TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

There's no witty opener to be found here. I want to be as straightforward and honest about Luca Guadagnino's Call Me by Your Name as Call Me by Your Name was straightforward and honest with me. This is the most piercingly honest depiction of first/falling in/romantic love I have seen in a very long time, perhaps of all time. If I would have postponed my top five list of 2017, this would have surely made the mark. The premise is so simple it begs you to question its gimmick: maybe they're on Mars the whole time? There is nothing deceiving about this film, and its pureness in relation to its characters is what makes it one of the better I've seen in the past decade. Oliver (Armie Hammer) comes to stay with Mr. Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) as a research assistant for a summer in northern Italy in 1983, along with Perlman's wife Annella (Amira Casar) and son Elio (now Oscar-nominee Timothée Chalamet). The relationship begins: and that's the movie. Spread out leisur...

The generic cup of Guillermo del Toro's latest, The Shape of Water , runneth over. It is fantastical, horrific in points, a musical element (I won't spoil that surprise), intense psychological drama, comedic moments courtesy of the always-fabulous Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins, and of course, as the amphibian man will tip off to you, sci-fi. But if I had Michael Shannon pointing a gun to my head (and let's be honest, with the performances he gives, that might not be out of the realm of possibility), I'd label The Shape of Water a romance. It's ruminations of love and hate and the ways we can show love, express it, would be goopy and syrupy in the hands of a lesser director, but del Toro is full-on freaky fairy tale here, and if you're wondering why the movie with the big green fish man is getting nominated for so many awards, I suggest you read my review. Of course, the magic of this movie is that you don't have to choose. It's gruesome, it's...

With my Breaking Bad  poster, Walter White bobble head and crafted Heisenberg drinking mug, you could say I have a whole lot of Bryan Cranston splattered around my college dorm room. I've enjoyed the man ever since seventh grade, watching Malcolm in the Middle reruns on FX before the middle school bus picked me up. I would've been only 12 when Breaking Bad had its series premiere on television, but after catching up after I graduated high school, it was astonishing, (for hundreds of reasons). But one of the biggest achievements critics and fans point out so often was Cranston's ability to play the silly, childlike Hal, and then to troubled meth kingpin Walter White. Cranston shows us why he's won a Golden Globe, 6 Emmys and 4 SAG Awards in the past several years, as he transforms (a lot of it is that gravely, smokey voice: I wonder did he actual smoke the cigarettes that he's inevitable seen with in nearly every scene of the film?) into blacklisted screenwriter D...