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Guillermo del Toro 's latest film The Shape of Water (my  review ) is currently cleaning up with accolades and guild nominations during this awards season. Shape of Water is essentially a love story, with the unique spin being that one of the players is an amphibian who learns to communicate through sign language. After reflecting upon the film during the weeks since I first saw it, I started thinking about a forgotten film from the 2000s, M. Night Shyamalan 's much-maligned Lady in the Water . The unexpected similarities between Shyamalan's bedtime story and del Toro's film were hard to ignore. Both films feature protagonists who are custodians with communication disabilities. In Shape , Sally Hawkins  is a janitor at a government laboratory and a mute. In Lady , Paul Giamatti  is an apartment building superintendent with a bad stutter. They both live lives of solace (Hawkins lives above an old movie theatre and Giamatti lives alone in a tiny pool house). Their l...

A big reason why Guillermo del Toro is so loved by cinephiles (myself included) is that his passion for cinema is evident in almost every frame of anything he makes. Whether it's the stunning cinematography that fills the screen canvas (usually in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, as opposed to 2.35:1) with a treasure trove of production design details and movie homages, the memorable music scores (e.g. you can literally hum the score for Pan's Labyrinth ) or the parable-like quality some of his stories have ( Crimson Peak , Cronos ), you know within the first five seconds that you are watching a Guillermo del Toro film. His signature screen voice is memorable. Other popular filmmakers with signature voices include Martin Scorsese , Spike Lee and Kathryn Bigelow . You know each of their cinematic screen voices because they are distinct -- and because those voices are real. They come from a place of deep affection, curiosity, pain, wonder, fear and conviction. It's why they endure ...