If Alabamans Had Seen "The Shape Of Water"," Doug Jones Would Have Won By A Landslide

The workers came to replace the popcorn ceiling at my mom's house yesterday - we weren't expecting them until Tuesday, but they called Thursday and said, "how bout we start tomorrow?"  So my daughter's family we're getting ready to go back to Seattle.  I was busily packing things and moving furniture to the garage, before the workers came.  I dropped the family at the airport at 2pm (really hard to see my little angel go, but we'll catch up with them in Seattle in a few weeks), and then rushed to meet my college roommate for a late lunch before he went to a UCLA basketball game.  (We did that together in the Golden Age of UCLA basketball in the mid-sixties.)  Then we were free and wanted to let the workers do whatever they were doing without us.  So we checked the films showing at the theater nearby.

I'd seen the LA Times Billboard Critics Choices for Best Films yesterday.  I tend to agree with Kenneth Turan, so I wanted to see his top pick, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri.

I've put the six critics' choices into a table.  You can see their picks for other categories as well here.

	Chang LATimes	Turan LATimes	O'Neil Gold Derby	Thompson Indiewire	Sperling Vanity Fair	Whipp The Envelope
Call Me By Your Name	1	8	5	6	3	9
Darkest Hour	2	4	4	4	2	5
Dunkirk	3	3	3	1	1	4
The Florida Project	4		7			1
Get Out	5			7	4	6
Lady Bird	6	10	8	5	5	7
Mudbound	7	5		9
The Post	8	6	1		6
The Shape of Water	9	2	2	3	7	3
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri	10	1	9	2	8	2
Phantom Thread		7	6
The Big Sick		9		8		8
Blade Runner 2049				10		10
Detroit			10

[The numbers show the order the critics listed them.  I'm assuming they ranked them with their favorites on top.]

But Three Billboards had already begun, so we went for The Shape of Water.

NOTE:  I'd suggest going to see The Shape of Water without reading anything about it.  Let it unfold without any preconceptions or expectations.

I sat there in amazement through the whole film.  It's was a totally unexpected story, a little bizarre, but I got past that pretty quickly.  I'm just beginning to think about the symbolic meaning of the story.  This definitely goes to on my top movies of the year - though admittedly I haven't seen too many on the list (Florida Project, Get Out, and Mudbound).  This one is so original and powerful and good;  it's why I rely on Kenneth Turan's judgment.  So now I have to see Three Billboards.

So What Does Doug Jones Have To Do With This?

One of the actors is Doug Jones - like the new Senator from Alabama.  And it's no spoiler if I tell you that we never see Doug Jones' face, so it is possible it's the same person.  And if it had been shown in Alabama, I suspect many of the people would have been impressed by the character Doug Jones played, and voted for him.  Though I can imagine some of those folks who take the bible literally might have some serious problems with the Doug Jones character.