Review: Call Me By Your Name

A jewel of a film, this. Expect it to loom large in the build-up to awards season. Here’s the Sindo verdict from the weekend. 

***

Call Me By Your Name
Cert: 15A

WE NOW reach that point in the calendar year when Oscar contenders begin to slowly assemble near the starting line ahead of the race for the Dolby Theatre. This utterly sumptuous coming-of-age romance from Italian director Luca Guadagnino looks to have not only the pedigree but also the topical edge the Academy judges seem to helplessly gravitate towards. Consult your bookmaker post-haste.

Guadagnino rounds off his “Desire trilogy” that began with 2009’s I Am Love and 2015’s A Bigger Splash with another tale of flaring passions and true natures being revealed in an idyllic setting.

Timothée Chalamet is 17-year-old Elio, lounging around his family’s northern Italy villa for the summer vacation of 1983. His academic father (Michael Stuhlbarg) welcomes a research assistant from the US in the form of urbane and sophisticated 24-year-old Oliver (Armie Hammer). Oliver fits right in and quickly becomes, on the face of it, a big-brother figure for Elio. But what the heart wants, the heart gets, and gradually, in the aching beauty of the region’s cobbled village laneways and abundant orchards, the pair fall in love.

Based on Andre Aciman’s 2007 novel but toned down for the cinema market, this is excellent filmmaking that should merit multiple nominations come awards season.

Hammer, Chalamet (and Stuhlbarg in the third act) give turns that quiver with sensitivity and illumination. Guadagnino manages to avoid melodrama by allowing quiet symbolism into the vista – ripening fruit, changing musical tunes etc – and effortlessly maintaining an erudite, cultured tone throughout (which, frankly, the world needs more of right now).

5/5

First published in the Sunday Independent

Simon Fitzmaurice

It’s very sad to hear this morning about the passing of Simon Fitzmaurice, the promising filmmaker who managed to complete a feature film, father two children and outlive his medical life expectancy after being diagnosed with motor neuron disease. This superbly configured documentary by Frankie Fenton was released only a few weeks ago and does not look to be still running in Irish cinemas. I hope some free-minded auditorium managers might consider a couple of special screening to remember this inspiring individual. Sincere condolences to his family. 

***

It’s Not Yet dark
Cert: PG

IF YOU’D forgotten about the formidable strength of the human spirit, a quaking reminder has arrived. With the news feed sometimes making out that all is collapsing around us there is a need for fare such as this arresting debut documentary from Frankie Fenton.

In 2008, 34-year-old filmmaker Simon Fitzmaurice was screening his short film at Sundance when he noticed a funny sensation in his foot. After shrugging off the strange limp, he sought medical advice. What he was told changed everything for Simon, his wife Ruth and their three young children. He was diagnosed with motor neuron disease and gradually lost all physical movement apart from his eyes. The title comes from the 2015 memoir he published about his extraordinary journey.

Fenton’s film plays simultaneous roles. It charts Simon’s determination to complete a feature film – 2015’s My Name is Emily – using eye-motion technology fitted to his wheelchair. It quietly profiles Ruth, the incredible wife bearing the weight (and whose own memoir I Found My Tribe was a bestseller this summer). But the sombre, meditative recesses – drone shots of misty fields and canopies as Colin Farrell narrates extracts from Simon’s book – suggest Fenton also wants the film to be absorbed on a more profound level than a mere observational document. The result is an intimacy that is deeply moving and thought-provoking.

The Fitzmaurices are truly incredible: Simon has outlived his prognosis by years and the family remains “battered but unbroken” through this ordeal. But in the wrong hands, this film could have been an exercise in mawkish sentimentality.

4/5

First published in the Sunday Indpendent

Thor blimey

Marvel go for an all-out knee-slapper in Thor: Ragnarok with mixed results. Thus sayeth the Sindo review. 

***

Thor: Ragnarok
Cert: 12A

AND the Marvel juggernaut rolls onwards, devouring whole economies and climaxing each episode with a delectable foreshadowing of the next. Nothing dents the behemoth, not the shoddy comedy writing of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, not the tired quips-and-kablamo formula of the Avengers franchise.

And just when you think the sheen might be coming off, a Doctor Strange or Spiderman: Homecoming comes along to breathe new life into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with bombast and brains. Hating Marvel is a short-lived hobby.

Granting arch Kiwi director Taika Waititi (Eagle Vs Shark, Hunt for the Wilderpeople) with the keys to a new Thor film is perhaps the very kind of thinking that’s worked all these years. Under him, Thor: Ragnarok reaches levels of silliness and tomfoolery not yet plumbed by a superhero film of this budget.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is a buff himbo, cocky in a fight but fragile of ego (which is actually not a million miles off his Norse mythology source). While enslaved as a galactic gladiator, he crosses paths with Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) again. It’s perfect timing because all-powerful sister Hela (a goth Cate Blanchett, perhaps the finest marvel of them all) has returned to enslave Asgard. Even gods sometimes need a hand.

Waititi puts the gags up front with mixed results. At times, it feels too needy of laughter and frivolity at the expense of heart (unusually for a Marvel film). Elsewhere, the camp overtones and dotty support cast (Jeff Goldblum, Rachel House, Waititi himself) pull you mercifully away from chest-beating smugness. It is, alas, at its best when beautiful gods and huge monsters are walloping one other to the strident gallop of Immigrant Song.

3/5

First published in the Sunday Independent

Abominable

Here’s last week’s Sindo review of The Snowman, a Scandi-noir thriller based on a popular Jo Nesbo novel. Like having brunost shoved up your nose while your eyes are drenched with aquavit (the film, not my review). The picture above is me weeping after the closing credits.

***

The Snowman
Cert: 15A

OSLO looks nice. This murder mystery – based on the Jo Nesbo crime bestseller – has lots of shots of pretty, clean streets decked out in seasonal decorations, efficient public transport and tidy, functional residential developments.

We’re trying very hard here because there are scant other virtues to this abominable busted flush of a film whose most interesting facet is that it should misfire despite its considerable talent pool.

As the director of Let The Right One In and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Tomas Alfredson looked a sure bet. Cinematographer Dion Beebe has a BAFTA nomination on his CV and editor Claire Simpson won an Oscar for Platoon. The cast has something for everyone – Michael Fassbender, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rebecca Ferguson, Toby Jones, JK Simmons, even Val Kilmer. And surely, with the Millenium trilogy fading the time was right to bring another Scandi-noir to the big screen.

System failures abound, from the glassy, TV-drama visual finish and horrid CGI, to the abrupt, stilted editing that halts any flow to the cluttered tale. The cast look as lost as we are.

Fassbender is tortured detective Harry Hole. A woman has gone missing and a serial killer who builds snowmen at the scene of his crimes may be involved. Harry and partner Katrine (Ferguson) investigate as Simmons’ shifty businessman skulks in the background. As for Kilmer, the less said the better.

You’ll recoil in horror but for all the wrong reasons.

1/5

First published in the Sunday Independent

King of the omniplex auteurs

It’s not ravaging the box office for a variety of reasons but Blade Runner 2049 is still the movie event of the year in my book. Better than that other yoke about the soldiers on the beach. You know the one.

***

Blade Runner 2049
Cert: 15A

THERE was a sigh of relief when it was revealed Denis Villeneuve, the brilliant Quebecois director behind Prisoners, Sicario and Arrival, would helm a new Blade Runner film. If we did have to go back and revisit that holiest of sacred sci-fi cows, this tasteful and visionary omniplex auteur felt like the only man up to the task.

Ridley’s Scott’s 1982 adaptation of Philip K Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has aged well thanks to its gritty gumshoe-noir stylings, hypnotic dystopian aesthetic and artificial intelligence themes. Villeneuve had his work cut out to both refresh a sleeping giant but not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

We’re 30 years after the events of Scott’s film. K (Ryan Gosling) is a new generation of Blade Runner mopping up the last remaining replicants. He discovers a thread of clues that could spell vast destruction. It will bring him into the sphere of not only Deckard (Harrison Ford), the lost hero of the original, but also a mysterious tech mogul (Jared Leto) and his aide (Sylvia Hoeks). We’ll say no more.

Do your utmost to see this in IMAX because you will not forget the experience. There are many scenes of just a character walking through a set that are rendered astonishing, both visually (by the grandly mesmeric dream-team of Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins) and aurally (a surging score by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch). Gosling’s minimal style is ideally suited for K.

With Christopher Nolan’s oomph waning (come on, Dunkirk was overrated), Villeneuve’s hit-rate now makes him the eminent action-thriller-sci-fi director working in Hollywood these days.

5/5

First published in the Sunday Independent