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Reviews
Pinsky (2017)
Cute movie, often funny
Found this movie as I was wrapping up a different "lesbian" love story and this came up as recommended on Tubi (listed as an LBGT+ category)
There really isn't much of a lesbian love story in this so don't be expecting that. However, it is a rather cute and endearing movie with a fair amount of humor throughout.
The star, Rebecca Karpovsky, who plays the lead, Pinsky, and is also the co-writer of the movie grew on me throughout the film. She dresses really frumpy and dressed down but she has an adorable smile and a figurative wink in her eye as she tries to decide what she wants to do in life.
Fun, cute movie.
Yeon-ae-dam (2016)
I will explain the ending as I see - Obviously spoiler alert!!!
I wasn't going to write a review for this film. Not because I didn't like it but because I've been doing tons of reviews lately so I was gonna keep my trap shut. Also, I like to write GOOD reviews to alert other viewers to something that I'd think they'd enjoy and BAD reviews to help viewers avoid dismal movies and time-wasters. I infrequently write reviews on the movies that are in-between those two extremes.
That said, at the time of this writing, I noticed that several other reviews said something to the effect of "What happened at the end?" or "movie just cuts off with no ending." In my opinion, no offense, but that just totally isn't true.
As a participant in way too high school and college romances, (me, a girl, and with a man) I too used to play all of the inherent games that go along with relationships. You, as a couple, are outrageously hot, then the cooling down period, then (rarely) one strays, 99% more likely, one of the parties will start distancing themselves from the relationship or, more specifically, the other person.
Sometimes breakups are big and cruel and notable. But much more often, it is just a drifting apart. And RARELY, do parties drift apart together. There is almost always one partner who is somewhat clueless as to why the other person is drifting away. One other thing. If it's a clean breakup, the partner that drifts away first moves on, leaving the other partner with unrequited love an heartache to some degree or another.
However, there are A LOT of unclean breakups where the dumper keeps coming back into the dumpee's life and either knowingly or unknowingly keeps them on the hook. If you're the dumpee, and you allow this, be prepared for some serious heartbreak.
Okay, so long story short, we the audience, witnessed the short-haired, nerdy protagonist, Yoon-ju, being the weaker player throughout the entire film. She is completely enamored of the long-haired woman, Ji-soo. It would take an entire book to record each of the incidents where Yoon-ju acquiesced to Ji-soo, Ji-soo understands this, and many times Ji-soo took advantage of this.
So the ending of this movie was rather mundane (meaning a lot of relationships play out like this), and subtle (hence some viewers didn't even grasp what happened, and yet mildly remarkable (because Yoon-ju, via waking up and seeing what Ji-soo was doing to her, protected herself by flipping the tables and shutting down Yoon-ju's final advances).
The reason why it was a somewhat uplifting ending isn't because they broke up or stayed together. It's because Yoon-ju took her power back, realizing she was being manipulated, and we, the audience, got to see that Yoon-ju (no matter how much she loved Ji-soo) had divested herself from the relationship and had decided to be a victim no longer.
Just my take on this and opinions will vary, but unfortunately, I used to be an expert at this and saw it coming a mile away in this movie. Good on you Yoon-ju. You go, girl!!!
Castaways (2023)
Ultimately kinda amateurish but still a fun watch
I've been binge-watching girl loves girl movies and shows for several months now. Girl making out with girl love scenes are the most passionate lovemaking scenes imaginable. Forget the dirty stuff ... just the longing glances and the loving embraces and the passionate kissing and the mere touching of fingers. You'd be hard-pressed to find this kind of passion in normal boy/girl scenes.
Castaways is about in the middle-of-the-road when rating it against other girl loves girl movies. Just to help any readers out, IMO, if you want to see the top notch lesbian movies, try 'You Can Live Forever', 'Elena Undone', 'More Beautiful for Having Been Broken', 'Loving Annabelle', or "Kiss Me', for starters.
That said, Castaways isn't a bad movie. The leads are pretty and decent actresses with good bodies. The story is interesting even if it is a little amateurish. The dialog (which can take a movie down) isn't too immature and, for the most part, was convincing. The chemistry between the two leads wasn't fantastic but it was mostly believable.
The "funniest" part about this movie are the voluminous flaws throughout the film. There are far too many to mention but the two most notable ones were-
Sooo many times, when the actresses were on the beach, I kept feeling sorry for them cuz they were in the hot sun. But then, as the dialog went back and forth between the leads, the closeups almost all had the actresses in the shade. And yet they were twenty yards from the closest tree.
The second glaring flaw was about 10 or 15 minutes into the movie, there is a big boat in the background. This isn't a spoiler, it is just a giant boat parked a couple of hundred yards away. I started laughing and my bf didn't believe me so we actually rewound the stream to witness this odd boat (having nothing to do with this movie) again. Then my bf started laughing.
In summary, even for all its flaws, I enjoyed watching Castaways. To me, the best recommendation that I could give you is, why you ask, did I recommend some of the above movies when I say that Castways was more mediocre. It's because every single one of the above recommended movies made me weep with emotion. Not cuz they're all sad but they evoked love or heartache or emotional pain or heaven on earth. In the end, at the end of Castaways, I was just thinking about what I was gonna cook for dinner.
You Can Live Forever (2022)
Totally worth seeing if you get the chance!
I've been binge-watching girl loves girl movies and shows for several months now. At first I didn't understand why, I'm a straight female with a terrific boyfriend. What is my problem, right?
Then, I finally figured it out. Girl making out with girl love scenes are the most passionate lovemaking scenes imaginable. Forget the dirty stuff ... just the longing glances and the loving embraces and the passionate kissing. You'd be hard-pressed to find this kind of passion in normal boy/girl scenes.
Soooo, when done correctly, you're not gonna get much more bang for your buck than a well-done girl/girl movie, especially when they incorporate a coming of age aspect to it, since that adds innocence and awareness to the mix.
You Can Live Forever has presented this masterfully. Great, pretty leads, good acting, great story, realistic emotions and characterizations. The directing is very good, for the most part, but there is one scene that is especially outstanding when they are all in the "final" truth meeting, where you feel you are actually in the audience and witnessing the main character's trepidation first hand.
Highly recommended!
Christmas at the Ranch (2021)
I really enjoyed this one
Okay, I know that it's formulaic and basically just a slight variation of the typical love story ... but it was really lighthearted and kind of fun.
I've been binge-watching girl/girl love stories lately and, although I generally love them, a lot of them are rather dark. Christmas at the Ranch was a fun diversion.
The two leads were very attractive and, while not perfect, seemed to have a good chemistry together. One of my favorite scenes was during the winter storm, when they innocently had to spend the night together. The squirming and manipulation on the bed made me giggle and reminded me of sharing the bed with one of my sisters or at sleepovers with platonic girlfriends when I was a child. Recommended.
Sam (2017)
Hilarious first 2/3s ruined by weak/lazy final 1/3.
Okay, y'all, I was totally ready to love this move. I have a girl crush on Natalie Knepp and have basically loved her since I saw her in Alto.
When I say that the first bulk of the movie was hilarious, it wasn't really that funny. It's just that's where most of the jokes reside. The last third is fairly lame. Not only does the story lose steam but the ending is, in my opinion, horrific.
**** Final SPOILER Alert ****
How could the now female, Sam, fall in love with his best friend. Not only does everyone in the viewing audience realize that Sam is still basically just an "upgraded" original Sam, but even Doc knows it's Sam. He says it to him specifically after one of their hugs.
Again, this is going to affect people differently but the ending was beyond creepy to me. I probably shouldn't be sharing this but, I have five sisters ... When I was in high school, a lot of the creeps would ask each of us if we had seen each other nekkid and if we would do each other, etc. What? Noooo! Ewwwww. That may be your weird fetish but making out with my beautiful but, to me, gross sisters was the absolute last thing on my mind.
For some weird reason, the ending of this movie reminded me of those days. Like it was somebody's weird, perverted fantasy.
The View from Tall (2016)
I really, really enjoyed this!
This was such an interesting movie. It was handled so expertly on so many levels ... the acting, the dialog, the story ... almost everything was flawless.
The movie isn't a laugh riot (obviously) but the lead, Christina's, wit makes for some funny, memorable lines. The role of her new friend, the older, Douglas, was masterfully portrayed, neither too saccharine or too clever. Just the perfect amount of a tender soul.
I won't harp on the movie's good points too much, I don't want to oversell it. Just know that it is a great watch, especially if you're in the right mood for it. I cried several times, not even from sorrow or from joy, just overflowing emotions.
That said, I only had two reservations about this film. Neither of them are fatal flaws though. In fact, it may be more just me and other viewers wouldn't think twice about them.
First, the actions of the younger sister, Paula, and the way she constantly denigrates her older sister, the protagonist, Christine. It is well done, well acted, and very believable, I just didn't really see the motivation. (And yes, I get that the younger sister was trying to fit in at school so she played the minor antagonist role). I have 3 younger sisters and I am the younger sister to 2 older sisters. None of us would ever, and I mean EVER, not have any one of our sister's backs or choose a stranger's feelings over each other. Again, this is not a flaw in the movie and it IS portrayed realistically. It truly just might be based on my own upbringing. I just had a had time relating to it so it took me out of the scenes several times.
Secondly, and again, this is a minor transgression, I think they cast an actress that was slightly too old to play the lead part of a 17-year old. It's not that she was tall (as the title implies) ... my two older sisters are 5'11" and 6'1". It's just that the entire time I was watching, I felt like this "high schooler" looked more like a mid-20s woman. As soon as I finished the movie, I jumped on the interwebz and started looking. "They" have definitely scrubbed the lead actress's age, but I was able to ascertain that she was probably indeed about 22- 26 when this film was made in 2016.
Nevertheless, because the role was played so phenomenally by actress Amanda Drinkall, I still probably wouldn't have re-cast the lead role. It's just something I noticed.
Thanks for reading my mini-novel.
Ringolevio (2020)
I usually LOVE girl/girl movies ... Ultimately heartbreaking.
Full disclosure, I'm a 27-year-old straight female with an (almost) perfect boyfriend. But, for some reason, I am absolutely obsessed with burgeoning lesbian or girl/girl movies, where a girl or woman, or each of the women, or together as a couple, are trying to make their way thru life and find themselves. The passion that these women display, even without the actual act, is incredible. So I basically cherish any insight into these female relationships and I can binge watch these movies for days. The women have to be attractive and feminine ... as soon as a truck driver, man'ish, baseball hat wearing lady shows up, I'm out.
That said, this movie had a lot of the right elements, two attractive leads, decent acting, and a decent story (even tho that was probably its weakest point), so I buried myself into the couch to enjoy it.
Long story short, without going into all of the details of the film, I'll just highlight two points, one of them being a spoiler, hence the alert.
First, I couldn't stand the brothers. Either the writing was bad or dumb old me just missed the point but it seems like, even tho they were on their home turf and a visitor must respect that, Ada, the protagonist, didn't do anything wrong and she more then bent over backwards to accommodate them.
Secondly, for probably the same reason as above, In my view Ada didn't do anything wrong toward her girlfriend, Marissa, either and yet Ada kept compromising and making amends and apologizing for things even when she (in my opinion) hadn't done anything wrong. Ultimately, Marissa came off as narcissistic and unbending and kinda horrible.
The reason why this movie makes me sooo sad was because, in that aspect, it's a lot like real life. Ada loved the uncaring Marissa so much that the film leaves it like Ada is willing to be treated like a doormat for the rest of her life. That is just too sad for me to imagine. And I think this fully applies to all relationships, boy & girl or lesbian ones. You can't give up your own identity just to please someone else so in the end, this movie broke my heart even tho some people might not see it that way.
Thanks for reading my rant.
Samaritan (2022)
I usually don't like superhero movies but ...
Like my title says, I usually don't like superhero movies but I actually kind of enjoyed this one. I've never understood why my bf likes most of the superhero-type movies but I'll usually tag along reluctantly. But, for some reason, this one actually was fairly easy to follow and was rather enjoyable. Sylvester Stallone wasn't too over the top (no pun intended) and was relatively believable, even at his somewhat advanced age, of being the star. And the little boy did a pretty good job ... the movie would have been horrendous if he hadn't been able to pull his tiny weight in the "main" character role. I really like the gritty city surroundings and, like I said, the story wasn't too convoluted to follow. That might be my main problem with most other superhero movies. I give this one a solid 7 out of 10.
Follow Me (2020)
Meh. Unlikeable lead character mars any empathy you may feel
Along with a lot of missed opportunities, this movie just barely stays above the D-level "Asylum"-type horror movies.
Unlike some other movies, this one, even if it capitalized on its missed opportunities, would never have blossomed because of the truly unlikeable male lead. There were five of us friends watching and we agreed afterward that there was never a single point in time where we were cheering for the protagonist, and subsequently his friends, to ever win. The dialogue and the minimal character setup never let us identify with the protagonist's group. He comes off much more looking like an egotistical jerk than a movie's hero.
SPOILERS ahead -
The worst part is, even with the meh casting and the shallow characterizations, the ending could have been spectacular ... one of those type of jaw-dropping endings where it was totally worth sitting through the rest of the quasi-lame film.
But, if you've ever watched horror films before (to be honest, all 5 of us viewers are devout horror film buffs 'except for the really yucky ones'), you see the ending coming from a mile away. Almost all viewers could possibly presuppose the final twist early on, but a lot of nascent horror viewers would've been fooled as the hero's friends are killed off one by one.
HOWEVER, if you notice the film-work/positioning of the camera, you can tell that the writer/directors were setting up each kill as special effects ... and not a real death (even within the movie). So, ultimately, they even failed, for the most part, to achieve the potentially redeeming final twist.
Infamous (2020)
VERY unsatisfying!
At university or in any writing class or writing group ...... if you tried to pass this storyline off to your peers, the big question would be, "Okay, so what's your point."
Of course, whoever wrote this would start saying, "Come on, man, it's about fighting back at oppression!" or some similar grand theme.
When, in reality, if we're being honest, the writer should giggle, drop their head down and say, "I know, I know, I'm just seeing it now. When I thought of the idea I thought it would make a GREAT movie. But, now that I step back and look at it, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOT POINT. I'm sorry.