THEGAYUK

Tag: Film Review

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

  • FILM REVIEW | Map To The Stars

    Maps to the Stars can be described as a take-off on Hollywood and celebrity and the people who inhabit this world, and boy what a world it is.

    It’s a world created by David Cronenberg, who also directed. He’s the man who last brought us 2012’s Cosmopolis but he is more well known for the much better received A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Maps to the Stars is not a normal movie, in other words, it’s not what it says on the tin. It’s surreal, dark, black, and intense. It’s a movie that is desperately trying to show us the inhabitants of Hollywood, and their dreams, and their need for fame and validation.

    There are several lead characters in the film, but it mostly belongs to Julianne Moore. She plays ageing actress Havana Segrand. While she’s not that old, she can’t get the parts she used to get, but one part that she really wants is to play a part her late mother once played. Segrand seems to live in the shadow of her more legendary mother, who died in a mysterious fire, yet is not a stable woman – though she lives in a huge house that befits a famous film star. Even though Segrand is surrounded by people all the time, including her agent, her personal assistant Agatha Weiss (Mia Wasikoska), and her visits to self-help guru Dr Sanford Weiss (John Cusack), she sees the ghost of he mother as a young girl around the house, and she doesn’t know why. Segrand is just one of the many strange characters in the film.

    There’s also the already-mentioned Agatha Weiss. Her story is even more bizarre. She’s been kept in a psychiatric asylum in Jupiter, Florida since she was a young girl, after a horrible fire that left her with scars on her hand (she wears gloves) and face. It was a fire that appears to be one that she started, as she has been ostracised and totally rejected by her family. This includes her father, who happens to be Dr. Sanford Weiss. She’s obsessed with trying to re-enter the family circle, which she does, and on top of all this, there’s something really strange about her.

    Dr Sanford Weiss is a famous television psychologist who offers New Age advice to his followers, as well as performing intimate bodywork on his celebrity clients, the rich and famous. He stars in his own television program that is constantly on in his household; he’s a strange egotistical man. He is also the author of best-selling self-help books with analysis for the troubled, which doesn’t help his 13-year old teenage son, Benjie Weiss (a very good Evan Bird).

    Benjie Weiss is a teen sensation, a Beiberesque movie star who is making way to much money. He’s spoiled and screwed up. He’s a teen heartthrob (having starred in the big hit ‘Bad Babysitter’ and fresh from rehab – at the tender age of 13). He visits a sick girl in a hospital, to boost his reputation, and is told by his agent that the girl in dying of AIDS, but actually she tells him that she’s got Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He’s pissed off and tells his agent off for providing him with the wrong information. The girl eventually dies and Benjie is haunted by her ghost – a ghost that he sees almost everywhere he goes. It’s a metaphor for his stardom, an attempt to bring him back down to earth perhaps? But it doesn’t, it makes him a lunatic to the point where he thinks he’s strangling her but he actually strangles the co-star of a new film that he’s doing. He’s jealous that this co-star is stealing scenes from him. The strangulation is a chilling scene, and all too surreal by the reaction of his mother, Cristina Weiss (Olivia Williams). She’s not your typical celebrity mother; she’s a bit backwards and emotionally unstable, paranoid if you will, who is more concerned about her son’s ability to make more money than for his personal well-being.

    The Weiss family is one screwed up family. Robert Pattison shows up as perhaps the only sane person in the movie. He’s Jerome, a limo driver who happens to pick up Agatha when she arrives in Los Angeles. He’s not just a limo driver, he’s also a part-time actor and has fallen for Agatha, but also gets seduced by Havana. After their sexual romp all hell breaks lose and Agatha goes on a rampage.

    Maps to the Stars is an exaggerated take off on Hollywood and it’s denizens. It’s a film that is a distorted view on celebrity culture, but to the extreme, with highs and the very lows, with ghosts from their past thrown in for scary effect. It’s a film where the characters are all very unlikeable, so unlikeable that you sort of wish they would all kill themselves. Maps to the Stars uses Los Angeles and Hollywood as the backdrop, with parts of the film shot on the Hollywood walk of fame and under the famous Hollywood sign, to give it an authentic feel.

    Most people say that Hollywood is fake and artificial, which is observed well in this film. It’s fake, dark, make believe, artificial and over the top, with celebrities swallowed up by their obsessions with success, celebrity and money, and perhaps this is what Hollywood is all about?

    Available to buy from Amazon

  • FILM REVIEW | Ida

    ★★★★★ | Ida

    It’s hard to decide exactly what period this new cinematic masterpiece from Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski is set in with its austere dramatic settings that look like they have remained unchanged for centuries. This unforgiving bleak countryside that seems to have escaped any attempt at modernization is in fact 1962 but you have this sinking feeling that this part of rural post-war Poland is probably still exactly the same today.

    Ida is an 18-year-old Novice at a large decaying rather remote Convent and is just about to take her final Vows. The Convent has been her home since she had been abandoned as an orphaned baby, but now the Mother Superior tells her that she does, in fact, have one living relative, an Aunt who she should go visit before she makes her ultimate commitment to God.

    She has two major shocks awaiting her at the end of her long bus journey when she finally meets her Aunt. Not only does she discover that she is Jewish by birth, but she also quickly realises that her Aunt, is a former high-ranking Communist Party Public Prosecutor who has transgressed into an alcoholic chain-smoking woman who seems to bed every man she meets. The sheltered young nun-to-be, however, seems to take it all in her stride and announces that she wants to go back to her home village just once and visit her parents grave.

    An initially reluctant Aunt agrees to drive her there, as she needs to prepare Ida for the harsh reality of the situation. The parents had been slaughtered in the Pogrom in the War and even now the local anti-Semitic Communist population are in denial of their complicity as in many cases they then stole the lands left by the murdered Jews. This was the case of her own parents and it took the fearless tenacity of the Aunt to uncover the actual facts.

    Along with their road-trip, they give a lift to a handsome young saxophonist who is en route to play at a Ball in the next town. Ida doesn’t realise at the time that he will turn out to be one of the reasons that she questions her vocation and her ‘calling’ to serve God.

    The tense melodramatic story is as uncompromisingly bleak as the landscape it is set in, and it’s twisting plot lines as both women’s lives unfold in front of our eyes makes for compelling viewing. The reason for their sadness is understandable and the outcome is, therefore, inevitable as neither of them can really carry on as before with the knowledge that they have unleashed.

    It is unquestionable one of the most powerfully moving films of the year to date. Completely stunning on so many levels but even so, it is the superb black & white cinematography that so carefully framed each single shot that took this movie to a whole another level. Faultless award-worthy acting by two sublime actors Agata Trzebuchowska and Agata Kulesza who had great chemistry as the two completely different woman who really had so much in common.

    Completely unmissable.

    P.S. The rather surprising detail about this movie that will undoubtedly go down in the annals of Polish cinema as a national masterpiece, is that it’s director and co-writer Pawel Pawlikowskin was born there but has actually lived and worked in the UK and France most of his life. Interesting then seeing the country, as he must remember it from his own childhood.

  • FILM REVIEW | Reaching For The Moon

    ★★★★★ Reaching For The Moon | Elizabeth Bishop was something of a self-absorbed cold fish. When she finished her tenure as US Poet Laureate in 1950, she was 40 years old, alone in N.Y., and suffering with ‘writers block’. At the suggestion of her friend and fellow poet Robert Lowell she decides to go to South America for a long vacation.

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  • FILM REVIEW | Wish I Was Here

    ★★ | Wish I Was Here

    Aiden is evidently a very lousy actor. He’s so bad that even though he lives in LA he hasn’t managed to score even a bit-part role for some years now.

    He does insist though that he must ‘follow his dream’ and selfishly refuses to give up even though his nearest and dearest must pick up the slack for him. His wife Sarah has a monotonous data-processing job at the Water Company just to put food on their table, and his father pays the fees for the private Jewish school that both of his children, Grace and Tucker, attend. This however now has to change as his father announces that as he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and wants to spend all his money on alternative therapies, he can no longer fund the kids’ schooling.

    Aiden’s response to this new development is to try and get accepted as a charity case at the school hoping they may forgo the fees, and when this fails, decides he will home school the children instead. It’s something that he clearly has no skills for, but then again, it’s obvious that he’s not actually qualified to do much at all beyond attending auditions.

    Pre-teen Grace who is a very earnest honours student wants to continue learning how to become a devout Jew, whereas her younger sibling Tucker would rather play video games than participate in his father’s attempts to teach him anything. Meanwhile, Sarah has to work in a cubicle with a creepy man who insists on talking about what he calls his penis voice and when she complains to her boss, she is just rebuked and told that she should be grateful she even has a job. Aiden’s father’s treatments fail and his health is now declining rapidly and he is desperate to make amends with Aiden’s slacker brother who seems to hate the entire world, except for the cute woman next door. But somehow Aiden still manages to make most of this all about him.

    There are more than a few similarities between Aiden on screen and his creator/writer/director Zach Braff (although Mr Braff is a good actor) as both are well-meaning and full of good intentions but in this movie are ultimately doomed to fall well short of their goals. This comic drama about the angst of a middle-class Jewish family ‘struggling’ in LA is at best mildly amusing, but for the most part is very flat and annoying. The fact that Mr Braff totally funded his sophomore movie from Kickstarter donors may be the clue as to why this rather undisciplined story, free of any Studio input, seems to have allowed him to indulge him in taking swings at many of the things in LA that seem to really peeve him with such an unfunny script.

    There are touches of the disarmingly charming Braff who has delighted audiences in his TV sitcom Scrubs for years, but not even a glimpse of the wit or humour of Woody Allen that he claims to want to aspire too. The high points are the poignant performance by Mandy Patinkin as the father, and a resilient Kate Hudson doing her best with the little she had been given as Sarah.

    After being so enamoured with his debut movie Garden State, a break-out Indie smash ten years ago, I was so looking forward to Braff’s follow-up, and it is just a disappointment then to find it is so less accomplished and enjoyable than one would have expected.

  • FILM REVIEW | The Perfect Wedding

    ★★★ | The Perfect Wedding

    Paul used to be a drunk. He also used to be Roy’s boyfriend. Two years later and both men have moved on with their separate lives. Paul goes to AA Meetings regularly and is now sober, thanks to Zack his Sponsor, and he lives at home with his very supportive parents in the their rather lush waterfront home in Florida.

    Paul’s sister Alana is engaged to be married and is coming home for the Christmas holidays to start planning a lavish June wedding. Besides her overly-enthusiastic mother, Alana also has her two best friends coming to help work out the details too, trouble is, one of them is Roy, her brother’s ex, and both men are nervous at meeting again for the first time after their messy breakup.

    Roy is also concerned that as he is still single, he may be perceived as a loser, so he persuades Gavin another ex boyfriend to tag along and pretend that the two of them are a couple.

    There was a time a decade or two ago, when almost every gay movie dealt with the ‘A’ issue i.e. AIDS.

    Thankfully at least cinematically we have moved on and this rom-com tackles three more big ‘A’s ‘ instead: alcoholism, adoption, and Alzheimer’s. It almost seems at times with this issue packed story that bestselling romantic author Suzanne Brockman had deliberately penned a script (with her husband Ed Gaffney) about two guys falling in love where being gay was so ordinary that it is almost over looked.

    The Gaffney’s actually wrote this for their gay son the actor Jason T Gaffney who did his mom and pop proud with his turn as Gavin who everyone seemed to fall in love with at some time or another.

    And in case you had guessed that Paul and Roy had seen the error of their ways and fallen back together, then you would have been wrong. The couple whose marriage rounds out this film (after Alana’s had hers) is that of Roy’s two exes who found each other irresistible.

    Thanks to some good performances, a very impressive location and some deft direction from newbie Scott Gabriel this small-budgeted indie movie is definitely one of the better ones of this genre. Touching and tender with very likeable characters that one wanted to find happiness… even if it’s the kind that only happens in the movies… and not a single stereotype in sight.

    It had plenty of eye-candy, and for once they didn’t keep disrobing when the story lagged at all.

  • FILM REVIEW | Wakolda

    ★★★★ | Wakolda

    In the opening scenes of this historical drama we see a distinguished looking German gentleman accosting a travelling family of five to ask if he may follow behind them as he is unsure about driving alone on the desolate dirt roads in the middle of the vast plains of Patagonia.

    The year is 1960 and they are heading south to the small lakefront town of Bariloche to re-open a Hotel that once was a thriving concern when another generation of the family ran it. The German never reveals much about his own destination or any of his plans for staying in this country far from home.

    When they finally arrive, the German, who the family are learning is either a Doctor or Scientist, insists on renting a room from them and to overcome their reluctance sweetens his request by overpaying as he has sensed that the family is cash poor. Eva the heavily pregnant mother is German speaking, as are so many of the local residents – as the best school in the area was the German one, and she welcomes him into their home. Her husband Enzo is a struggling doll-maker and although a man of few words and simple tastes, he is the only one in the family who is not impressed with the charm onslaught from this very creepy stranger in their midst.

    The ‘Doctor’ is particularly taken by Lilith the 12 year old of the family who has always been much smaller than the norm for her age ever since she was born 2 months premature. Soon he is trying to persuade the parents that with the hormone treatment that he has been working on, he can improve Lilith’s growth rate dramatically. They are all initially reluctant to even consider this course of action but Eva relents after Lilith suffers another brutal day of taunting at her school because of her size. However she insists that they keep the news of this change of heart from Enzo until at least Lilith starts gaining some height.

    Now the ‘Doctor’ has gained Eva’s confidence he turns his attention to her, especially when he discovers that she is going to give birth to twins as we eventually find out that he has some plans of his own for these yet unborn babies.

    This movie from Argentinian filmmaker Lucía Puenzo, adapted from her own novel, never hides the fact that the Doctor is none other than Josef Mengele the notorious Nazi who did barbarous and inhuman genetic experiments on the inmates of Auschwitz earning himself the moniker ‘The Angel of Death.’ This highly believable fiction is based on the fact that after the War he, like so other high-ranking Nazis, fled to South America where he continued his cruel work on pregnant women and children until his death in Brazil in 1979.

    Puenzo slowly unravels her story and builds the tension by insinuating what the Doctor really is up too as he slowly manipulates his way into this family’s lives. It is only the German School Archivist that suspects and confirms his true identity and she is anxious that he is caught and out in trial for his war crimes just like Eichmann who Israelis had recently captured. Unfortunately, as he is protected by a wide network of loyal Party supporters he will always manage to completely avoid this.

    This chilling tale succeeds mainly due to the combination of a convincingly sinister performance by Spanish actor Àlex Brendemühl as the menacing Mengele, and also the bleak remote landscape dramatically captured by cinematographer Nicolás Puenzo, who is also the Director’s brother. This was Argentine’s official submission for Best Foreign Picture Oscar, and although it didn’t end up with a nomination, it was definitely worth a consideration.

  • FILM REVIEW | A Most Wanted Man

    ★★★★★ |  A Most Wanted Man

    In Dutch filmmaker Anton Corbijn’s take on John le Carré’s spy thriller we are very much aware of who ‘the most wanted man’ is, but like Gunther Bachmann, a German Intelligence Officer in Hamburg, we never know why he has earned this title.

    Gunther is very much the ‘good man’ in this intricate web of international spy/terrorist catching. Gruff, scruffy, chain-smoking and a fiercely independent operator in charge of a Specialised Terrorist Unit, he is trying to get information from Issa Karpov a half Russian & half-Chechen Muslim illegal immigrant before the police or other authorities can capture and imprison him.

    Karpov has escaped from a Russian prison where he was brutally tortured and he is portrayed as being the innocent victim of the fact that his father was a notorious terrorist/criminal. Via a sympathetic lawyer, Karpov leads Gunther to Tommy Brue a wealthy Merchant Banker who is trying to extract himself from his late father’s dubious clients who he has inherited. This includes Karpov Snr. who still has a major nest egg stashed away in the Bank. Gunther wants to use Brue and these illegal millions to trap a respected Professor who he suspects is the head of a cell of terrorists. Although both the German Authorities and the CIA. reluctantly agree to give Gunther time to do things his way, they obviously do not mean it at all.

    It’s a well told thrilling intricate story, although a tad confusing at times, and it keeps you completely engaged until the very end. It’s very much Gunther’s story, which is appropriate as the great Philip Seymour Hoffman plays him magnificently in this, his final movie role. I’m unsure if Corbijn actually re-edited the movie as a result of Hoffman’s untimely death which occurred after its Sundance Premiere, but anyway Gunther is rarely off the screen. It’s a powerful swan song from this talented actor and even more poignant because he plays yet another dishevelled character that seems to be such a perfect fit for him in his very distinguished career.

    The cast is made up of Rachel McAdams as the liberal lawyer/social worker, Robin Wright as the cold-hearted double-dealing CIA. Agent, Willem Dafoe as the Banker plagued by the sins of his father, Nina Hoss as the very matter-of-fact loyal assistant to Gunther, and handsome Grigoriy Dobrygin as the hunted man who is forced to decide between his life and his religion when he is made to shave his shaggy beard off.

    We came away believing the real possibility that if the Gunthers of this world were actually allowed to use Intelligence as opposed to the usual knee-jerk response of sheer brutality to try and deal with the whole scenario of terrorists, then things may even start to get resolved. And the other totally different thought ingrained in our minds as the final credits rolled, was that the world will never quite be the same after the loss of such a very fine actor.

    A Most Wanted Man opens in the UK on the 12th September 2014

  • FILM REVIEW | I’m A Porn Star

    Filmmaker Charlie David‘s light-hearted rambling review of the burgeoning gay pornography industry could never be mistaken as a serious piece of investigative journalism. After speedily racing through the whole history of the business from its birth in the 1930s up to present day, the documentary focuses on four of the most successful performers today. They have probably earned the accolade of ‘star’ but then again this grossly overused title has now been claimed by everyone who has ever had a bit part in a movie or video. And there are a lot of them. In our internet based culture there now an estimated 370 million porn websites online contributing the bulk of a $13 billion business worldwide!

    All of David’s subjects are very affable men and happy enough to candidly share their views on controversial topics such as barebacking, HIV, social stigma, fetishes and escorting. The whole question of gay-for-pay was also discussed by them and not always in a positive manner. Whilst Colby Jansen’s attitude regarding his evolving sexuality was refreshingly honest, Johnny Rapid’s constant reminders of not only how straight he was (‘When I am being f..ked by a guy, I keep thinking of my girlfriend just so that I can remain erect’) became very tiresome.

    And with interviews with Ryan R a leading director (and a heterosexual) who claimed as others did that he did gay instead of straight porn because it was financially more lucrative, David never pushed him or anyone else further on this issue. The fact that there are seemingly so many straight men either side of the camera seems to indicate that as a community we still haven’t dispensed with all our internalised homophobia.

    The most likeable, and by far the most level-headed of the pornstars featured, was the young-looking 29 years old Canadian Brent Everett. He’s not only an out proud gay man, but a happily married one who also has the full support of his parents for his chosen line of work. Everett, quite a charmer, is very effusive about his very successful career and doesn’t proffer any hint of regret or become an apologist for his roles like so many of his peers. He revels in the fact that it his work is fun and that he is clearly committed to making it as entertaining and sexy as possible for his legions of fans.

    And that was probably David’s motives in making this titillating movie with its explicit scenes of sex and a seemingly endless parade of erect penises that often distract you from some of his narration. He also succeeds in making the industry look like a well-run corporate type business far removed from its old sleazy and seedy back-street image. It’s an enjoyable and diverting lively romp that will fascinate and amuse anybody with the slightest interest in the subject i.e. all gay men!

     

     

  • FILM REVIEW | Ballet Boys

    Ballet Boys is a feature length documentary that follows in the footsteps of three adolescent male dancers as they are about to graduate from the Norwegian Ballet Academy and move on to the next stage of their training. ★★★

    CREDIT: Ballet Boys

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  • FILM REVIEW | Magic In The Moonlight

    ★★ | Magic In The Moonlight

    Within a few minutes after the opening of this movie… Woody Allen’s 46th, and probably one of his most tedious … it is very obvious that the magic in the title refers strictly to the staged tricks created by the two leading characters and not to the film itself.

    Allen’s very thin story, set in Europe some time between the two World Wars, is about a famous English professional illusionist who’s stage persona is a very crass Chinaman complete with Fu Manchu moustache (which I’m guessing that Allen must have considered was not racially offensive). Wei Ling Soo aka Stanley is recruited by his best friend Howard to unmask an American psychic who he believes is faking her way into the bosom of a wealthy American Family vacationing in their chateau on the French Riviera. Sophie is aided and abetted by her scheming mother in order to get their hands on some of their fortune and marry the gormless heir of the family.

    It turns out she really is a fraud but for totally different reasons than the ones that we expect, but by the time that the pompous sarcastic Stanley has uncovered this, we have lost all interest anyway. Forget the sleight of hand tricks he plays, as its the plot that is so slight to the point of being so transparently obvious.

    Cold-hearted cynical Stanley with his very unemotional fiance back in London naturally falls in love with Sophie but as she is practically 30 years younger, we are as uncomfortable about this age-inappropriate romance as Stanley awkwardly appears to be as well.

    Colin Firth makes heavy going of his portrayal of Stanley, and a radiant looking Emma Stone fares little better in this very stilted script that gives neither of them much of a chance to shine. The only cast member that relieved the fast encroaching boredom was the wonderful Eileen Aitkens as Stanley’s Aunt, even though her part was very small.

    Kudos though for the stunning period costumes and very glorious sets and locations which at least gave us something pretty to look at, but not enough to stop me nodding off from time to time.

    P.S. Look closely in the scene set in a Jazz Club for the fleeting glance of the singer who is none other than the fabulous Ute Lemper.

  • FILM REVIEW | Obvious Child

    ★★★★★ | Obvious Child

    The movie opens with a very confident Donna in the middle of her stand-up comedy routine in a small nondescript bar in New York. She is extremely funny and disarmingly honest as she talks candidly about the absurdities of her own life.

    The small audience loves it and applaud her enthusiastically when she finishes her Set. All that is except her boyfriend who had been standing at the back of the room listening to a stream of highly personal jokes made at his expense. Then minutes later the two of them are together in a rather busy unisex bathroom and he dumps her. Not for the jokes but because he has been sleeping with her best friend for some time now.

    Suddenly life doesn’t seem quite so funny for this part-time comedian so she takes to her bed with a large bottle of wine and her phone. The more she drinks, the more she leaves a series of ugly voicemails on her (now ex) boyfriends machine.

    Days later she’s back on stage and recounts this new development that resulted in her being a reluctant single again but she is so bitter and angry that she totally alienates the dwindling audience. This calls for more drinking in the bar afterwards and when she is well-plastered allows herself to be picked up by Max a clean-cut preppy business studies graduate who seems a fish-out-water both in this Dive and also in Donna’s bed where he ends up later.

    Fast forward a few weeks and Donna discovers she is pregnant. She knows that the baby is Max’s but, as she tells Nellie her roommate, she doesn’t know how it happened. She was sure they had condoms and that she had even helped Max open the packet, but she was unsure if in their drunken stupor they had actually used them.

    What Donna has no doubts about is that she will have an abortion, but when in a series of coincidences, she keeps running into Max again, she feels an obligation to at least share the news with him. The trouble is she never knows how too. She tries to confide in her puppet-making very supportive father and even in her rather cold micro-managing Professor mother but she fears losing their support. Naturally, when she does break down and break the news they are in her corner anyway and back her choice completely.

    But still left with having to deal with Max, she invites the unsuspecting (and very sweet) man to watch her perform at the Bar the night before the ‘procedure’ is scheduled, the date is February 13th. She is brutally upfront with all the details regarding the unwanted pregnancy and her chosen route and has her slightly shocked audience laughing along with her. Except, Max who runs out into the cold.

    This wonderful, refreshing, heart-breaking comedy that bravely dares to tackle the oft-taboo subject of abortion head on is the work of director and co-writer Gillian Robespierre and is based on the successful short film she had made a few years earlier. Both Donna and Max are very believable characters, thanks to a combination of some excellent writing and great performances, and even though they are so totally opposite on many levels they are a good fit. This is, despite the plot I have outlined so far, a romantic comedy after all. There are still some moments of great pain and struggle as Donna wrestles with the finality of her choice and I think it is also very important to note that even with its very honest and open approach to abortion, no-one in this story treats the subject glibly.

    There is also a rather wonderful unexpected ending that so refreshingly steered cleared of all of the usual cliches but as it includes spoilers I have omitted covering it here.

    This is indie movie making at its best and I loved it now just as much and when I first saw this at Sundance.