Change Your Image
kyle-153
Reviews
Frisk (1995)
Homophobic piece of trash
I watched this movie on a bet. I hated every minute of it. Why?
1. Bad acting (except for Parker Posey, who can make a telephone book seem interesting...and should have done so instead of taking this trash on).
2. Insipid script filled with self-important dialog and voice-over that sounded like fake high-school ennui laced with a dash of faux philosophy 101.
3. A-B-C directing.
4. Pseudo-stylish editing flashes that even MTV would find silly.
5. Nothing sets.
6. 1-2-3 style lighting.
7. A loathing of all things homosexual and the fag-hags who adore them. Not one normal person was allowed to counterpoint the non-stop anti-gay depiction of gay men as self-mutilating drug abusers into kinky anything so long as it winds up with them ejaculating at the end.
8. The wimpy non-stop suggestion that it's all in Dennis' mind. Maybe. Except it might not be. Or might be. Maybe. Sort of. Except it isn't. Or is it? And on and on and on, ad nauseum.
Edgy? Avant guarde? A whole new genre of in your face "I don't care about anybody" sort of movies, with this being a prime piece? Give me a break. At best, this is limp- wiener porn gussied up with occasional flashes of male genitalia and a low-rent idea that self-destruction and serial murder are part of the queer gene.
That this homophobic piece of trash was (supposedly) shown at Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival only shows how second rate those venues have become. You want to see a real serial killer movie full of "I don't care about anybody" done right? Rent "Henry, Portrait Of A Serial Killer" or "Monster" or even "Citizen X". Anything but this garbage.
Borstal Boy (2000)
A desecration of a beautiful book
I don't know why Pete Sheridan called this nonsense "Borstal Boy," because he tossed out everything that made that story wonderful and deep and human and warm and real and in its place put clichés and stupidity and complete fabrication laced with the worst sort of homophobic condescension and a flat-out insult to the one gay character in the script. All made ten times worse by the fact that Sheridan's an Irish filmmaker who's come up with excellent work in the past. He really should have known...and definitely done...better.
The book begins in 1939 when Brendan Behan's arrested for smuggling bomb-making materials into Liverpool in the early months of WW2. He's 16 years old. The first section deals with the months he spends in jail waiting to be tried for the offense. With his fears. His bravado. His problems with the pro-English Priest. Problems with Dale and the policemen watching over him. The casual brutalization. Friends he makes (he's okay with Charlie being a "poof" from day one, calling each other their "china" and sharing smokes and info and reading material). The details of the day-to-day tedium. The pathetic food. All told with a simple warmth and acceptance and humanity and humor that makes you ache and laugh and sigh at the same time.
None of this is in the movie.
Then Brendan's sent to Borstal -- a Juvenile Detention Center, in US parlance -- where he makes more friends. Works. Learns. Teaches. Has fun. Has trouble. Protects his friends. Deals with his enemies. Grows to be a man. Decides not all the English are bad...something he was already acknowledging was truth. Again, told with a warmth and acceptance and humanity and humor that makes it seem like you're living it yourself.
The movie? A bad Irish version of a Micky Rooney-Judy Garland "Let's put on a show" piece of junk, sort of a "Brendan Does Borstal" tale, told in such a way that everyone can see just how wonderful it is to just get along, and so Brendan can learn that "poofs" are people, too, while there's a fresh pretty girl standing nearby to make sure everybody knows he's not really "that way." And also suffer a stupendously stupid tragedy "of his own making"...not once but twice...and have everyone see how he suffers and try to make him feel better and I WANTED TO VOMIT.
Okay...the acting is decent enough. Shawn Hatosy and Danny Dyer try to bring their characters some depth. And Michael York is always good, even when given drivel to work with. But this movie is a desecration of a beautiful book. There is no other way to put it. And that it was allowed by the Irish Film Board and various other Irish production companies to be linked to this brilliant and eloquent example of great Irish writing (even with the silly disclaimer that it's only "inspired by" that book) is disgraceful.
Shame on you all.