Reviews

One person called this show "Entitled garbage" after saying, "Yes, I loved "Sex and the City."" I could hardly believe it. This is exactly a gay male "Sex and the City," and to say you like the one but not the other literally makes no sense. This, like SatC, is a fantasy version of upper middle class middle aged beautiful people living in NYC. Just like a show about straight people shouldn't be burdened with being expected to represent the entire straight experience, which would be impossible, this show shouldn't be expected to represent all gay men, which is equally impossible. The one thing I'll agree with the other poster on is that "Pit Stop" is very good and worth seeing, but spoiler alert, that film, set among small town lower middle class gay men in Texas doesn't represent the entire gay community, either.

I love a good horror film, including a number of Asian titles from the last twenty years or so, but this seemed like a butchered version of what was meant to be a longer film. (No cause and effect, unclear motivation, difficult chronology.) It made very little sense to me (maybe if I was Korean, it would have made more sense, but I have my doubts.) The main character and her daughter are also two of the most annoying characters I've seen on film in the last few years: screaming at each other constantly... angry... petulant. I wanted them both dead half an hour in. There are some nice visuals here and there (and the male lead has some charisma), but to be honest, I barely made it through this utter mess of a film.

Either you like experimental film/video or you don't. If you do, and not just for its oft-present explicit or borderline explicit sex, I'd say that chances are you'll really like "v.o." For me the juxtaposition of art-cinema soundtracks (complete with subtitles) and non-explicit scenes from gay porn of the 70s and early 80s creates a profound and thought-provoking experience. Showing the way the "low" experience of cruising for casual gay sex connects to the "profound" experiences of "high" art offers a unique insight into what sex, even grubby pick-a-trick-up-in-a-subway-station sex, means in queer life. If you have a chance to see this hard to find piece, and you like experimental video, I'd say it's a must see.

I saw this movie at ImageOut, the Rochester Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival. Although a shallow, good-natured film called "Summer Storm" won the audience award at the end of the week, most of my friends--people who like more complexity and substance in their films--thought this film was the best of the fest. Focusing on a 30ish gay male photographer whose apartment looked upon the World Trade Center and who is now coping with the trauma he suffered on 9/11, this drama with comedy is one of the most warm and deeply felt human dramas I've seen all year. You really learn to care about the photographer, named Eric, and his all-too-human response to overwhelming historical events. The humor comes organically out of the material without seeming inappropriate or ghoulish, and the film really shows us what it's like, in a compelling way, to live in historically significant times. Were this film to have starred bigger stars--say Jake Gyllenhaal as Eric and Claire Danes as his gal-pal friend--it would be talked about as an Oscar contender today. As it is, this little gem of an indie needs searching out. Many of the actors in this film, particularly Michael Urie and Nick Potenzieri, will be stars one day. See them here first, and remember I told you so.

I saw this film at the ImageOut film festival last weekend, and found it a highlight of my film going year so far. The directors take a fascinating person's career and make it even more interesting with a series of great interview subjects (including Kathleen Turner, B.D. Wong, and Rosie O'Donnell), hysterical video footage of Busch's past live performances, and clips from his film work. Busch himself is a wonderful interview subject and the life and career he's had is an inspiration for anyone who feels a little different and still wants to succeed in mainstream society. I would hope this film gets shown to every gay--or even just "different"--young person to show them they can succeed to the level of their wildest dreams, even if they have to make their own opportunities. If you're not a Charels Busch fan yet, you will be after you see this very entertaining and heart-warming film.

I wasn't expecting too much out of this little gay indie, but I was happily surprised at how much I ended up liking the characters, laughing at the jokes, and being delighted by the cinematography and art design. With the exception of some of the exterior shots (some done with CGI and some with grainy stock footage), the film looks exactly like a vintage production from the late-Fifties or early-Sixties, which is the era in which the film is set. In fact it's a perfect pastiche of the old Rock Hudson Universal comedies of that time like "Lover Come Back" and "Man's Favorite Sport?"

The characters, for their part, at first come across as being a bit annoying. A surprisingly buffed-up Matt Letscher (who played the anchorman character in the TV sitcom "Good Morning, Miami") is a closeted gay movie star in the Fifties (based on Rock Hudson) whose promiscuousness is matched only by his vanity; Carrie Preston plays a dippy studio secretary who's conned into marrying the actor as a "front" to the public; and Veronica Cartwright (looking a bit like Joan Crawford in the 1964 horror film called "Straight-Jacket") is his ball- busting, dyky agent.

Eventually, these characters do come to actually seem somewhat lovable, if not exactly like three-dimensional human beings. Letcher, when he finally falls in love with a man (the slightly dorky but utterly adorable newcomer Adam Greer) ends up seeming almost gallant in a Cary Grant sort of way. Preston, while she never loses her cartoony quality, ends up— especially after a fun musical number—seeming as delightful as she does ditzy. Her performance winds up being much like that of Ellen Greene's in "Little Shop of Horrors", a film with which this one has much in common.

Best of all is Veronica Cartwright, who plays Guy's agent Jerry. She's an absolute delight. She's always been one of those actresses who commands the screen whenever she's on it. Her short little part in "Kinsey" (virtually a cameo) as Alfred Kinsey's mother was perhaps the best performance in that film. As the other woman, besides Sigorney Weaver, in the first "Alien", she delivered a masterpiece of on-screen hysteria that should have gotten her an Oscar nomination. Here, doing broad comedy, she practically steals the show. Simple little throwaway lines like: "Can I just say that's beautiful… and retarded?" become dialogue classics in her hands.

Finally, the look of the film is beautiful. In creating a pastiche of 50s/60s Hollywood, it comes close to the bigger budget but not nearly as good Renee Zellweger film "Down With Love" from 2003. I strongly disagree with the review here that says this is a good film but more of a DVD rental than a "go out and see it" movie. Half the film's charm is in its Technicolor CinemaScope big-screen splendor.

In short, "Straight-Jacket" is a great little gay date movie. It's much better than, though similar to, a number of other gay indies I've seen recently like "Eating Out", "Slutty Summer", and "The Broken Hearts Club". It's not going to win any Academy Awards at the end of the year (not that comedies do anyway!) but if you want a fun big-screen film with a gay focus, you can't do much better than this screwball gem.

People like to excuse "Irréversible's" undeniable sense of homophobia by saying, "well, gay sex clubs do exist" and "the film is an anti-violence film and the homosexual stuff is just atmosphere." But what these kinds of comments ignore is that writing and directing are all about making choices. Gaspar Noë CHOSE, to make the film's central rape scene an ANAL rape (if, as Roger Ebert seems to think, it's just an anti-rape film, why did Noë make such a point of having it be an anal rape?), he CHOSE to have the film begin/end in a gay sex club, and he CHOSE to have the club be named "The Rectum". This all adds up to a classic expression of homophobia, which can be best understood, if your interested, by reading the famous essay about the hatred of gay sex by Leo Bersani (in the book by Douglas Crimp, "AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism") called "Is the Rectum a Grave?"

An accurate interpretation of the film must acknowledge that Noë clearly thinks that the most wonderful thing in the world is vaginal intercourse, since it can lead to conception, birth, and the future of the species, and that the worst thing in the world is anal sex since (to him and other homophobes) it's all about dirty anuses filled with rotting excrement. The theme of the film is built upon the dualistic belief that vaginal intercourse leads to life and therefore anal intercourse leads to death. The theme, finally, is the polar opposite of Kubrick's "2001", which Noë clumsily references at the end/beginning of the film. He's saying that mankind is devolving toward destruction and death, and homosexuality is the key metaphor for, and a primary symptom of, our destruction.

Sorry, folks, I like an envelope-pushing shocker--like "Salò", "In the Realm of the Senses", or "In a Glass Cage"--as much as anyone, and many of the films considered homophobic (like "Cruising") have been, I think, misunderstood, but "Irréversible" is truly a textbook example of homophobia in the cinema.

This is simply a soft-core porn movie, nothing more, that I stumbled upon while researching films portraying city life. It starts out as if it's going to be an investigative piece on "depraved Los Angeles", but it quickly becomes just another skin flick of people peeping through windows at other people supposedly having sex.

There's no sync sound, bad photography, and it isn't even sexy.

In the great Jean Renoir classic "Rules of the Game", a character played by the director himself comments that "everybody has his own good reasons." This rightly has been taken to be the great humanist director's basic philosophy of life. Seeing, over and over again, this understanding, non-judgmental attitude by a narrative artist toward his characters' weaknesses is what makes art film audiences love Renoir's work and consider him one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century. Irvin Kershner's "Loving" is one of the rare Hollywood films worthy of being called Renoirian, and it is for just this reason. Even though "Loving" is filled with highly-flawed characters making seemingly disastrous choices about their lives, its genius is how it puts the audience in a position where it cannot (or at least cannot with any decency) judge them. This may be more than many audience members can handle, being so used to films with heroes and villains about whom they are allowed to feel smugly superior. The legendary "New Yorker" critic Pauline Kael, in her rave review of the film, wrote that it "looks at the failures of middle-class life without despising the people; it understands that they already despise themselves" and that there's "a decency in the way that Kershner is fair to everyone." We could use a few more films like "Loving" out there in the American film cannon. If you every get a chance to see this film, don't hesitate to do so!

Well… almost. At its best, "Circuit" reminds one of the scope,

wit, and compelling nature of PT Anderson's "Boogie Nights" and

"Magnolia", or even Robert Altman's "Nashville", and one suspects

that had the director had more money, a better cast and crew, and

maybe the help of a script doctor, this film could have been as

great as those films. Despite uneven performances, dialog, and

plotting, "Circuit" does a good job of conveying the ambivalence

inherent it the contemporary American circuit scene. Yes, the

scene can seem both exciting and shallow at the same time…

dangerous and alluring, soulless and sexy, liberating and

destructive. There's no contradiction in conveying that, excepting

the very real contradictions in life about all things that have mixed

benefits and drawbacks. It's a sign of the filmmakers maturity that

they can show both sides of the many issues with a good deal of

complexity.

The biggest drawback, for me anyway, was the film's

melodramatic and contrived ending, murder plot and all. Still, my

boyfriend an I were always entertained, staying up till 3 a.m. to

finish this reasonably well-done effort.

Amazingly, director Peter Weir voluntarily cut seven minutes out of

this film for its re-release in the late 1990s, but this shorter

version, sadly the only one now available, is not nearly as effective

as the longer cut.

While nothing of substance has been removed in terms of plot, by

tightening up an originally slow and dreamlike film, the poetic

dread and art film ambiance is largely lost. Now, instead of a

haunting film to stand next to the best work of Dryer and Antonioni,

we're left with a "professional" product with the shortcomings of a

US studio film but with none of the benefits. Were 115 minutes

really too long for a film like this? The longer cut hadn't even hit

the two hour mark! I almost expected Weir to have tacked on a

more mainstream ending than the haunting original. At least that

hasn't changed.

LUSTER is a winsome, engaging look back at a time in the early 1990s when queer nonchalance began to overtake gay pride for the first time.

Something like an early Gregg Araki film (although less angry and more light-hearted), LUSTER is a funny, sexy, and a generally fast-moving look at the early Nineties from the not-too-distant perspective of the early Twenty-first century. It's hardly a classic, and hardly the kind of film that will stay with a person as the years go by, but the film's entirely adorable actors and characters help make this sweet and sexy film very much a worthwhile experience. At least it seems that way for a gay audience looking for something beyond the usual post-Queer milquetoast like IN AND OUT or WILL AND GRACE..

"Un Crabe dans la tete" focuses on Alex, a handsome but selfish underwater photographer who undergoes a number of emotional, life-changing experiences while passing through Montreal. When all is said and done, however, writer/director Andre Turpin has presented little more than a rudderless narrative featuring a bunch of unlikable and uninteresting characters, characters whose patience for the boorish protagonist is nearly unaccountable.

Again and again, one finds oneself mystified by Alex's actions: If he's meant to be a selfish man, only out for himself and afraid of commitment--leaving his wife after the wedding without a word--why, on the other hand, is he so dangerously loyal to a pathetic female drug dealer? If he can thoughtlessly fall into the arms of his best friend's vulnerable lover, how can he suddenly be so completely (almost overly) ethical about a series of disturbing photographs his agent wants him to display? Great films have been made by examining "unlikable" or selfish characters and about people whose actions and motivations are almost inexplicable (i.e. John Cassavetties' films), but the confusion of this film's characters is never thematized or explored. Alex acts the way he acts only so the melodrama can take another surprising turn.

The film is sharply, if erratically, shot, but most paying audiences will surely lose patience with Alex and his associates long before it has ended.

But it's not one of his best. The characterizations of the film's protagonists are inconsistent from scene to scene and some of them leave a viewer with many unanswered questions (like the mother's motivations.) Beyond that, the cinematography is pretty dowdy, particularly the exterior footage.

Still, it has elements that Bergman fans will recognize from his more famous films, and it contains sequences of despair and anguish that can haunt a viewer days later. Birger Malmsten, who plays the lead character Johannes and who will be seen in several later Bergman films, is immensely likable and compelling as the hunchback son who finally stands up to his despotic father. While many of the early Bergman films are uninteresting at almost every level ("Port of Call," for instance) this one is well worth a look for the hard core Bergmaniac, if you can find it.

I am at a complete loss as to why anyone, aside from brain-dead action movie fans, would dislike this small gem of a film. I saw "Rachel River" at the US (now Sundance) Film Festival, and I--along with most the other festival-goers--found it a moving, thought-provoking examination of life in small-town America. It easily deserves the awards it won that year in Park City: the cinematography beautifully invokes the chill and alienation of mid-West America in the dead of winter, Viveca Lindfors gives a touching performance as an elderly woman looking back on her life, and Pamela Reed is haunting as a young woman living a life of quiet desperation in a bleak environment. "Rachel River" bears comparison to a number of other memorable and melancholy films about fading hopes and lost opportunities, films like "You Can Count on Me," "Loving," "The Sweet Hereafter," and "Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams."