Nobody Knows Hollywood

Paranoid, government secret love may be the best kind of love - that is the shape of Guillermo del Toro’s latest, beautiful myth. Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is a woman without a voice, mopping the floors and bathrooms in a secret government lab in 1962. The cold war is icy - with the Russians man in outer space and missiles on Cuba putting the Americans G-men on the highest, high alert. Strickland (Michael Shannon) is the G-man in charge, and he kicks things into high gear by introducing the mysterious South American Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) to the lab. The Amphibian Man is a cross between the Creature from the Black Lagoon, E.T. and Star Man in film parlance. He looks creepy, but still, human enough for Elisa to fall for him. How she reaches out to him is simple and show us how ridiculously limited and unfortunately awkward our verbal language is in comparison. The rest of the supporting cast is fantastic, too. Richard Jenkins as Elisa’s sweet neighbor, Giles, is fun, sw...

Director: John Slattery Year: 2014 God’s Pocket is a movie that leaves me gnashing my teeth for what could have been. The killer lineup of actors, in particular, John Turturro, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Richard Jenkins set against a poor, blue collar, never quite defined northeast suburb and a small, dark, ugly little story has all the elements of a powder keg. Sadly, the explosion is more a pop than a boom.     The setup is such: Jeanie Scarpato (Christina Hendricks) is in a loveless marriage with shlub, Mickey Scarpato (Hoffman). She has an adult child, Leon (Caleb Landry Jones), from a previous relationship living with them. Leon is a loud-mouthed drug addict with a switch blade for a best friend – and Jeanie believes her little boy is perfect. Mickey’s a hustler who owns a meat-delivery truck and does small-time crime to make ends meet. His partner in crime is Arthur ‘Bird’ Capezio (John Turturro). Sal Cappi (Domenick Lombardozzi) is the heavy who watches over...