Call Me by Your Name

9/15/2017

Alongside _Weekend_ and _Moonlight_, _Call Me By Your Name_ is the greatest queer film I have seen in the past ten years. It's a gorgeous, quiet masterwork - Luca Guadagnino has given us something truly special here. I'll cherish this one for a long, long time as it's extremely human and very personal. The fact that the legendary James Ivory wrote the screenplay for this shoots this over the top and slam dunks it into the cinematic stratosphere. Truly stunning work that deserves to be remembered, preserved, and celebrated for decades to come. The performances in this are so mesmerizing. I've never liked Armie Hammer as much as I like him in this. He really embodies his character and it's a lived in, fully realized performance. Timothée Chalamet - who has a great year ahead of him with o

1/7/2018

A near-perfect, timeless movie which will be responsible for many tears and yeast infections. Languid small-town living is captured perfectly, as is the tentative romance between the leads. I can't think of any substantive criticism until the last 25 minutes, when the movie becomes sloppy, less of a climax than a dissipation. (And personally, I'd have liked to see a sliver more of sexuality, which is oddly lacking.) Still, it's good. Watch it.

8/11/2024

Amidst some beautiful Italian rusticity, we are introdcued to the "Perlman" family. It's the father (Michael Stuhlbarg) who has employed American "Oliver" (Armie Hammer) to help out with some research, and that involves living-in with his family of wife "Annella" (Amira Casar) and teenage son "Elio" (Timothée Chalamet) at their villa. Initially, they just call him "later" as that's his most often used expression as he takes his leave, but gradually they take to this man who appears to have depths that bely his slightly friendly but diffident attitude. It's the young "Elio" who seems most smitten. He's only seventeen but has a maturity that seems beyond his years as he uses his own substantial polyglot intellect to engage with their visitor. Though he's flirting like mad with his childhood