‘The Post’ & ‘The Shape of Water’ at the Odeon

The Post

Government secrets, the theme of two upcoming films at the Odeon Cinema, are revealed by stealth and happenstance. The Post recounts a true story from America during the Vietnam War era. A romantic fantasy, The Shape of Water, tells a tender story tinged by the culture and mores of the 1960s. Films will be screened in English with Italian subtitles.

The Post will be screening Saturday, February 10, Sunday, February 11 and Monday, February 12 (4, 6:30 and 9 pm), Friday, February 9 (4 and 9 pm) and Tuesday, February 13 (4 and 6:30 pm).

Director Steven Spielberg directs Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in a drama leading up to the Washington Post’s publication of highly classified documents exposing a government cover up spanning three decades and four US presidents. Recently widowed Katherine Graham (Streep) portrays a tenuous and untested publisher pressed by the overbold and gruff news editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks) to risk both their careers and freedom to disclose Vietnam secrets revealed in the Pentagon Papers.

The film nostalgically depicts 1970s journalism with gutsy journalism, huddles in smoky rooms and nail biting editorial decisions before final rush publication on moveable type with truckloads of papers hot off the press rushed to corner newsstands. The Post, with the president’s malfeasance and attempts to squelch the free press resonates with the current political situation; audiences will easily see Spielberg’s belief that justice naturally follows truth.

The Shape of Water is showing Wednesday, February 14 (4:15 and 6:30 pm), Thursday, February 15 through Sunday, February 18 (4:15, 6:30 and 9 pm), Friday, February 23 (6:30 and 9 pm) and Saturday and Sunday, February 24 and 25 (4:15, 6:30 and 9 pm).

Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer star in this ephemeral film set in the Cold War era. A lonely deaf-mute janitor (Hawkins) working the night shift in a high security government lab discovers a highly classified experiment on a humanoid aquatic creature found in the Amazon. Communicating in sign language she befriends the creature and she and co-worker Zelda (Spencer) scheme up a plan to free it. An increasingly malevolent lab director (Michael Shannon) brings an element of evil into this otherwise romantic sci-fi tale. Director Guillermo del Toro won the Golden Globe award for best director and the film received 13 Oscar
nominations. (rita kungel)