The Shape of Water (2017)

I'm not convinced The Shape of Water should have been eligible for this year's BAFTAs, considering it was only released the Friday before the ceremony. I think it's one thing for the film industry to award themselves as many prizes as they want (wasn't there something about how only monkeys and the incumbent US President claps themselves?), but if BAFTA seriously wants to engage with cinema-goers, it would help if it wasn't so elitist and gave folk the chance to make up their own minds before telling them which films are good and which aren't.

To be fair, the reason I imagine that BAFTA is pushing films that only scrape a release before the ceremony is that the delay between the US release and the UK release means that BAFTA is worried that compared with the Oscars, it's going to look like last year's news. Perhaps they need reminding that the 'B' does not stand for America.

With that off my chest, on Friday I took a day off work to see the film (well that and and Lady Bird, another prematurely BAFTA'd film) and found myself sitting in a cinema with a sinking feeling of deja vu.

A couple of weeks before, I had been sitting in the same cinema (Curzon Aldgate, I'm looking at you) waiting for Early Man to begin. Only it wasn't so much a case of Early Man, as Delayed Man and then Didn't Bother to Show Up At All Man.

It all started with a lack of adverts, which wouldn't bother most people (and as long as the lights are up, I spend those ten minutes reading), but it's an indicator that the the wonderful state-of-the-art digital projection service, where you don't need actual projectionists had failed to start.

As the rest of the audience was content to sit there (occasionally asking each other if the programme should have started by now), I went off in search of someone to do something. I don't know how I ended up in the position of being the person who always goes off whenever there's something wrong in the cinema as I've always considered myself as the person least likely to cause a fuss, but I guess that's what comes with getting old(er).

By the time I return to my seat, someone has kindly turned it into a shrine to their shopping - proof that no good deed goes unpunished.

Unlike with Couldn't Get Out Of Bed Man, the cinema staff managed to start the film (might have been a case of turning it off and turning it on again), the upside to the issue being that they skipped all the adverts and went straight to the trailers (often the best part).

I had been prepared for The Shape of Water to disappoint me hugely. I remember the fuss made about Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, which I though was okay, but not the masterpiece that some friends were making it out to be. I liked his Hellboy, but not so much Hellboy 2, and the rest of his films have been interesting, but unlikely to make it to the top of my favourite films list.

I'd also been coming across a bit of a backlash about the film from certain folk - yes it looked pretty, but it didn't engage them.

I was captivated for almost all of the film's running time. There's one sequence (the musical one, if you go see it) that felt out of place to me, but other than that I absolutely loved it.

It won't work for everyone (that's proven), and it requires a pretty huge suspension of disbelief, but if you can get over the unlikely romance (and there are big fat clues about how not unlikely it might be), then there's a lot to like.

It's been accused of being derivative, but for me that was one of the strengths of the film. del Toro has taken inspiration from dozens of sources and mashed them into something that worked on multiple levels for me.

The Alexandre Desplat score is possibly the best work he has done - I've been listening to it a lot and have found myself humming bars of it when waking up (yes, I wake up humming film scores, what of it?). The Production design is beautiful, and the directing shows del Toro at the top of his game.

In short, all of the BAFTAs that The Shape of Water won are properly deserved in my book.

Even if it was a a year too soon.