THEGAYUK

Category: Film

  • FILM REVIEW | Map To The Stars

    ★★★ | Map To The Stars

    When the Hollywood limo driver asks his mysterious disfigured young passenger where she has come from she answers ‘Jupiter’ meaning the small town in Florida. It could however easily been the planet though as the girl is obviously extremely odd, and this is a David Cronenberg movie after all.

    Agatha is back in California after being incarcerated after trying to kill her kid brother in a house fire. Now a young adult she is out to find Benjie her brother an obnoxious 13-year-old successful movie star in the vein of Justin Bieber, who has just spent the summer in rehab trying to kick his habits. Their father is a celebrity self-help guru, who mixes massage with lashings of Freud, and their highly-strung mother is trying to keep herself and the family together by acting as Benjie’s manager, and at the same time praying that their well-kept secret about the mentally unstable Agatha never leaks out.

    Meanwhile elsewhere in this tale about the narcissistic and greed of movie land, Havana a fading middle-aged star is desperate for a role in a remake of a film that originally starred her abusive mother. When she fires the latest in a long line of personal assistant, or ‘chore whores’ as she calls them, her good friend Carrie Fisher hooks her up with a weird new girl in town who she had met online. When Havana learns of Agatha’s burns she sees that as good omen having lost her own mother in a fire, and gives her the job. Eventually, Havana is offered the film role, albeit by default, and when she is back in the studio it gives Agatha access to hook up with her brother and prey on his insecurities to worm her way back into his life.

    Throughout the film, all manner of ghosts appear with disquieting regularity adding to both Benje’s and Havana’s already troubled psyches and undermines their attempts at trying to keep a grasp on their sanity. It’s one of the perverse elements of this intriguing very odd drama that seems morbidly obsessed with the past.

    It’s the first movie that Cronenberg, a Canadian, has made in the USA and it is beautifully shot in a very sunny and glamorous California which somehow makes the heart-rending tragedy at the end seem even darker. Written over 20 years by Bruce Wagner a limo driver turned screenwriter (like the one in the movie) who obviously has something of an inside track on the seamier side of Tinseltown.

    It gave Julianne Moore her second big role of 2014 and her sublime performance as Havana always on the edge of totally losing it won her the Best Actress Award at Cannes Film Festival in the summer. It also reunites her with the immensely talented Mia Wasikowska (they played mother and daughter in ‘The Kids Are Alright’) and this time she is superbly creepy as the deranged Agatha. Cronenberg reunites with Robert Pattinson who starred as the executive being driven around Manhattan all day in ‘Cosmopolis’, and this time it is he who plays the limo driver that Agatha all but forces into a relationship.

    Olivia Wilde as the mother, John Cusack as the father, and a remarkable young TV actor called Evan Bird who was pitch perfect as Benjie the spoilt child star rounded out the cast.

    Like all Cronenberg’s work, this is a fascinating movie and even though it is hard to actually like, it is well worth seeing just for Ms Moore’s exquisite performance alone.

  • FILM REVIEW | Global Warming

    Do not be put off by this ominous title as this is not an environmental doomsday prediction about the state of our planet, but simply a selection of four boy-lit short movies where the action sometimes gets steamy.

    ★★★

    The first is You Can’t Curry Love which is the story of a young Asian gay man who cannot get a boyfriend back home in the UK, but when he flies to India on a business trip he falls in love with the very first man he meets and who happens to be Sunil the handsome front desk clerk at his hotel. This too-cute-for-words tale also serves as an infomercial with Sunil preaching on how far gay rights have/have not progressed in his country. They wrap up this happily-ever-after very slight story with one of those camp song and dance numbers that are the mainstay of every Bollywood movie.

    Daddy’s Big Girl is a less than satisfactory tale of a sad overweight girl desperately trying to reconcile with her self-centred man-hungry father who is only interested in being a ‘daddy’ to the stream of young gym trainers he beds.

    The third movie in this compilation, and probably the best, is Foreign Relations. Shy Tom is assigned to bunk up with handsome Greek Nikos on a group vacation trip. Unsurprisingly Tom totally falls for Nikos even though he has no idea if his new friend shares his preference for boys. By the time this sweet tale ends you are hoping for Tom’s sake that he does.

    The fourth and final movie is Performance Anxiety which is the most amusing one in the quartet. It is the tale of two straight actors who have been cast to play gay in a movie. Both are naturally cute to boot and unnecessarily are as worried as hell. They really needn’t be, as they both would fit in extremely well on our team any day. Or night.

    All written and directed by filmmaker Reid Watererand filmed with a cast of engaging young actors, this enjoyable new collection would make a perfect date movie. It may not warm the globe, but it will probably get you hot under the collar at times.

     

  • FILM REVIEW | Fairytale Of Kathmandu: Highly Emotive and Compelling

    ★★★★★ | Fairytale Of Kathmandu

    Not every Fairy Tale has a happy ending especially this one desperately sad but true one from 2007.

    Director Neass Ni Chianain first encountered legendary Irish Poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh as a student in awe of him. Years later, the two are now friends and the poet invites her to accompany him on his annual three-month visit to Nepal, which he considers his spiritual home. Ó Searcaigh, a middle-aged openly gay man, was keen to share his life in the capital city of Kathmandu, and show all his charitable work supporting a whole legion of young Nepalese boys.

    The documentary starts out simply as a tribute to this seemingly altruistic generous man that villagers treat as some sort of a deity, turns into a totally different story.

    Admiration turns to dismay and anger, fuelled by Ó Searcaigh’s denials when confronted with the discoveries, and ultimately it is he that claims betrayal and not the boys or the filmmaker.

    Sensitively shot, this superb documentary with its totally unexpected curve is highly emotional, and even blood-curdling at times. Whatever one’s opinion of Ó Searcaigh is, his story is totally compelling, completely riveting and makes fascinating viewing that shouldn’t be missed. Ultimately, we are reminded of what we’ve always known: not every fairytale has a happily-ever –after ending.

  • FILM REVIEW | Geography Club, Wonderfully fresh look at gay teens coming of age

    ★★★★★ | Geography Club, Wonderfully fresh look at gay teens coming of age

    In this wonderful fresh look at the world of gay teens, the one thing the members of this Club definitely don’t talk about is Geography.

    They are a group of closeted gay high school students who don’t want anyone to know the true purpose of their meetings. There are only three members to start but when Min, a rather bossy bi-sexual, inadvertently catches her friend Russell kissing football jock Kevin, she invites him to join them and that triggers a whole series of events that will eventually force them to ‘out’ themselves to the whole school.

    Oddly enough Kevin is the deepest into the closet even though his father is actually very proud of his out gay brother. Kevin encourages Russell to join the football team in order so they can at least hang out together, and although by accepting the offer it doesn’t mean that the boys actually get any closer, apart from the rare make out session, but it results in Russell getting roped into bullying another gay classmate just to keep his own cover.

    Russell’s plump best friend Gunnar pressures him to go on a double-date as that is the only way that Kimberly will go out with him. When Trish her friend makes the moves on a petrified Russell, his panicky reactions cause Kimberly to call him a ‘fag’; a fact that she ensures is common knowledge to the entire school the very next day. Now totally exposed there are only two ways that this can play out for Russell, and he chooses the bravest and most honest option with the support of his real friends.

    Based on Brent Hartinger’s very successful young adult novel, the movie is directed by 28-year-old actor Gary Entin from a script by his twin brother actor Edmund Entin (both known for The Seeker: The Dark is Rising). It is an extremely impressive and professional debut from these two and is a wonderfully fresh look at young teens coming to terms with their sexuality. They score high points for their enlightened approach to an emotive subject, especially for avoiding all the usual clichéd stereotypes. The fact that not all the main players redeemed themselves at the end, added another credible touch of realism.

    Great cast of young experienced actors; Cameron Deane Stewart (‘Pitch Perfect’) played Russell; Andrew Caldwell (Transformers) was Gunnar, Ally Maki (Step Up 3D) as Min, Justin Deeley (Couples Retreat) as Kevin, Nikki Blonsky (Hairspray) as Min’s girlfriend Theresa and Alex Newell (Glee) as Ike a club member. And the wonderful Ana Gustier (ex-Saturday Night Live) was hilarious as the hippy teacher ‘who cared’.

    Several publishers rejected the book itself before Harper Collins picked it up. To their delight they had three reprints within the first three months, proving that there is both a market and real need for books like this, I think there is also a demand for the movies that evolve from them, especially when they are of this high calibre.

  • FILM REVIEW | Appropriate Behaviour

    ★★★ | Appropriate Behaviour

    For Shirin, a twentysomethingyear old angst ridden fashionable Brooklynite, life is mess.

    We don’t need to feel sorry for her, as she does that so well herself. She is reluctantly breaking up with Maxine her girlfriend and leaving the home they shared with little more than a strap on dildo. She is moving into a shabby squalid apartment with a pair of pretentious ‘artists’. Her nice middle class Iranian parents, who have no idea about her sexual identity, would like her to marry a nice traditional Persian boy. Her over-achieving brother is a doctor, whilst Shirin wastes her journalism degree and just flits from one menial job to another. And if that is not enough, she is broke too.

    The trouble is Shirin doesn’t know what she wants. She starts dating men again, whilst at the same time tries all she can do to woo a reluctant Maxine back. Her attempts at ‘finding herself’ make for some of the funnier moments in this comic story that is based loosely on the life of Desiree Akhavan who not only directed and wrote it, but is playing Shirin herself too. It’s her performance that makes this piece come alive even with its gaping holes. When Shirin attempts a three-way with a neurotic couple, or has a hook-up from a website, or makes a disruptive visit to a gay rights discussion group it is outrageously funny.

    Ms. Akhavan has written herself some delicious one-liners.

    Her scenes with her parents are less successful as it’s hard to believe that such worldly educated people would never have a single inkling as to what their free-spirit bisexual daughter is all about.

    The story peters out with little conclusion other than the fact that Ms Akhavan is an immensely talented performer and is a powerful presence on the screen. I am sure that we will see a great deal more of this future star.

  • FILM REVIEW | Whiplash

    ★★★★★ | Whiplash

    19-year-old Andrew Neyman wants to be the next Buddy Rich.

    This aspiring young drummer who is completely obsessed with his burning ambition has managed to get himself enrolled at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory of Music in Manhattan, which is ranked No. 1 in the country. Now he is desperate to be recruited into the School’s band led by its legendary leader Terrence Fletcher. Even after he catches Fletcher’s attention one day and is invited to become the Band’s alternate drummer, he is never sure if he will succeed and achieve his dream especially when Fletcher’s initial charming approach soon dissipates to reveal his true nature.

    The bald-headed Fletcher is nothing short than a sadistic bully akin to the worse kind of Army Drill Sergeant who insists on insulting, terrorising and abusing his talented charges. However, Andrew is not only willing but even eager to take all the public humiliation Fletcher dishes out since it forces him to suffer for a cause he chooses to believe will be worth it. After all his other idol Charlie Parker only went from good to great after a traumatic incident that induced him to sacrifice a year to intensive practice.

    During the Band’s rehearsals for some upcoming crucial Competitions Fletcher deliberately demands the near impossible, berating any of the frightened players who make a mistake and even those who don’t. He promotes Andrew from page-turner to featured drummer and then quickly demotes him back again after screaming more abuse at him and making him cry in the process. There are times he pushes Andrew to practice so hard that his hands actually bleed, and then still not content he hurls a cymbal across the room at him.

    Out of school, Andrew is very much a loner, and when he does eventually pluck up the courage to ask a girl out and start dating her, he very quickly dumps her because he feels she maybe a distraction from all the practice he needs to do to appease Fletcher in the hope of eventually becoming the lead drummer. He is also afraid of emulating the failure of his father who’s writing career never took off and he ended up be resigned to settling with just being a schoolteacher instead.

    This exhilarating indie movie was the opening gala of the Sundance 2014 Film Festival having started life however as a three-sequence film that won the US short film jury prize at Sundance the previous year. It stars the immensely talented Miles Teller (‘The Spectacular Now’) as young Andrew struggling to maximise his artistic talent regardless of the intense physical and mental pressures. It is however the subliminal career-defining performance from veteran character actor J K Simmons that ignites the screen as Fletcher a profane and seemingly unstoppable villain that has propelled this wee movie on to a much wider audience than it would normally have expected to reach. It has won a strew of well-deserved Awards culminating in a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award.

    The music throughout is also quite electric and wonderfully adds tension to some of the more frenetic scenes. This very personal second film from writer-director Damien Chazelle, ended up with an unprecedented 3 Academy Awards (Film Editing and Sound Editing) which certainly also makes him a talent to look out for too.

    Fletcher cuttingly remarks at one point that the lamest two words in the English language are ‘good job’ so we will carefully note that this is not good, but an excellent one.

  • FILM REVIEW | Hyena, Slick and Brutal

    The ‘hyena’ in this slick and brutal crime thriller is a burly bent copper called Michael Logan who plays so closely with fire, he is definitely going to get more than his fingers burned if things turn out as badly as they probably will. ★★

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  • FILM REVIEW | Still Alice

    ★★★★★ | Still Alice

    Beautiful, pitch-perfect, Sublime

    Life is seemingly idyllic for 50-year-old Alice Howland a renowned Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University who is happily married with three grown up children.

    Then suddenly out of the blue she forgets a word or two midway in a tutorial, and then cannot remember the occasional appointment although this hardly registers with her at all. That is until one day out on her usual run around the campus Alice suddenly realises that she doesn’t recognise where she is even though she is literally standing outside her own office building. A subsequent trip to a Neurologist rules out a brain tumour or stroke which had been her worst fears, but further investigation reveals something that she had never even considered: early-onset Alzheimer’s. If that is not bad enough for Alice as she comes to terms with the fact that she will eventually be unable to recognise her own children, she then learns that her disease is hereditary and she may inadvertently pass it on to them too.

    Alice takes a reasoned and logical approach to her situation even though filled with rage that she will lose all that she has worked for and achieved in the past 50 years in probably just a matter of months. Whilst still very much aware of her situation in these early stages Alice makes plans for her uncertain future by visiting Special Care Facilities and making contingency plans for when she can no longer answer a series of personal questions about her life, which have now become part of her daily routine. She desperately tries coming to terms with the fact that life, as it had previously existed, is now over and so insists on continuing teaching, until that is she tells all to her Department Head who promptly dismisses from her position. Having a lack of a daily purpose seems to help speed up her degeneration, and being left at home all with just a carer to look after her is difficult for this once extremely active workaholic to come to terms with. Her husband John, a fellow academic is very understanding and completely supportive of all her needs but nevertheless still refuses to take a sabbatical year off to share what will be her last few months of coherence, and he is, in fact, planning to accept a new important job in another State.

    The story based on a novel by neuroscientist Lisa Genova unusually tells the tale from Alice’s point of view instead of solely focusing on the effects her illness has on family and friends. The fact, in this case, it was initially harder to diagnose was, as her doctors point out, due to the fact that intelligent people like Alice are capable of devising elaborate ways to work around their initial symptoms that mask the problem. Whilst writer/directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland have not shied away from showing the sheer sadness in watching Alice’s life disintegrate in front of her own very eyes, they have rather brilliantly avoided the temptation to milk the situation and let this turn into a weepy melodrama. In fact there are some tender touches of humor that never let us forget that before Alice became a victim, she was a very articulate and witty woman.

    The sublime Julianne Moore imbues Alice with a powerful voice in a beautiful pitch-perfect low-key performance that makes it all feel so real. She makes us appreciate that life is simple, not fair, and that you have to appreciate it whilst you are able too. It deservedly won her a long overdue Best Actress Oscar. It was very much her picture, but nevertheless kudos to her fine supporting cast that included Alec Baldwin who delivered a subtle understated performance as her husband John, and Kristen Stewart as her youngest daughter Lydia who refused to give up her own dreaming of acting, but nevertheless became the one family member who would really be there for her all the way.

    The story has particular resonance with married couple Westmoreland and Glatzer as the latter has his own debilitating disease after being diagnosed with ALS. The fact that he has chosen to write and direct this exceptionally beautiful movie with his husband shows that he certainly hasn’t given up, a message that is also very important to Alice who refuses to just give in.

  • FILM REVIEW | Selma: US History With Passion And Brilliance

    ★★★★★ Selma | This extraordinary wonderful new film that finally brings Nobel Peace Laureate Dr. Martin Luther King centre stage in a Hollywood movie focuses on just one of the most crucial periods in his life.

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  • Lesbian Films On Netflix

    Here is the current list, updated on Feb 16 2015 for films with a lesbian storyline or films aimed at gay women on Netflix UK.

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  • FILM REVIEW | This Is What Love In Action Looks Like

    ★★★★ | This Is What Love In Action Looks Like

    When evangelicals try to forcibly make gay men straight.

    In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Later that same year Love In Action was founded by an evangelical Christian ministry specifically ‘to restore those trapped in sexual and relational sin through the power of Jesus Christ’ i.e. to forcibly make gay men straight. As the oldest established ‘ex-gay’ organisation in the US, it based its whole creed on lumping pornography, sex addiction and homosexuality together but the latter was considered by far the worse sin of all.

    In 2005 their Refuge Program specifically designed to ‘cure’ young teenagers of their ‘gay addiction’ hit the national headlines when 16-year-old Zach Stark’s heartfelt cry for help appeared on his MySpace Blog. Zach had ‘come out’ to his parents and in return, they sent him against his will to be an inmate at the Camp. His plea hit a real nerve and quickly became a rallying cry for a small group of other young people, both gay and straight, who’s regular protests outside the Campus started a snowball effect and very soon caught the attention of the national and local media.

    On one hand, Pat Robertson was preaching his usual hate-ridden rhetoric, whilst on the other, more mainstream TV channels Zach ‘s story and the whole Love In Action oppressive authoritarian regime was covered by the likes of Diane Sawyer and Paula Zahn. Most of them quoted L.I.A. Executive Director John Smid, an ex-gay now married (to a woman). who bitterly defended his organisation tooth and nail not conceding to any of the real concern now being raised about these young men’s welfare.

    Stark was released after 8 weeks and initially obeyed his parents’ instructions to delete his blog and make no public comments to further fuel the fire. But by the time this documentary was made, Stark was now 18 and ready to speak up and to confirm that despite all that he went through he is now a happy and reasonably adjusted gay young man.

    In 2007 the Program was halted and not only did the Rev. Smid resign his post, but he actually took the unprecedented step of publishing a public apology to anyone who may have been harmed by the program.

    Morgan Jon Fox’s film bears witness to this shameful time in recent history and is most compelling when the interviews are with ex-patients/inmates and you can see the real pain that they were forced to endure in what are essentially the most crucial years in their growing up. It’s a testimony to their strength that they survived the ordeal, and equally a credit to the determined band of protesters who proved that standing up to be counted on when one encounters an injustice, does really work. And it’s a witness to all those poor souls that the disbandment of this whole movement came too late for.