Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is now streaming on Netflix.

Given just a three-week run in theatres where this majestic film should rightfully be seen, it is nevertheless now available for all who have a subscription to Netflix to see.

From the director of The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and Nightmare Alley comes another screen masterpiece, the umpteenth film based on Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic horror novel but the best since James Whale’s 1931 interpretation.

The story is told in three sections: a prelude, and two parts, the titles of which are the self-evident Victor’s Tale and The Creature’s Tale.

In the prelude, a Danish Sea Captain (Lars Mikkelsen) oversees the attempts of his crew to dig their ship out of the ice. Investigating a fire glimpsed across the tundra, they come upon Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) injured and near death, though his sled dogs are unharmed.

The rampaging creature (Jacon Elordi) appears almost as a giant, a towering, hooded form wrapped in animal furs. “Victor. Bring him to me,” he growls, tossing aside crew members that assail him and shoot at him, and using his mighty strength to tilt the ship. When a blunderbuss blast hits him, he falls through cracks into the icy waters. The captain assumes that he is dead, but Victor assures him that the creature can’t die and begs the captain to leave him out on the ice.

The captain, of course, refuses and Victor tells him his life story in flashback, beginning with his childhood under the thumb of his tyrannical scientist father (Charles Dance) who he blames for his mother’s death during the birth of his younger brother (Felix Kamerer).

Victor becomes something of a tyrannical scientist himself, leading to his association with another noted scientist (Christoph Waltz) and his quest to create a man out of body parts of the recently deceased.

Rather than just a head stitched to the body and rewired with a new brain, Victor’s creature appears to have a ceramic head attached to a marble sculpture clothed in bandages. Elordi inhabits him with a mix of awkwardness and grace.

The creature at first seems like a newborn baby delighting in new discoveries like water and leaves. Obviously, Victor has not given much thought to what would happen beyond the creature’s birth. His brother asks: “Did you ever ask yourself, of all the parts that make up that man, which part holds the soul?”

The heart of the film emerges as the creature escapes the castle and finds shelter in an isolated farmhouse with a blind old man (a memorable David Bradley) overjoyed to have companionship. One of the film’s most touching moments is the creature learning the word “friend.” with books giving him a new world of language and knowledge.

The creature’s world falls apart when he discovers through Victor’s notebook that he’s “a wretch assembled from the refuse and discards of death”, worsened by the realization that absolute death will remain elusive to him, denying him a remedy for his pain.

Not since Boris Karloff inhabited the monster in the 1931 version has there been such a soulful portrayal of the creature. Unlike the 1931/32 Oscars when there was no award for Best Supporting Actor, Elordi is major contender for that award this year.

The film is also in contention for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Production Design, Costume Design, Hair and Makeup, and Score. How many will it receive? We won’t know until nominations are announced in January.

Apple TV has released a Blu-ray of CODA, the first, and so far, only streaming film to win an Oscar for Best Picture.

The film had been nominated for three Oscars including Best Supporting Actor for Troy Kotsur and Best Adapted Screenplay for Sian Heder who also directed. It won all three.

Based on the 2014 French film, The Bélier Family, CODA which stands for Children of Deaf Adults, is about Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones), a musically gifted 16-year-old girl (Emilia Jones) who is the only hearing member of a family of four that also includes her mother (Marlee Matlin), father (Troy Kotsur), and older brother (Daniel Durant).

Set in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the father makes his living as a fisherman with his son and daughter accompanying him on his boat after school while his wife keeps the books.

Ruby has recently joined the school choir where she is paired with a boy (Ferdi Walsh-Peelo) with whom she is falling in love. Her choirmaster (Eugenio Derbez) encourages her to audition for the Berklee College of Music, but if she is accepted it will mean leaving her family and moving to Boston where she will be unable to help them with the family business. They will have to hire someone to take her place as they must have a hearing person on board to hear warnings from the Coast Guard.

It’s a simple coming of age story, but not a simplistic one. When I first saw it prior to the 2021 Oscars, I saw it as little more than a glorified TV movie. I thought Kotsur’s character was there to show that deaf people can be just as vulgar as anyone else. In viewing it again, I still find that to be the case, but Kotsur’s character is much more than that. It is he who pushes his daughter in the end to follow her dream.

The film’s most memorable scene is Ruby’s audition for the college in which she sings Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” with accompaniment by her choirmaster. Her parents are not permitted to attend the audition, but they manage to sneak up a back staircase to the balcony. Ruby, spotting them, begins to “sign” the words to the song while singing it and of course wins the audition.

Sadly, her boyfriend did not pass his audition, but he promises to visit her in Boston, and the family says goodbye with a group hug.

Happy viewing.