CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

Armie Hammer

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (2017). Director: Luca Gaudagnino.

In 1983 Italy, 17-year-old Elio (Timothee Chalamet) lives with his parents in a small village. His father (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a professor of archeology, and each summer a graduate student spends time with the family and assists him. This summer it's 24-year-old Oliver (Armie Hammer of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), who on the surface at least seems sunny and confident. Elio has a sometime girlfriend, but while initially standoffish to Oliver, he eventually seems to focus much more on him than the girl. Elio and Oliver eventually begin a romantic and sexual relationship, but (alleged) true love doesn't always run smoothly. Coll Me By Your Name is based on the novel by Andre Aciman, a middle-aged family man who thinks there's no such thing as "gay, straight or bi" and is possibly not the best person to write a supposed gay love story. The film version is similarly confused when it isn't being tedious. Chalamet, who was actually 20 during filming and could pass for fifteen, gives a very good performance (he is especially good at the very end, when a long take focused just on his face shows the conflicting emotions Elio feels -- from heartbreak to anger to wry understanding of sorts) but Hammer is more problematic. At 31 he is too old and too tall and his very awkward and unconvincing love scenes with the boyish Chalamet are less erotic than they are discomfiting. (While not effeminate, Hammer does seem to play the role at times like a borderline languid queen as if he thought that's how he should play a gay guy.) Others have noted that Oliver is not a child molester -- that Elio is of legal age in Italy -- but the sex scenes still look like ads for NAMBLA. (We do have to remember, however, the innumerable movies that have had adult men involved with 16 or 17-year-old girls without anyone raising an eyebrow.) Others have also noted that Call Me By Your Name comes off less as a love story between equals as it does the story of an older man who gets off on a boy's adoration of him and pretty much takes advantage of it, especially when one considers what he does at the finale. A bigger problem is that Elio and Oliver are simply not that interesting. Perhaps the best scene in the movie is when father and son have a very frank talk without ever quite coming "out" with what they're talking about (pun intended), but which they manage to get across in spite of it. Still, one might wonder if the sequence is really that believable. Call Me By Your Name also has a dated quality, as if it came out in the seventies instead of 2017, and there have certainly been many -- too many -- tales of boys who fall for older men only to have the older guy go off and get married. While I've no doubt many conservatives will see this film as a Gay Lib movie -- not to mention prettified Chickenhawk crap -- the fact is that Call Me By Your Name is not as gay-friendly -- nor as gay --as it may seem, in some ways suggesting (intended or not) that homosexuality is just a phase. Another "minimalist" movie that has no really great or memorable dramatic sequences. 

Verdict: If it doesn't put you to sleep you may find some of it interesting, but otherwise, this is a MAJOR disappointment. **. 

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

Henry Cavill as Solo and Armie Hammer as Illya

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (2015). Director: Guy Ritchie.

Back during the days of the Cold War, CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) crosses figurative swords with Russian agent Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) when the two are on opposite sides of a mission in which the former is helping a woman named Gaby (Alicia Vikander) get out from behind the iron curtain. Gaby is the daughter of a former Nazi scientist, Dr. Teller, who has been working on a nuclear device for an organization run by the sinister Victoria (Elizabeth Debicki). Solo, Illya and Gaby's new mission is to infiltrate Victoria's operation and find the bomb, even as the two male agents are told their respective countries must win the arms race and get their hands on a certain disc, over each other's dead bodies if necessary. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a refashioning of an old television series that many of today's moviegoers have never heard of or even seen. There are so many changes that you wonder why they even made the movie under this title or who the audience for the picture was supposed to be. As in several old Eurospy movies and more recent TV shows, Solo is turned into a black market criminal who is blackmailed into working for the CIA. Hugh Grant [Love Actually] plays Waverly, but the name "U.N.C.L.E." is only referred to as a codename in the final moments of the picture. Victoria's organization isn't given a name, and THRUSH, the main adversary of the heroes in the TV series, is never mentioned. There are no cameos by the stars of the series, Robert Vaughn or David McCallum. Speaking of which, Henry Cavill's [Immortals] performance as an arch, super-cool, stylish super-spy isn't bad for what it is, but the man has absolutely no charm, at least in this. Hammer is more on the mark as a different kind of Illya, but the movie is stolen by Debicki as the villainess, who makes Gervaise Ravel of the old show seem like a piker in comparison. Director Ritchie tries to make the film different and whimsical, but this approach often backfires, such as when what could have been an exciting scene on a river is muffed by the "cute" stylistics. Some of the other action sequences are okay, however. Arguably the best and most darkly comical scene in the movie involves Solo being tortured by Gaby's sadistic Uncle Rudi (Sylvester Groth), whose ultimate fate is pleasantly ironical, as is Victoria's in the film's entertaining (if rather abrupt) climax. John Mathieson's cinematography is outstanding, guaranteeing that the film looks great, but the score, a hodge podge of generally inappropriate musical cues, is terrible, with a fairly hideous theme song wailed by a female singer. If Jerry Goldsmith's terrific theme for the TV show is in there somewhere, I missed it. The women in the film are attractive, but not especially glamorous a la James Bond; in fact one could argue that most of the sexual tension in this is between the two men, (although it must be said that being a stylish clothes horse with good taste doesn't always add up to being gay, or vice versa). The script for this is somewhere between one of the really bad overly campy episodes of the old series and the much better ones of the first and fourth seasons.

Verdict: This isn't totally terrible and there are enjoyable moments and performances. Fans of the show will probably be disappointed, however. **1/2.