Review: "Call Me by Your Name"

Remember that glorious, gut-wrenching scene in James Ivory's The Remains of the Day in which the lonely butler Mr. Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) is caught by housekeeper Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson), the woman he secretly adores, reading a book of sweet love stories?

I will never forget it and it's that sense of overwhelming longing and desire that I figured would play so prominently in Call Me by Your Name, a picture not directed by Ivory but written by the filmmaker - a rare screenwriting credit. Yet the film, pretty as it may be, ultimately left me more restless than anything, one of the great disappointments of the 2017 film season.

The picture opens on young Elio (Timothee Chalamet) who, over the summer of 1983, spends his days relaxing in the Italian countryside with his family. His father (Michael Stuhlbarg), a professor of archaeology, invites Oliver (Armie Hammer), a twentysomething doctoral student, to spend much of the season with them. Initially, the introverted Elio and high-spirited Oliver seem to have little in common but, over time, they do grow close and, despite Elio's courting of Marzia (Esther Garrel), a sexual relationship soon blossoms.

Call Me by Your Name is sumptuously photographed by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom - it's a picture that looks just as splendid as Ivory's best. Alas, director Luca Guadagnino, who has impressed me in the past (I love I Am Love), shows far more sensual feeling for the countryside scenery than his characters. Elio and Oliver are just not as captivating or absorbing a pair as say, Mr. Stevens and Miss Kenton or Maurice and Clive of Ivory's Maurice.

Chalamet is dead-on convincing as Elio. Too bad he's stuck playing against Hammer who, his matinee idols looks aside, continues to exude the acting prowess of a block of wood. At the film's 11-'o-clock hour, Stuhlbarg has a monologue on young love that, while exquisitely delivered by the actor, rings of something manufactured that you'd only hear in the movies.

Call Me by Your Name dazzled my eyes but, to my surprise, barely tugged at the heartstrings.

B

Review: "I, Tonya"

At last, a film worthy of the talents of Margot Robbie and Sebastian Stan!

Robbie and Stan, two marvelous stars with rather patchy filmographies to date, are at their career-best in I, Tonya, a picture that serves up heaps of meat for both actors to chew on. Robbie, in particular, is truly stunning, in one of the year's best and most affecting performances.

The film, directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Steven Rogers, who too have only had intermittent success on the big screen, opens on young Tonya Harding (portrayed as a child by Mckenna Grace) being thrust into the world of figuring skating by LaVona (Allison Janney), her chain-smoking monster of a mother. By her teens (at this point played by Robbie), Tonya is one of the great up-and-coming American figure skaters, helped along the way by coach Diane Rawlinson (Julianne Nicholson), who shows Tonya infinitely more warmth and concern than her own mother ever provided.

Tonya eventually falls for Jeff Gillooly (Stan), a man equal parts doting and vicious, and is able to finally move out of LaVona's house by marrying him - alas, this is an act of moving from one abusive relationship to another. There are ups and downs for Tonya, both personally and professionally, culminating in a comeback attempt that inspires Jeff and his buffoonish friend Shawn (Paul Walter Hauser) to bring down Tonya's rival Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver). The rest, of course, is history.

I, Tonya is at its most absorbing early on, as Tonya catapults her way toward the top of the figure skating world, despite the barbaric pain (and negligible support) inflicted upon her by LaVona and Jeff. Robbie is downright exhilarating from start to finish, painting Tonya as a gifted, sad and wholly sympathetic figure. She's matched by Stan, often explosive as the volatile husband, and Nicholson, warm and wonderful, per usual, as the altruistic coach.

Janney, no surprise, is memorable too, but I don't think LaVona is quite as fleshed out on the page as Tonya and Jeff. It's a vivid portrayal of loathsome, garish woman, but Janney never quite gets that 'Oscar scene' you'd hope for and LaVona all but disappears from the picture in the second half.

While there is so much to love about I, Tonya, the proceedings are a tad less compelling once "the incident" comes to fruition. At this point, with the rock soundtrack blasting and film editing growing more snazzy with each frame, Gillespie and Rogers seem hellbent on kicking the film into Scorsese mode, and I think this only detracts from the brilliant central performances. Also, there's a little too much of the grotesque Shawn to stomach

My few quibbles aside, I, Tonya remains an absolute must-see for Robbie's stirring performance alone, a turn that, no doubt, is en route to an Oscar nomination. If only Stan could make the cut too!

B+

Review: "All the Money in the World"

In 1987, during post-production on his drama September, Woody Allen made the unprecedented decision to all but start from scratch on the picture, replacing stars Sam Shepard, Maureen O'Sullivan and Charles Durning with Sam Waterston, Elaine Stritch and Jack Warden, respectively. The result, while not a commercial success, marked one of Allen's most absorbing and richly performed dramas, with Stritch especially riveting in the role of family matriarch.

Fast-forward three decades and, amid sexual assault allegations toward All the Money in the World star Kevin Spacey, it was Ridley Scott in this precarious position of going back to do extensive reshoots, albeit not quite to the extent Allen did in '87. Spacey's scenes as oil tycoon J. Paul Getty were booted from the film as that old pro Christopher Plummer waltzed in to save the day and shoot the role over a mere nine days.

Plummer, I'm pleased to report, is in marvelous form as Getty, a feat made all the more remarkable by the time crunch to have this thing ready for a Christmas theatrical release. To boot, this role is no cameo - he graces the screen for well more than half an hour, instilling much-needed vitality into the proceedings, and clearly had a blast with the role.

Alas, when Plummer isn't front and center, All the Money in the World is an overwhelmingly ho-hum endeavor and certainly no September.

The picture opens on young John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) being kidnapped by an organized crime regime in Rome. His mother Gail (Michelle Williams) reaches out to Getty Sr. to pay the ransom, which he promptly refuses to do, claiming it would only encourage his other grandchildren to be captured in exchange for Getty money. With her son's captors growing more savage over time, Gail works alongside Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg), a former CIA operative and Getty Sr.'s business manager, to devise a way of saving the young man without the assistance of his crusty grandfather.

A key and nearly fatal flaw of All the Money in the World is the young Getty is so thinly drawn by Scott, (Charlie) Plummer and screenwriter David Scarpa that it's tough to get all that emotionally invested in the proceedings. Williams is able to breathe a bit more life into her role, even with Scarpa's script doing her few favors. Wahlberg, on the other hand, is supreme dead weight, evidently having graduated from the Bruce Willis in The Bonfire of the Vanities School of Acting - "maybe I'll win an Oscar if I do nothing but simply throw on a pair of glasses!"

Ultimately, the sole reason to sit through this lengthy and often middling exercise is Plummer, who at least has some blood flowing through his veins and is able to wholly transcend Scott's unfocused direction and Scarpa's lame script. Spacey, I suspect, may have played Getty as camp, rendering the proceedings all but unwatchable. Plummer, on the other hand, is stunningly convincing. It's a tour de force turn that provides a hefty lift to this troubled production.

If only Scott had pulled an Allen, scrapped the entire picture and started over with a Getty biopic!

B-

Review: "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"

More porgs, please!

Those adorable porgs - the pint-sized sea birds who inhabit the planet on which an exiled Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) resides in Star Wars: The Last Jedi - sure are irresistible and there's a lot to like in filmmaker Rian Johnson's contribution to the franchise, even if it rarely reaches the heights of the legendary first three films.

While, in many respects, this is a bolder, more ambitious effort than the series' last entry, J.J. Abrams' fine but workmanlike The Force Awakens, it is also structurally haphazard, often bouncing among its subplots in frantic manner that renders the proceedings somewhat uninvolving.

The Last Jedi opens on the Resistance, led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher, in her final film appearance), evacuating their base upon the arrival of a First Order fleet. Leia's son, the painfully conflicted Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), has the opportunity to blow the Resistance ship to bits but hesitates, deep down harboring feelings for his mother. Nonetheless, the First Order pursues them via a tracking device, which Resistance fighters Poe (Oscar Isaac) and Finn (John Boyega) are determined to disable.

Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley), alongside Chewbecca and R2-D2, has interrupted Luke's isolated existence, determined to recruit him back to the Resistance. Luke initially resists, viewing the Jedi as plagued with failure, but eventually relents, willing to educate Rey in the ways of the force. Matters get messy, however, when Rey and Kylo begin telepathically communicating and Kylo, who had been trained by Luke, paints his former master in a not-so-flattering light.

With Hamill in career-best form and Ridley a sterling screen presence, their scenes are among The Last Jedi's best and most absorbing - and just wait 'til a franchise favorite shows up for marvelous surprise cameo alongside Luke. It's the rest of the picture that's rather erratic.

The cast isn't to blame. Fisher (who has more to do here than in The Force Awakens), Driver, Boyega and Isaac are all terrific, as is Kelly Marie Tran as Rose, a mechanic along for the fight. (Laura Dern, sadly, doesn't have much meat to chew on.) The thing is, for every sequence that crackles, like Finn and Rose's journey to an elaborate casino city, there are one or two that either don't quite pay off or just fall completely flat. Also, at more than two and a half hours, the proceedings left me awfully restless...with about half an hour still go.

As admittedly not the most ardent of Star Wars fans - oddly enough, my favorite in the series is Return of the Jedi...and that's mostly because I'm that one person who loves Ewoks - I'm hardly dumbfounded that The Last Jedi didn't leave me head over heels. Still, I can recognize that vitality and movie magic in the original trilogy of Star Wars pictures and it's pleasure that's only intermittently present in this film and The Force Awakens.

That said...I'm totally down for some more porgs.

B

Review: "Darkest Hour"

It was hardly hyperbole when, in the late 1980s, film critic Roger Ebert labeled Gary Oldman "the best young British actor around." Oldman may not have graced the Hollywood A-list at this time but he was nonetheless killing it with dazzling turns in the likes of Sid and Nancy, Prick Up Your Ears and Rosencranz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Oldman would, over the years to come, instill vitality in safer fare like Air Force One, The Contender and Hannibal, plus Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, which perhaps introduced a whole new generation of film buffs to the veteran actor.

Rarely, however, has Oldman been handed a role with this much meat to chew on. His turn as newly appointed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, a performance talked up for months as a shoo-in for the Best Actor Oscar, is a legit tour de force, a master class in acting that is equal parts convincing and entertaining. It's just too bad the picture around him isn't operating at that same sky-high level.

Directed by Joe Wright, a master of the workmanlike British drama, Darkest Hour follows Churchill during the early days of World War II. Nazi forces are steamrolling across Western Europe and the threat of invasion to Great Britain is imminent. Where his predecessor Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) was known for his appeasement foreign policy, Churchill fiercely opposes Hitler and loathes the idea, still advocated by the Chamberlain wing, of negotiating with him. Ultimately, despite his political opponents' best efforts to influence him, Churchill rallies the nation behind the war effort and the rest is history.

Darkest Hour often has the feel of a one-man show. This is in part due to the riveting, larger-than-life nature of Oldman's performance, a turn that graces the screen in nearly every frame. It is also, however, the result of screenwriter Anthony McCarten's decision not to much flesh out a single other figure in the picture. We learn virtually nothing about wife Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) or King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn) and while Pickup is quite terrific as Chamberlain, he too is mostly treated like a mannequin.

This isn't to put the film down too much. Beyond Oldman, there's a lot to like on the technical end, with a marvelous Dario Marianelli score and lush cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel. A handful of scenes, perhaps most notably Churchill's bolting from his car to join his fellow citizens for a trip on the subway, are also very nicely staged by Wright.

Ultimately, though, Oldman upstages everything and everyone around him in Darkest Hour. He chews scenery, sure, but also instills in Churchill a palpable sense of vulnerability. Oldman also disappears into the role in a way I don't think past actors like John Lithgow (The Crown) and Richard Burton (The Gathering Storm) quite pulled off.

Darkest Hour may be a stuffy endeavor in many regards but Oldman more than delivers the goods.

B+