THEGAYUK

Category: Film

  • FILM REVIEW | Elephant Song

    ★★★★ | Elephant Song

    At only 26 years old, French-Canadian Xavier Dolan already has five films under his directorial belt, all of which have been well received and critically acclaimed. In addition, he’s acted in 12 films, including the just released Elephant Song.

    In 2009, Dolan directed, produced, starred and wrote J’ai Tué Ma Mére (I Killed My Mother), a semi-autobiographical story about him as a young gay man at odds with his mother, and wrote the script when he was at the tender age of 17. It won 3 awards at the Cannes Film Festival. The next year he wrote, directed, produced and starred (again) in Les Amours Imaginaires (Heartbeats), a story about three close friends who are involved in a love triangle. In 2012 Dolan continued his string of emotional and heartfelt films by writing and directing Laurence Anyways. At 168 minutes, it was an ambitious project for the young director to do, it was about the struggle of a straight man who, over the course of ten years, transitions from male to female, and how it affects the relationship with his lover (with amazing performances by Melvil Poupajd and Suzanne Clément). Laurence Anyways won many awards, including two Cannes Film Festival Awards (the Queer Palm Award and Best Actress for Clément). Lawrence Anyways was also nominated for ten Canadian Screen Awards (winning two), and more importantly, at the Toronto International Film Festival, it won Best Canadian Feature film. Not bad for a local boy.

    2013 is when Dolan wore multiple hats in a film. In Tom á la Ferme (Tom at the Farm), Dolan, who wrote, produced, directed and starred, plays Tom, a young man who works in an advertising agency and travels to the Canadian countryside for the funeral of his 25-year-old boyfriend. The problem is that the grieving mother did not know that her son was gay, so she accepts Tom as his friend in the hopes that he can tell her all about her dead son’s life. Meanwhile, the deceased’s brother, 30-year-old Francis (an amazing Pierre-Yves Cardinal), knew that his brother gay but could never really accept it. Conflict, anguish, thought provoking moments, anger, love, and acceptance follow. More acclaim followed Dolan when Mommy was released in 2015. It stars French Canadian actress Anne Dorval who is a widowed mother overwhelmed by her teenage son (Antoine Olivier Pilon – a relevation) and his attention deficit disorder. Dolan wrote, produced and directed Mommy, and it won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and won nine Canadian Screen Awards, including Best Motion Picture.

    In the newly released Elephant Song, Dolan, who co-stars along with Bruce Greenwood and Catherine Keneer, plays Michael, a psychologically unwell young man in a mental institution who may or may not have had something to do with the disappearance of his psychiatrist. So it’s up to Greenwood’s Dr. Greene to interview Michael to try to get to the bottom of his colleague’s disappearance. During the interrogation, Michael plays mind games with Dr. Greene, alluding to the fact that he knows where his psychiatrist is but is not quite yet ready to tell. Michael is clearly a very disturbed young man, his very famous opera singer mother all but ignored him, and the one time he spent with his father was when he took him elephant hunting, with the boy Michael crying over his father’s killing of an elephant. And Michael alludes to a sexual relationship that he is having with his psychiatrist, so it’s up to Dr. Greene to take what Michael is saying with a grain of salt. Even the head nurse, Susan Peterson (Keneer), warns Dr. Greene to keep his distance from Michael. It’s a film that at its centrepiece is Dolan, who is perfect as Michael, very good looking yet very mischevious, you don’t know whether you want to hug him or to run away from him. And the film revisits the themes of homosexuality and the lack of acceptance so common in Dolan’s films.

    What’s next for Dolan besides conquering the world? He just finished shooting ‘It’s Only the End of the World,’ about a young man who returns home after 12 years to announce his impending death to his family. It stars Marion Cotillard and Vincent Cassel. Dolan will also be shooting his first film in the United States, to be titled The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, in 2016. It’s a fictional story about an actor who is famous for playing a Marvel-style superhero whose life and career are turned upside-down when his private correspondence with an 11-year-old fan is exposed and made to look indecent by a villainous gossip columnist. This one stars Hollywood heavyweights Kit Harrington, Jessica Chastain, and Susan Sarandon. If his previous films are anything to go by, these new films (and his future films) will be eagerly anticipated and will be must sees.

  • Surrey Gay Film Festival Line Up Announced

    The second annual LGBT film festival will take place again in Redhill, Surrey in August.

    (more…)

  • FILM REVIEW | The Loft

    The storyline is fairly straightforward, five seemingly respectable professional men conspire to share a secret apartment. A safe space in which to conduct their illicit affairs and indulge in their deepest, darkest fantasies, safe from the prying eyes of their wives.

    That is until one of them, Luke, arrives to find a dead body, an unknown woman, a blonde, hand-cuffed to the bed they have all used at some point.

    Then their fantasy turns into a nightmare, as they realise there are only 5 keys to the apartment and it isn’t possible to duplicate the keys… so one of the 5 must be the murderer?

    Or so you think…

    The film is quite inventive in terms of use of flashbacks, the way the five are questioned by the detectives investigating the crime, the possibility of the wives being involved? The list of potential suspects grows, as the victim is revealed. It has a feel of classic Hitchcock about it as we appear to suspect everyone, no-one is safe.

    With a stellar cast, including James Marsden (Hairspray, amongst many others), Keith Urban (Bones in the Star Trek reboot), Wentworth Miller (Prison Break) and Matthias Schoenaerts (from the original version of Loft, and also Rust & Bone, A Little Chaos and Far from the Madding Crowd) who all give performances that waver between making you feel revulsion for them and their predicament and pity for the game they are all involved in.

    Erik Van Looy remakes his 2008 Belgian classic and succeeds with playing with you – you think you know where it’s going, but you’re wrong!

    One for a DVD and pizza night…

    A massive 4 stars

  • FILM REVIEW | Magic Mike XXL

    The Kings of Tampa are back! The men, strippers from the 2012 film Magic Mike, return with a sequel – Magic Mike XXL – and they are back with a bang!

    Magic Mike XXL reunites Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer and the rest of the cast from the hit film about male strippers and picks up the story three years later after Mike has left the world of stripping. He’s got his own furniture business but it’s not doing too well. So when the former Kings of Tampa look him up on the way to a stripper convention in Myrtle Beach, North Carolina, Mike (Tatum) can’t resist the pull to go back to stripping, and to reunite with his buddies. So what takes place is a male stripper road movie with scenes that allow all of the men to display their fine physical goods.

    And these scenes are hot. In one, reminiscent of Jennifer Beal’s dance scene in the film Flashdance, with sparks flying all around, Mike does the same in his garage, a freestyle solo that proves he’s still got it. Once on the road, we are treated to the men’s misadventures, to be voyeurs in their exhibitionism, with a front row seat. First stop, a gay bar in Jacksonville where the drag queen emcee asks members of the audience if they want to participate in an amateur strip contest. Of course our men enter and wow the crowd. After, they find themselves at a beach party, where Mike has an encounter with Zoe (Amber Heard), who takes his picture while he is urinating.

    Big Dick (Manganiello) get his big showy number when he performs, on the spot, for a shocked but very lucky female gas station attendant. You’ll never look at a bag of Cheetos the same way again.

    A stop at private club Domina, Mike’s pre-Tampa stomping ground, transforms the movie into a breathtaking and intensely sexual film. You see, Domina’s female customers are treated to in-your-face male strip shows, and these strip shows are like ones you’ve never ever seen before on film. It’s here that Mike re-encounters Rome (Jada Pinkett Smith) the proprietress, and a woman from his past.
    It you’re out of breath at this point (trust me, you will be) there’s lots more. The men wind up at the home of Nancy (Andie MacDowell), a recently divorced sexy and flirtatious woman in her early 50s, and the rapport between Nancy and her female friends and the men is very palpable, very real, you can cut the sexual tension between the men and the women with a knife.
    It’s at the Myrtle Beach stripper convention where the film comes to a climax. Each man gets to perform his own unique dance, for a room full of ladies, and perform they do. Tatum strips all the way down to a shiny jockstrap, while the other men do their own special routines, one which includes chocolate sauce and whipped cream, and another one involves a sling. Various ladies from the audience are lucky enough to be chosen as part of the act. And Tatum chooses Zoe to be in his act, performing on her on stage in every position imaginable.
    Directed by the same man who directed the campy Liberace film “Behind the Candelabra,” Gregory Jacobs brings a stylised nuance to Magic Mike XXL, where the long dance scenes take a life of their own. And the male stars of this film really put themselves out there, hell, they’ve all got the bodies, so why not? And for the female actresses who were chosen to be performed on in various scenes of this film, we can assume they were not just acting, but were also extremely enjoying themselves. So will you.

  • FILM REVIEW | The Last Knights

    In the current climate of sword and sorcery fever, stirred up by the wonderful Game of Thrones, we are seeing a surge of books and films set in Machiavellian worlds, with plot twists and turns to keep you on your toes.

    This film is one of those – probably more by happenstance than by planning. This film seems to seek to ride that wave – however, it falls short, far short.

    A fallen warrior, one of the last knights of the title, seeks to avenge his former and now dishon-oured master against a cruel and corrupt ruler in a pseudo-medieval land.

    Beautiful backdrops, amazing scenery, weather fit for Winterfell and its frozen North, there just seems to be something missing.

    The cast work hard, the plot, in theory at least, should entertain but it fails somewhere.

    Have you ever settled down to watch a good movie, only to be left a little, well, a little flat and dis-appointed?

    With a cast that includes Clive Owen and Morgan Freeman, we could expect more but they can only work with what they have. The scenery is wonderful, spectacular even. The castles and courtyards appropriately epic, the costumes perfection.But, and its a big but, it doesn’t succeed – and I can’t put my finger on why?

    I read a few reviews on this film from Amazon and my favourite one read: “utter ball bag”. Not sure why this tickled me, but it did! It was also too harsh as it only gave the film 2 stars – I’d give it 3 and maybe a second watch at some point to check if my review was right.
    A mild-mannered 3 stars

    BUY ON AMAZON

  • FILM REVIEW | Boy Meets Girl

    ★★★★★ | Boy Meets Girl

    Eric Schaeffer’s refreshing and enchanting drama about three 20 year-olds looking for love in a small backwater town in Kentucky gently challenges us to suspend our preconceived views on gender labels and be as open to what happens as these lovelorn kids are. Ricky is a confident and determined transgendered young woman who is marking her time working in the local coffee until she is accepted at Fashion School in NY and can get on with the life she dreams of. She’s been best friends with Robby since they were 6 years and he now works as a mechanic at her father’s garage and the two of them are totally inseparable.

    Then one day their world gets shaken up more than a little when Francesca breezes into the coffee shop and within minutes it’s clear that there is a mutual attraction between her and Ricky. Francesca is the spoiled rich kid of a local Politician and is engaged to be married to a Marine presently serving in Afghanistan. When she and Ricky hang out with each other and start to really bond, Ricky breaks the news about her identity to her new friend by text even though they are sitting next to each other at the moment. It sets a tone on how all the intimate moments are so superbly handled in this touching tale of romance.

    Francesca has been ‘saving herself’ for marriage … well, that’s the line she has feeding David her fiance… but soon finds herself in bed with Ricky. She asks after making love if this now makes her gay, to which Ricky simply replies ‘it makes you human.’ The situation soon intensifies when David comes home on leave unexpected and is horrified to discover that his fiance’s new best friend is the transgendered Ricky. It turns out that his homophobia is, however, to do with his own secret past which he shared with Ricky.

    The one person who is even more upset with the two girl’s relationship, which ends before it even gets a chance to really take off, is Robby. Turns out that he now realises that he must come to terms with his own feelings for his best friend, and once he can let go of his preconceived ideas of her gender, he can love her for who she really is.

    Schaeffer’s script handles this all with such refreshing candour which empowers these young people to find it within themselves to accept and value who they are without being hung up on the labels that society insists on doling out. Ricky’s own journey of discovery up to that point was certainly not easy as she had to deal not only with bullying and taunting during her school days but also with the demons of misremembering her late mother’s opinions. She is, however, fortunate to have the unconditional support of her blue-collared father and her younger brother.

    Superb casting also contributed a great deal to the undisputed success of the movie, and the presence of the incredibly talented transgendered actress Michelle Hendley making her film debut as Ricky lifted the whole piece to a different plane. She gave a riveting performance of Ricky as a sassy strong-willed young woman, not immune to the world’s negativity and ignorance about her sexuality, but one who was determined that it wouldn’t stop her being her own true self.

    It’s warm and often very funny and an entertaining, intelligent, sensitive treatment of an oft-misunderstood subject and probably the most enlightening and best movie that I have seen on it so far. It truly deserves the widest audience possible way.

  • FILM REVIEW | A Funny Kind Of Love

    ★★★ | A Funny Kind Of Love

    You could be forgiven for thinking from the opening scenes of this new comedy from Australian actor turned director Josh Lawson that you are about to watch a movie that is like a Wikipedia of sexual practices, or even some soft-core pornography.

    Thankfully it is neither of those although Mr Lawson does want us to laugh at the absurdity of fulfilling sexual fantasies, which never ever turn out like you had dreamed and wished for.

    These then are the totally separate stories of five couples and the tenuous link to them is the fact that they all live in the same suburb neighbourhood, and they are all white and middle-class. The first concerns Maeve who confides to Paul her live-in boyfriend that she has a rape fantasy, which he is as reluctant to comply with as he is with proposing marriage. Evie and Dan’s marriage has hit a rocky patchy so the counsellor they consult suggest role-playing to spice things up a bit. The trouble is that Dan gets so into it he quickly forgets why the started doing this as he is now completely obsessed with becoming an actor so he can play dress-up every day.

    Richard and Rowena have been trying to have a baby for so long that sex has become a monotonous chore, for Rowena anyway. That is until her husband gets really bad news and bursts into tears and she suddenly discovers she has dacryphilia (that thankfully is explained on screen). It means that she gets sexually aroused at the sight of tears, which is harmless enough until she finds has to plot to constantly keep Richard sad enough to weep whenever she fancies getting laid. It is an odd condition, but not quite as potentially objectionable as the somnophilia that Paul has when he drugs his nagging wife Maureen so that when she is passed out, he can finally have sex with her.

    The fifth and final … and by far the best scenario, is of a couple of strangers who have not met in person. Monica works as a signing translator for deaf people wanting to make phone calls, and one night Sam calls into use the service. He wants to be connected to a sex line and poor Monica has to be the conduit for the funny and bawdy language that passes between the ‘working girl’ and Sam a cute young graphic novelist. Despite its set up it has the most tenderness of all of the scenarios because of the very real chemistry between both the caller and the operator, and it is such a genuine connection.

    There is one other tenuous link between this group of vignettes in the shape of a new neighbour who is going around introducing himself. Whilst handing over welcoming gifts he slips into the conversation that fact that he is a registered sex offender, but every household he calls on is so wrapped up in their own problems that the last part simply doesn’t sink in. Just when you think he may get back to his old ways, Lawson finishes him off. We had expected something fatal to happen because of the original title of the movie had been The Little Death and he is one of the ‘little deaths’.

    The movie ends up being more bizarre than bawdy although it does heavily on the basic assumption that many people who find sex funny will find this movie comical too. The troubles are that the laughs are rather intermittent and some regarding the whole concept of non-consensual intercourse are bordering on being offensive and in extremely bad taste.

    As well as giving himself a plum part (Paul) Lawson does pepper the piece with an extremely talented cast of well-known Australian actors. Particular mention to the pitch performances from TJ Power and newcomer Erin James as Sam and Monica. By placing their story last in the proceedings it did at least mean the movie ends on a much higher note than the one it started on.

  • FILM REVIEW | Angel With Tethered Wings

    It seems like Steven Vasquez the director/writer/cinematographer/editor wants to corner the market in low-budget gay horror mystery movies the rate he is turning them out these days.

    This new one like his last recent one (Errodity) is essentially another piece of soft-core pornography, but this time with an extended and tangled plot, and where the script is as flaccid as the penises and the only thing stiff is the acting.

    It’s billed as a ‘back-from-the-grave revenge flick’, which is in three parts and is the story about a pair of gay twins, and their brother. I think. Anyway, there is a bad twin who is a callous producer of twink porn who owes the mysterious Carmine an awful lot of money that he plans to replay when a geeky Texan coughs up big time to have sex with the main porn star. The money disappears after the Texan has had his end away, and the rest of the movie is spent chasing the money and the Twink too.

    It’s not all played out chronologically so the rather lame story is not that easy to follow, and I wouldn’t be giving too much away by saying that soon after the Twink and his brother (!) come back as vampires, most of the cast get shot one way or another. Now that the Twink is dead he very sadly misses his boyfriend although they dated for just two days. However, the fact that he is played by a real (and hot) porn star Addison Graham makes that totally understandable. He actually puts in a very convincing performance even when he is fully clothed.

    Nearly everyone at one time or another gets completely naked and there are lots of full frontals and also some very noisy un-erotic simulated sex scenes, once even played out to some church lady singing ‘Ave Maria’.

    Making ambitious low budget gay movies like this is not easy and through sheer lack of resources often the script and the acting suffers. In this instance, it was both, and maybe if Vasquez hadn’t been trying to do everything behind the camera himself he would spot that too.

    If you are a fan of gay zombie B Movies then you may want to even try this, as there are not many others in this genre. If you are a fan of Mr Graham and want to literally see more of him (!) then you may want to check out some the steamy movies he stars in for Michael Lucas’s Studio.
    On Dvd/VOD July 13th from TLA

  • FILM REVIEW | Tiger Orange

    Wade Gasque’s debut feature, which he co-wrote with lead actor Mark Strano, is an interesting drama about the conflict between two estranged gay brothers who are trying to reconcile after the death of their father. ★★★

    Their sexuality is one of the few things the siblings have in common as Chet is quiet and reserved and has never left their small hometown or ‘come out of the closet’. His younger brother Todd, on the other hand, escaped to LA when he just 18-years-old to try his hand out as an actor, and he is out, proud and very loud.

    Chet is a workaholic and when he is not running the family hardware store in town, he leads a solitary life just eating dinner in front of the TV every night. Todd never bothered to return to town for his father’s funeral but now breezes back when he ends up both jobless and homeless with no other options or prospects in sight. If his rebellious streak is not enough to upset Chet’s calm equilibrium, then at the same time Brandon one of his schoolboy crushes also turns up and between the two of them, force Chet to deal with his reality.

    This very simple indie melodrama that is presently playing the Film Festival circuit is attracting attention simply because of the curiosity value with it starring porn performer Johnny Hazzard going legit. Under his real name Frankie Valenti, he plays Todd and puts in a much more credible performance than one may have suspected, and he proves to be a strong focal point of the drama.  He is very charismatic and easily shows that he doesn’t have to be naked to grab our attention.

    It’s a well-produced and well-crafted movie that thanks to some good acting, and a pleasing visually look, really belies its low budget. Well worth a look when it is released on DVD/VOD later this year.

  • FILM REVIEW | The Invisible Men

    ★★★★★ | The Invisible Men

    Louie is a 32-year-old Palestinian who tries to live his life unobtrusively hidden away from society’s prying eyes. He has no legal right to live in Israel, and thus without papers he must continually avoid any confrontation with the police or officialdom, as if he returns back across the border he risks the very real death threats from his own family and all simply because he’s gay.

    This remarkable award-winning documentary from Israeli filmmaker Yariv Mozer tracks Louie as he goes about his daily life in Tel Aviv. A somewhat shy, introverted and extremely likeable young man, Louie survives by doing odd jobs of work and constantly moving apartments as he tries to keep one step ahead of the authorities all the time. On the several times he is caught, the police deport him back to Ramallah, but yet somehow this quiet resourceful man soon manages to very soon sneak back into Israel once again. It’s a harrowing existence and when he relates the lurid details to Mozer of how his family tied him up and tried to slaughter him like an animal, you know that he has no other choice if he wants to live.

    After what seems like just one to many deportations, Louie contacts a refugee law centre at the university and discovers that there is a possible way out from this predicament. Under international law he can apply for asylum in another country (that will be chosen for him) and resettle there. There are no guarantees he will be awarded this and he is warned that his chances of succeeding are slim. A skeptical Louie is put in touch with Abdu another gay Palestinian who has already been accepted and is about to leave for his yet unknown new country/home. Abdu, an outgoing extrovert, is totally opposite to Louie and he shows his new timid friend a whole underground gay movement that Louis finds hard to believe.

    Months later when Louie gets word that he has won a much coveted asylum place, he starts having very serious second thoughts. Israel has been his home for the past 10 years, and although it has been a scary and dangerous existence, he feels a great draw as this is where he believes he truly belongs, despite all the pain and heartache that he has been through, he really wants to stay.

    Mozer tells Louie’s emotional charged story without disguising his own attachment, but he does sensibly refrain from making any comment at all on the tense political situation that engulfs this whole region. It’s a humanitarian tale that will shock most of us living in the West to realise (or be reminded) that being gay in any Arab country puts your very life at risk, and being Palestinian in a country where you are illegal, which in Louie’s case was his birthplace, seems so very unjust.

    An extremely moving heartbreaking story that is sensitively documented, and that will rightly jerk you out of your comfort zone… it’s very definitely unmissable.

    P.S. Louie is safely living somewhere in Europe coping with the snow, but as Yariv Mozer has told us he’s ‘the only gay in the village’. However he’s alive and well and even getting some assistance to help him heal his emotional scars. He is one of the lucky ones.

  • FILM REVIEW | Triple Crossed

    ★★ | Triple Crossed

    After he had finished his posting serving in the military in war-torn Afghanistan during which time he witnessed his best friend being killed, Chris Jensen is struggling to adapt back into civilian life. Unable to find a job, as no one seems prepared to want the services of a somewhat damaged ex-serviceman, he has resorted to living in his car.

    Out of the blue, he gets a call from Jackie who wants to offer a job that he would like to turn down. Her recently deceased half-brother has left his controlling share of the family’s multi-million business to his boyfriend Andrew, and she is having none of it. She wants to get his share but doesn’t want to pay a cent for it, but she is however prepared to pay Chris a handsome sum to kill Andrew so she can get her own way.

    He is desperate enough to take on the assignment but first he goes to check out his ‘target’ who naturally turns out to be as hot as hell. The two men are soon grappling with each but not quite in the way Jackie had wanted as they are naked and in bed. The question then is to kill or not? Not an easy one to answer as the title of this drama implies everyone has their own agenda, and so we are never sure how this will play out.

    What makes this small-budget indie stand out from others of this genre is that it marks the debut of Sean Paul Lockhart; aka ex-porn star Brent Corrigan behind the camera as well as in front for a change. Although it is full of the good intentions the movie does sadly fail to be a thriller in or out of the bedroom even though it does have a gun-toting finale.

    Sean doesn’t ever quite manage to convince us that he really did go to war, although he does put in a pretty good performance as a potential new boyfriend for Andrew who seems to have soon forgotten his ex dead one. If you are a fan of Sean aka Brent then you’ll want to see this,but if you are not, then you may just want to wait for a rainy afternoon when you have nothing better to do.