THEGAYUK

Tag: Five Star Film Review

The latest Five-star film review from THEGAYUK.

  • FILM REVIEW | Boy Meets Girl

    ★★★★★ | Boy Meets Girl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • FILM REVIEW | The Invisible Men

    ★★★★★ | The Invisible Men

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • FILM REVIEW | Testament of Youth

    ★★★★★ | Testament of Youth

    This is one of those titles you may know, you’ve seen it somewhere or have heard of the author, Vera Brittain… it rings bells.

    But you may be like me, know of it but not know it? I’d heard of it, I’d seen the cover, I knew the author (not personally) but it didn’t appeal enough to buy, beg or borrow a copy to read.

     

    I’m glad I didn’t now – I’m glad I waited for this lush, rich adaptation which only makes me want to whizz out and buy a copy to read it and savour every detail.It’s an epic tale, set against the fight for women’s rights, struggles in Edwardian England that then faces the First World War, and all that this entails for the youth of that time – the lost generation.I can only imagine what it was like, but this film helps show it – the life of privilege for upper middle classes, women wanting equality and suffering for it, the horror of going to war and the horror of waiting at home for news of loved ones.It only briefly touches on it in one scene, but it also mentions the love that dare not speak its name, as Vera’s injured brother clutches to a letter from a fellow officer.This is an amazing adaption; the script is rich with Brittain’s words, the scenery gritty and pretty in equal measures and the acting superb.

    Kit Harrington and Alicia Vikander are perfect as the slightly awkward lovers, separated by war and a society that still insists on chaperones for young unmarried couples.

    They are more than ably supported by Taron Egerton as Vera’s brother, Miranda Richardson as a stand offish Oxford tutor, Dominic West as Vera’s father, the list goes on…
    For all its epic proportions and massive story – this is still a very personal film and I defy you not to be touched by it.

  • FILM REVIEW | Meet The Fokkens

    69-year-old identical Dutch twins Martine and Louise Fokken give a new meaning to the word sexagenarian. Both of them have been working as prostitutes in Amsterdam’s red light district for almost 50 years now, and Marianne is still plying her trade daily. (Louise retired 2 years ago when arthritis meant she ‘couldn’t get one leg over each other’ any more)!

    ★★★★★

    In this truly delightful documentary we discover that they are a wonderfully colorful irascible pair of Rubenesque women who have such joie de vivre. The film starts with following elderly Martine as she catches the bus from the suburbs clutching her tiny chihuahua (which she NEVER ever seems to put down) and en route to work calls in at the convenience store to pick up another box of 144 condoms. Immensely affable she greets everyone she meets with her big smile and constant chatter as if she is just heading for another day at the office.

    Setting up her room she hangs her accouterments to show to passing strangers that she offers dominatrix and other kinky services for her ‘naughty’ men, and then dressed very provocatively sits in her large window enticing then to come in. The fact that all the ‘working girls’ in adjoining ‘windows’ are barely 20-years-old seems to hardly bother this old trooper at all.

    The sisters explain that very few of the punters want full intercourse but just to simply ‘get their rocks off,’ and the film includes some hilarious scenes with Martine and her gentlemen callers and how easily she can get them to be satisfied. What should be regarded, as an intensely sexual experience seems to be harmless and a somewhat funny episode for the men who appear to enjoy the free cup of coffee afterwards just as much.

    The sisters are inseparable and do literally everything together and live in their own apartments that are in buildings opposite each other. They dress in the same bright gaudy clothes, finish each other’s sentences and clearly are each other’s best friend. We see them in conversation with each other and also alone talking unguardedly straight to the camera about their lives to date. The information they reveal is somewhat patchy which makes their story even more intriguing. When Louise was 19-years-old and already a mother of 3 children her physically abusive husband ‘forced’ her into working, as a prostitute and Martine seemed to follow almost to support her sister’s indignity and precarious situation.

    They touch on the fact that they made so much money in the early days, but now stuck in municipal housing there is no sign of it at all. They are fiercely independent and talk about the days when they broke away from the organised crime ‘pimp’ system and even opened up their own brothel at one time. And there is a scene when Louise is reconciled with one of her daughters but no real explanation is offered as to why the child grew up with foster parents. It’s almost like there is a whole another movie to be made here.

    The sisters own pleasure now is in painting bright garish canvases of scenes of their life in the Red Light District. Like the women themselves their artwork can best be described as somewhat naive. They do however make for a wonderful scene towards the end of the film when they are exhibited in a Gallery and all their old cronies turn up to show their support and their genuine love for these two unstoppable women.

    They are two good-natured women with an infectious sense of humour who have obviously led a tough life yet appear to bare no scars or even deep resentments even, and the final scene where they are frolicking together in the snow like a couple of silly schoolgirls shows what a wonderful resilient couple they are.

    A sheer joy to watch, and even enough reason to check up flight schedules to Amsterdam.

    by @RogerWalkerDack

  • FILM REVIEW | A Most Violent Year

    ★★★★★ | A Most Violent Year

    Ok, a film that’s set in 1980 (my era) and stars Oscar Isaac (W.E. and Inside Llewyn Davis) and Jessica Chasten (Interstellar and Zero Dark Thirty), along with some killer outfits and one hell of a story – who wouldn’t want to watch this?

    The storyline follows Abel Morales (Isaac), an honest and hard working man, as his ethics collide with brutal violence at a time when New York is facing an unexpected and unprecedented spike in violent crime. Abel is building his business, following the American Dream, over-stretching himself in order to expand in what appears to be a sensible way.
    Having borrowed heavily to fund this expansion, his business is hit by opportunistic thieves, and he finds himself taking matters into his own hands in order to protect his interests. Alongside this, his wife, from a very distinctly NY “family”, is itching to get in there and sort the matter out if her husband can’t!
    While searching for those responsible for these crimes, he attracts the attention of an ambitious Assistant District Attorney (David Oyelowo – Interstellar and Selma) who is out to make a name for himself and needs a victim to do it.
    This film has the look and feel of a classic thriller from the Serpico and Godfather era, the use of language and mannerisms are spot on. The colours and settings echo the early ’80s perfectly, with the costumes showcasing power dressing NY style. Chasten has some killer outfits and hair-dos and knows how to work ‘em!
    With a strong supporting cast that includes Alessandro Nivola (American Hustle and Coco Before Chanel), Albert Brooks (Drive) and Elyes Gabel (World War Z and Spooks), this film showcases the underbelly of a city, pitting good men against what can seem impossible odds.
    Director JC Chandor did an amazing job on this film and I for one was dumbfounded that it didn’t generate any interest at the major awards – showing how unfair these shindigs can be.
    This is a perfect pizza and beer movie and a distinct 5 stars, I paid good money to see this first time round and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again.
    Buy on Amazon

  • FILM REVIEW | Italy

    ★★★★★ | Love It or Leave It. In 2009 I remembered being totally enamored with an irrepressible young Italian gay couple that documented the struggle of acceptance of gay rights in their country and being totally horrified about the vitriol and power of the far right political parties that seem to make the American Evangelistic Conservatives seem like real sweethearts by comparison.

    (more…)

  • FILM REVIEW | Private Romeo

    ★★★★★ | Private Romeo

    Over a weekend eight male high school cadets are left behind when the rest of the McKinley Military Academy go away on an exercise and they are ordered to carry on with their studies regardless.

    In the English Literature Class, they are studying ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and the two young men reading the leads begin to take it all very seriously and live their roles as the star-crossed lovers for real.

    Rather than the city of Verona, the setting is the hallway, gym and dorms of the School, and whilst the script is punctuated with occasional references to their daily routine, it sticks faithfully to Shakespeare’s glorious text. It transforms the piece into a modern-day gay tragedy.

    This totally enchanting production by writer/director Alan Brown of shirtless teenagers falling in love with each other and spouting this magical prose is a real breath of fresh air. The energy and exuberance of the talented young cast oozes through, and what they may occasionally lack in technique certain more than compensates with such enthusiasm which makes all of their performances so very watchable, especially Hale Appleman as Mercutio.

    This is not one for Shakespearian purists but if you ever had the same good fortune of ever catching Joe Calcaro’s play ‘Shakespeare’s R & J’ (which I was lucky enough to see Off Broadway in the late 1990s) which served as the inspiration, then you will love this one.

    A refreshing wee gem of a movie.

  • FILM REVIEW | Futuro Beach

    ★★★★★ | Futuro Beach

    Karim Ainouz’s mesmerising melancholic drama starts and ends in a very similar fashion.

    In the opening scenes we see two motor bikers racing across the sand dunes and when they reach the end of the beach discard their bikes and clothes and run off into the high rolling waves. They soon get caught in riptides and despite the efforts of the lifeguards, one of them drowns.

    Donato one of the lifeguards is so shaken by his first ever death whilst on patrol, he takes it upon himself to break the sad news to Konrad the swimmer who they had managed to rescue. He is repaid for his kindness by Konrad working out his grief on him sexually. The two men spend the next few days together whilst the authorities search for the missing body. When it’s time to give up on that, neither of them are prepared to let go of each other, so Donato makes the decision to leave his sun-kissed beach in Brazil to try life with Konrad in his native Germany.

    In the second chapter of the story that Ainouz has called ‘A Hero Cut in Half’ (the first was ‘The Drowner’s Embrace’) we see the two lovers trying to make a go of urban living in the middle of a dreary winter in a country that is alien to Donato. They almost seem to succeed but Donato obviously misses not only Aryton his younger brother that he was extremely close too and his mother, but he feels he cannot live without a beach. The fact that he doesn’t catch his return flight to Brazil when his visit is over is covered in the third chapter called ‘A German Speaking Ghost’.

    It’s 8 years later and Donato has a new life, still swimming, but now as a maintenance diver in a city aquarium. He and Konrad are no longer an item but still important to each other as is apparent when an angry Aryton turns up on his doorstep unannounced. It appears that Donato had abandoned his family when he decided not to return back to Brazil and they have had to fend for themselves ever since. Now all grown up, and with their mother dead, Aryton wants to confront the brother he so idolised and who ruthlessly deserted him without a single word.

    Together the three men try and establish some form of forgiveness and reconciliation to be able to move forward. The final scenes are of them in the middle of winter roaring down the fog-drenched Autobahn to a stark desolate beach. It has another kind of beauty totally different from their precious Futuro Beach back home but just as stunning, and it’s where they realise that this is where home is now.

    Ainouz’s movie, co-written with Felipe Braganca, is light on plot as it focuses much more of the sensuality of each moment. There are certain pivotal scenes, which are sparse of dialogue where he allows the camera to remain much longer than the norm with such riveting effect. Whether it be Donato letting off steam dancing rather manically in a club, or when he and Konrad are making rough and passionate sex together, or in the closing scene of the final motorbike ride. It’s also clever that the script is guarded in revealing too much detail or any real insight into the three men and we are simply left to observe and imagine what emotional state they are in at any time.

    It is unquestionably a real visual treat from the wild untamed uninviting ocean in Brazil to seeing young Aryton acting out his ‘Speed Racer’ fantasy racing through the deserted streets of Berlin. The acting is astoundingly good with award-winning Brazilian actor Wagner Moura as the over sensitive Donato, handsome German Clemens Schick who’s prior claim to fame was that he played a baddie in ‘Casino Royale’, and young Jesuíta Barbosa, who stole our hearts last year in ‘Tatuagem’ was the bewildered Ayrton.

    Futuro Beach is one of those movies that linger with you for days as you run it through your mind time and time again. It’s Karim Ainouz’s fifth feature film. And it’s been 12 years since he gave us ‘Madame Sata’, and this new one is every bit as good, if not better as that. Winner of the Sebastiane Award for Best LGBT film at the San Sebastian Film Festival, it was nominated for a Golden Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival too.

    P.S. Interestingly enough Mr. Ainouz is a Brazilian who has now settled in Germany, so maybe there is part of his life in this story too.

  • FILM REVIEW | Beyond The Walls

    ★★★★★ | Beyond The Walls

    This unexpected and rather remarkable film from first-time writer/director David Lambert realistically scrutinises the intimate details of the rise and fall of an edgy gay relationship, devoid of stereotypes.

    It premiered at Cannes Film Festival during the Critics’ Week (picking up an award) and most of the reviewers then made a point of commenting that after Andrew Haigh’s very successful Weekend and Ira Sachs’ Keep The Lights On that there is a now a new movement of realism in gay cinema. And very refreshing it is too.

    Drinking rather heavily in a Brussels’ bar one night, Paolo a young slim youth catches the eye of Illir a hunky bearded Albanian bartender and ends up waking in his bed next morning. Bisexual Paolo slinks back to his girlfriend but she eventually throws him out two days later, and Paolo now homeless, persuades Illir to put him up even though the barman knows that shacking up together after just a couple of dates is not a good idea.

    However thrown together, love blossoms between the inexperienced young man and his ‘daddy’ figure boyfriend and everything is going really well until Illir, a part-time musician leaves town for a gig and ends up being arrested and jailed for possessing hash and resisting arrest. The clingy dependent Paolo is distraught and makes every visit to jail emotionally explosive, and Illir conscious of the tough guy image he wants to maintain in front of his cellmates, tells him never to return again.

    Paolo eventually hooks up with an older successful businessman who he clearly doesn’t love, but the relationship empowers him to mature and find his own sense of worth. Halfway through Illir’s jail sentence, Paolo is still willing to jeopardise his own freedom by smuggling in some hash, but later by the time Illir is eventually freed, Paolo can resist Illir even though he is obviously still in love with him.

    Like both Weekend and Keep The Lights On there is no fairytale ending where everyone lives happily after: it is what it is. The relationship reaches giddy heights but both men in their different ways accept that it has run its course and that they cannot turn the clock back.

    The story dips a tad in the later part losing the excellent pace that it started out with, and although by no means a perfect film it has much too highly recommend it. ‘Realism’ does not mean gloomy and Lambert obviously has a keen sense of humor and has written a couple of funny and affectionate scenes like when the normally closeted Illir grabs the microphone in the supermarket to ask anyone if they could point out the condoms so that he and his boyfriend could have a good afternoon making out. Plus there are the two lead actors Guilluame Gouix and Matila Malliarakis who are perfectly cast to add to the rawness of the piece. Well photographed too.

    We’re giving this a high rating because not only is this a refreshingly enchanting heart-warming movie from this newbie Belgian filmmaker, but it strives (and succeeds) to help break the mould and not make this very real story into the usual frothy lightweight gay movie.

  • FILM REVIEW | Wild Tales

    ★★★★★ | Wild Tales

    Pretty model Isabel is on a business trip and strikes up a conversation with a gentleman the other side of the aisle of the plane.

    They quickly discover that they have a mutual acquaintance in Gabriel Pasternak who Isabel used to date and whom the man had once turned down for a College Grant. The woman seated in the row in front hears their conversation and proffers up that she once taught this same Gabriel Pasternak. Very quickly they establish that everyone on board had some sort of dealings with Gabriel, most of which had not ended happily, and they also discover that he had not only gifted them all their plane tickets but was one of the crew on board.

    This is first of six extraordinary and wonderfully wicked hilarious short stories that all end badly and have one thing in common. I.e. vengeance. Created by Argentinian filmmaker Damián Szifrón each one is magically bizarre and all, nothing less than brilliant, show his delightfully warped imagination

    In the second tale called ‘The Rats’ which is set in a remote roadside diner, the waitress discovers that her sole customer that night is a loan shark who had driven her father to kill himself. The cook, a tough female ex-con, declares that merely rebuking the man is not enough and she is determined that this will be his last meal ever. It’s followed ‘Road to Hell’ which is the bloodiest episode of the set, with its tale of road rage that so gets out of control when an arrogant hot-shot yuppie in an expensive Audi tries to belittle a country redneck in his beat up wreck. The fourth of Szifrón’s yarns ‘Bombita’ is about an unfortunate demolition engineer who is having a really bad day. His car is impounded when he stops for one brief moment to pick up a birthday cake for his young daughter. He is forced to pay a hefty fine to the rude staff at the compound to retrieve it, and then gets screamed at by his wife for completely missing the child’s party. It’s the last straw for her and she demands a divorce and so his car is towed away again and he literally explodes.

    The penultimate tale is the only really serious one that is totally devoid of any humour. It’s the story of a very wealthy family whose son has killed a pregnant woman in a hit-and-run accident and they try and bribe their gardener to take the rap instead. Their ploy almost falls apart when everybody, including the Police, seems to want to ensure that they get the heftiest share of the hush money.

    The rather spectacular finale has the very apt title ‘Till Death Do Us Part. It’s set at a Jewish wedding reception where the bride loses her big smile when she suddenly discovers that her groom has been having carnal knowledge with a very pretty younger girl in his office. The bride loses it big time and is determined that not only will her new husband suffer, so too will his family and inevitably all the guests too in an outrageous seemingly endless slapstick performance.

    The pace never lets up in the entire 2 hours that for once just flies by as you sit on the edge on your seat unable to even guess what could possibly happen next. What is really quite delicious though is Szifrón’s subversive humour which sets this unique piece really apart and must be a major contributing factor in the movie getting a Best Foreign Picture Oscar Nomination. It also benefitted from an excellent cast, a stunning soundtrack from Gustavo Santaolalla, and the fact that it had the Almodovar Brothers as its Producers.

    Wild Tales is really one wild ride that you will not want to miss. In UK cinemas now.

  • FILM REVIEW | Brotherhood

    ★★★★★ | Brotherhood

    Lars is a young Danish soldier who is resentful because he has been thrown out of the Army after being accused of making a pass at some of his men.

    Frustrated at being back home with his pushy interfering mother, and at a loose end and unsure of where his life is going, he becomes easy prey for a local gang of xenophobic neo-Nazi thugs looking for new recruits. Although somewhat reluctant at first, he naïvely allows himself to be drawn into the group and is soon recognised by the leaders as being a brighter than average convert who they want to install as a fully-fledged member.

    Lars’ quick rise through the ranks doesn’t sit well with everyone, particularly as he is foisted onto the group’s hard-nutted lieutenant Jimmy who is bitterly resentful of Lars for usurping the position that he felt his psychotic brother should have got received. The angry Jimmy is ordered to be his trainer but the hate he shows however soon turns into lust, which ultimately turns to love in this most unlikely setting.

    This award-winning movie shows the sheer brutality, and the depth and bitterness of the far right’s racism and homophobia in a powerful and moving way. It’s both explicit and shocking and its subject matter is unquestionably disturbing, but the way that this drama unfolds, juxtaposing vitriolic violence and hatred with its edge of tenderness in the love that comes through, makes this film totally unmissable.