Call Me By Your Son.
120 Mins. Starring: Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney, Andre Royo & Amy Ryan. Director: Felix Van Groeningen.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, 'Beautiful Boy'. Call him by his name and call it like it is, Timothée Chalamet is one of the hottest young actors right now. And we aren't talking in regards to this handsome kids looks and locks. More like his magma mainstream talent that has out of this world, gone 'Interstellar' ever since the days he starred alongside Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Mackenzie Foy and Michael Caine in the Christopher Nolan space and the infinity of beyond epic. Now following the same Oscar year as he and Armie Hammer went award season Dutch on the Italian love affair of the novel adaptation of 'Call Me By Your Name' (his silent tears water the father son bond of a closing, Oscar worthy, by the book speech that (the only book to ever make me cry) is something everyone recovering from a lost love needs to read and heed before snuffing that flame out and tearing so much of themselves out that they become bankrupt by the age of 30), Chalamet also made cameos of significance in both the Christian Bale starring western 'Hostiles' and of course Saorise Ronan in Greta Gerwig's 'Lady Bird's (which to mother and daughter, is what this movie is to father and sons), easily the top three movies of 2017/2018 inclusive (depending on which country your cinemas reside in). But you haven't seen nothing yet. The ever charming Chalamet who is giving us skinny guys named Tim with shaggy hair a chance (thanks Timmy) is about to take the lead role in 'Blade Runner 2049' sequel director Denis Villeneuve's 'Dune' remake. With arguably the greatest actor of this generation Oscar Isaac playing his pops (how perfect does that sound?). But it's his Steve Carell father first that takes the palm on the shoulder human touch here to begin. Chalamet is disarming as a young drug addict. Both bracingly beautiful and full of distraught demons looking to take the substance of his life apart from within. From crawling skin on bone to gnawing teeth in his grinding jaw, Timothée's transformation is one three times physical, emotional and spiritual. He works with the 'Machinst' weight he's lost and has left to show the gaunt look of a child whose only sustenance comes from his developing drug habit and the malnourished mind of a man whose nerve endings are being fried to its last very feeling. Its more than hard to watch on your every nerve. It's beyond brutal. But Tim makes sure you feel every nuance of his physiological and psychological pain in every wrung hand and blinked back tear. It's a caustic cautionary tale look at a real kid who had a real life and dreams, but the perilous pull of addiction and the side effects abuse would always sledgehammer all that into the silent scratches of a kid with hope in his heart, but junk in his veins. It's searing to the senses, but Timothée Chalamet is serious about all of this and doesn't fake a single note in respect to both subject and matter. No wonder there's nominations again this Academy go round. This kids work isn't just transformative. It's transcendent in the sponsoring notion that like Leonardo DiCaprio in 'The Basketball Diaries' this is going to make young kids think twice about circling the sinking drain once the hooks in.
Ever since he was catching foxes with 'Magic Mike' and the Hulk, Gru of 'Despicable Me' has gone from comedy to gold standard serious acting like the depression of 'Dan In Real Life', or the light of all that in 'Little Miss Sunshine'. He even went for the service of an award season 'Battle Of The Sexes' with Emma Stone last year. Carell knows how to coral the box office, but now he knows how to bring the mainstream more meaning himself too. Forget about loving lamps, this guy loves to act as people like former 'Anchorman' funnyman director Adam McKay can attest with his definitive directorial double of 'The Big Short' financial crash, or Christian Bale as the big Dick Cheney in this week's 'Vice'. Which sees Carell without any prosthetic look and eerily capture the feel and hold of Donald Rumsfeld himself. And right now like Chalamet's 'Call Me' double, Carell shows he's the hottest actor this week with two of the biggest films of the month and the award season out there (not to mention his hidden figures of 'Welcome To Marwen'). But it's this one were the bearded and greying Steve shows just how dedicated he is to all this. As Chalamet shows there is still a 'Beautiful Boy' underneath all that crawling skin and drug addicts itch, Carell shows that just like the Beatle, "your daddy's here" to make sure to "have no fear" as the "monster's gone". But there's so much more to Carell's character than the parental love of a wooried father with unconditional love and devotion. Forget that everytime he shouts you'll be left thinking, "LOUD NOISES"! Carell captures every emotion with an acclaimed actors touch and feel for humanity. Bringing forth the turmoil of the inner torment a father feels when he is helpless in helping the one boy he wants to protect from all the evil in the world, once the needle is in and the damage is done. The lead musters all he can manage with his entire heart to show that in his most subtlety soulful and numbly bruised performance to date. This is by any measure one of the hardest things to watch. But seeing it through a father's eyes, in all his picture portraits memories, regrets and fears for the future he doesn't want him or his very own to face alone, is something you can't take your eyes off. No matter how much you want to look away. When Carell's father figure looks a shadow of his former self as he walks around what should be an idyllic home with all the world is adding to his shoulders each time without so much as a shrug, you will feel every weight he carries. One such a toll that like him you could only wish you could help with to lighten the load of this torture.
"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans", John Lennon sings in the song to Sean that this movie is named after and features with the heart of Carell's sweetly soulful lullaby. And it's a metaphor for this movie from Belgian director of decadence Felix Van Groeningen that masters the moving sense of this struggle in skitish and anxiety aggravating tones. Just as it does the late 90's aesthetic and strong but somber soundtrack that then scores into the harrowing strings of something out of a horror movie to mask the real evils that haunt this house. Sobering and strung out, this movie based on the memoirs of both the real life father ('Beautiful Boy') and son ('Tweak') portrayed here are as genuine as it gets to the letter. No matter how unflinchingly hard that is to take. And it's given more gravitas in its groundbreaking, not suitable for Hollywood clichéd work realism in this independent picture that stands on its own from some of the other figures in this family drama. Like the marvellous Maura Tierney, stepping in as Stepmom. As the small screen great of 'ER' and 'The Affair' fame shows she without a word can communicate books worth of counsel, love and support from just one facial expression. Like her "I got you" opening, tired, embracing arms around the neck of a world weary Carell. But believe she has her say too like mother and ex-wife Amy Ryan. The 'Birdman' star out in L.A., but not pursuing ignorance. More like the other methods she can in the open state of California to help cure her son's urge that is fixing to take his life and destroy all the ones of all the people around him, who can't bear to watch him heartbreakingly lose his essence and being to this s###. Even 'Empire's' Thirsty oil-slick shark of a lawyer Andre Royo is here as a sincere and serious sponser offering helpings of heart and humour in a movie full of the first. But desperate in the latter as every joy, or sense or recovery, threatens to remiss into the never seemingly ending fall of relapse like the monsters, real or imagined that lurk and hide under the bed of horror movies. In the Julia Roberts and 'Boy Erased' fellow indie kid of the moment Lucas Hedges ('Manchester By The (My God that killed me, Oscar winning) Sea') movie 'Ben Is Back', our mother takes her son to a cemetery before he hugs her from the waist down in nothing left desperation to make him choose where he'll be buried if he relapses again in the most realing and teaching moment. Here this method isn't employed for fears of it coming all too true. Drug addiction is the sole biggest killer for the youth under 50 in America. And with mainstream music and a modern careless culture, going out and beating that fact and devil may think twice notion into young, impressionable minds, this unnerving, unflinching and jarring movie is the one counter to all this, that can be even related to today by millennials. But through all these black holes in a drug abusing system, there is still hope here for an escape. And it all starts with Timothée. And boy is that idea of influence bleak...but beautiful too. As a matter of fact, it's "everything". TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Further Filming: 'Ben Is Back', 'Call Me By Your Name', 'Lady Bird'.
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