Reviews

Marriage Story is Noah Baumbach's magnum opus, an emotionally-poignant film that will surely be added the great canon of masterpieces and its awards-worthy performances examined in acting classes.

Marriage Story navigates the emotionally-fraught lives of a couple going through divorce and masterfully places the audience as a helpless invisible child witnessing the trials and tribulations Charlie and Nicole endure. The humanity, sensitivity and candor in Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson's performances coupled with an exemplary script provides for a grounded film unfolding with endless layers of depth that mine the audience of emotional catharsis.

The simple title: Marriage Story aptly encapsulates the film. It's not a divorce story, It's about a marriage of dichotomies and dualisms. NY vs LA, stage vs screen, work vs play, family vs friends, actor vs director, performance vs authenticity. It may be hard to comprehend that throughout the film as we witness Charlie and Nicole fall apart but its in the final sequence that Baumbach really reconciles the dichotomies. He tenderly reveals to the audience that it was not his intent to show how different each side of the dualisms, but to shine a light on the overlap, the grey areas, the messiness of trying to draw lines in the sand.

Call Me By Your Name is the kind of movie that makes you sit through the credits with tears rolling down your face, staring blankly at the screen with a lump in your throat and tightness in your chest.

Call Me By Your Name is not a tragic movie. It's not a sad movie. It's not a pretentious movie. It's a movie about love, and love, and love. A beautiful love that will leave you longing to find your own love and drown in it.

Timothée Chalamet is an absolute force of nature. Elio will make you want to love, and hurt, and piece yourself back together with absolutely no regrets whatsoever. Elio will make you want to live your life to the fullest. Elio will make you want to break your own damn heart. It's so rare that a performance truly shows the depth of longing, and despair, and passion a character conveys through written words without the internal monologue. Timothée is truly a revelation and his last scene during the credits will have a lasting impact on everyone.

Armie Hammer is absolutely brilliant in the way he humanizes Oliver who is somewhat glorified through Elio's lens in the first part of the book. In the movie, Oliver is endearing and human and sexy and caring. He cares for Elio, and his love for him is so tender and so touching

Michael Stuhlbarg's monologue delivered nearing the end of the film is a complete masterpiece, and without a doubt that monologue with be taught and quoted for many years to come. A raw and beautiful scene.

Watch this movie. Watch it, and love it, and don't let it fall victim to over-hype. Watch this movie. Fall in love in two hours and twelve minutes, then question every single time you didn't allow yourself to feel just because you were afraid of getting hurt. Was avoiding a possible heartbreak that might have shattered you worth never getting a taste of the heavens? Was killing the potential pain and heartache worth it? Was it worth it?