2010 could live forever as the best year for movie releases in my lifetime. As I write this today (April 22, 2023), I, sadly but more confidently, feel like the years when we have two to three dozen quality movies are forever gone. With the advent of streaming television shows and series and an established vast array of cable programming, the cinematic single-viewing experience may be left to blockbuster-type movies. There have been no better examples than 2020, which I had discussed in previous reviews was the worst year of film in my lifetime, only for that argument to be surpassed by the 2021 cumulative list of below-average movies. 2021 is the first year when none of the Best Picture nominees will be in my end-of-year top ten list. Rewatching a film like The Social Network, despite receiving a 100% review, was just my fourth favorite movie of 2010. This would have been my favorite movie in many other years. Still, with The Town (my second favorite movie of all time) and the incredible Blue Valentine and Shutter Island, even a perfect film finished outside my top three.
Category Archives: Armie Hammer
Call Me By Your Name (2017)
As the release of 2017 movies slowly (and mercifully) comes to an end, each review provides an opportunity to reflect deeper and deeper on the year that was. I’ve mentioned a few times in recent reviews that 2017 has, by far, been the worst year for movies since the inception of this blog back in 2010. Some movies may finish at the end of my year Top 5, but they wouldn’t even come close to finishing in my Top 10 in any other year. Unfortunately, for this review, Luca Guadagnino’s (A Bigger Splash, I Am Love) Call Me By Your Name did not benefit from a weak 2017. This movie has done very well with the critics and likely will earn multiple Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet – Lady Bird, Interstellar), Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as potential nominations for Best Supporting Actor (Armie Hammer – Nocturnal Animals, The Birth of a Nation) and Michael Stuhlbarg (The Shape of Water, Arrival), Best Original Song, and others, it still didn’t captivate me in the way I expected it to. For those expecting this to be the most excellent movie about gay love since Brokeback Mountain, you may be disappointed. Brokeback Mountain is an A+ movie. Guadagnino’s (A Bigger Splash, I Am Love) Call Me By Your Name is a B at best.
Nocturnal Animals (2016)
Almost perfect. While it may not even end up in my top five movies of the year, Tom Ford’s (A Single Man) Nocturnal Animals was almost perfect. I liked it so much in this movie, and Ford almost created a masterpiece, but it fell short. An A- for sure. Maybe even an A. But it won’t be the 49th movie I’ve seen that would classify as an A+. Jake Gyllenhaal (Love and Other Drugs, Everest) is better than ever, and he could end up with an Oscar nomination for this film. In a perfect world, he would, especially since he may have been the odd man out in 2015 (Nightcrawler) and 2016 (Southpaw) for a Best Actor Academy Award. But with four of the five slots pretty much locked up (Tom Hanks – Sully, Denzel Washington – Fences, Casey Affleck – Manchester by the Sea, Joel Edgerton (Loving), that leaves only one more nomination between Gyllenhaal, Ryan Gosling (La La Land), Warren Beatty (Rules Don’t Apply), and Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge). And, honestly, while his performance was excellent, it wasn’t nearly the performance he gave in either Nightcrawler or Southpaw. Ford’s chances for a Best Directing nod look even dimmer, and an impressive performance by Amy Adams (The Fighter, American Hustle) may be overlooked entirely because she will likely receive a nomination (and may even be the frontrunner) for Arrival, a movie that was released just a week before Nocturnal Animals.
The Birth of a Nation (2016)
Nate Parker (Beyond the Lights, Non-Stop) made his big-screen debut back in 2006, but a decade later, many moviegoers might not be able to pick him out of a lineup. However, that’s all about to change. The incredible The Birth of a Nation is about to launch Parker into the next tier of not just actors but also directors and screenwriters. I’ll be the first to say that I didn’t know who Parker was, but it might be time for me to go back and watch some of the movies on his filmography. Not only did Parker give an Oscar-worthy leading actor performance, but he also directed and wrote this film that, somehow, is flying under the radar. Parker knocked this movie out of the park. The 79% rating it is currently receiving on Rotten Tomatoes is quite respectable (especially for a movie based on a true event, but one that even Parker described as reality-based fiction), but I have seen almost no promotional materials for this movie. It opened the same weekend as Girl on the Train, which may have received as much publicity as any other movie released in 2016 so far.
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