by lhb412 » Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:10 am
Cronos
Guillermo del Toro's first film - his first Spanish language film and his only Spanish language film set in his native Mexico.
This film follows a kindly old antique dealer, Jesús Gris (played by Federico Luppi), and his relationship with his almost entirely silent granddaughter. Their quiet existence is interrupted by the discovery of a ornate, golden, scarab-shaped device hidden in an old archangel statue in his shop. Jesús accidentally activates the device which 'stings' his palm, and soon he begins changing into, well, a vampire (the movie never says 'vampire'). If that wasn't enough trouble, an industrialist who wants to live forever is also after the device and he's got this brutish American nephew (Ron Perlman) to get rid of anything or anyone in the way.
You see a lot of GDT's style and themes, some in embryonic form, in this movie. Of course, it's his first movie and it's really low budget, but even so GDT elevates it somewhat - but what really elevates it is Luppi's wonderful performance. Without Luppi the movie is interesting, but with Luppi the movie becomes special.
Luppi also appears in Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. He passed away a few weeks ago.
Mimic (director's cut)
GDT goes from a small Mexican film to a major Hollywood production and it almost destroyed him: tons of interference with the studio demanding constant rewrites, character changes, changes to the design of the creatures - often seemingly without logic or reason, or, as when they refused for the main couple to be interracial, just pure meanness. GDT notes in his commentary that he was 33 when making this movie; "the perfect age to be crucified." Star Mira Sorvino championed GDT, and was apparently the reason GDT wasn't fired from the film. Honestly, the special features when GDT goes over all the madness is probably more interesting than the film itself.
This director's cut is, by GDT's own admission, far from the film he wanted to make, but at the very least it restores the movie into almost all stuff GDT actually made himself, eliminating the reshoots and second unit stuff that added fake scares and the like that GDT didn't want to shoot.
The film is okay. It's a good, standard creature feature about giant insects breeding in the NYC sewers and the scientists who accidently created them discovering and trying to fight them. I quite like Charles S. Dutton as the police officer. There are a few sparks of really interesting ideas, but they never really blossom. What GDT could certainly be proud of is his visuals, 'cause the film looks fantastic.
Last edited by
lhb412 on Sun Nov 26, 2017 2:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.