I don’t say this lightly, but I think Guillermo del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN might be up there pretty high among the top Frankensteins? Or at least it hits hard for me. It’s one of the more faithful adaptations of Mary Shelley’s 207-year-old novel Frankenstein: But If You Think About It It’s Almost Like a Modern Prometheus, but it’s reinterpreted enough to feel like pure, personal del Toro.
He uses the wraparound story of a Royal Danish Navy expedition to the North Pole that’s now stuck in the ice. The crew sees an explosion nearby and discovers injured Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac, THE CARD COUNTER). Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen, of the Copenhagen Mikkelsens) takes him on board to shelter him from The Creature (Jacob Elordi, THE MORTUARY COLLECTION), and this strange guest decides to be dramatic and tell his whole damn story from childhood to that very day. (read the rest of this shit…)
See, this is why I continue being a best picture completist – it gets me to watch some good movies I was planning to skip. This year when they announced the ten nominees I had already seen six of them and was planning to see another three. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is the only one I’d had no desire to see. In fact I’d been hoping it wouldn’t get nominated, and felt a little resentment that according to my self-imposed rules I was gonna have to watch it.
