REVIEW: The Shape of Water & Brawl in Cell Block 99 (LFF Day 6)

Okay, so I may have skipped a few days, but both of these films were fresh in my mind and my thoughts on them actually seem to have made it onto the page in semi-presentable form.

 

The Shape of Water

With The Shape of Water, Guillermo Del Toro has delivered a film that is at once a luminous love letter to ‘50s sci-fi and a pricking commentary on prejudice.

Bone Tomahawk is a brutal and welcome revisionist Western

 

In Bone Tomahawk, novelist turned filmmaker S. Craig Zahler takes an approach to the Western genre that is bright, dusty, and watered with blood — think The Searchers meet The Hills Have Eyes.

When a mysterious drifter (David Arquette) wanders into the idyllic settlement of Bright Hope, Chicory (Richard Jenkins), an amiable old buffer and “backup deputy”, promptly reports it to Sheriff Franklin (newfound Western afficionado Kurt Russell), who brings the drifter in… though not without violence.…