sex

You’re Killing Me Susana [Me estás matando Susana]

Link posted on by moviebloke

(Mexico 2016)

When I was a kid, Cedar Point would start hyping its newest ride, usually but not always a roller coaster, just as winter gave over to spring. In June, we’d finally get to the park and wait in line for two hours to experience it. Some years, the ride didn’t live up to its promise; I felt I had been duped. I recently felt that same disappointment again leaving the theater after a sold out screening of Roberto Sneider’s edgy new romantic comedy You’re Killing Me Susana.

Self-absorbed lout Eligio (Gael García Bernal) is a minor soap opera actor who believes in monogamy—for his wife, Susana (Verónica Echegui), not him. He stays out drinking, cheats on her, and sometimes drags his thespian friends over to their apartment to party into the wee hours—after Susana’s gone to bed. The look on her face and the way she pushes him off of her when he stumbles into bed and nuzzles her to cuddle is sublimely bitchy—and funny.

Eligio is the only one who’s confused when Susana leaves him. He schleps from Mexico City to Iowa to track her down, enduring American customs agents and evading campus police. He finds her enrolled in a writing program for foreign students at an unnamed university (University of Iowa, perhaps?). She’s also running around with a silent, brooding, and well-endowed Polish poet (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson). Without a plan or a place to stay, Eligio moves into Susana’s dorm—ostensibly to work out their issues.

Adapted by Sneider and Luis Cámara from José Agustín’s novel, You’re Killing Me Susana depicts a dysfunctional relationship that both participants take a lax approach to maintaining. I don’t mind dislikable characters, but I had some difficulty connecting with these ones. They seem to recognize a problem, but it doesn’t come off as dire. Some of what happens between them is confusing, and as a result the message gets lost. Somewhere in here, I suspect, are statements about machismo, maturity, fidelity, how men and women view sex, and what they want out of life.

The previews suggested something riotously fun and sexy, and I really like Bernal. You’re Killing Me Susana exudes that distinct cuteness with a dark undertone you see a lot in Mexican films. Overall, though, this is just okay. It has some funny moments—most of them in the trailer—but the execution is shallow, simplistic, and forgettable. Too bad, because this could have been a really powerful and interesting film.

With Ashley Grace, Andrés Almeida, Jadyn Wong, Adam Hurtig, Barbara Garrick, Ilse Salas

Production: Cuévano Films, La Banda Films

Distribution: Hola Mexico Distribution

100 minutes
Not rated

(Gene Siskel Film Center) C-

http://holamexicoff.com/susana/

https://www.facebook.com/killingmesusana/

Elle

Link posted on by moviebloke

(France 2016)

Director Paul Verhoeven’s Elle doesn’t sound like a comedy: the central event of the film is a rape—a bloody, violent one at that. In fact, it’s the very first scene. Strangely, the opening credits warn us that what we are seeing is “a French comedy.” Really? I guess that explains it!

Michèle Leblanc (Isabelle Huppert) is raped in her dining room by a man in a ski mask while her green-eyed cat watches, detached and seemingly bored. China is smashed, furniture is toppled, blood is shed. After he leaves, Michèle cleans up the mess and resumes her life, ordering sushi delivery—a “holiday roll,” no less.

As the film proceeds, we learn a lot about Michèle. She’s the daughter of a famous mass murderer approaching parole. She’s a ballbusting owner of a video game company. Her staff, entirely young and male, either wants to sleep with her or murder her. Her son, Vincent (Jonas Bloquet), is totally whipped by a shrew (Alice Isaaz) who’s pregnant with a baby that clearly isn’t his. Her ex-husband (Charles Berling) is involved with a younger yoga instructor (Vimala Pons). Her mother (Judith Magre) is a high maintenance piece of work who carries on with men a third her age. Meanwhile, Michèle is having an affair with with Robert (Christian Berkel), the husband of her business partner (Anne Consigny).

Things get dicey when Michèle develops a thing for her neighbor, Patrick (Laurent Lafitte), a handsome banker married to a devout Catholic (Virginie Efira) who apparently won’t fuck him. Their flirtation messes with her head as she tries to figure out who raped her. She’s surrounded by men, and every one of them is suspect.

David Birke’s screen adaption of Philippe Djian’s novel Oh… is, in a word, warped. Elle plays with power, desire, sex, and of all things sympathy. Consistent with its character—a constant switcheroo you don’t know whether to trust or look away from—it’s not a sad affair. To the contrary, it’s daring, thrilling, irreverent, and totally fun. It shouldn’t work—I found myself questioning whether I should enjoy the film as much as I did—but it does. The execution of both the plot and the characters is clever—and Stéphane Fontaine’s cinematography, which nicely illustrates the psychological drama here, is flawless. If nothing else, Elle is a visually stunning film.

Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” plays at various points in Elle, suggesting a lot of contradictory things. I took it as ironic more than anything. Elle is not for everyone, but it’s a powerful statement for those who can handle it—the perfect film for Valentine’s Day.

With Lucas Prisor, Raphaël Lenglet, Arthur Mazet, Hugo Conzelmann

Production: SBS Productions, Pallas Film, France 2 Cinéma, Entre Chien et Loup, Canal+, France Télévisions, Orange Cinéma Séries, Casa Kafka Pictures, Proximus, Centre National de la Cinématographie, Filmförderungsanstalt

Distribution: SBS Distribution

130 minutes
Rated R

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B+

http://sonyclassics.com/elle/

The Handmaiden [Agassi]

Link posted on by moviebloke

(South Korea 2016)

“Where I come from, it’s illegal to be naive.”

—Sook-hee

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden [아가씨], but I’m glad I got to see it. One word: wow! A sexy, complex, and intriguing film to say the least, it’s a lavish visual and narrative cinematic experience. The trailer offers only a hint of what awaits.

Park wrote the screenplay, an adaptation of the 2002 novel Fingersmith by Welsh author Sarah Waters, with frequent collaborator Chung Seo-kyung. They change the setting from Victorian Era Britain to 1930s Korea when it was under Japanese colonial rule before the end of World War II. Confession: I did not read the book. The change is brilliant, though, resulting in something far more tense, exotic, and erotic than I imagine it would have been had they stuck to the original concept.

The Handmaiden is a cutthroat tale of power, sex, and deception in the same vein as Dangerous Liasons, though by no means is it the same story. The title refers to “Tamako” (Kim Tae-ri), a young common girl hired to serve as a maid to mysterious Japanese heiress Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee). Lady Hideko’s authoritarian Uncle Kouzuki (Jo Jin-woong) runs the household, which has a crazy library of antique erotica and a basement used for punishment. The atmosphere is abusive and weird. So much so, in fact, that Lady Hideko’s aunt committed suicide—and she still hears her voice at night.

WARNING: Potential spoilers ahead!

“Tamako” has a secret: she’s really Sook-hee, a master pickpocket from a long line of con artists. Sook-hee is working with Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo), a dashing con man, on an elaborate scam to bilk Lady Hideko out of her fortune. Fujiwara, posing as a Count, is wooing Lady Hideko into marriage, after which he plans to commit her to her an insane asylum and take off with her money. Fujiwara has a secret, too: he’s double dealing with Lady Hideko, who wants to get away from her uncle. Their plot involves getting married, cashing out her inheritance, and committing her illiterate maid under her name, after which Lady Hideko assumes the identity of “Tamako”—while keeping her money, of course.

The best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley, and nothing here is what it seems. Things get interesting and go another route when the two women’s relationship takes a sexual turn, and they like it.

The Handmaiden is an example of near perfect execution. The beginning and end are a little slow, but what’s in between is well worth the slightly draggy bookends. Divided into three parts, it tells the story from the different perpectives of the three scammers. We get more information with each part, and just when it looks like we know what’s coming—bam!, the proverbial rug is pulled out from underneath and the narrative goes somewhere else. The characters are really complex, and the acting here is excellent. The sex scenes are sensual but often have a humorous undertone. Chung Chung-hoon’s cinematography is rich and layered with thoughtful camerawork that adds a nice voyeuristic touch to the whole film, liberally using long shots and peeking through doors and around screens. This is a film you can easily get lost in.

144 minutes
Not rated

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B+

http://www.handmaidenmovie.com/showtimes

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/

Staying Vertical [Rester vertical]

Link posted on by moviebloke

(France 2016)

Writer-director Alain Guiraudie’s Staying Vertical is a strange trip indeed. Traveling through the mountains while writing a script, screenwriter Léo (Damien Bonnard) comes upon Marie (India Hair), a single mother of two and a shepherd who works on her father’s farm. Within the first 20 minutes or so of the film, he knocks her up and sticks around after the baby is born. Without explanation, Marie takes off with her two boys, leaving Léo behind to care for the baby. Marie’s father, Jean-Louis (Raphaël Thiéry), allows him to stay on the farm in exchange for taking care of the sheep.

Meanwhile, Léo develops an obsession with a pretty young buck named Yoan (Basile Meilleurat), who lives down the road with a cantankerous old man, Marcel (Christian Bouillette). Their relationship is ambigous: Yoan seems to do nothing but occasionally clean Marcel’s house—and not very well—while Marcel sits in his chair, blasting Pink Floyd and condemning Yoan with anti-gay rants. While this is going on, Léo seeks assistance for his writer’s block from a spiritual healer (Laure Calamy) while dodging his publisher (Sébastien Novac).

Staying Vertical has some great characters, particularly Marcel and Yoan. It also has a few gorgeous and memorable images, such as a brood of vagrants descending upon Léo and the baby under a bridge and a truly odd final scene involving wolves coming out of the dark onto the farm. Other than that, though, it’s really nothing more than a number of episodes and subplots that don’t exactly connect. A pervading homoeroticism that starts out mildly interesting goes somewhere completely unbelivable. I’m not sure what the point of it is, but I can say that about a lot in this film.

98 minutes
Not rated

(AMC River East) C

Chicago International Film Festival

http://www.wildbunch.biz/movie/staying-vertical/

Annie Hall

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1977)

“A relationship, I think, is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”

“You know, this guy goes to his psychiatrist and says, ‘Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.’ And the doctor says, ‘Well why don’t you turn him in?’ The guy says, ‘I would, but I need the eggs.’ Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships: you know, they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd, but I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.”

—Alvy Singer

Classic Woody Allen is an acquired taste, kind of like gefilte fish: too weird and off putting to appreciate right off the bat, you find that you actually look forward to his annual appearance once you get what he’s about. There’s no way around it: Woody Allen is for the urban set.

Annie Hall is hands down my favorite Woody Allen film, at least out of the ones I’ve seen—and I haven’t seen them all. It’s everything that makes a Woody Allen film great: lots of nervous banter, self-deprication, uncomfortable situations (usually but not always related to sex), an obsession with manners and etiquette, and hilariously pointed observations on the absurdities of modern life. It sounds like Seinfeld, but Allen was first.

The plot is simple enough: Alvy Singer (Allen) examines his relationship with Annie Hall (Diane Keaton), an aspiring Manhattan singer and photographer. They play a cat-and-mouse game because neither wants to make the first move. Alvy and Annie are awkward and bizarre, but I still found myself rooting for both of them. The relationship doesn’t work out, but it’s really something while it lasts. Along the way are small, sublime parts for Carol Kane, Shelley Duvall, Jeff Goldblum, and Christopher Walken.

Annie Hall stands out even as a Woody Allen film, and for an obvious reason. Underneath its entertaining and brilliant storytelling, underneath its many bells and whistles—subtitled subtext, a cartoon segment, and cameos by Marshall McLuhan, Paul Simon, and the Evil Queen from Snow White? Fuck yeah!—is a poignant reality: people change. For all its warmth and wit, Annie Hall spends more time showing its protagonists fall out of love than in it. Rich and layered, it’s funny yet wrenchingly accurate. While we laugh out loud, it plays on our worst fears—none of us wants to end up where Alvy and Annie do.

In 1992, the United States Library of Congress deemed Annie Hall “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

96 minutes
Rated PG

(Music Box) A

http://www.woodyallen.com

Choke

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2008)

“We let the world tell us whether we’re saints or sex addicts. Sane or insane. Heroes or victims. Whether we’re good mothers, or loving sons. But we can decide for ourselves. As a certain wise fugitive once told me, sometimes it’s not important which way you jump—just that you jump.”

—Victor Mancini

I’m not sure why more Chuck Palahniuk novels haven’t been made into movies—his style might not be for everyone, but his stories and characters certainly lend themselves to film. Easily. As it stands, two of his novels have been adapted for the screen: Fight Club, which most probably know because of its stars (Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, even Meat Loaf) and director (David Fincher); and Choke, which is relatively unknown—likely because it’s a much lower key (and lower budget) project. I recently learned that Palahniuk has something new coming out—a coloring book called Bait—and it got me thinking about him. On a rainy morning, I downloaded Choke, which I saw one time during its short original theatrical run almost exactly eight years ago. I was thrilled when it finally came out then, and I wanted to see how it reads now. Overall, the film works despite some minor bugs, but the story is still more satisfying as a novel.

Director and screenwriter Clark Gregg—who also has a minor role in Choke—is faithful to the book. Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) is a despicable mess. A medical school dropout, he’s a sex addict who hooks up with pretty much anyone who will have him. Possibly his most disturbing partner is Nico (Paz De La Huerta), a fellow member of his sex addiction support group, who disappears from meetings with him to have filthy (and in this film, very graphic) rest room sex down the hall. Victor supports himself as a tour guide of sorts in a colonial-themed park by day and faking choking episodes at restaurants by night. Long ago, he devised an elaborate scam to elicit pity—and money—from the people who save him. He uses the funds to finance his mother, Ida’s (Anjelica Huston), residency at a Catholic mental hospital, where she’s suffering from a form of dimentia and dying. Her doctor, Paige (Kelly Macdonald), has a crazy plan that might save her—if only Victor wasn’t falling for Paige.

The book is usually better than the movie, and Choke is no exception. Like all of Palahniuk’s novels, there’s a lot going on. Gregg makes an artistic choice to emphasize the subplot involving Victor’s mother and their relationship, apparently to unpeel Victor’s many layers. It’s a good idea, but it ends up downplaying other plot elements (and sometimes omitting plot developments)—like the choking scenes, some of the sex addiction, and things at work—and as a result they seem superfluous in the film. Victor comes off as hollow, more case study than character. The casting is really good, though—Brad William Henke is totally likeble as affable chronic masturbator Denny, Gillian Jacobs is dippy smart as stripper Cherry Daquiri, and Heather Burns is wonderfully cunty as Gwen, Victor’s online hookup with the rape fantasy and the silk bedspread. Actually, these three are along the lines of what I pictured when I read the book. Joel Grey makes an odd but well placed appearance as a support group leader. I love that Gregg keeps Victor in a pathetic light and toys with the theme of salvation, and I’m relieved that he doesn’t change the ending and save anyone. The great thing about Palahniuk is that he’s not sentimental, which Gregg honors.

I’ve heard through the years that many of Palahniuk’s books are being adapted for film (or in one case, television): Invisible Monsters (http://www.slashfilm.com/director-hired-chuck-palahniuks-invisible-monsters/), Rant (http://www.slashfilm.com/james-franco-options-chuck-palahniuk-rant-movie/), Survivor (http://collider.com/chuck-palahniuk-survivor-tv-series-jim-uhls/), Haunted (http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/financing-has-finally-come-through-for-the-adaptation-of-chuck-palahniuks-haunted), Snuff (http://www.moviefone.com/2011/02/09/chuck-palahniuk-snuff-film/), and Lullaby (http://chuckpalahniuk.net/news/lullaby-kickstarter-campaign-reaches-surpasses-its-goal). So far, none have come to fruition, so I’ll believe it when I see it. If nine years (the length between Fight Club and Choke) is an indicator, then next year we should see something—my guess is Lullaby.

92 minutes
Rated R

(Home via iTunes) B

My Blind Brother

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

Robbie (Adam Scott) and Bill (Nick Kroll) are brothers. Robbie is an overachieving athlete—attractive, admired, and blind. He’s also kind of a dick in private. Bill dutifully assists Robbie with his athletic endeavors, holding a string to guide him as he runs marathons and rowing in front of him with a blowhorn as he swims. Admittedly lazy, Bill fantasizes about being disabled and having everyone wait on him while he watches TV all day.

WARNING: Potential spoilers ahead!

One night while their parents are fawning over Robbie after a race, Bill goes out by himself for a drink at a local bar where unbeknownst to him a memorial is being held for a guy who was killed when a bus hit him. Bill meets Rose (Jenny Slate), who’s crying because she feels guilty about it—she dumped him right before it happened. They introduce themselves: she’s a “superficial narcissist” and he’s “lazy and judgmental.” They talk, and she tells him she wants to be a better person—maybe helping baby elephants in Africa or something. Rose ends up going home with Bill. In a very uncomfortable scene, she extricates herself from his room and takes off the next morning, roughly declining Bill’s request for her phone number.

Soon after, Robbie hooks up with a volunteer to help him with swimming, something Bill doesn’t want to do. Turns out, there’s a spark between Robbie and this volunteer—who Bill discovers is Rose.

Writer and director Sophie Goodhart does a capable job on both fronts, even if My Blind Brother takes a little while to get its stride and feels a bit like a TV show. The story moves steadily once it gets going, though the ending is predictable—including its reveal of how Robbie lost his sight. There are more than a few genuinely funny moments here. I love that all of the characters are detestable, or at least nothing to aspire to, for one reason or another—even Robbie, who from an outside perspective seems inspirational with his fundraising through athletics. It doesn’t take long to see that he’s lame, right down to the same flimsy joke about looking beautiful that he repeats to every woman (because he’s blind and can’t see, get it?). Slate does neurotic frazzled really well. Charlie Hewson as blind stoner GT and Zoe Kazan as Rose’s quick and loyal but cynical roommate Francie both add a breath of fresh air. Filmed in and around the West Side of Cleveland, Ohio—where I grew up—I immediately noticed exterior shots in Tremont, Lakewood, and I’m pretty sure Rocky River.

85 minutes
Rated R

(Facets) C+

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Video posted on by moviebloke

(UK/USA 1975)

“I, Robert Sabetto,
Pledge allegiance
To the lips
Of The Rocky Horror Picture Show
And to the decadence
For which it stands
One movie, under Richard O’Brien
With sensuous daydreams, erotic nightmares, and sins of the flesh for all.”

—The Rocky Pledge of Allegiance

Through high school and into college, a sure bet on a Saturday night was that two films would be playing at midnight: Pink Floyd’s The Wall and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Every. Damned. Weekend. In the case of Rocky Horror, it’s no wonder: dressing up, shouting at the screen, throwing shit around the theater, and acting and singing along to the movie is more fun than a burlesque science fiction gothic drag hoedown—essentially what it was. At some point during the ’90s, it stopped. I couldn’t resist catching Rocky Horror again with a group of friends when it played at a theater near me.

A movie version of Riff-Raff/Richard O’Brien’s stage musical, the story is silly—stupid, even: a newlywed couple, Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon), are forced off the road during a rainstorm. I love that Janet reads The Plain Dealer in the car. Anyway, they end up at the castle of mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry)—he’s just a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania—who’s about to unveil his newest creation that took him just seven days to make: Rocky (Peter Hinwood), a gorgeous tan man with muscles and tight gold shorts. A strange journey of an evening tinged with sexual tension, motorcycles, and music and dance ensues.

The characters and costumes are iconic, and the songs are a campy blast. Watching it this time, I picked up on a sexy overtone that I was kind of surprised to see it retains. Bostwick exudes an adorably dorky charm that I’ve always liked. It’s impossible to picture anyone but Curry as Frank-N-Furter, but Mick Jagger was after the role (http://www.broadway.com/buzz/171159/happy-birthday-dear-rocky-38-freaky-facts-about-the-rocky-horror-picture-show/). Meat Loaf makes for an interesting cast member. And who doesn’t love Magenta (Patricia Quinn)?

The Rocky Horror Picture Show bombed when it was originally released, but an astute marketing person recognized its potential in a different format—the rest is history. It’s an okay movie, but what goes along with it makes it a truly unique experience. Audience participation is a concept created here, and nothing else ever will be—or can be—quite the same.

In 2005, the United States Library of Congress deemed The Rocky Horror Picture Show “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

101 minutes
Rated R

(Music Box) C+

http://www.rockyhorror.com

 

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