THEGAYUK

Tag: Film Review

All the latest film reviews for LGBT themed films and others.

  • FILM REVIEW | The Last Impresario

    ★★★★ | The Last Impresario

    Gracie Otto’s affectionate documentary on the charismatic and adventurous English theatre and film producer Michael White is a movie long overdue. Despite his enormous contribution in a prolific career that spanned three decades he is as Anna Wintour succinctly put it, ‘the most famous person that you’ve never heard’. Ms Wintour also so accurately summed up his rich and tumultuous career by describing him as ‘a true Renaissance man’.

    Michael ‘Chalky’ White was born in Glasgow in 1936 to wealthy immigrant Jewish parents who packed him off to Boarding School in Switzerland at the tender age of 7. This small shy boy who suffered from asthma and couldn’t speak a word of French was something of a loner and although fiercely independent developed a skill in befriending everyone, a character trait that would end up changing his life.

    From Switzerland, he went to study at the Sorbonne which was followed by a stint as a Wall Street runner in the 1950s. Somewhere along the line this well-travelled young man discovered a passion for the theatre and landed himself a job with the impresario Peter Daubney in London producing international theatre seasons. At the ripe age of 25 White produced his first play in the West End. It was not a conventional drama but a production of Jack Gelber’s Living Theatre group called ‘The Connection’ and it depicted the life of drug-addicted jazz musicians. It had a mixed reception with its detractors up in arms about the debauchery on stage which showed men shooting up, something totally unheard of back in 1959 when every play was still censored by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office.

    It was however not the last time that White would break all the rules as he pursued anything avant-garde and different than the norm in a career in which he mounted 101 stage productions and produced 27 films.

    He introduced London to art ‘happenings’ with Yoko Ono, contemporary dance with Merce Cunningham and Pina Bausch, discovered the ground-breaking ‘The Rocky Horror Show’, joined forces with Kenneth Tynan to produce the all-nude review Oh Calcutta’, gave Barry Humphries aka Dame Edna Everage his first big break. Then as his career moved into movies he produced ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’, John Water’s ‘Polyester’, and the classic ‘My Dinner with Andre’.

    Otto starts her movie almost at the end when after casually meeting White at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 she is intrigued about this charming septuagenarian who literally knows everybody worth knowing. And what’s more, they all totally adore him. From British royalty to the Hollywood A list via mega-rock stars to model superstars, White has hung out with them all, and many of them, including ex-wives and girlfriends, eagerly line up to give witness to all the joyous times they have spent together. Even Wintour the Ice Queen cracks a rare smile on her face when she talks about her times with White.

    White’s professional success (and sometimes failure) is because he is a gambler. Unlike any of his peers, he is happy to take a chance on people and their productions simply if he believes in them, almost in the same way that he bets on horses too. His personal ‘success’ is because he is an optimist and believes that everyone is his friend. ‘Some people have cheated me, but I have no enemies at all.’

    Now after a couple of strokes, although White refuses to acknowledge the ageing process, he is obviously not in a good shape physically or financially. Whilst he is happy to talk about his life (with the rare exception such as losing the lucrative rights to The Rocky Horror Show) he adamantly refuses to let Otto in to find out much about him as a man. Several colleagues drop very broad hints that part of his present demise is due to not just the excessive partying but the use of recreational drugs, but Otto chooses not to pursue any of this.

    His legacy will not just be all the thousands of photographs he took to chronicle his life with a whole galaxy or stars, or the correspondence with the rich and famous that he had hoarded for decades. It will be the way that his approach of leading with his heart and not his head completely propelled London into being a true world-class stage and discovering and giving a voice to such a remarkable array of talent. It also helped that he was also a professional charmer.

    The world is definitely a better place because of Michael White, the like of whom we will never see again.

  • FILM REVIEW | Tru Love

    ★★★★ | Tru Love

    When 60-year-old Alice comes to Toronto six months after becoming a widow, her daughter Suzanne a lawyer is too busy at work to be home to greet her mother.

    She asks her unemployed friend Tru to step in at the last minute to look after Alice but then is shocked when she later arrives home and find that the two women have very quickly bonded. When Suzanne goes back to the office again that night, Alice takes Tru out to dinner to thank her, and the conversation soon takes a very personal turn.

    Alice is fascinated to learn about 30-something-year-old Tru’s life as a commitment-phobic serial-bed-hopping lesbian’s seemingly carefree life. She admits to having similar feelings when she was young but confessed that back in those days one had either to get married or join a nunnery. This provokes Tru into joking that the latter would have been the same as being a lesbian. There is obviously an attraction between the two women, but both are afraid to act upon it.

    The relationship between Alice and Suzanne is, however, is tenuous, to say the least as if neither can deal with the other’s grief for the departed husband/father. When it is clear that Alice’s spirits are so lifted by just spending time with Tru, Suzanne steps in and meddles to try and ensure that she puts a stop to their budding relationship. It appears at first she is in denial that Alice could possibly be a lesbian, but it soon turns out that this lonely partnerless woman has another reason to resent Tru making her mother so happy.

    Tru on the other hand slowly realises that with this welcoming older woman she is capable of loving someone after all. Alice never doubts her feelings but in some wonderful scenes talking to her late husband (seen on screen) she does question if this invalidates her life to date as she has not been true to her own feelings.

    This very touching story is very much about the two women’s quite chaste love but also equally about Alice’s relationship with her own daughter which seems to have reached a very low point. It’s unexpected and sudden ending was not the best way to finish the story as it didn’t really seem to give closure to all of them, well, at least to the two younger women.

    It’s an entertaining spirited movie about a delightful May/December relationship. Shauna MacDonald who co-wrote and co-directed as well as playing Tru gave herself a part that could/should have done more, but she did at least enable Kate Trotter who superbly played Alice and was a sheer joy as so convincingly conveyed the spirit of a woman finally discovering herself.

  • FILM REVIEW | The Overnighters

    ★★★★ | The Overnighters

    After North Dakota introduced the controversial technology known as fracking in 2008 it suddenly became the nation’s second largest oil producing State.

    So as the economic recession started to kick in really hard over the next few years, thousands of unemployed men unable to find work in their part of the country flocked to the new oilfields hoping to secure jobs. Many ended up the city of Willaston which is located in the oil-rich region in the west of the state. Totally unprepared for job searching which could take some considerable time or at which they could fail as they were totally unqualified, many of these migrant workers ended up being homeless and destitute.

    Their one chance of surviving and making their dreams succeed lay in the hands of an extraordinary local Lutheran Pastor who mounted what turned out to be a one man band to help these men try and succeed and move on. Pastor Reinke knew that the City permitted people to sleep overnight in their own cars if they were parked legally, but for the people that had come by bus and train, he went one step further and opened up the church premises and allowed them to sleep on any floor space they could claim.

    This program called ‘the overnighters’ was started in the dead of winter and the church’s congregation went along with their leader’s plan assuming that when the spring came, the men would move out and on. But each day more and more men arrived seeking refuge and the trickle turned into a flood. The Pastor suggested that the men make a voluntary contribution towards their keep, but insisted on them submitting to a background check and also attending church.

    As this influx of cars and men impacted the neighbourhood and at the same, the crime rate also rose the local paper started to voice the concerns of the community and published a few damning pieces on the Pastor’s activities. In a badly thought out move he panicked and invited one of the men who had been a convicted sex offender to stay with his own family to take the heat off for a while… but when word got out, it was the start of the unravelling of the whole program and the Pastor’s own life.

    Director Jesse Moss was his own one-man crew when he filmed this in 2012/3 and he gets up close and personal in telling the intimate stories of some of the men that are passing through in the hope of a better life. And although their struggles simply to survive are a powerful indictment on the effects of the downturn of a global economy on ordinary working men, it is the Pastor’s own somewhat bewildering and incessant crusade that is the main focus here. Reinke is resolute in his sheer doggedness to offer these men shelter and hope despite the overwhelming objections of the City, and of his own congregation who are angry at being railroaded into giving their support to something they can no longer tolerate.

    The Pastor’s very blinkered approach to expecting all of his neighbours to act as he believes Christians too unfairly casts them as the devil’s advocate when the refuse to go along with all his plans, and he eventually pays the cost of pushing them all too hard. There is more than hint that he has his own troubled past and on one occasion when he sympathies with one of the men who is baring his tormented soul, he remarks that they have a lot more in common than the other man would think. There are also the tell-tale signs of sudden flares of anger when Reinke believes that anyone has betrayed his trust in him. And then when the chips are down at the end of the movie, Reinke shocks his placid wife (and us) with a surprising confession.

    Moss’s movie never steers shy from showing the sheer despair of these men, and even of their guardian angel too. This compelling feature length documentary is quite an eye opener, in every sense of the word.

    In UK Cinemas 31st October

  • FILM REVIEW | The Secret Path

    This new gay love story from a married couple of newbie filmmakers Daniel and Richard Mansfield is quite unique.★★★

    Essentially a two-hander, its the story of a pair of lovers in their late 20s who are on the run having deserted the British Navy in the early 1800s. Having come ashore near the rather lush grounds of the estate of an abandoned country house, the two men live ‘rough’ during the day whilst at night they dig up dead bodies to sell and get some funds to move on.

    In a script that is full of more holes than any net these ex-Mariners may have found at sea, we are never too sure why they do little beyond walking around in circles or just lying on the grass cuddling each other.

    They make out occasionally in a manner that one can only suggest that their clumsiness is due to being new to man-on-man sex, or that they are used to doing it on rough seas which gave them a natural rhythm. What is for sure is that the whole place is haunted, and in this supernatural thriller where Theo alone keeps seeing dead people, we know that it cannot possible end well for him or for his lover Frank.

    It’s a bold move making a gay period drama, especially on a micro-budget, and these two Brit filmmakers should be applauded for their valiant effort. The combination of the jerky hand-held cameras and an ominously eerie soundtrack go a long way to making this wee movie more watchable. The two very likeable actors, Darren Bransford & Henry Regan, do well with their parts but they, like the script could have so benefited with both more substance and better direction. The whole thin plot was far too stretched out and made one’s attention wander a little too often in the middle section in particular.

    This new movie is due to be premiered at the GayWise Festival in London in November but before that will be available on VOD/DVD at Amazon.

  • FILM REVIEW | You And The Night

    The opening sequence of French writer/director Yann Gonzalez debut feature starts with confusion that never really eases up through this avant-garde art-house film. ★

    CREDIT: Les Rencontres D’Après Minuit
    CREDIT: Les Rencontres D’Après Minuit

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  • FILM REVIEW | Love Or Whatever

    Like most Therapists who spend their working day advising people how to get their act together, Corey was not that hot at getting his own life on the right track. When he finally proposed to his muscle-bound airhead personal trainer boyfriend, Jon just freaked out and ran off into the arms (and bed) of the nearest woman. He had finally come of out of his gay closet to discover that he was bisexual, or maybe straight even. ★★★

    Corey crying his eyes poured out his woes to his best friend who was his lesbian sister Kelsey, who insisted that there was only one way forward for him viz. Grindr. And soon as she had taught her brother how to use this Gay dating app. the first man he spotted was the Pizza delivery guy. Pete is hotter than hell: handsome, intelligent, articulate and is running the pizza store whilst caring for his sick Uncle the owner. He’s a saint and too perfect to be true, but this is the movies after all.

    The two men have a very successful date and geeky Corey now has another muscle-bound super-fit boyfriend, but before they can even think about even living happily ever after, they must get through a couple of melodramas first. It turns out that Melissa, the woman who the newly proclaimed bisexual Jon is dating, is also a client of Corey’s and she insists on telling him every intimate detail of her new relationship not knowing that he was her predecessor. Eventually he tells her that his appointment book is full and she should go find another therapist.

    Meanwhile Jon decides he really prefers Corey after all so he comes back and they immediately jump in to bed only to be caught in flagrento by saint Pete. Before they can even get their underwear back on, in storms Melissa who had given Jon a lift and had been waiting in the car outside. And just before they can all say scream ‘How could you ? etc’, then into this now rather packed house comes Kelsey to say that she is broke and her coffee shop business is in Foreclosure and she’s leaving town.

    It’s a romantic comedy so you know that in this very lightweight fluffy piece it will work out in the end so everyone will have big smiles on the faces and a hot body to share their beds. Well most of them anyway. This one is cute, thanks mainly to a good cast, and not just the ex-underwear models who play two of the leads.

    As fun as it is you and perfect for a date night, you may still cynical just opt for the ‘whatever’ rather than ‘love’!

    Available to by from Amazon

  • FILM REVIEW | The Way He Looks

    FILM REVIEW | The Way He Looks

    The lazy summer is over and Leo and his best friend Giovana are back in High School for the new term when curly headed new boy Gabriel joins the class for the first time.★★★★★

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  • FILM REVIEW | The Fault In Our Stars

    16 year old Hazel Graze is permanently attached to an oxygen tank that now keeps her alive after her most recent bouts of cancer. If knowing that her days on earth are severely limited isn’t bad enough, she has to cope with her well-meaning parents and their enforced sunny dispositions to just get through each day. It’s no wonder that this sweet teenager is so depressed as she is dragged from counsellor to group therapy because the adults in her life tell her this is what she needs.

    It isn’t of course, but as stoic and brave as she is, Hazel is not sure that anything beyond her favourite post-modern novel (about cancer), will ever remotely make her happy. That is until one day in the Youth Cancer Group she meets Augustus. A clever tall and handsome 18-year old whose potential career as a baseball player was cut short when cancer took his right leg. He’s a carefree optimistic soul with a very quick acerbic wit who takes an instant shine to Hazel and pursues with an energy and enthusiasm that totally throws her.

    He takes her out on a few very chaste dates, reads the novel that she is addicted too and starts courting her with long late night phone conversations and they gradually morph into a couple in love. A few weeks into this budding relationship Augustus springs a surprise. He’s fixed it with the ‘Make a Wish Foundation’ for the two of them to take a trip to Amsterdam where Hazel can meet Van Houten the author of the book she will not put down. The elusive writer never produced the sequel he promised and Hazel has always been desperate to know what happened next in this unfinished story.

    Meanwhile, before she can go she has another close call with death when she suddenly gets very sick again. It turns out that she will recover to fight another day only to realise that Augustus’s cancer has reappeared and this time there is going to be nothing to stop it being terminal, and soon.

    If that is not enough grief, Van Houten is a major disappointment and breaks her heart too, and just to ensure that we use up at least two boxes of Kleenex watching this high-octane tearjerker, when the young couple are in Amsterdam they visit the Anne Franck house, giving us another reason to sob out loud.

    However what makes this melodrama work and keep our sympathy remaining high throughout is a beautifully understated and mature performance by Shailene Woodley who so carefully avoids any temptation to milk the part and make Hazel a tragic figure. She imbues her with such a serenity and a dignity, makes her warm and funny and never once makes this poor dying teenager a pathetic figure. She is a sheer joy to watch. Ansel Elgot has a slightly easy task as Augustus and he does it exceedingly well demonstrating such great chemistry with his co-star.

    Based on the best-selling novel by John Green who used his past experiences as a chaplain in a children’s hospital for the groundwork of his story. Adapted for the screen by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, who previously wrote ‘The Spectacular Now’ together, and it is director Josh Boone’s sophomore feature.

    Highly recommended.

  • FILM REVIEW | Gone Girl

    ★★★★★ | Gone Girl
    When the movie opens on a quiet July morning in a small Missouri town there is no visible indication we are looking at a man who has fallen on hard times.

    It turns out that Nick Frost has been virtually unemployed since being laid off from his job on a magazine in NY and is now penniless. He and his wife live in a large ugly suburban house that they lease using the remains of her depleted trust fund, and this morning on his 5th wedding anniversary he is feeling sorry for himself and sipping a shot of Bourbon in the small empty bar he owns with his sister. As he sounds off about the stale state of his marriage the telephone rings. It’s his neighbour telling him that the front door of his house is wide open.

    That’s not the only thing he discovers when goes back home, as the house is totally deserted and furniture is turned over and broken as if there has been a struggle of sorts. When the police check it out they find signs of blood and enough clues to be concerned for Amy’s safety and decide to mount a Press Conference the next day to appeal for help. Nick is joined for this by Amy’s psychiatrist parents who are famous authors having once made a fortune on a series of books called Amazing Amy that ruthlessly exploited their daughter’s childhood.

    Initially, there is an overwhelming abundance of sympathy and support for Nick from both the police and local community but as Detective Rhonda Boney keeps uncovering further clues that indicate that Nick may be responsible for his wife’s disappearance, the mood rapidly changes. Egged on by local TV pundits who have already declared that Nick is guilty of killing his wife, everybody turns against him. When his young mistress goes public about their affair it seems like now that a motive has been established, they can be no further doubt about his guilt.

    Things are far from what they seem in this latest movie from the master of suspense director David Fincher who excels at complicated thrillers such as this. By using a series of flashbacks he has shown that this once fairytale romance is now on the rocks, but even so, it’s impossible to comprehend the depths that Amy will go to resolve it in a manner that will try and exact such diabolical revenge on her unfaithful husband.

    It is one of those movies that is best enjoyed knowing little beyond these bare bones of the plot because what follows is so astonishing it will certainly stupefy you. Just when you think you have it all worked out, the story will twist another 360 degrees to confound you yet once again. It is however unquestionably one of the BEST movies of 2014.

    Ben Affleck is superb as put-upon Nick who you may dislike for wanting his own way, but even he doesn’t deserve the punishment Amy wants to exact on him. The movie, however, belongs to the British actress Rosamund Pike who, in an Oscar-worthy performance, is nothing less than outstanding as Amy. It’s an amazing revelation to see her being so brilliantly devious, manipulative, demented and stunningly seductive when she wants her own way. She is such a sheer joy to watch (apart from all the bloody bits naturally).

    Lest I should forget, there are also some great supporting turns that deserve mention too. Kim Dickens (TV’s Sons of Anarchy) as the Detective, Carrie Coon (TV’s The Leftovers) as Nick’s sister Margo, Neil Patrick Harris as Amy’s stalker boyfriend, and Tyler Perry for once playing it straight as Nick’s hot shot lawyer.

    The script, the first ever written by Gillian Flynn, and adapted from her own novel gave Fincher a great canvass to work with, but it is his superb attention to the most minute detail that makes it such the spectacular roller-coaster ride that it is.

  • FILM REVIEW | This Is Where I Leave You

    ★★ | This Is Where I Leave You

    The ‘leaving’ in the title of this rather frenetic comedy refers to death and divorce and a few other departures in between. Everybody in the Altman family has both issues and secrets and the set up for us (and them) to discover them all is when the patriarch dies and his widow (their mother) insists that they must all sit the traditional Jewish Shiva even though none of them has been inside a synagogue for decades.

    Shiva means sitting there together for 7 days without exception or excuse and talking about life and death, and this family have a lot of it on their minds. Four days prior Judd just discovered his wife in bed with his boss and had walked out on both his marriage and his job. Judd’s eldest brother Paul has been trying to get his wife Annie pregnant for some time now and maybe firing blanks, so she looks for an alternative ‘donor’ in her ex-boyfriend, who just happens to be Judd. The youngest brother Phillip who is still just a big kid at heart shows up with his older cougar girlfriend/future fiancé who he met when she was his therapist. The 4th sibling is Wendy, the mother of two, and whose workaholic husband has a cell phone attached to his ear permanently, whilst she is still carrying a torch over Harry the man next door who was her childhood sweetheart and who she dumped after a serious car accident which left him with brain damaged.

    The only one who seems prepared to talk openly and frankly is the mother who proudly flaunts her new breast implants and incessantly hawks the best-selling book that she wrote some years ago based on all her children’s secrets. Naturally, it turns out that she has a big secret too, but this, the most surprising one is not revealed until almost the end.

    It’s all a little too much with an over-abundance of clichéd plot strands that are at best mildly amusing but in reality, give the overall feeling of an ill-conceived TV situation comedy that is too eager to please. Its one big saving grace is the stunning array of talented actors that make up the cast and do the very best with the script that they have been served up. Jason Bateman as Judd stoically takes most of the heavy load as the main character, and Adam Driver, Corey Stoll and the wonderful Tina Fey play his siblings. Timothy Oliphant is the man next door, Dax Shepherd bares all as the cheating Boss, Kathryn Hann is the motherless sister in law and Connie Britton as the put-upon cougar girlfriend. Mother is played by the great (and elegant looking) Jane Fonda but there are moments when you are convinced that she has just phoned her performance in.

    It’s one of those movies you will be happy to watch on a wet Winter evening when there is nothing else that grabs you on the TV, as its really not bad. It’s just that it could/should have been so much better

    Opens on the 24th October 2014

  • FILM REVIEW | The Two Faces Of January

    ★★★★ | The Two Faces Of January

    After an overly long gestation period, this lesser-known psychological thriller from novelist Patricia Highsmith finally makes it to the big screen.

    The year is 1962 and the story opens on the sunny steps of the Acropolis where two American tourists, Chester McFarland and his much younger bride Collette, are having fun enjoying the splendor of the Ruins, whilst nearby Rydal a handsome charismatic Tour Guide has a small group of young wealthy debutantes eating out of his hands. At Collette’s insistence, Chester hires the guide to take them sightseeing although he quickly realises that the young man is not all he claims to be.

    It turns out that neither is Chester, and the past that he is running from is far more complicated and filled with danger. That night a Private Investigator turns up at Chester’s hotel room and threatens to expose him unless he repays the money he swindled from some Clients in a Ponzi-type scheme. After a struggle in which he kills the man, Chester realises that he will need to quickly flee Athens before the murder is discovered. So he turns to Rydal sensing that the young man will know someone who can get them new passports to replace the ones that the Hotel had taken off them when they checked in.

    As they all need to hide out until the new passports can be forged, Rydal suggests that they take the night ferry to the distant island of Crete. However when they arrive there the Hotel will not give them rooms without proper identity, so they catch a decrepit local bus into the remote heart of the island hoping that a more basic village inn would take them in regardless. As the journey gets more difficult and fraught the trio seem less elegant and assured particularly as there are strong undercurrents of mistrust developing between them, especially the two men. Rydal seems fixated with Chester who he thinks off as a substitute figure for his father whom is estranged from, whilst on the other hand, Chester suspects that the young man wants to steal Colette away from him.

    Suspicion leads to treachery and the pace gets more frenetic as they try to keep one eye on each other whilst keeping the other eye looking out for the authorities in hot pursuit as they start catching up on them. It’s very clear that it’s not going to end well for any of them.

    It’s hardly a Hitchcock masterpiece like his adaptation of Highsmith’s Strangers on A Train, nor is it Minghella’s take on the novelist’s Talented Mr Ripley but Oscar-nominated screenwriter Hossein Amini in his directing debut does an admirable job keeping the tension level high in this gripping thriller. The moody cinematography is particular is superb adding a very dramatic visual look to this period piece. Whilst the lead actors Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst may not have a great deal of chemistry as a couple, they put in really fine performances as the troubled McFarlands that one expects from these two talented actors The real joy, however, is Oscar Isaac who was completely mesmerizing as Rydal, and this following hotly on from his riveting turn in Inside Lllewyn Davies clearly shows that he is destined to be a major star.