Call Me By Your Name's Timothée Chalamet -- Updated

Here I post notes about Timothée Chalamet, whose work in Call Me By Your Name earned him accolades and honors around the world. These are not fandom ravings but rather random musings about this exceptional young man's craft.

*A Chalamet / Glover pairing for Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen or Othello, Beckett's Godot or Parks' Topdog/Underdog would be singularly epic.

*2018 promises to be an even bigger year for Young Mr. Chalamet. Along with Beautiful Boy and Woody Allen's joint there's Hot Summer Nights (TC does Breaking Bad?) I didn't know this number was in the mix. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=O5ROSS9ReUY

 

*In Pamela Romanowsky's The Adderall Diaries (2015), Chalamet was cast as the teenage son of an abusive father (Ed Harris), who grows up to be a drug-addicted and self-destructive author (James Franco). Chalamet appears in flashes of memory, recoiling from his father's temper, self-injuring and retaliating against abandonment. It's a demanding role even though it does not carry a narrative arc, and, once again, he demonstrates his readiness and willingness to commit to a challenging part.

*Chalamet's performance in Miss Stevens (2016) was hauntingly nuanced, even though it contained some histrionics (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH8y3lky2FM). His character, the boundaries-challenged Billy, was both endearing and unnerving, walking that line between comforter and creep. For an actor so young to be able to negotiate such difficult emotional territory is quite extraordinary. 

*The mystery of Chalamet's attractiveness will probably never be solved to everyone's satisfaction -- if the attempt were to be made -- but it has occurred to me that in some photographs he bears a striking resemblance to Liz Taylor. Taylor's appeal, of course, is legendary, but Chalamet's allure is not entirely in bone structure and facial symmetry. From where I'm sitting, it's in his mien, manner and intellect, as well.

*In interviews, Chalamet has included Joaquin Phoenix among the actors he admires most. I can certainly see the affinity, if it's based on body of work. Phoenix picks idiosyncratic roles; he seems to thrive on the serious challenges. His characters are often taciturn, brutalized men who glower. One recent exception was his pained loner / romantic in Her. Frivolous and Joaquin Phoenix do not occupy the same space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XeK0rc_9a0  I'm confident the same will be said about Timothée Chalamet in time.

*Chalamet should have won the Oscar because he was in nearly every scene of Call Me By Your Name, speaks three languages in it, plays Bach, covers everything from diffidence to passion, holds audiences in their seats without saying a word, and Frank Ocean thinks he rocks.

*I've heard Chalamet in a dozen interviews and think he's got one of the nimblest, most sagacious minds of any 22-year-old I've ever come across. And I've been teaching them for 25 years. He's unaffected and engaging, a real joy to watch.

*He will be one of the most consequential persons in cinema sooner rather than later. Aside from his outstanding screen work, in interviews he is focused, incisive and generous. If he avoids predators, Chalamet will be the Paul Newman of his generation, for real.

*Having seen CMBYN a couple dozen times since January -- alone and with friends -- I feel the film itself, due in no small part to his leading role, stands up remarkably under close scrutiny. It is scrupulously composed (I've created another posting for those thoughts) and thoroughgoing. Just remarkable in its presentation and affect. It is masterful and will endure.

*As a friend said to me after a screening, it takes real immersion into a role to enable an actor to alter their appearance so dramatically and to such powerful effect as Chalamet does in the course of the picture.

*The film societies decide who gets hardware, not how enriching the work was. Often the two are the same, not always. Challenging, stimulating work (whether film or performance) will always be prized by those who were touched, enlivened. And that's not bad. Not bad.

*I'm intrigued by Chalamet's 2014 film short Spinners (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOYMwuHJa3Q …) and its message about displaced and discarded young people. Film shorts are trickier for me to comment on than features because I rely so much on narrative that "snapshots" leave me too much room for mischief.

*Knowing that Kid Cudi's credos speak to Chalamet adds interesting levels to the actor's descriptions of what gets him going and how he's handling his fame. I suppose walking the line between the desire for affirmation and "whatever" can be tricky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRPpLGxGNZY

Ready Player One

Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One is expensive (175 million dollar) and disorienting (two-thirds of the film takes place in game space), loaded with pop culture references and self-referential witticisms, but, regrettably, it is also overstuffed and emotionally inert for long stretches. Most of the film's interest is in the execution of Spielberg's singular transporting vision onto the screen which occasionally in the past has fallen just short of full realization (see Bruce the shark from Jaws). In this case, the picture is a visual marvel set in the near future where citizens escape their overpopulated existence through a virtual reality game called Oasis, taking on avatars and living a fantasy life that occasionally means warring fantastic creatures to accumulate points and coins. Spielberg's hero is the teenage orphan Wade (Tye Sheridan), whose avatar, Parzival, is a skillful bad-ass who often teams with other masked players in Oasis. He befriends a rogue female avatar named Art3mis / real name Samantha (Olivia Cooke), who is actually playing the game to find a way to destroy it. This crew joins the rest of the gaming universe in a challenge to find secret keys that will lead to an Easter Egg hidden by the game's creator (Mark Rylance) somewhere in the guts of the virtual world that will pay trillions of dollars and transfer control of the game to the winner. Ben Mendelsohn plays the head of the gaming company plotting to keep anyone from wresting control out of his hands. Yes, it's convoluted as hell, which is much of its problem, the other part  being the actual people get so little screen time that the audience never really develops a connection with them and so their quest (while amazing to watch) feels remote.

Chappaquiddick

In John Curran's Chappaquiddick, Sen. Ted Kennedy (Jason Clarke) is portrayed as the whipping boy of the Kennedy clan, who did absolutely everything wrong after driving off a bridge on Martha's Vineyard and leaving a devoted campaign worker (Kate Mara) to drown. As portrayed by the masterful Mr. Clarke, Kennedy is at once despicable and pitiful, but certainly no more callous than the stable of power brokers and spinmeisters who had been doing the palsied and indomitable Joe Kennedy's (Bruce Dern) bidding for years and are called to save the senator from himself. The screenplay by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan is smart and confines the story to the week after the accident, which, coincidentally was the time of the first moon walk -- the time of one Kennedy's posthumous space age triumph and his youngest brother's near implosion.

A Quiet Place

 
John Krasinski's mean monster thriller, A Quiet Place, makes clear what's at stake in a truly startling way within the picture's first five minutes and adds layers of complication and dreadful concern through to the last reel. Krasinski directs himself and Emily Blunt as the parents of a small family trying to stay alive after what appears to have been an alien invasion that left humankind scattered, scarce and scared. The beasties are hideous, ravenous and blind; they hunt using sound, which means to avoid attack one must be quiet -- always. Contributing more than a little irony to this entertaining pressure cooker of a movie is the young actress Millicent Simmonds, who plays the couple's oldest child, who uses a hearing aid. Simmonds, who actually is deaf, brings an emotional weight to her role that nearly matches the more senior members of the cast and that's saying a lot considering what Emily Blunt must face down during the course of this terrific picture.

District (2017)

Anthony Bawn (nee Newsome) created an interesting, no budget TV series last year that was streamed on what his company describes as the only black-owned, LGBTQ service on the web. District, which is now playing as a single hour-long piece on Amazon, explores the intersections of blackness, maleness and sexuality in an original context, IMO -- labor exploitation among black men in Atlanta. The series / film stars Brandon Anthony, the most polished of the half-dozen men in the cast, whose character, Miller, is an elaborately tattooed, under-employed hustler of sorts who is preyed upon by his occasional lover Jayvon, a homeless drug addict who nonetheless rocks a swimmer's build. One of Miller's generous "friends" introduces him to a secretive cartel of black construction contractors called the Brotherhood, from whom he learns that strings are attached to everything. The film suffers from uneven performances from cast members (all of the men are out-acted by Tami Roman as Miller's straight-talking, imprisoned mother), poor sound editing and mixing, and a curious narrative voice-over from Miller that's distorted to sound like anonymous witness testimony.

Journey's End

British director Saul Dibb's anguishing cinematic treatment of R.C. Sherriff's 1928 stage play Journey's End trains an unwavering but humane eye on the devastation of war that goes beyond the destruction of flesh and bone to the pulverization of the mind and the spirit. Sam Claflin stars as Captain Stanhope, a company commander in 1918 who is deep in the whiskey bottle as the film opens and never finds his way out. He is counseled and supported by the stalwart Lieutenant Osborne (Paul Bettany) and Second Lieutenant Trotter (Stephen Graham), both of whom are much loved by the soldiers under their command. Into their ranks comes a freshly minted second lieutenant, Raleigh (Asa Butterfield), a personal friend of Stanhope's who requested assignment to his friend's company, which has been assigned to hold a trench in northern France. Stanhope, embarrassed by his drinking, is at first cold to the new officer, who admires him still and understands little of what combat is actually about. In time, Stanhope receives word that the Germans will be moving on the company's position in a few days and the company can expect no assistance or relief. The film spends most of its time showing us what goes on beneath the surface among this group of battered, frightened but resolute soldiers, who, we realize, as they must, that they are little more than dispensable fodder.

A Fantastic Woman

Chilean director Sebastian Lelia’s A Fantastic Woman assumes nothing in its depiction of a trans woman whose partner dies suddenly, leaving her to contend with the man’s abrasive and transphobic ex-wife and brutish son as she comes to grips with the meaning of their relationship and her place in the world. The narrative does not ride on the back of current political disputes and activist sloganeering. The film’s lead is not heroic just supremely human. Daniela Vega is stoic and nearly regal in her bearing as the beset Marina, who simply wants to salvage some element of happiness out of a horrible situation.

Unsane

Steven Soderbergh's clever, iPhone-filmed distress fest, Unsane, is a tightly wound creep thriller that will no doubt have audiences yelling at the screen -- in the best way. British actress Claire Foy (The Crown) stars as Sawyer Valentini, an anxious and possibly crazy young woman who is on the run in Pennsylvania from a stalker back home in Boston. A visit to a counselor for her anxiety lands her in a psychiatric hospital, that may or may not be legit, for observation, but she bounces off the walls and off of other patients. A gregarious fellow patient (Jay Pharoah of SNL) who may or may not have an opioid addiction befriends Sawyer and tries to help her adjust. A weirdly menacing medical technician played by Joshua Leonard (director and star of the pioneering handheld creep fest The Blair Witch Project) may or may not be Sawyer's stalker from Boston and no one seems to believe her claims that he is. Both Foy and Leonard deliver a degree of intensity in their roles that could have easily devolved into parody. Instead, they are riveting and exhausting. Unsane is a smartly crafted tale in this Age of Time's Up and predatory health care.

Seven Seconds

Netflix's Seven Seconds starts as a refreshing treatment of a rapidly aging dramatic premise -- honest folks face off with bad cops and a beleaguered and cynical criminal justice system -- but it turns mawkish in its final hour. It's worth the watch because of Clare-Hope Ashitey's winning performance as Assistant Prosector KJ Harper, a karaoke-loving booze hound who is assigned the case of teenage black boy who was hit by a Jersey City cop and left in a ditch to die. Though at first reluctant, Harper is joined in this Black Lives Matter crusade by NYPD transfer Joe "Fish" Rinaldi (Michael Mosley), a ballsy guy who hates dirty cops more than he hates New Jersey. The series' rogues' gallery of despicable characters includes a trio of undercover detectives who are in bed with a local black gang that is slinging drugs on city corners, an ambitious chief prosecutor who needs the case settled to lock in the black vote for the next election and happens to be Harper's ex-lover, and the dead boy's family, church-going folks who sway between indignation and madness. The final courtroom scene might remind some viewers of To Kill a Mockingbird; I'm sure the scene was meant as an homage but it felt forced and treacly to me.

Hard Sun

Brit Neil Cross's Hard Sun joins the bleak ranks of binge series occupied by Mr. Robot and The Night Of ... whose grim premises suggest the creator's intention to go dark and get ever darker. In the case of Hard Sun, the irony is deliberate and the brutality unrelenting. Cross, the creative mind behind Luther, has crafted his narrative around a catastrophic solar episode, not fully explained in season 1, that is predicted to destroy life on earth in five years (yes, cue Bowie). Were that horrible projection not enough to contend with, London's unhinged are using leaked reports of humanity's destruction as reason to mete out their own last-days retribution on sinners and saints alike. No, it's not a pretty picture but the three primary players are, er, stellar. Jim Sturgess, who I remember best from the Beatle's tribute film Across the Universe and the card-counting hat trick 21, plays DCI Charlie Hicks, a corrupt cop who may or may not have murdered a fellow officer; Agyness Deyn (Clash of Titans) as DI Elaine Renko, a crack detective and astoundingly messed up woman whose assigned to Hicks' unit to replace the dead detective and, secretly, to get to the bottom of the shooting; and the eminently watchable Nikki Amuka-Bird (Luther), as an MI5 operative on the hunt for the pirated documents that tell the story of the solar episode, code name Hard Sun. The series also features some outstanding work by the young actor Jo Jo Macari as Renko's slasher offspring, the psychotic but weirdly lovable Daniel.

Love, Simon

Greg Berlanti's Love, Simon delivers layers of affectionate humor in the telling of this coming out story of high school senior Simon Spier (Nick Robinson) who begins to correspond via email with another secretly gay student at his high school whom he knows simply as Blue. A virtual romance blossoms (mostly in Simon's fertile imagination) and is kept from Simon's unbelievably cool parents (Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel) and his devoted buddies (Katherine Langford, Alexandra Shipp and Jorge Lendeborg Jr.). When his correspondence is discovered by a classmate (a wonderfully irrepressible Logan Miller), Simon concocts ways to keep his deluded blackmailer happy, all of which, of course, go sideways. This affirming picture is brimming with charm and wit, none of which is barbed. Simon's dilemma is ultimately resolved, of course, but it serves as a fairly pointed lesson about the interconnections of our lives and loves. Tony Hale as Assistant Principal Worth and Natasha Rothwell as drama coach Ms. Albright add delicious helpings of sauce to the mix.

Annihilation

Alex Garland's phantasm of a film, Annihilation, contains familiar expedition tropes, a brutal and agonizing attack sequence and stunning visuals that, unfortunately, spangle more than enlighten. We follow a team of female scientists and warriors into a piece of coastal U.S. territory that is being genetically transformed by an extraterrestrial presence called The Shimmer. Others have ventured in but not one has returned. The picture poses an interesting paradox -- the benign alien threat. Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Oscar Isaac star.

A Wrinkle in Time

Ava DuVernay's adaption of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time is such a frustrating work that it's difficult for me to pinpoint where to place my disappointment. I guess I'm perplexed more than sad. Two young siblings (Storm Reid and Deric McCabe) and a friend (Levi Miller) set off in the company of three fantastically costumed cosmic creatures (Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling) to search for the sibs' scientist father (Chris Pine) who is lost in another time and dimension. The script feels uneven and quite often uncertain of itself. The derision the sibs suffer at school because of their father's disappearance feels grotesque and unreal but is explained, to some degree and not entirely convincingly, later. Actually, some important exposition about the discovery at the center of the story has been omitted from the final print, even though, oddly, it was included in an early trailer. The animated elements are top-notch Disney but don't contribute substantially to story development. A pretty spectacular flying sequence runs two hairs too long and is followed by comparatively lesser visual effects that don't quite add up to a thrill ride. The final showdown with the evil force IT is a showcase for the often engaging Miss Reid and the precocious though overtaxed Master McCabe. And, still, the three child actors heading this fairly contained adventure aren't well-served by the story. The dreamy young Master Miller is reduced to prepubescent eye-candy, and the early banter between Reid and McCabe is too often garbled when it's not cloying. Ms. DuVernay's decidedly multicultural casting and storytelling is trading in some interesting racial politics. The casual viewer might not question the choice of perennial heartthrob Pine to play the missing father and British beauty Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the perplexed mother / wife but others might wonder why the film, which was boldly promoting the universality of humankind, would show such timidity in casting these roles so conventionally. I wonder what the response would have been had they cast Sterling K. Brown as the father, for example. Children, especially younger girls, will no doubt enjoy the film's power girl message but the picture itself is not one for the time capsule. Pity.

Black Panther

Celebrated director Ryan Coogler brings his Hollywood A-list gravitas to bear in the latest Marvel Universe entry, Black Panther. Despite the less-than-nuanced decision to release the film, which features a predominately black cast, during Black History Month, Disney Studio's assured blockbuster offers much to appreciate and to ponder, whether inside or outside of the African diaspora. Chadwick Boseman plays Prince T'Challa, who ascends to the throne of the fictional nation of Wakanda after his father is killed in a terrorist attack on the United Nations (depicted in Captain America: Winter Soldier). T'Challa, like his noble forebears, is also a costumed superhero, Black Panther, whose abilities are derived from a rare mineral found only in his country and coveted by mercenaries around the world. T'Challa's nemesis is an erstwhile American soldier of fortune named, most unsubtly, Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), who claims Wakandan roots and wants to liberate oppressed people in the U.S. and elsewhere using Wakanda's miraculous technology and weaponry. This richly textured, exquisitely designed and expansive film boasts an international cast (Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Daniel Kaluuya, Martin Freeman, Letitia Wright) and delivers all of the bang and bad-assery fans expect from a Marvel Universe picture while posing provocative questions about national identity and kinship, isolationism, security and community.

Broadchurch

I feel I'm experiencing traumatic stress associated with processing the callousness of the DT administration. I'm raw, like my nerves have been rubbed all over with a scouring pad. When I watch a program like the first season of Broadchurch, before you know it I'm feeling flinty and pissed, wanting someone, anyone, to be punished. My condition isn't helped by the superbness of David Tennant and Olivia Colman, who voice obstinateness and resoluteness, respectively, like few actors I know. Colman, whose diction I find captivating, was MVP in The Night Manager (won the Golden Globe), and Tennant, well, is Tennant: Classically trained. Indefatigable. Probably the most loved Dr. Who of all time (pardon the pun). The Brits really have a way of peeling off the layers of community sin and this series is a prime example. The last episode of Season 1 was unrelenting in its depiction of human distress and nearly unbearable grief and regret. And yet, the image of memorial pyres burning along the southern coast of England gave me chills.

Phantom Thread

Paul Thomas Anderson's films are not to be enjoyed as much as endured. That is not to say they aren't well made; Anderson is an auteur of the first order. (His is a fiercely creative imagination.) It's that his subject matter is often bleak, people behaving badly, irrationally, brutally, talking past each other and quite often past the audience too. Such is the case with Phantom Thread, reportedly the last picture the film's star Daniel Day-Lewis will make. 'Tis a pity that the celebrated actor will not be signing off with a more powerful role or substantial piece. Still, Day-Lewis, Anderson and the film are nominated for Oscars. Day-Lewis plays Reynolds Woodcock, a British dressmaker for the aristocracy who seduces and then abuses a young woman (Vicky Krieps), who though his model and lover turns out to be more than a match for Woodcock's monstrous behavior. The film is beautifully designed and filmed and plays with viewers' perceptions and expectations. While one might expect a famous couturier to be turning out some knock out frocks, Woodcock's creations, to my eye, are boxy and cranky and unbecoming to the women who commission his work. In fact, he's touted as a genius but he's actually more of a fussy martinet who is coddled by his severely pinched sister, Cyril (Lesley Manville), and haunted by his dead mother, whose wedding dress he made at the age of seven. Anderson, who also wrote the screenplay, once again welcomes audiences into a world of supremely unlikable people and it's excruciating.

I, Tonya

Aussie director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) never asks for the audience to suspend disbelief while watching I, Tonya. In fact, the film opens with Margot Robbie as an older, spent Tonya Harding announcing that the film is a mix of truth and lies. Each member of the stellar ensemble -- Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Paul Walter Hauser -- goes for broke in this retelling of the low-class horrors that created a world-class figure skater and then all but ruined her life. Janney, an effing scream as Tonya's witch of a mother, cusses and smacks her way through the picture, dragging on cigarillos while abusing her daughter and destroying all goodness in her path. When Tonya finally moves out and in with boyfriend Jeff Gillooly, she simply exchanges one variety of sociopath for another. It's Gillooly and his portly numbskull of a friend Shawn who came up with the idea of sabotaging "America's Darling" skater Nancy Kerrigan. How and when sabotage, which started as sending some intimidating letters to Kerrigan, became bashing her on the knee is disputed but that's the wonder of this madhouse of a picture. It's all a Crockpot of truths, half-truths, mis-rememberings and full-blown lies that the audience is welcome to believe or not. Robbie and Stan are truly inspired as the warring couple, who in the end stopped just short of killing each other.

Hostiles

In Hostiles, director Scott Cooper (Black Mass and Out of the Furnace) takes viewers on a journey across some beautiful U.S. territory to tell the story of a sad and hollow Army officer in the 1890s (Christian Bale) who rediscovers his humanity while escorting an ailing Cheyenne chief (Wes Studi) and his family from a New Mexico prison post to his traditional burial grounds in Montana. Bale's Capt. Joe Blocker refuses the mission at first, bearing nothing but hatred for all Indians, but relents when his pension is threatened. He starts out with a full (and familiar) contingent of men (the clueless private, the untested West Point lieutenant, the loyal black corporal, the world-weary sergeant who is one stiff drink away from self-destruction) but are soon joined by the widowed and childless survivor of a ranch raid and slaughter (Rosamund Pike). As these stories go, Blocker's party is slowly picked off by Comanches and other hostiles along the trail, putting into question whether they will arrive at the destination. Cooper, who directs raw, brutal films about men refusing to give in to untenable circumstances, offers in Hostiles a picture that takes full advantage of the stunning vistas of New Mexico and Colorado but invests most of the movie's impact in quiet moments between these men and women, when they reveal the devastation that violent hatred has laid on them.

Mudbound

Mary J. Blige's Oscar-nominated performance as the quietly determined, fiercely sacrificial mother of a WWII tank commander (Jason Mitchell) who returns home to the Mississippi Delta is a well-modulated study of power and presence in film. Blige's character, Florence Jackson, is a supporting role but she doesn't just grace the margins of the scenes she's in, seasoning the proceedings with homespun bromides and nods. Instead, she pulls attention to her when she's present because of the weight of the burden she carries: She is caring for her family who live as tenants on a farm that seems cursed while being pulled to tend to the children of the landowners.  Rob Morgan plays her husband, Hap, a farmer who preaches on Sunday about freedom in this lifetime. He's committed to his family's safety, which means entering through back doors and obliging even the most heinous of souls if they're white. This rankles his oldest son, returned veteran Ronsel, who finds friendship and trust in his fellow veteran, Jamie (Garrett Hedlund), the younger son of the farm owners. Their perilous friendship eventually leads to disaster for the men but not before helping them both to heal a bit. Mudbound, directed by Dee Rees, deals candidly but also artfully with our country's miserable past; with insatiable desperation; the horrors of race hatred; the lingering, debilitating effects of war. It's a wrenching, difficult picture that does, however, convey the message that love will bring the victory in the end ... and maybe in this lifetime.

Call Me By Your Name

Italian director Luca Guadagnino's beautifully intriguing 2015 film A Bigger Splash was saturated with sensuality, with the film's characters -- an aging rock star, her handsome new stud, her former record producer and his daughter -- often lounging about an impossibly charming villa on an Italian island, nearly naked, bumping uglies and egos, opening old wounds and creating a few fresh ones. Guadagnino's latest film, Call Me By Your Name, is just as evocative but trades the emotional explosiveness for romantic insight and tenderness. It's the early '80s and an archeology professor (how good is Michael Stuhlbarg?) and his wife (Amira Cassar) and their son (the captivatingly Raphaelite young actor Timothee Chalamet) are joined at their Italian villa by an American graduate student (a smoldering Armie Hammer) for a few weeks to help the good professor with some cataloguing and soak up the local culture. Chalamet's young Elio is charged with introducing Hammer's Oliver to the villa, the town and nearby swimming holes and in short order Elio's nascent homosexuality, heretofore suppressed by his interest in a pretty French girl (Esther Garrel), is enlivened, which excites and frightens him. Screenwriter James Ivory's elegant depiction of those first stirrings is masterful, relying on silences, glances and nuance to show young Elio's awakening, uncertainty, frustration, confusion, ardor and, as we might expect, ultimate heartbreak. But when the characters speak, their words can be as lush as the verdant countryside that surrounds them. Call Me By Your Name is a lovely picture that features a marvelous monologue, from father to son, in the last reel that is more splendid by half than it needs to be. Bravo.

Molly’s Game

Writer / director Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game is a loquacious work about former Olympic Class freestyle skier Molly Bloom (a tireless Jessica Chastain) who is introduced to the world of high-stakes poker after an injury and ends up running million-dollar operations in Los Angeles and New York before being nabbed by the feds. The story has the crackling dialogue of Sorkin’s work but a fairly static feeling due to the nature of the story -- poker games. The script is lousy with poker language but doesn’t handle the translation of insider lingo with nearly the aplomb of The Big Short (several actors from which are featured here). Sorkin tries to layer the story (based on true events) with some insights about Molly’s motivations, with most of that contained in some oddly unsatisfying scenes between Molly and her father (Kevin Costner). This is a commendable directing debut for Sorkin, and Chastain manages the enormous title role like a champ. The movie's unsung hero is Idris Elba as Bloom’s enthusiastic attorney whose scenes with her capture much of Sorkin’s talky rhythm and ethos.

Darkest Hour

British director Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour is an artful and intense treatment of Winston Churchill’s first days as England’s prime minister, as Nazi troops storm through Europe, pushing British fighters to the beaches of Dunkirk. Gary Oldman’s robust portrayal of the maligned Churchill, caught on the horns of a dilemma, is a marvel and fills nearly every frame of this elegantly composed and beautifully written film. A scene that depicts a supremely conflicted Churchill interviewing citizens in a London subway car is a distillation of the man’s indomitable spirit and, as we discover, that of the English people. It’s a stirring, thrilling moment in a movie that packs enormous dramatic power. P.S. Kristin Scott Thomas's performance as Churchill's wife, Clemmie, provides a nicely tempered theatricality to a film that does not lack for big, blustering exchanges between scowling, jowly men.

Golden Globes I

I've seen all of the Golden Globe nominated pictures except Call Me By Your Name and I, Tonya but will hazard a guess at winners in best pictures because neither of those directors was nominated. Best Picture Drama nominees are Call Me By Your Name, Dunkirk, The Post, The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Last year's winner was Moonlight, a much loved and admired film about a gay man's journey of self-discovery. I get the sense that despite what reviewers describe as a sensitive and provocative narrative and outstanding performances by its two leads, Call Me By Your Name hits the same notes as Moonlight and so might be eliminated for that reason.
Dunkirk strikes me as the kind of big scale / big message / big risk picture that often receives awards for its daring. Director Christopher Nolan, who is greatly admired as an auteur, was nominated for best director. It's a large ensemble drama that experiments with point of view and time and though it featured several notable performances not one was nominated. Also it was released early in the year and may have been forgotten.
Steven Spielberg's The Post is an entertaining picture but in no way is as strong as his reputation and that of his cast would project. Meryl Streep, though quite good, did not have to stretch for this performance; it's well within her range. The same is true for Tom Hanks, who along with Streep has been nominated and whose Ben Bradlee is actually more of a supporting role to Streep's Katharine Graham. I feel their nominations were more by default than merit.
Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water is a beautiful picture with many elements Del Toro's fans have come to expect -- bold visuals, sentiment and magic. That Sally Hawkins and Richard Jenkins, not exactly Hollywood A-listers but outstanding character actors nonetheless, have been nominated along with Del Toro suggests the Hollywood Foreign Press sees the movie as a thoroughgoing work with committed performances in front of and behind the camera.
In 2008, the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men was denied the Best Picture and Best Director wins though the Coen's did receive the award for best screenplay. Three Billboard's, though directed by nominee ballsy British director Martin McDonagh, feels like a Coen Brothers picture because of its sardonic tone and bloodletting and, yes, Frances McDormand, a Globe nominee. Like No Country, its dark coloring and ambiguous ending might be a bit too much for voters more willing to celebrate the liberation of the spirit of a earthbound mute custodial worker who saves her life by sacrificing it. I think The Shape of Water will win.

Golden Globes II

Golden Globe's Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy is an odd assortment of films, all but one of which (I, Tonya) I've seen, so I might amend this in a few weeks. None of the directors of the films in this category was nominated.
The Disaster Artist is being singled out for the phenomenal work of its lead actor and director James Franco. The film, itself, while quite funny in spots, feels more like an extended SNL sketch than a motion picture, however, and so might be docked for underdevelopment.
Jordon Peele's highly celebrated Get Out has a sketch comedy premise, being the brain child of a sketch comedian, but a serious message, several intensely violent passages and an overall feeling of dread. The wonderful young British actor Daniel Kaluuya has become both the face of the film and, for some, of black male oppression, which the film has as its core message. While Get Out is a more assured and finely crafted picture than The Disaster Artist, it might be penalized for being tonally ambiguous.
The Greatest Showman is a dazzling musical with a truncated story about P. T. Barnum's rise and near fall as an entertainment impressario. It succeeds with a winning score and several fine musical performances (including star Hugh Jackman's) but the narrative is paper thin and the film's emotion is carried almost completely by the singing.
Lady Bird, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, is the most successful of the projects I've seen on this list. This story of a rebellious teenager and her disapproving mother is familiar but also remarkably fresh, made so by two terrific performances (Saorise Ronan and Laurie Metcalf). I suspect I, Tonya's mother / daughter pairing of Margot Robbie and Allison Janney, both of whom are nominated, might be Lady Bird's strongest competition in this category. Again, I might make a different call after seeing Tonya.

The Greatest Showman

A-list movie and Broadway composers Pasek and Paul's score for The Greatest Showman, much like last year's celebrated La La Land, is the true star of this fairly conventional story about the rise and near fall of Phineas T. Barnum, of circus fame. The book that ties the dozen or so synth pop songs casts Barnum (a terrific Hugh Jackman) as a champion of society's outcasts (led by Zendaya as a black aerialist and Keala Settle as the bearded lady), at first more as a means to turn a buck but later to challenge high society conventions. Because of this, the show's strongest and most thrilling numbers are the anthemic ensemble pieces, most notably "Come Alive" and "This is Me," which will undoubtedly be adopted as anthems for LGBTQ or other marginalized communities. First-time director Michael Gracey's The Greatest Showman is a dazzling picture in the mold of contemporary Hollywood musicals that will find its largest audience with dreamy-eyed pre-teens from Columbia to Calcutta.