gay

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Link posted on by moviebloke

(Australia 1994)

The “road movie” is a subgenre that I think of as an American convention. They tend to involve younger people on a quest for something, perhaps a race (The Cannonball Run), a chase (Convoy), a new life (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore), a vacation (National Lampoon’s Vacation), a mission (Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure), or or just getting laid (Losin’ It). They don’t usually involve gay men or drag performers or Australians for that matter, which makes The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert rather compelling for its subversiveness if nothing else.

True, the world had seen a road movie with gay characters before (My Own Private Idaho, which predates this one by three years, comes to mind) and Australians (Roadgames, Backroads). However, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is different. It’s every bit as fierce as Mad Max, but it’s fabulously fun—as though a team of drag queens tossed a bunch of glitter and disco (and CeCe Peniston) into the mix.

Anthony “Tick” Belrose a.k.a. Mitzi Del Bra (Hugo Weaving) is a drag performer in Sydney who accepts an offer to perform at a casino resort operated by his estranged wife, Marion (Sarah Chadwick), in remote Alice Springs—in the middle of the continent. He gets his buds Bernadette Bassinger (Terence Stamp), a recently widowed transgender woman, and Adam Whitely (Guy Pearce), an obnoxious younger queen whose drag name is Felicia Jollygoodfellow, to join him.

They hit the road in a huge silver tour bus that they christen “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” and embark on a journey through the desert. A clan of Aboriginals is very welcoming, allowing the three to perform for them. Not everyone is nice, though, which they soon discover when some outbackass bumpkins spraypaint “AIDS Fuckers Go Home” across the side of the bus.

The three contend with the bus breaking down, a homophobic gang, what appears to be an inescapable bar brawl, and secrets—quite a few secrets. Some of the stuff that happens is predictable, but writer and director Stephan Elliott manages to keep the whole thing fresh because he infuses some great conflict and character development into the narrative. Bernadette’s subplot, a soul searching midlife “where do I go from here” kind of existential crisis, is probably the most interesting part of the movie. The acting—Weaving and Pearce (who looks like a cross between Brad Pitt and Mark Wahlberg) for sure, but especially Stamp—is moving for something that appears to be heading toward frivolous and campy territory. It doesn’t quite stop there. What the characters all end up with is something maybe none of us saw coming: acceptance.

What makes The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert so great, still, is that it’s full of surprises.

With Rebel Russell, John Casey, June Marie Bennett, Murray Davies, Frank Cornelius, Bob Boyce, Leighton Picken, Maria Kmet, Joseph Kmet, Alan Dargin, Bill Hunter, Julia Cortez, Daniel Kellie, Hannah Corbett, Trevor Barrie, Ken Radley, Mark Holmes

Production: PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Specific Films

Distribution: Gramercy Pictures, Roadshow Films

104 minutes
Rated R

(DVD purchase) B-

Anchors Aweigh

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1945)

“What a time we had tonight, mmm!” In his 1945 New York Times review, Bosley Crowther called Anchors Aweigh a “Gay Musical Film” (http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0DE3DC103BEE3BBC4851DFB166838E659EDE). Well, duh!

I doubt Crowther meant “gay” in the current sense of the word, but he certainly wasn’t wrong either way: between all the singing, dancing, handsome sailors in tight pants, and a very young and wide-eyed Frank Sinatra acting out a creepy attachment to Gene Kelly, the only thing that could make Anchors Aweigh any gayer would be an appearance by Judy Garland. Or a raunchy sex scene with all those sailors and the admiral who, in one number (“We Hate to Leave”), said he would beat them with a whip. I half expected and kinda wanted it to happen, but of course it didn’t. Oh well.

As a reward for their bravery, Navy seamen Joe Brady (Kelly) and Clarence Doolittle (Sinatra) are given a four-day leave in Hollywood. Joe plans to hook up with his dame, Lola. After stalking him on the streets of Los Angeles, sweet and naive ex choir boy Clarence asks the apparently more experienced Joe to teach him how to meet girls.

Enter Donald (Dean Stockwell, whom most of us know as a middle-aged man from his many ’80s and ’90s movies), a little tyke who’s running away from home to join the navy. Our boys take him home, where Donald lives with his Aunt Susie (Kathryn Grayson), a nice girl trying to get into the movie industry—if only she could catch a break. Clarence immediately falls head over heels and enlists Joe’s assistance in wooing her, which provides the story here.

Even though (and probably because) the characters, plot, and dialogue are totally corny, Anchors Aweigh is truly a frothy blast—it’s exactly the kind of film that comes to mind when I think of classic Hollywood. A vivacious affair, director George Sidney keeps everything about it big: the sets, the songs, the dance numbers. I was particularly taken by one sequence involving Kelly and various animated figures—it culminates in an awesome song-and-dance with none other than Jerry Mouse of Tom and Jerry cartoons. Flawless!

The whole spectacle is tied up in an amazing Technicolor bow; Charles Boyle and Robert Planck’s color palette is gorgeous, and seeing it on a nitrate print literally left me breathless. From a sensory perspective, Anchors Aweigh was hands down my favorite film at this year’s Nitrate Picture Show.

As a side note, I must confess that one thing threw me for a loop: Kelly and Sinatra (and Grayson, for that matter) are young and beautiful here—not the old timers I’m accustomed to seeing having grown up when I did. They’re actually hot, even by today’s standards. Kelly upstages Sinatra throughout the entire film, which I found bizarre and quite amusing.

With José Iturbi, Pamela Britton, Grady Sutton, Rags Ragland, Billy Gilbert, William Forrest

Production: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Distribution: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

143 minutes
Not rated

(Dryden Theatre) A-

Nitrate Picture Show

Center of My World [Die Mitte der Welt]

Link posted on by moviebloke

(Germany 2016)

Center of My World, director/screenwriter Jakob M. Erwa’s adaptation of German author Andreas Steinhöfel’s 1998 novel for young adults, is not a home run. Fortunately, though, Erwa knows how to extract enough charm, particularly from its two main actors, to downplay its shortcomings and proffer a respectable and enjoyable film.

17-year-old Phil (Louis Hofmann) lives with his mercurial, flighty mother, Glass (Sabine Timoteo), and his twin sister, Dianne (Ada Philine Stappenbeck), in a gorgeous house on the outskirts of town. This family isn’t exactly The Brady Bunch: Phil is gay, Dianne supposedly communicates with animals, and Glass can’t commit to a partner for very long. She won’t even tell her kids who their father is.

Phil notices some friction between the women of the house after he returns from summer camp. When school starts, his best friend, Kat (Svenja Jung), encourages him to go after mysterious new guy Nicholas (Jannik Schümann), a dreamy transfer student who looks like a cuter blue-eyed version of Lance Bass with his chiseled cheeks, luscious lips, and perfect hair. Supposedly, he likes boys. Phil finds out for sure in the locker room one afternoon—and it leads to a passionate affair, insecurity, and a weird bout of jealous competition with Kat.

Center of My World is a cute and engaging story. Erwa does a nice job showing how any kid, gay or otherwise, has a lot to deal with when it comes to sexuality. The Chaun Ngo’s cinematography is well done, employing a bright color pallette verging on artificial that plays really well against the small town setting with all its gardens and summer greenery. The acting is generally good. Schümann is really easy to just…gaze upon, I guess, but in a harmless Teen Beat way.

All that said, Center of My World would have been a much gutsier film, say, 15 years ago. It probably would have made a bigger impact then, too. It contains hints and echoes of things I’ve seen before. The characters are a bit hollow; some of them come off as half-baked, rendering their importance to the story tenuous or questionable. These two boys have sex a lot, which is great. However, the sex scenes here need work even with the full frontal we get. More in-your-face than sexy, they come off as gratuitous. I don’t know if Erwa was trying to be shocking, but it didn’t work if he was. It’s like watching two puppies go at it. I hope that’s not the intended result.

With Inka Friedrich, Sascha Alexander Geršak, Thomas Goritzki, Nina Proll, Clemens Rehbein

Production: Neue Schönhauser Filmproduktion, Prisma Film, Universum Film, mojo:pictures, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Bayerischer Rundfunk, ARTE, Österreichischer Rundfunk

Distribution: Constantin-Film, Universum Film

115 minutes
Not rated

(Tower City Cinemas) B-

Cleveland International Film Festival

http://mitte-der-welt-film.de

https://www.facebook.com/diemittederwelt.film

King Cobra

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

Well now, Justin Kelly’s King Cobra looks like a film with some serious bang: it depicts the salacious, sensational, and supposedly true story of tres popular real-life gay porn actor Sean Lockhart b/k/a Brent Corrigan’s messy entry into the porn industry. Packing loads of scandal and suspense, it comes with a denouncement of sorts from Lockhart himself (https://www.google.com/amp/www.gaystarnews.com/article/brent-corrigan-condemns-gay-drama-king-cobra-bastardising-story-life/amp/?client=safari). Oh, and the money shot: a wad of bona fide Hollywood stars all in on the action. Hot yet? Not so fast, Jack: if there’s one thing I’ve learned from many an opportunity to view gay porn, it’s that looks are deceiving and the movies rarely live up to their promise. Assessing King Cobra therefore demands some deeper probing to get to the bottom of it.

Taken from Andrew E. Stoner and Peter A. Conway’s true crime exposé Cobra Killer: Gay Porn, Murder, and the Manhunt to Bring the Killers to Justice, Kelly’s screenplay gets into the real 2007 murder of Bryan Kocis, the owner and operator of Cobra Video, a real gay porn production company. As such, it makes sense that Kelly doesn’t focus on Corrigan as much as he does on Stephen (Christian Slater), a thinly fictionalized version of Kocis. A forty-something professional photographer turned producer of twink skin flicks, Stephen “discovers” Lockhart (Garrett Clayton) and signs him to make videos in a room of his suburban home in Dallas Township, Pennsylvania. Lockhart becomes Brent Corrigan, a name he plucks from the phone book, and proves to be an internet superstar as a bareback bottom. Things are strained—Stephen is clearly smitten with Lockhart, who moves in with him and does menial chores like yard work and scrubbing toilets around the house shirtless when he’s not shooting porn. Plus, Stephen is doughy and creepy. Lockhart realizes he’s being exploited and sees his potential to make a lot more money on his own. The shit hits the fan when he walks away from his contract with Cobra only to find that he can’t use his porn name because Stephen trademarked it.

Enter psychotic couple Harlow (Keegan Allen), a porn actor and rent boy, and his intense, overbearing boyfriend, Joe Kerekes (James Franco), owner of Viper Boyz, a smaller porn production company. Kerekes is a half million dollars in debt thanks to their ridiculously expensive lifestyle, which is starting to disintegrate. He’s got an idea for a sure moneymaker: Harlow and Corrigan together in a porn. They meet Lockhart, who wants to work with them but can’t use his lucrative name. Desperate to make it happen, they come up with a way to solve Lockhart’s dilemma: get rid of Stephen.

Although I didn’t love it, King Cobra is not terrible. In fact, it’s a noticeable improvement over Kelly’s first film, last year’s I Am Michael (https://moviebloke.wordpress.com/2015/10/24/i-am-michael/). That said, it still suffers from the same deficiencies. If anything, it feels underdeveloped. The two subplots—the storyline with Stephen and Lockhart, and the one with Joe and Harlow—take too long to intersect; when they do, King Cobra devolves into a gay slasher flick. Ho hum. Molly Ringwald and Alicia Silverstone are okay in their roles as Stephen’s sister and Lockhart’s mother, respectively. However, their characters are superfluous and don’t fit into the story—it’s as though they’re dropped in just to give the actors a part in the film so their names can be included on the poster. Oh yeah: another film with Franco playing a gay guy, only this time he gets his butt plowed. Big wow. For a film about the gay porn industry, King Cobra is shy about nudity; it comes off as sanitized cable soft core lite. It’s not even the whole true story; Rolling Stone ran a story about the murder of Kocis in a September 2007 issue: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/death-of-a-porn-king-20070920. Kelly takes some generous artistic license, leaving out parts of what happened (and thus arousing the real Lockhart’s ire).

Kelly’s script is so overboard on gay clichés that it rings hollow. Just as he did in I Am Michael, he again gives superficial treatment to his characters here and doesn’t quite get into their heads, leaving them flat—though he does a better job with Stephen and to a somewhat lesser degree Lockhart. Kelly seems drawn to the dark side of the gays, and I won’t fault him for that. However, his way of portraying this dark side is amateurish and uninformed, recalling films like Cruising and Basic Instinct. Having seen the only two films he’s made, I have to wonder whether he knows any gay people.

I’ll end this on a positive note: Clayton is the real star of this picture. He plays Lockhart as a diva hustler, one with an agenda that no one is getting in the way of. He’s pouty, arrogant, bitchy, so stuck on himself, and unapologetic about it all. He’s brilliant! The scene where a makeup artist touches up his butt says it all.

92 minutes
Not rated

(Home via iTunes) C-

http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/king-cobra

http://gowatchit.com/microsite/4274?gwi_origin=tracking_link&gwi_origin_context=microsite#upcoming_theaters-11402

Being 17 [Quand on a 17 ans]

Link posted on by moviebloke

(France 2016)

“I don’t know if I’m into guys or just you.”

—Damien

In a pivotal scene in André Téchiné’s astute and poetic sexual awakening drama Being 17, French high school boys Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein) and Thomas (Corentin Fila) throw literary quotes at each other while studying together. As their discussion intensifies, their disparate views toward their strange attraction become clear from the material they cite: Damien is willing—eager, even—to go with his unfamiliar feelings, while Thomas fights his. The scene eloquently brings into focus the essence of the tension between them.

Being 17 takes place over the course of a school year. As the story begins, a serious animosity suddenly develops between classmates Damien, a privileged brainy blonde French teen who wears a big flashy (and probably fake) diamond earring, and Thomas, the quiet, rugged brown adopted son of animal farmers. The whole thing starts when Thomas trips Damien as he walks back to his seat in one of their classes. Their interactions grow increasingly hostile and physical: shoving, slapping, and punching. It isn’t clear why, but the two can’t keep their hands—or eyes—off each other. The plot thickens when Damien’s mother (Sandrine Kiberlain), a physician in the remote mountain town where they live, arranges for Thomas to move in with her and Damien while his mother (Mama Prassinos) works through a difficult pregnancy. In a more intimate setting, the boys play a prickly game of cat and mouse as they gingerly let down their guard—only to an extent.

At times, Being 17 pushes suspension of disbelief to its edge. Still, it’s an achingly moving story that is extremely well executed. Even when the interactions between Damien and Thomas get, um, sultry—and they do—this isn’t so much a “gay” film as it is commentary on the power of desire. Téchiné wrote the script with Céline Sciamma, and they explore how hostility and desire play on each other. It’s a complicated dynamic: suspenseful, exciting, and confusing. Alexis Rault’s haunting score lends a pensive, masculine, almost Old Western touch that fits in perfectly. Julien Hirsch’s hazy cinematography gives the film a dreamy, sensual quality that highlights the natural beauty of the settings: the mountains, the lake, the snow, even the fields in the spring. It works really well showing both characters making it through the wilderness, figuratively and literally.

116 minutes
Not rated

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B

http://www.elledriver.fr/being-17/

Closet Monster

Link posted on by moviebloke

(Canada 2016)

I wish I could play Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy” for Closet Monster‘s protagonist, Oscar Madly (Connor Jessup), because the lyrics say something he needs to hear: the answers you seek and the love that you need will never be found at home. Sigh.

When young Oscar (Jack Fulton) is a wee lad of maybe seven or eight, his parents give him a hamster (played by four different actors: Chunk, Mama, Blood Thirsty, and Buffy #1). The gift, it turns out, is intended to take the sting out of their explosive announcement: his mother (Joanne Kelly) is leaving his father, Peter (Aaron Abrams). It doesn’t take long to see why, as Peter is an oppressive loose cannon. Oscar stays with his father and quietly retreats into his own world where his new furry friend, Buffy, becomes his companion and has a way of expressing what Oscar is feeling (Isabella Rossellini, of all people, provides Buffy’s voice).

One afternoon after school, Oscar follows a group of older teenage boys into a cemetery. Unbeknownst to them, he watches from behind a tree as they barbarously attack another boy—presumably a gay one—with a rusty iron rod. Immediately after, Oscar notices his father is a toxic alpha male asshole. Determined to prevent something horrible from happening to him, he jumps into survival mode and starts doing “guy” things.

Cut to a decade later: Oscar (Jessup) is into creating monsters with makeup and prosthetics, practicing in his treehouse on his friend Gemma (Sofia Banzhaf), an aspiring model who carries a torch for him. They both just finished high school. Oscar bides his time that summer working as a stockboy at a home improvement store while waiting for an acceptance letter from a school with a design program for cinematic special effects to which he’s applied. He’s completely beside himself when a new employee named Wilder (Aliocha Schneider) shows up and asks to borrow his work shirt. Wilder is cool, sexy, and has a way of transmitting ambiguous sexual signs—causing Oscar severe stomachaches and visions of that iron rod.

Writer and director Stephen Dunn’s first feature threw me for a loop, in a really good way. Closet Monster is packed with gay coming of age clichés, but it still stands on its own. Oscar’s homosexuality is more than incidental, but it’s no dark secret; Oscar knows he’s gay and he doesn’t seem to be ashamed of it, even if dealing with it is tricky. The cast here is excellent, particularly the exchanges between Jessup and Schneider (not to marginalize the other actors). Dunn exhibits a dinstinctive style both in how he tells his story and how he shows it. From a narrative standpoint, he concocts a compelling mix of comedy, teen drama, fantasy, horror, gore, and psychological intrigue. The tension between Oscar and Peter is palpable, simmering from a quiet friction to an all-out eruption.

Dunn’s visuals are even better: vivid, surreal imagery of iron rods popping out of Oscar and vomiting nuts and bolts into a sink, they indelibly illustrate what’s going on in his head. Peppered with retro electronica, I pick up a certain late ’80s/’90s vibe here; indeed, Dunn’s aesthetic reminds me of David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and to a lesser extent Anton Corbijn, all of whom started out doing music videos. Dunn’s sensibility is similar to another young director, Xander Robin (Are We Not Cats) (https://moviebloke.wordpress.com/2016/10/15/are-we-not-cats/), though Dunn is not as dark. Closet Monster has a few shortcomings, but overall it gels nicely into a totally satisfying film.

90 minutes
Not rated

(Facets) B

http://rhombusmedia.com/film/closet-monster/

http://www.strandreleasing.com/films/closet-monster/

https://youtu.be/RTgM1e8w05g

Moonlight

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

“At some point, you got to decide for yourself who you’re going to be. Can’t let nobody make that decision for you.”

—Juan

A few films impressed me this year, but so far none have moved me like Moonlight, screenwriter and director Barry Jenkins’s first project in eight years. Inspired by Tarell Alvin McCraney’s piece In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, Moonlight peers into three brief but pivotal intervals in the life of Chiron, a poor black kid in a Miami hood, as he grows up, struggling to connect to the world and find his place in it. This doesn’t sound revolutionary—I could say the same thing to summarize a handful of other movies—but Moonlight is different; it’s not merely Boyz N the Hood or Precious with a gay protagonist. Executed beautifully and flawlessly in three “acts,” it covers a lot of ground—blackness for sure, but also family relationships, sexuality, masculinity, and identity. I relate to so much about it even though my world is nothing like the one it depicts. Jenkins hits something universal, and I can’t imagine many people walking away from this film not feeling it.

WARNING: Potential spoilers ahead!

Act one: It’s clear from the outset that something is different about Chiron, who everyone calls “Little” (Alex Hibbert). He’s quiet and contemplative. A group of boys chases him into a dope hole, an abandoned apartment building or motel where junkies do drugs. Juan (Mahershala Ali), a dealer, finds him hiding out there. Chiron won’t talk even after Juan takes him to eat. He warms up a little when he meets Juan’s girlfriend, Teresa (Janelle Monáe), but he’s still guarded. Chiron’s mother (Naomie Harris), who has a difficult relationship with her son, knows he’s not like other boys.

When Chiron is kicked off the field during a game of something—soccer or football, I don’t remember—a classmate, Kevin (Jaden Piner), runs after him. He tells Chiron he’s “funny” before he picks a fake fight with him to get Chiron to show the other boys that he’s not “soft.” Apparently, they don’t buy it: “What’s a faggot? Am I a faggot? How do I know?” are some of the questions Chiron peppers Juan with not long afterward.

Act two: Chiron (Ashton Sanders), trying to shed “Little,” is a scrawny teenager. He’s still dodging bullies, particularly Terrel (Patrick Decile). He’s also still friendly with Kevin (Jharrel Jerome), who brags about his sexual exploits and smokes a lot of pot. Chiron has a thing for him. They share a surprise moment on the beach one night—it’s deep for Chiron. Too bad things go violently sideways when they’re back at school the next day.

Act three: Chiron, now “Black” (Trevante Rhodes)—incidentally, the name Kevin gives him in high school—is his 20s and living in Atlanta. He emulates Juan, and not just by following in his footsteps selling drugs. Kevin (André Holland) calls out of the blue. He’s a cook in Miami. He says that a guy played a song on the jukebox where he works that reminded him of Chiron, and he offers to make him dinner sometime. It’s a weird call that gets to Chiron, who still carries a torch for Kevin.

After visiting his mother at a treatment center, he heads down to Miami and finds Kevin at the restaurant where he works. They skirt around a bit, and Kevin plays the song: “Hello Stranger” by Barbara Lewis, a smooth ‘60s R&B track with lyrics like “I’m so glad you stopped by to say hello to me” and “If you’re not gonna stay please don’t treat me like you did before because I still love you so.” Kevin vaguely seems to come on to Chiron, who doesn’t understand why Kevin called him—though he seems glad he did.

The sum of Moonlight is greater than its parts, but its parts are still great. The plot is fluid, driven more by dialogue and little moments—like Juan teaching Chiron how to swim, Teresa making the bed for Chiron, and Kevin cooking him dinner—than building up to any single climax. Moonlight is voyeuristic, crammed with moments that are so personal it feels like we shouldn’t be watching. The third act is strange and even a bit slow, but it’s brilliant nonetheless. Chiron and Kevin’s meeting is suspenseful and confusing, percolating with an urgent and erotic undertone. Something about how they convey what they’re feeling with just their eyes makes you actually want to see them kiss. Kevin sums up what the film is all about in one question when he asks Chiron point blank, “Who is you?” The end is unresolved, but it’s perfect.

Moonlight is as close to poetry as a movie gets. James Laxton’s cinematography uses colors that are so lush that you can actually feel the humidity in the air. The night scenes, especially on the beach, are an odd mix of serene and ghostly.

Side note: Chiron’s mother is an interesting character. She seems overprotective at first, wearing scrubs and a name tag when we first see her rushing up to Chiron as Juan brings him home the next day. Upset with Chiron for not coming home, she revokes his TV privileges and tells him to find something to read. Sensible parenting, perhaps; but a lot here is not how it appears. It doesn’t take long to see that she’s a mess. Likewise, it doesn’t take long to see that Juan is not the thug he appears to be. Nothing about Moonlight is what its seems on the surface.

111 minutes
Rated R

(AMC River East) A+

http://moonlight.movie

Who’s Gonna Love Me Now? [Mi yohav otti akhshav?]

Link posted on by moviebloke

(Israel/UK 2016)

Barak and Tomer Heymann’s warm documentary, Who’s Gonna Love Me Now?, takes its title from the first thought that crossed subject Saar Maoz’s mind when he received his HIV diagnosis. A likable middle-aged gay guy (he turns 40 during the course of the film), Maoz relocated to London almost two decades ago after he was kicked out his kibbutz in Israel for being gay. It’s been a source of embarrassment for his religious family, whose respect Maoz seems to have lost. He sets out to change that, going back home and confronting his parents and his siblings. He has to get past their fears, their misconceptions about homosexuality and HIV, and worst of all their judgments of him.

Maoz, who sings in the London Gay Men’s Chorus, is oddly charismatic. Relatively unassuming, he leads a seemingly quiet life and doesn’t exactly stand out from the crowd; in fact, he blends in with the other men in virtually every scene with the Chorus (save for one—I won’t say what it’s about). He’s decent, honest, open, and has a good sense of humor with an imperfect past, all of which probably explain his charm. He could be anyone you know, including yourself. I must admit, I related to him on many levels here: his conflicted feelings about his religion, moving away from home and coming out, his sense of distance with some of his family, filling a void with partying in the early 2000s, being alone for a long period of time. He doesn’t come across as regretful or pitiable, just reflective and forward-focused. Filmed over the course of about five years, the best scenes are the ones with his mother, his father, and an argument in a restaurant with his brother. Who’s Gonna Love Me Now? is an often funny and sometimes heavy reminder that home is where you can be yourself, for better or for worse.

Screening followed by a live discussion with Saar Maoz

84 minutes
Not rated

(AMC River East) B-

Chicago International Film Festival

http://heymannfilms.com/film/whos-gonna-love-me-now/

Akron

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

Kudos to screenwriter and codirector Brian O’Donnell for his first film, Akron. After a great setup, he throws in a crazy plot twist and completely changes the trajectory of the story: what starts out as a sweet, almost too cute romance turns into something weird, dark, and potentially calamitous. The drama here slowly simmers to a boil and starts to bubble over. O’Donnell treats a gay relationship as incidental and not something strange; it’s a given from the outset. Plus, he makes the city of Akron a major character without becoming a cheerleader.

Benny (Matthew Frias), a student at the University of Akron, meets another student, Christopher (Edmund Donovan), at a pick up football game. They start dating, and Christopher invites Benny on a road trip to Florida to meet his mother (Amy da Luz) over sping break. While waiting for him on the morning they head out, Benny’s mother (Andrea Burns) mentions to Christopher that Benny had an older brother who died when they were both kids. Christopher realizes that he and his mother are connected to the tragedy.

As much as I liked Akron—and there is quite a bit here to like—it has problems. The opening scene, which takes place a decade or more before the story, is confusing; no hints are given to tip us off that we are in the past. The scene is shot in a grocery store parking lot with current cars and license plates. It threw me off, and it took me awhile to realize that this scene occurred a long time ago. It’s a critical piece of the story, so it should have been done more carefully. For the most part, the acting is good; however, Benny’s mother is a Latina-lite Stepford wife who ultimately comes off as one-dimensional caricature rather than a fully developed character. Burns overdoes the doting mom thing. Particularly annoying is her peppering her speech with basic Spanish words that everyone knows; it doesn’t ring authentic because she’s whiter than Christopher. Sadly, the story fizzles in the end; the resolution is too fast and too neat, and some of the characters—especially Benny’s father (Joseph Melendez) and sister (Isabel Rose Machado)—get lost in the melodrama. I could have done without the sensitive folky score.

Akron isn’t a bad film. It could’ve been a lot more interesting, though—it certainly has the elements. It ultimately doesn’t meet is potential.

(Akron-Summit County Public Library) C+

Cleveland International Film Festival

http://www.akronthefilm.com

Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

The title is misleading: Henry Gamble (Cole Doman), teenaged son of a preacher man, is definitely having a birthday party—a pool party, no less. It’s an all-day affair for an Evangelical crowd, and it continues into the night. A lot more than cake, ice cream, swimming, and Jesus is going on here, though. Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party is much more complex and interesting than it may appear at first blush.

The opening scene is brilliant even if it is weird, and it shows exactly what Henry is going through: he’s lusting after his buddy, Gabe (Joe Keery), who just slept over. Henry’s sister, Autumn (Nina Ganet), home from her freshman year at a Christian college, is dealing with her lost virginity and possibly unresolved feelings for and mixed signals from the guy she gave it to, Aaron (Tyler Ross). Henry’s parents, Bob (Pat Healy) and Kat (Elizabeth Laidlaw), are recovering from a disruptive event involving the deceased husband of neighbor and fellow churchgoer Rose Matthews (Meg Thalken) and contemplating a separation, something that probably doesn’t bode well for Bob’s career. Meanwhile, Rose, who clearly misses her husband, seems to have taken up drinking, and her son Ricky (Patrick Andrews) has other issues altogether.

Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party is not what I expected—a very good thing. It’s about the secret matters that go on in private, how we face or avoid them, and the facades we all put up to keep them private. It definitely gets at Henry’s queer longings and raises some gay issues, but it’s not what I would call a “queer” movie. Its subject matter is broader than that. It’s not even focused on Henry—his family members, friends, and even secondary characters are all going through one thing or another: Logan (Daniel Kyri) is black and “questioning” if not gay in a homophobic white world, pastor Larry Montgomery (Steppenwolf member Francis Guinan) is questioning his faith and looking for an escape, and his wife, Bonnie (Hanna Dworkin), is repeatedly disappointed by the sagging morals of those around her. This is a smartly culled ensemble of realistic characters, each discovering himself or herself—much like Henry.

I enjoyed this film a lot more than I thought I would. Laced with sexuality, it manages to maintain both an honesty and an innocence that work really well. The acting, mostly but not entirely by newcomers, is surprisingly good—particularly Doman and Kyri, who play their parts with a winning uneasiness. Laidlaw is awesome as Henry’s mother, and she subtly defies what one might expect an Evangelical Christian mother to be. Writer/director Stephen Cone creates relatable, memorable characters—they’re all flawed and inconsistent, yet he approaches each of them with tenderness and leaves their dignity intact. A killer new wave inspired soundtrack scores major cool points. Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party has the flavor of a John Hughes film—it was even filmed in Lake Forest on Chicago’s North Shore—but it stands on its own. Everyone here has a story, and each story makes for an absorbing film.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B+

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