Mr. Funny Shoes

Mimic

(1997)

Didn't like this when it was new, but that was before I realized that Guillermo del Toro was one of my favorite contemporary directors, so 15 years on, I decided it was time to give his big-bugs-under-Manhattan second feature another shot (of Raid?).

Sorry, still no: a few hints of the tropes he uses effectively elsewhere, especially his go-to birth-canal corridors (here, subway tunnels), but too much of this seems lifted directly from Alien and Aliens, and Mira Sorvino, though she had recently copped an Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite, can't hold a tough maternal candle to Sigourney Weaver.

Del Toro's long-awaited next film, by the way, is the space-aliens attacker Pacific Rim, starring fellow Arsenal backer Idris Elba (right: Stringer Bell). Scheduled for a May 2013 release. Scheduled for me tomorrow night: another film I didn't like first time, by a director who has since become one of my favorites.