Victoria & Abdul

Victoria & Abdul.

This is the story of the unlikely friendship between Queen Victoria (Judi Dench) and a young Indian clerk Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal).

It has fun with the extravagant royal treatment of the reigning 1800s English monarch. It’s light, bright, breezy, and you could find some amusing bits if you just flipped it on.

But the movie as a whole rings false to me. It feels this particular history lesson has gone through Hollywoodification.

The fun here is watching the Queen do things, like learn the Hindu language and demand a mango from across the globe. Dench is great, but we’re getting lulled into expecting these performances, so I can’t comment where this one stands.

Abdul is written too one-dimensional, and even though it follows his journey from India to England, it still feels too much like surface material.

Stephen Frears has directed excellent movies, so it’s curious why this one’s shallow. Why not dive a little deeper into what the Queen saw in him, and what the rest of the royal household saw that made them so racially prejudice?

There’s a good story here. The Queen took to Abdul because he simply spoke to her as a friend, not as a proper, measured manservant.

I know as much because I read a great Vanity Fair article that’s more informative than this movie. But I don’t discourage you from seeing it.

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

Threes Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.

You can't have simple feelings about the characters in this movie. That's because they're never done sorting through their own feelings about everything.
I thought one thing about Sam Rockwell's character until he showed me something else. And same for Frances McDormand. And to some degree, Woody Harrelson.

The decision those characters face at the end of the movie seem to place it out of the hands of the filmmakers themselves.

I really enjoyed that. It's difficult to watch the pain and anger these people go through, and it's a movie that questions what we're supposed to do with it. Whether we chose to serve somebody a bottle of wine or bash their head in with it.

McDormand and Rockwell are so effective, because we can see what they're thinking, but they don't clue us what actions they'll take as a result.

Intriguing story/script, raw acting, and excellent small-town USA scenery. Lots of familiar actors turn up for support, but the three mentioned actors carry the bulk of the story.

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Call Me By Your Name

Call Me By Your Name.

It's about a young boy, Elio (Timothée Chalamet) who falls in love one summer with an older grad student, Oliver (Armie Hammer), who is staying with him and his family of archaeologists at their place in northern Italy one summer in the 1980s.

Sometimes in the movies, you need an access point to help you begin to empathize. I've never been to Europe. I don't consciously remember the 1980s. My family isn't Jewish or archaeologists. I've never had sexual feelings for a man. On the surface, there's not much of anything relatable (or American, for that matter) in the movie.

My access point was the song "Futile Devices" by Sufjan Stevens played in full midway through the film, as the movie contemplated the feelings of young 17-year old Elio. Even though I couldn't imagine the depth of what he was feeling and how personal it was, I immediately was in his shoes. Because I know what that song means to me.

That's not just a testament to Sufjan Stevens (who also has two other new songs that fit nicely here), but to the director Luca Guadagnino who knows the aesthetic feeling he was going for.

Guaragnino has created a lot of beautiful cinematic scenes. You won't forget it's Europe. Such as when Elio and Oliver circle each other around a WWI statue or when the camera stays fixed on the landscape as they ride down the bike path.

Chalamet gives a mature, emotionally deep performance as the boy. There are explicit scenes, and I'm not a fan of sexual situations in the movies in general. But for everything that happens, his best scene of the movie is during the closing credits where the camera sits on his face.

And Michael Stuhlbarg, as Elio's father, gives an absolutely killer monologue to his son at the end that will leave many people in tears.

It's one of the best of year. Find your access point.