Page 16
February 28, 2018
‘Get Out” Best Film of 2017
C ontinueD From p age 15
nese immigrants in New York. An
absorbing film and a perfect case
study.
7. “Call Me By Your Name”
fully deserves the rapturous re-
sponse it got from audiences and
critics. Italian director Luca Gua-
dagnino has not only created a
heartbreakingly beautiful gay love
story; he has captured the ache of
longing and falling in love more
profoundly than I can remember
seeing on film. I caught myself
holding my breath several times
while watching it -- even without
narrating the thoughts of Elio, the
17-year-old boy at the center of
this story, Guadagnino (and Tim-
othée Chalamet, in an astonish-
ing performance) make you feel
the push-pull of fascination and
obsession and irritation and ur-
gency that drive him in the weeks
that Oliver, a 24-year-old grad
student, is living in the home he
shares with his very groovy aca-
demic parents in Italy. And while
the story is told from Elio’s point
of view, Armie Hammer’s Oliver
is compelling and gorgeous and
diffident and yet believably vul-
nerable too. I appreciated the gen-
tle way in which such passionate
love was portrayed and how the
film did not solve the discomfort
we might feel with the difference
in age between Elio and Oliver.
Michael Stuhlbarg as Elio’s father
also is especially wonderful and
delivers one of the most moving
speeches ever uttered on film by a
father to his son, words not just for
Elio but for so many others who
never otherwise would hear them.
In the end, so much is packed into
so few words and images that you
leave feeling like you understand
something essential about these
two men in the fullness of their
lives, and hold the mystery of
what it means to experience a love
that, however fleeting, changes
you forever.
8. “I, Daniel Blake” ought to
be required viewing for everyone
in the U.S. and other industrial-
ized countries. The great British
director Ken Loach does his best
work here depicting the title char-
acter’s Kafkaesque experiences
navigating the British social ser-
vices system. Blake is a 59-year-
old carpenter who recently suf-
fered a heart-attack; his doctors
tell him he’s not ready to go back
to work, but his benefits have been
cut off and his fight to get them
restored would provoke a health
crisis in just about anyone. This is
not a documentary, but its dramat-
ic rendering of the dehumanizing
experience of obtaining help from
the government is imparted with
empathy and wisdom, aided by
an utterly believable and absorb-
ing performance by Dave Johns as
Blake, and by an equally excellent
supporting cast.
Although this film won the pres-
tigious Palme D’Or at the Cannes
putably brilliant poet who lived a
very quiet life. But director Ter-
rence Davies has found a way to
present Dickinson, in her time, in a
way that illuminates how a radical
woman thinker could manifest in a
time when it was not possible for
a woman to be a radical thinker.
As played by Cynthia Nixon (who
A Chinese immigrant family fights to defend themselves and
the legacy of their Chinatown community bank in the new
documentary “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.”
Film Festival in 2016, it received
no Academy Awards notice. The
Hollywood establishment has nei-
ther the clarity of vision nor the
guts to honor stories like this, let
alone to produce them.
9. I was quite stunned by how
deeply “A Quiet Passion” affect-
ed me. Period pieces are very
tricky; filmmakers often have a
hard time letting go of a desire
to beautify according to current
standards, and the main character,
here, Emily Dickinson, is an indis-
deserves the Academy Award for
Best Actress), Dickinson speaks
in measured tones and is devoted
and respectful to her father, and
yet she is funny and fierce and
questions everything. Traversing
her life from age 16 to her final
years of seclusion before her death
at age 55, this film captures what
it means to operate far far ahead of
one’s time, and promotes a much
deeper respect for an iconoclast
who lived without appreciation or
recognition until her death.
10. Actress Sally Hawkins
has justly received recognition
for her role in “The Shape of
Water,” but I think she is even
better in “Maudie,” the surpris-
ingly effective homage to folk
artist Maud Lewis. Disfigured by
what appears to have been juve-
nile rheumatoid arthritis, Lewis
was entirely self taught and lived
in extreme poverty in Nova Sco-
tia for most of her life -- and yet
bright, colorful scenes of trees and
cats and flowers flowed out of her
onto just about every surface she
encountered. She mostly painted
them for herself until, at the end of
her life, she enjoyed a surprising
celebrity. This film treats her with
consummate respect and is large-
ly devoted to exploring her rela-
tionship with her husband Everett
(Ethan Hawke, too handsome, but
surprisingly effective), who hired
her as his housekeeper and then
married her. Their relationship is
troubled and disturbing in many
ways -- but the film treats them
both with appropriate dignity and
real insight. Whether or not the
details are true, this film is true in
the ways that are deepest and most
important.
Darleen Ortega is a judge on
the Oregon Court of Appeals and
the first woman of color to serve
in that capacity. Her movie review
column Opinionated Judge ap-
pears regularly in The Portland
Observer. Find her movie blog at
opinionatedjudge.blogspot.com.