Screen Log 8: Call Me by Your Name; I, Tonya; Darkest Hour; Get Out; Mozart in the Jungle Season 4

"Call Me by Your Name."

I finally saw CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, which would probably have won Best Picture if it were up to Twitter or the Internet. But my, what a beautiful, beautiful film. I loved everything about it. The world building most especially. I loved how it focused on atmosphere and feeling and texture. I loved how as a viewer you knew exactly where you were and in what time and in what circumstances. I loved how you could feel the Southern European heat from the other side of the screen, could feel the humidity, the coolness of the streams, the breeze that blew across the orchards. I can't believe this wasn't even in the conversation for Production Design or Costumes, because everything just looked appropriate. Also, it made me wish I were a (vaguely) rich academic with a villa in the Italian countryside and all the time in the world to just bike around town and swim in rivers and read tons of books. I mean, just exactly how well-off a professor Michael Stuhlbarg was? Who, by the way, is also overdue for his career Oscar, if that's how we're awarding Oscars now, because heck, he sure deserved a nomination for his ROFLMAO-brilliant turn in the Coen Brothers' "A Serious Man." And whatever, Timothée Chalamet would have been a totally deserving Best Actor winner. The critics, at least, saw that. I will definitely watch this movie again, if only to see and hear and taste and feel everything it has to offer again. The beautiful and the fragile in sublime harmony. A total treat for the senses, if there ever was one.

In this year's Golden Globes, I, TONYA competed in the comedy categories, and I now wonder if that's because the movie's a laughable endeavor. I mean, good grief, the whole thing just felt so, so thin, like a communion wafer, or a piece of fabric stretched on all sides. The mock-documentary format did not work for me at all; it was too painfully aware of its supposed cleverness, but very few of its intended laughs made it to terra firma. Margot Robbie was the one who kept me going forward with this movie; in my mind I kept asking her to surprise me, and she did, scene after scene after scene, and by the end I was just so happy with how far she's come since breaking out in "The Wolf of Wall Street." I also asked Allison Janney to surprise me, and she disappointed every single time, committing instead to this one-note caricature of a monster mom, which really saddened me that a great actress like her had to win an Oscar--had to sweep awards season, really, and over a performance as miles-superior as Laurie Metcalf's in "Lady Bird"--for a bad role. It's like they wrote this for Janney just so she could go on auto-pilot, be nasty and mean, and secure her career Oscar in the process. The rest of the movie, I really didn't care about.

What is it with the Academy nominating mediocre movies anyway? Last year we had "Hell or High Water" as the prime example. 

While watching Joe Wright's DARKEST HOUR, which, I must mention, was a Best Picture nominee this year, I couldn't stop thinking how, probably around that same time, Christopher Nolan was making the far better World War II movie of 2017 across the English Channel. Yes, I loved "Dunkirk," warts and all. "Darkest Hour," on the other hand, was a handsome chap who just failed to rouse my interest. I was watching and going along with it and before I knew it--no, I did know it, because I was counting the time--it was over. It looked good onscreen, but Bruno Delbonnel did this blue-gray shadowy stuff to more involving results in "Inside Llewyn Davis." And Dario Marianelli's score was interesting in parts where I didn't expect it to be. As for the cherry on top--or the cake, more like it, because that's how big the entire thing is--and I'm obviously referring to Gary Oldman's rendition of Winston Churchill, well, the makeup deservedly won the Oscar. But even his Sirius Black was way more affecting. This performance just felt rehearsed and hungry for an Oscar. There's a scene where he engaged Lord Halifax in a shouting match, and Lord, was I cringing.

I saw GET OUT for the second time, this time with my mother. It's really a movie that grows on you, and that grows more and more in stature with every viewing. Jordan Peele's the deserving Best Original Screenplay winner. First time around, last year, I was like "so this is Stepford Wives for Black People" and was so ready to proceed to the next flick, and that I think was because of all the hype I'd absorbed coming into this movie. This second viewing's a much different experience though, now that I already had the basics of the story out of the way. It's a movie that really stays with you, as it did with my mom, who couldn't stop talking about it the next day.

When MOZART IN THE JUNGLE won its Golden Globes, I was at that stage where I felt my TV knowledge was so lacking and so I was very hungry for more, more, more! I finished the fourth season last night, and the makers haven't announced yet if the show's been cancelled or if a fifth season's in the works, but they really, really must continue this show. If anything, "Mozart" is redefining what one can do with 25 minutes--how much unexpected crazy can be stuffed in that short a span of time. The fourth season's the craziest I think, the one with the most episodes that had me going, "What's happening?" or "I did not see that coming at all," but also the one with the most heart and the most soul, and I was pretty satisfied by the finale.