THEGAYUK

Tag: Five Star Film Review

The latest Five-star film review from THEGAYUK.

  • FILM REVIEW | Blood Brother

    ★★★★★ | Blood Brother

    This is one of those real life stories that you come across now and again that re-affirm your faith in the goodness of (some) human beings. Rocky Braat’s story is especially moving and relates how one very ordinary and regular young American man, who is exceptionally unselfish and wonderfully generous, made a real difference to the lives of many children that society would like to forget.

    Rocky grew up in Pittsburgh with a drug addict mother who had a whole string of abusive boyfriends and as he struggled academically at school they put him in special ed classes. He is however far from stupid and graduated from design college, and got a good job on a magazine. After a while he got the travel bug and quit his job and went off to see the world and ‘find himself’.

    His chosen destination was India, and one day on a whim he went to see an AIDS orphanage in Chennai. He thought that the visit would be tough seeing the kids suffering, and it was indeed and he found himself crying a lot, but he still felt compelled to stay there for one whole month. When he resumed his journey he couldn’t get the kids out of his mind, because despite all their troubles, they found such joy in living, so he immediately turned around and went back.

    He stayed the rest of the summer, and when it was time to go back to the US, he promised the kids he would return in one year, and he did.

    This movie, shot by Steve Hoover, Rocky’s childhood friend tells of the next few years of how this remarkable man with no real qualifications at all, and with no official paid position lives there in the orphanage and became an amateur dentist, teacher, clown, carer, friend and father to all these abandoned children who absolutely adored him. He lives in a rat infested hovel, exists on a daily diet of rice, and has to keep leaving the country because of visa problems.

    It is a highly emotional story (there wasn’t a dry eye in the house even with the cynical Sundance audience I watched it with) as we live through all the many traumas the kids and Rocky endure. Kids get very sick and some die as they can only have access to the very basic of AIDS drugs, and Rocky Anna (as the kids call him) is there every inch of the way. What is so endearing that Rocky, unlike a professional AIDS worker, is never ever detached from any of the happenings and gets totally distraught and frustrated at times and often cries.

    The fact that he is there and chosen to remain with the kids is simply explained as that’s what he wants to do. There are no lofty claims that he is doing God’s calling (or anyone else’s for that matter) or for any religious conviction or any other profound reason. This is where he wants to be, and he certainly is making an enormous difference to all these children’s lives.

    I am totally in awe of the man, and it was interesting too that as Steve Hoover witnessed and filmed Rocky insitu over the years he grew to understand and appreciate why his friend is so committed to the kids and the country itself. However, there is a lighter note to the story too, because just as Rocky ‘finds himself’, he also finds a beautiful Indian bride to marry.

  • FILM REVIEW | Advanced Style

    ★★★★★ | Advanced Style

    Five years ago Ari Seth Cohen took to the streets of Manhattan armed with his camera looking for old ladies. Not just any elderly dears but photographing fashionable women in their ’70s, ’80s and beyond having being inspired by his own grandmother who made him appreciate senior style icons who life live to the fullest.

    His blog which became de-rigour reading for myself and many of my friends developed into a book and is now a delightful documentary. A project that started out with Cohen being inspired by this tight band of eccentric women with a zest for living and a passion for their fashion has almost turned full circle as they are now enjoying the fame and celebrity that his attention has brought them from a curious world.

    The ladies’ stories are inspirational and a sheer joy to listen too, and the highly individual and colourful personal styles their adopt in their traffic-stopping outfits are just part of their well-conceived mantras of living every moment of the lives to the hilt, especially as they recognise that they are now in their twilight years. Tiny red-headed 92-year-old artist Illona Royce Smithkin with the biggest eyelashes I have ever seen sums it up aptly when she say that she no longer buys green bananas as she simply cannot afford to wait for them to ripen.

    Each of the group has a swathe of stories to tell and none with more than a hint of regret of lives well led (‘I wish I had children’ says one coyly, but adds quickly that ‘taking care of all her handmade clothes is much more hard work than playing house.’ There’s 81-year-old Jacquie ‘Tajah’ Murdock who was one of the original ‘Apollo Girls’ in Harlem and during the course of the film, is chosen by Steven Meisel no less to be the new face of his campaign for Lanvin. And Lynn Dell Cohen, also in her 80s, who has run a Vintage Frock Store Off Broadway for 40 years and still politely hectors each of the customers to find their own style.

    It’s refreshing and a real treat not simply because these elderly women look so ravishing but because they dare to be different and are such a delightful anti-dote to mainstream UK who slavishly try to keep up with ever-evolving fashion trends that few can afford and most look hideous in. But they are also up there on a pedestal as wrinkled and challenged as they are (‘at my age for everything in my body that I have two off, one hurts like hell’) simply refusing to either act the way society expects them too, or just die quietly in the corner. In fact one of their number, Zelda Kaplan a mere 95-year-old had a heart attack whilst she is the front row of a fashion show. Zelda must be so happy in heaven now.

    Style, as these elderly icons will show you, is much more than just about fashion. It’s an innate quality that not just enriches your own life, but also those of the people that are part of yours too. And each of these irrepressible ladies reminds us yet once again that life is not a dress rehearsal.

    Unmissable.

  • FILM REVIEW | Getting Go, The Go Doc Project

    ★★★★★ | Getting Go, The Go Doc Project

    For three weeks in the summer of 2012 filmmakers Cory James Krueckeberg and Tom Gustafson (the producer/director behind the cute ‘MARIACHI GRINGO’ and the gay cult film ‘WERE THE WORLD MINE’) followed two guys all over New York with a camera and a script and nothing else.

    Tanner, a slightly nerdy recent College Grad had devised a plan to shoot a documentary about the NYC nightlife scene in order to meet a really hot go-go guy that he has cyber-obsessed with. And this is the film about their film.

    They followed the couple filming each other all over the city in cafes and bars, rooftops, dance clubs, their own living rooms and bathrooms and eventually into their bedrooms too. As the story developed and the relationship between ‘Go’ and ‘Doc’ evolved in front of us, there is a very definite, and somewhat unexpected, shift in the power axis between the two men.

    This really is guerrilla filmmaking at its best. No crew, a kickstarter budget of $10K, one actor and one real life go-go boy in an innovative hybrid of documentary, narrative and art film that is such a delight. Following hot on the heels of movies such as ‘WEEKEND’ ‘KEEP THE LIGHTS ON’ and ‘HORS LES MURS’ this wee drama is part of a very welcome new movement of edgy queer cinema.

    By no means perfect (like the editing!) but it has many things to really love… such as a rather brilliant soundtrack of new music from gay musicians… not to forget the acting of these two young leads who are not exactly tough on the eye to watch even with their clothes on. It also packs an energy and excitement that is quite infectious.

    The future of gay cinema looks very promising indeed when new work like this is being made… and finding the audience it deserves.

  • FILM REVIEW | The Normal Heart

    ★★★★★ | The Normal Heart
    Larry Kramer is perpetually angry. This prominent loud-mouthed writer and gay activist has been shouting out his highly personal take on some of life’s iniquities and inequalities for the past 40 years and has made himself famously unpopular.

    It was his exasperation with the apathy of the gay community when the AIDS scare first started that made him co-found the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in his living room in 1981. And it was his unfettered bursts of outrage against an indifferent and immovable culture and a bureaucratic stonewall that got him unceremoniously forced out of the organisation just two years later.

    Retiring to Europe to lick his wounds, Kramer sat down and wrote an autobiographical piece of his whole experience of those past constantly changing years. It opened Off Broadway in 1985 when the AIDS Epidemic had really started to take a tight grip in New York (and many other major cities) and ‘The Normal Heart’ became the seminal play of the period. It would be another 6 years before Kushner’s ‘Angels of America’ would be seen.

    Now nearly some three decades later the play finally makes it to the silver screen after many false starts and broken promises, but along the way it has not lost a single iota of its potency with its powerful story that never fails to stun its audience into sheer silence.

    The movie opens on a typical care-free speedo-clad beach in Fire Island summer in the late 1970’s where sex is the first and second thing on the minds on this happy gay crowd. When one of their number suddenly collapses without warning on the sand no-one has the slightest idea that he is one of the early victims of what the New York Times will later describe as GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) i.e. the Gay Cancer.

    As the virus spreads writer Ned Weeks played by Mark Ruffalo (Kramer’s ‘stand in’) tracks down Dr Emma Brockner (Julia Roberts) who is the first physician in NY dealing solely with the epidemic and she simply cannot cope. She is overwhelmed with the increasing number of patients, with the indifference of the medical community who in denial, refuse to help or provide funds; and the apathy of the gay community who refuse to give up their newly gained hedonistic liberty to stop having sex just because this disabled doctor says it could kill them.

    Brockner recognizes a passionate true spirit in Weeks and eggs him to start trying to both persuade the gay community to change their practices and also organize an official support system.

    Even with the figures of gay men getting sick and dying escalating at an unprecedented pace Weeks is frustrated at the very little headway the newly formed GMHC is making. Finding himself as the unofficial spokesman, mainly due to the fact that he is not only the most articulate of the bunch, but his anger at a system that refuses to pitch in and help makes him a compelling anti-Establishment figure that the media are happy to cover.

    It may help them sell newspapers but it doesn’t achieve any of Week’s more lofty ambitions, and in fact only serves as the reason for the Board of GMHC to fight him tooth and nail and try and control his activities. Even with a Mayor, a President and a whole medical community that refuses to do anything to help stop all these men dying, the GMHC still wants to take a very cautious and overly polite approach so as not to upset either anyone in power or a gay community that do not want to curb their lifestyles.

    Whilst all this is going down 30-something-year-old Weeks finds love for the first time in his life in the shape of a younger New York Times Reporter Felix Turner (Matt Bomer). This unlikely seeming couple turn out to be a perfect match and their very passionate relationship is the one happy part of Week’s life even though it is sadly doomed when Turner falls ill and his young life is unseemly ended way before its prime like so many others of his generation.

    The movie ends soon after that (although the story in real life didn’t with Kramer going on to co-found ACT UP the AIDS activist organisation that unapologetically demanded help and support to help fight the plague and whose many successes included the releasing of much needed drugs and funds).

    Kramer’s anger may also have been one of the reasons that it took so long to get this on to our screens, but it was worth every minute of the wait. In Ryan Murphy, the openly gay creator of ‘Glee’ and ‘American Horror Story’, he found a filmmaker who not only put his own money where his mouth was by buying the Rights himself, but he proved to be a collaborator who created a masterpiece movie true to his vision.

    Murphy deserves credit for many things, not least the fact that he took the almost unheard of decision of casting many openly gay actors to play gay men. With not one mis-step in his selection which included the actor & director Joe Mantello as Mickey Marcus (fresh from his Tony nominated turn playing Ned Weeks in the recent Broadway revival); Jim Parsons repeating his role in the same production as Tommy Boatwright; Jonathan Groff, Taylor Kitsch, Alfred Molina, Frank De Julio, and the ultra handsome Matt Bomer as Tyler who quietly shed 40 lbs to play his dying character without any of the inflated brouhaha of a certain Oscar Winner who had trouble mentioning the word AIDS in public!

    Mark Ruffalo gets nominated as an honorary gay for his convincing portrayal of Ned Weeks who was equally passionate berating politicians as he was making love to his boyfriend. And last, but not least, Julia Roberts very competently played the part that Barbra Streisand had lusted after years, the physician who was sadly dabbed as Dr Death.

    With Murphy refusing to shy away from any of Kramer’s rhetoric or the scary visuals of the violent and cruel deaths these young men suffered, this is the story of how it really happened, warts and all. There are no flowery allegories or sightings of Angels as in the Kushner play but just sheer unadulterated screaming and angry rants at a world that we thought may actually kill us all

    If you were around at any of these times from the early 1980’s on, then this powerful heart-wrenching piece will make a lot of unpleasant memories flood back. It is shockingly disturbing and serves to remind one that the nightmares that we lived through were not imagined in the slightest and were very real indeed.

    If it hadn’t been for Larry Kramer’s loud mouth, it would been a whole lot worse. If on the other hand you are approaching this drama having been born after these events then I can only assume that this near apocalyptical scenario may even appear like an historical event that is nothing to do with you. Trust me it does. AIDS may longer be considered a gay plague, but as the closing credits of this movie remind us all too clearly, even now 6000 people are diagnosed with HIV every single day to increase the present world total of 35 million infected. It still affects as us.

    P.S. The last word goes to Murphy when he simply summed it up after this movie was Premiered in NY. with ‘You were right Larry’. I never thought otherwise.

    The Normal Heart airs on 1st June on Sky Atlantic

     

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  • FILM REVIEW | Locke

    ★★★★★ | Locke

    Ivan Locke is on the eve of the biggest challenge of his career.

    Tomorrow sees the biggest concrete pour ever that will serve as the foundation for Europe’s largest building to date. As the foreman of the site he is considered not only the go-to expert but also a safe pair of hands to ensure that this mammoth operation will be done without a single hitch. However, that night he receives a phone call that will not only put the project in jeopardy, but will serve to unravel his job, family and his entire life.

    Several months earlier whilst on another ‘concrete pour’ away from home, Locke had a one-night stand with an older rather lonely woman. It was a brief fleeting moment that he had totally forgotten about until tonight when the woman, very scared and panicking, had suddenly phoned him out of the blue to tell his she was about to give birth to his baby at any moment. So after finishing work that day he jumps into his BMW and hot-foot it down the motorway from Birmingham to the hospital in London where the woman is having a difficult labour.

    In the course of the 3-hour drive Locke tries to manage the job and also his wife remotely by a series of very fraught phone conversations. Neither his flabbergasted boss nor his unsuspecting wife can accept Locke’s reasoning for abandoning them both on a whim like this and the phone calls get menacing and bitter as they threaten to destroy Locke if he persists with what they can only see as a foolhardy plan.

    Meanwhile in between all this rancor Locke is also balancing calls to his deputy Foreman who Locke has convinced can manage the task on his own, even though at this hour the man is already the worse the wear for drink. He also manages to deal with the police and council officials to ensure that the construction site has all the right permits for the task. On top of which Bethan, the now very distraught mother to be, is also bombarding Locke with hysterical demands as her deteriorating condition means that the hospital need to make decisions to try to save the baby.

    Throughout this all Locke is cool and collected and deals all the anger thrown at him is a quiet reasoned manner. Even though his boss fires him, Locke continues to brief his (ex) deputy as he is still convinced that he can supervise the job at a distance. He does however fail to calm his hysterical wife and she refuses to now take his calls and Locke is left communicating to her through his two teenage sons who are not interested in any family drama and much keener in relaying the play-by-play detail of the football match they had been hoping to watch with him on TV that night.

    The sons are obviously the real joy in Locke’s life but in the gaps between the phone calls we learn the real reason why his is insisting on undertaking this journey tonight and its to do with the fact his own father had deserted him at an early age, and so Locke will do anything to avoid repeating this, even though it may end up at a very steep cost. He has no intention at all of starting any sort of relationship with Bethan, but he wants to take responsibility for his new child regardless. Whatever his irate boss and his wife who has been blindsided by this one act of betrayal think of him, Locke is in fact a decent man who simply wants to do the best.

    Written and directed by Steven Knight, who picked up an Oscar Nomination for his screenplay for Stephen Frears ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ and is also known for writing ‘Eastern Promises’ for David Cronenberg. Knight wrote this piece for Tom Hardy and when he persuaded the actor to take the part, he was given just 2 weeks by the Actor’s agent to shoot the whole thing. It is a tour-de-force career defining performance by Hardy who is on screen in that car for the entire performance. He is nothing short of electrifying and I can totally appreciate why Knight insisted that the role was his alone.

    There is whole plethora of wonderful English talent who are the disembodied voices at the end of the phone that included Olivia Colman, Ben Daniels, Danny Webb, Andrew Scott and particularly Ruth Wilson as Locke’s distraught wife.

    Hands up too for Haris Zambarloukos the D.P. and Justine Wright the editor for helping make an entire movie short in car so compelling.

    This small indie movie was shown in the Spotlight Section at Sundance this year and is just about to have a limited theatrical release in the UK. I do so hope it becomes more widely available as the audience it so well deserves should see it.

    Available to buy / view on: Amazon | Amazon Prime | iTunes

  • FILM REVIEW | Any Day Now

    ★★★★★ | Any Day Now

    So, here’s the thing, I can be an old, hard cynical fart when I want to be – but occasionally, just occasionally along comes something that makes me weep like a baby.

    This film is one of those things.

    What starts out as a simple story of love and acceptance quickly turns into one of bigotry and spite – leading to an unexpected ending. Based on a true story, this is one emotional roller-coaster.

    The storyline is simple, boy meets boy, boy blows boy in front seat of car, Rudy (Alan Cumming) is a low rent drag queen/singer, Paul (Garret Dillahunt) is a closeted lawyer – and these are our two main characters. Set in Los Angeles in 1978, Rudy lives in a flea pit apartment block, and when his drug addicted neighbour is arrested and sent to jail, the twosome take in her teenage son Marco (Isaac Leyva) and become the family unit they all want and need.

    However, this is the late ’70s, and their family soon draw the wrong kind of attention, and then the prejudice kicks in. A biased legal system, people perceptions of gay life and children – a far cry from the current ads being run by several councils offering fostering with images of smiling gay or lesbian couples as images of happy families.

    It highlights a time when it was “in the child’s best interest” to be placed with a convicted drug addict, rather than a loving same sex couple. When a downs syndrome child may be better off incarcerated in an institution rather then even consider that a gay couple could give him the love and caring he needs.

    There are some lovely set pieces in the film, the loving couple Rudy and Paul portray, the stories Marco needs to sleep (always with a happy ending), his love of donuts and Isaac’s acting ability – the heart wrenching scene when he cries himself to sleep as he can’t go home.

    A strong cast and crew make this one of the best films of its kind in a long time with Travis Fine doing a great job as director, writer and producer.

    My advice, buy a big bag of Minstrels and an entire box of Kleenex before hitting play – enjoy the film, and the cry!

    BUY ON AMAZON | BUY ON ITUNES

     

  • FILM REVIEW | Lilting

    ★★★★★ | Lilting

    Lilting is a gently moving piece about bereavement, grief and colliding cultures, beautifully scripted and played and directed with a sure hand by Hong Khaou.

    The way in which he dovetails past and present, real and imaginary, whilst making sure the movie flows seamlessly was really quite special. He was immeasurably helped by some superb performances, especially Ben Whishaw’s deeply broken Richard, reeling from the recent loss of his boyfriend Kai, a performance superbly seconded by Cheng Pei Pei, as Kai’s mother Junn, a Chinese-Cambodian woman who has never come to terms with the English world she was thrust into.

    She has never learned to speak English and Kai was her only connection with the alien world she finds herself in. Despite their closeness Kai had never felt it possible to come out to her, leaving Richard with the impossible task of wanting to do right by his lover’s mother without divulging the true nature of their relationship.

    Wonderful supporting performances too from Andrew Leung as Kai. Peter Bowles as the Englishman Junn befriends in the home she is living in, and Naomi Christie as Vann, the translator Richard employs for Junn.

    Subtle, poetic, almost unbearably moving without being mawkish, this is a must see.

    Available to buy / view on: Amazon | Amazon Prime | iTunes

  • FILM REVIEW | Kill Your Darlings

    ★★★★ | Kill Your Darlings

    The cinematic fascination with The Beat Generation continues regardless, following on the heals of Walter Salles’ take on Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’, which the critics were quick to dismiss when it recently had a limited release in US theatres. We now have this new movie which, set in the mid 1940’s, is essentially a prequel to the movement that was about to begin. It’s Lucian Carr’s story, a central figure in Allen Ginsberg’s coming out, and the wittiest member of their clique at university, who ended up killing his obsessed older ex-lover David Kammerer who just wouldn’t leave him alone.

    It’s a heady period in these young men’s rite of passage into adulthood when despite the war going on in Europe they could indulge in whatever extreme pleasure they wanted too. For the wealthy William Burroughs it was an endless stream of drugs, and he coasted through it perpetually stoned. Ginsberg had shaken off his New Jersey roots, and now at Columbia University could finally shed the responsibility of the demands of his mentally ill mother, and nurture his writing and explore his sexuality. He was fixated with the charming, flamboyant and excitable Carr who incessantly quoted chunks of Yeats and Rimbaud but yet relied on Kammerer to actually write all the essays needed to keep him from being expelled from college. Carr’s past history was gradually exposed as the story developed, and he was revealed as possible the most confused of this very challenged bunch of friends.

    Through Carr, Ginsberg met many of the people that would remain in his life and play a significant part one way or another, including Jack Kerouac, one of Carr’s best friends. (Strangely enough another person that he met… again via Carr… was Neal Cassidy who he developed a major crush on, but there is no mention of him at all.)

    Whilst the movie is ostensibly about the murder and the subsequent trial, it is essentially much more about how this bunch of friends gelled together as a group and how that time really set them on course for what lay ahead and would eventual earn them the label the Beat Generation. Carr does get arrested for the murder of his ex lover, and pleads that it was an ‘honour slaying’ i.e. that he was straight and Kammerer was a predatory homosexual. Both Burroughs and Kerouac were also arrested as they helped dispose of the body resulting in Burroughs being forced to move back home, and Kerouac being forced to marry his girlfriend in return for her family bailing him out. But before this all happened, Ginsberg finally lost his virginity to Carr.

    Newbie director/co-writer John Krokidas worked on this movie for 10 years before he got it to its premiere at Sundance this January. It’s a refreshing look at the loss of innocence… Ginsberg’s and Carr’s in particular as it is hard to imagine that Burroughs ever had it to lose… and a much more palatable movie than ‘Howl’ the slightly inaccessible and tad pretentious vehicle in 2010 for James Franco to try his hand at playing Ginsberg. It may in fact end up being the best ever made of this clique, but maybe that’s too premature a statement as there are probably still many more to come.

    I’m still reeling from the fact that the unknown Krokidas could manage to recruit such a first rate coterie of actors for his first movie… The clue maybe in the fact that Christine Vachon of Killer Films (Boys Don’t Cry, Far From Heaven) is one of the producers. Daniel Radcliffe shakes off his Harry Potter mantle to show what a very impressive talent he really has. He also shakes off all his clothes to show that he can also make out with another man in a very convincing way. Ben Foster (The Messenger) was excellent as the very dry Burroughs, and equally wonderful was Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire) as Kerouac, Michael C Hall (Dexter) as Kammerer and with a very small part, Elizabeth Olsen (Martha,Marcy,May & Marlene) as Eddie Parker, Kerouac’s girlfriend. There is an impressive list of supporting cast that included Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kyra Sedgwick, David Rasche, John Cullum & David Cross.

    However it was young Dane DeHaan (Chronicle) playing the extrovert Carr with a career defining performance, stole every scene he was in.

    The movie will attract a great deal of attention because of the mere fact of seeing Mr. Radcliffe all grown up, but regardless of that, he is definitely worth watching even if like me you have never sat through a Harry Potter movie!

     

    Available on Apple or Amazon

  • FILM REVIEW | Floating Skyscapers

    ★★★★★ | Floating Skyscapers

    Polish writer/director Tomascz Wasilewski’s second feature film is a dark tragic love story that you immediately sense from the opening scenes that is doomed.

    Although it is Poland’s first ever gay movie, it is so much more a story about the search for one’s identity and about being accepted for one’s own true self and accepting others for who they are. Essentially it’s a movie about love. Love between a girl and a boy. Between boy and a boy. Between a mother and a son, and a father and a son. It is completely heartbreaking.

    Koba is a young man who has been training to be a champion swimmer for 15 years. He lives at home with his mother who makes somewhat unnatural and creepy demands on him, plus Sylwia his rather sullen girlfriend of two years. He is also in the closet and furtively seeks out brief sexual encounters with other male swimmers in the locker rooms after practice. And then one evening it all changes when one Sylwia drags him reluctantly along to an art opening and he meets Michel, and there is an immediate attraction between the two men.

    Michel is open about his sexuality although his wealthy family, with whom he still lives, are having difficulty with accepting it. The two men surreptitiously embark on a relationship which Sylwia suspects but will do nothing about beyond being hostile to Michel. Uncharacteristically Koba falls totally for his new lover and as a consequence much to the annoyance of all, he neglects both women in his life, and his training.

    When it finally reaches the point of no return and the men decide to leave the closet once and for all, Kuba is confronted by an embittered pregnant Sylwia, and the fervent demands of his mother that he abandons Michel completely and become a full time father and husband. This is however not the only tragedy that befalls them, and makes for such a bitterly sad ending.

    By using such austere and somewhat foreboding locations Wasilewski has heightened the darkness in this heavyhearted tale in a society that is still unceasingly hostile to most gay and lesbian people.

    Watching here in the US where the acceptance of LGBT rights is now racing along and is reflected in the recent Supreme Court rulings somehow makes this groundbreaking film seem even more poignant and pertinent.

    Recently I reviewed Out Loud the first ever film from Lebanon that dealt with gay issues, and also ‘In The Name of’ the 2nd ever-Polish gay movie (and this one won the coveted Teddy Award for Best Feature at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year).

    Change is happening, and these excellent movies are both witnesses to the fact, but also more importantly, instruments of the change too.

    Unmissable.

    Floating Skyscapers is Out Now on Matchbox Films

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  • FILM REVIEW | Floating Skycrapers

    Polish writer/director Tomascz Wasilewski’s second feature film is a dark tragic love story that you immediately sense from the opening scenes that is doomed. ★★★★★

    Although it is Poland’s first ever gay movie, it is so much more a story about the search for one’s identity and about being accepted for one’s own true self and accepting others for who they are. Essentially it’s a movie about love. Love between a girl and a boy. Between boy and a boy. Between a mother and a son, and a father and a son. It is completely heartbreaking.

    Koba is a young man who has been training to be a champion swimmer for 15 years. He lives at home with his mother who makes somewhat unnatural and creepy demands on him, plus Sylwia his rather sullen girlfriend of two years. He is also in the closet and furtively seeks out brief sexual encounters with other male swimmers in the locker rooms after practice. And then one evening it all changes when one Sylwia drags him reluctantly along to an Art Opening and he meets Michel, and there is an immediate attraction between the two men.

    Michel is open about his sexuality although his wealthy family, with whom he still lives, are having difficulty with accepting it. The two men surreptitiously embark on a relationship which Sylwia suspects but will do nothing about beyond being hostile to Michel. Uncharacteristically Koba falls totally for his new lover and as a consequence much to the annoyance of all, he neglects both women in his life, and his training.

    When it finally reaches the point of no return and the men decide to leave the closet once and for all, Kuba is confronted by an embittered pregnant Sylwia, and the fervent demands of his mother that he abandons Michel completely and become a full-time father and husband. This is however not the only tragedy that befalls them, and makes for such a bitterly sad ending.

    By using such austere and somewhat foreboding locations Wasilewski has heightened the darkness in this heavyhearted tale in a society that is still unceasingly hostile to most gay and lesbian people.

    Watching here in the US where the acceptance of LGBT rights is now racing along and is reflected in the recent Supreme Court rulings somehow makes this groundbreaking film seem even more poignant and pertinent.

    Recently I reviewed ‘Out Loud’ the first ever film from Lebanon that dealt with gay issues, and also ‘In The Name of’ the 2nd ever-Polish gay movie (and this one won the coveted Teddy Award for Best Feature at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year). Change is happening, and these excellent movies are both witnesses to the fact, but also more importantly, instruments of the change too.

    Unmissable.

    Buy Now on Amazon

     

  • FILM REVIEW | Dallas Buyers Club

    ★★★★★ | DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

    The very scary fact thing about watching Dallas Buyers Club is always knowing that this is sadly a very true story.

    Not that we have anything except unfettered admiration for Ron Woodroof and his wild unorthodox schemes, but it is the reminder of the sheer number of countless deaths that could have been avoided if it hadn’t been for the complicity of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration Agency with the greed of the Pharmaceutical Companies that still rankles even now.

    Woodroof was a working-class Texan hedonist living in a Trailer, hanging out at Rodeos and partying very hard indeed. He was also a serial homophobe. When he collapses one day and is rushed to the ER the Doctors discover he is HIV + and with such a minute T cell count, they tell him that he has no more than 30 days to live. The year is 1985 and there is very little hope for anyone that gets full blown AIDS.

    At first he is in total denial and continues his life of drugs, drink and unprotected sex with hookers until his body starts to give up. When he finally accepts the truth, he also sharpens his resolve to beat this rap. He drags himself to the library and consumes all the information that is in the public domain at the time, which is very little. It is however enough to know that there is about to be a trial of AZT a new anti-retroviral drug …. the first if its kind … and because of the rapid explosion of AIDS, the FDA have agreed to fast-track it without its usual safeguards and checks.

    Woodroof pleads with the Doctors at his local hospital to be allowed some of this new wonder drug, but he is rejected on the grounds that he doesn’t qualify, so he seeks out an Orderly and bribes him to steal a supply. When this dries up, the Orderly recommends that he tries a Doctor in Mexico who may be able to help.

    He checks into Dr. Vass’s rundown Clinic over the Border and it is there that he first learns the enormous potential harm that unchecked toxic drugs such as AZT cause. At the supposition that they may stop the virus expanding, they also do such harm to the body that they expose them to countless opportunistic diseases. Vass’s solution is proteins and vitamins that will actively improve the general health of a person with AIDS making them in better position to be able to deal with the virus.

    When Woodroof learns that none of these are available in the USA, he starts an import business to supply them to other patients back in Dallas. He partners with Rayon a Trans person with HIV who he met in Clinic once as she can introduce him to all the people who would want to get their hands on these new drugs.

    At every step of the way, he is aggressively pursued by the FDA as even though none of the drugs/proteins he sells are illegal, they have not been officially approved and the FDA, egged on by the Drug Companies who fund them, want to keep total control of every aspect. One of the ways to get around the Law is not to actually sell the drugs themselves, but sell memberships to his Club (for $400 a month) and this entitles each member to have whatever drugs they want.

    As supplies get tougher to obtain, and new drugs come on the market, Woodroof widens his search worldwide to anyone and everyone who would sell to him. And the FDA would use every legal loophole and obscure law on the Statute Books to seize all his supplies and issue countless fines. Meanwhile at the local hospital it is getting very obvious that patients on the AZT trial are doing much worse than other AIDS patients, but the Authorities anxious to keep receiving the much need Payments from the Drug Companies are happy to suppress all the official reports that confirm this, and the one Doctor that dares to question her Bosses’s ethics is fired.

    Woodroof unquestionably started this venture purely to keep himself alive and to make money. He succeed with his first aim and lived 6 years after his initial diagnosis of just 30 days, and as he gradually got less paranoid of the gay community, he started allowing some people to have the drugs even though they couldn’t afford the Fee. It wast as much that he was any less of a homophobe, but as his own friends totally rejected him out of sheer fear, he started to be able to relate to being an ‘outcast’ like his fellow AIDS sufferers.

    This film has been a long time coming. Scriptwrters Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack based it on the hundreds of interviews they had with Woodroof, and then waited 20 years for the movie to finally get made. Several directors and stars were attached to it until it ended up in the hands of Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallee who’s claim to fame (so far) is C.R.A Z.Y. a very neat gay coming of age so far. His two principal stars lost a ton of weight for the parts Jared Leto as Rayon dropped 30 lbs and Matthew McConaughey a scary 50 lbs. They both gave powerful dazzling performances which will has got them several acting awards including Oscar Nominations for them both. It was definitely a stunning change in direction for McConaughey in particular who has established his career so far mainly in rom-coms, but for my two cents (!) it was Leto’s heart-breaking turn as the drug-addicted Rayon that totally bowled me over. It makes one appreciate that Leto has been off our screens far too long (5 years whilst he was touring with his Band)

    These Clubs like Woodroof’s (there were others in other cities) played an important role alongside the wonderful ACT-UP movement to continually put the FDA on notice, and without their unceasing pressure, demands and activism so many of the drugs that would eventually help with people with AIDS would never have been made available in time.

    It’s a compelling story told with such passion and authority that both disturbs and delights. Unmissable.

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