Every year since the 2010s began, there’s been at least one Best Picture nominee (or winner) I give a thumbs down to. This year, there’s two, and I just so happen to be reviewing them together right here.
Call Me by Your Name:
Call Me by Your Name moves at its own steady pacing. For scenes focused on creating ambiance for its beautiful Italian setting, it works effectively—for scenes focused on plot and character interactions, however, the pacing becomes excruciatingly sluggish. The film is a fun, sweet tale about love and desire, and its main couple has striking chemistry between them, but this is all diluted by the film’s lax progression and various mini-detours that halt development. The pacing ends up becoming Call Me by Your Name’s Achilles’ Heel—causing me to become detached from the characters. If Call Me by Your Name could have been a half-hour shorter—and it really could have been without cutting any important content and development—or perhaps utilized its beautiful setting in a more active, persistent manner (there’s a lovely storm scene that goes by way too quickly), it would have been a far more effective, engaging feature.
Lady Bird:
Lady Bird is the ultimate Oscar-bait film. It contains a little of everything that attracts the Academy, yet not enough of anything innovative or fresh to form its own identity. I'm a strong believer that creators can reuse/mix past concepts to form a new, equally effective—if not superior—work of art. Yet there also needs to be a new angle, tone and/or built-upon concept for such recycling to succeed. As it stands, Lady Bird is a hodgepodge of previously tackled concepts, strung together to form a coherent, yet disengaging coming-of-age story that never quite connects. The film’s most innovative, and humorous, idea is a minor scene where an assistant football coach tries teaching a high school theater class. Lady Bird ultimately comes across as a film designed to please critics rather than a film made to express its creator's heart.
