THEGAYUK

Tag: Movie Genre Drama

All movie reviews for films in the Drama genre

  • FILM REVIEW | Out In The Dark

    ★★★★★ |  Out In The Dark

    Nimr is in Tel Aviv to visit his old friend Mustafa in a gay bar where he works since moving from Ramallah. Once there he meets Roy a very flirtatious your lawyer who gently puts the moves on equally handsome Nimr who is quickly smitten and is soon ready to make a night of it. However, he is offered a ride for the daunting journey home so they reluctantly say their goodnights. Nimr promises to call, but the chances of that are slim, as he is a Palestinian and is there illegally, and Roy is an Israeli Jew.

    However back home psychology student Nimr is offered a place on a special course in Tel Aviv and along with that comes a permit to enter Israel at any time he wants. It’s something that his militant older brother hates, but on the other hand, something that a very surprised and delighted Roy loves. As the young couple gets to spend time together, within a short time it is clearly not the only thing Roy loves, and the feeling is obviously mutual.

    Whilst Nimr must remain totally closeted to all his family back home in Ramallah for fear of his own life, in Tel Aviv, Roy takes him to formally meet his liberal parents who don’t actually welcome their son’s Arab boyfriend with open arms as he expected them too.

    And then suddenly the two men’s somewhat precarious lives together now becomes outright dangerous especially after the Israeli authorities deport the very flamboyant Mustafa. Once home he is beaten to death for the dishonour his (very open) homosexuality has brought on his family. Soon after the Israeli Authorities suspect Nimr’s brother of terrorist activities and having his own arsenal of weapons, they then take Nimr’s travel permit away unless he will agree to spy for them.

    He refuses and so they ensure that the elder brother knows of his gayness which is, just cause, for the family to at once disown him and beat him to death. In the only act of compassion, we see towards any gay person in this film, the brother allows him to escape back to Israel where it looks like the Authorities may even finish the job for him.

    This heart string tugging story of forbidden love from LA based Israeli newbie director/writer Michael Mayer follows in the well-trodden footsteps of filmmaker Eyton Fox (Yossi & Jaeger, The Bubble) with this story of how being gay just adds yet one more obstacle to living in this troubled region. Mayer’s convincingly real love story between these educated young men works really well because of the chemistry between his two talented lead actors Nicholas Jacob & Michael Aloni.

    What makes it even more interesting is the fact that whilst its the deeply entrenched extreme politics that are the main cause of the couple’s problems, the story never focuses on their own beliefs but purely on the disastrous effects it has on them. And to my knowledge, it’s also one of the very few gay films that have ever dealt with barbarous ‘honour’ killings.

    It is nigh on impossible to find an Israeli or Arab movie with a gay romance that doesn’t involve a great deal of danger and death (Fox’s recent sequel ‘Yossi ‘was a rare exception). It’s all the remarkable then after the horrors that Nimir and Roy went through that the overwhelming feeling that one came away with from this movie is the fact there is hope. It’s probably one of the reasons why it’s picked up almost a dozen Awards in Festivals worldwide already. Many of them as Audience Favourite.

    Be warned, as well as having you reach for the Kleenex, this movie will in parts, make you very angry/horrified too. It is, however, a definite ‘must see’.

     

  • FILM REVIEW | Silent Youth

    Marlo a young engineering student is taking a break from school and is visiting a girlfriend in Berlin.

    When she goes off to work, he takes off to explore the city. Crossing the street he momentarily links eyes with another man, and after the pass, they take furtive looks back at each other. Moments later as he crosses a bridge, Marlo espies the same young man, and starts to follow him. When he catches up he with him he hangs back for a few minutes before sidling up and tries awkwardly to start a conversation.  Both of them are unsure of themselves, let alone of each other, and even after they eventually decide to walk on together, very few words are exchanged.

    Kirill is Russian and has just returned to Germany after visiting his Grandmother and beyond saying that, he reveals very little about himself.  It’s a surprise then that after this he agrees to meet up with Marlo again and accepts his phone number.

    For their second outing Kirill’s father without uttering a word gives the two boys a lift to the Templehoff, Berlin’s old abandoned airport.  They wander aimlessly around the empty runways communicating intermittingly with brief snatches of conversation. Kirill, the more extrovert of the two, admits to having ‘tried it with a man’ then surprisingly fesses up to be the father of a baby girl who he is no longer allowed to see.  Poor reserved virginal Marlo who keeps stressing that his ‘girlfriend’ is just a friend has nothing to counter this new revelation with.

    Back at Kirill’s tower block apartment, the boys feast on bread and Nutella, before Kirill suddenly announces he wants to take a shower. Naked together the boys finally get physical but instead of this bringing them closer, once the lovemaking is over, Kirill seems more distant and odder than ever.

    There is a lot going on unspoken on in this movie as these two men deal with discovering their sexuality and sometimes it really is not clear what it is.  After watching these gentle souls very slowly interact with each and try to come to terms to discover what if anything is beyond all these awkward silences, you cannot avoid feeling a little numb even though it did almost redeem itself with its very sweet ending. All, however, a tad too slow for my liking, which is a pity as the two boy’s characters had great possibilities.

     

  • FILM REVIEW | Heartbeats

    ★★★★★ | Heartbeats

    If you have ever had an unrequited love, especially one in your (distant) youth then this wonderfully witty tongue-in-cheek movie from the remarkable multi-talented filmmaker Xavier Dolan will really appeal to you.

    The story is of a love triangle. Twenty-year-old best friends Marie and Francis spot Nicolas, a stunning Adonis, at a dinner party, and they both fall for him big time. Nicolas adores attention so encourages them to the point where they destroy their close friendship and become bitter rivals to win his heart. Nicolas is very self-absorbed and affected and it is impossible to tell if his androgynous personification will eventually reveal whether he is gay or straight. The three of them have sleepovers in Francis’s bed but nothing at all happens, and then one day they ago away to the country for the weekend, and after this life, for them, all will never be the same.

    As the story progresses Mr Dolan edits in some hilarious anecdotes in interview form from strangers whose love lives also fell part. The man definitely has a way with words.

    There is something totally entrancing about this second feature from Canada’s wunderkind filmmaker and as much as one can pick holes with annoying (and almost clichéd) touches like some of the slow motion scenes, you really sense that this is no ordinary movie from any ordinary director. Mr Dolan’s first movie I Killed My Mother a totally stunning and hilarious semi-autobiographic piece won 3 Awards at the Cannes Film Festival (and another 23 other Awards around the World) in 2009 when he was a mere 19-years-old.

    Sadly the US Distributor went into financial difficulties and the movie, trapped in legal no-mans-land, has never been seen beyond the Festival Circuit to date. Now at the ripe old age of 22, he has written, directed, starred, co-produced, edited, and designed the sets and the costumes for Heartbeats, which also picked up an Award at Cannes last year. He is an enormous precocious talent and I think this, his early work, shows that he is going to be one of THE most important filmmakers of the future.

    You would be a fool to miss this one.

  • FILM REVIEW | Mommy

    ★★★★★ | Mommy

    When Diana ‘Die’ Despres reacts quite violently after she crashes her car on the way to collect Steve her troubled teenage son from the special care facility after he set fire to the cafeteria, it’s initially not clear who is the craziest one out of the pair of them. However, life with Steve will be no picnic for his widowed mother after the two of them traipses back on the bus to the latest rental apartment in the suburbs that they now call home.

    Steve may look like an angel with his blond hair and blue eyes but he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder which gives him extreme mood swings. They include many violent angry outbursts which then, without warning, suddenly change into some almost inappropriate ‘kiss and makeup’ sessions with his mother. Die seems to spend most of her time pleading and cajoling with her son who she is obviously very afraid of, but then again she too can be pretty frightening in her own right. Despite their traumatic daily life together she clings to her son even though she craves her freedom and so when a neighbour flirts with her she is reluctant to take it one step further in case it antagonises Steve more.

    They do however let someone else into their lives in the shape of their rather mousy neighbour Kyle. She has plenty of her own issues to deal, with most of which manifest in her rather mysterious stutter that greatly inhibits her ability to express herself. Kyle, an ex-school teacher, takes on the thankless task of trying to tutor Steve, and both he and his mother are desperate to make her their only friend which at first is something that she seems to welcome too.

    With one unpredictable scene after another, it soon becomes clear that no matter how strong and fiercely independent Die is, she is simply overwhelmed with trying to deal with this petulant head-strong unbalanced teenager. Love is just simply not enough.

    This remarkable and deeply disturbing film is the fifth from 25-year-old Canadian Wunderkind filmmaker Xavier Dolan and in a way he is revisiting a theme of his debut movie I Killed My Mother. This time however instead of it being about a son who felt completely misunderstood by his mother, the lack of misunderstanding seems to go both ways. It’s extremely raw, very heartbreaking, completely original and deeply personal as it simply has to be another of Dolan’s semi-autobiographical stories. What is especially effective is that despite all the melodrama he infuses it with some brilliant touches of humour which don’t just lighten the pace but make it really quite funny at times.

    It reunites him with his movie mother the dynamic Canadian actress Anne Dorval who, as the lynch pin for this intense drama, is manically mesmerising. She like Suzanne Clement who plays Kyle are stellar regulars of Dolan’s films and their performances (like the movies themselves) keep getting better every time around. Young Antoine-Olivier Pilon inhabits the often uncomfortable skin of the deeply disturbed Steve quite brilliantly too.

    The consummate Dolan’s hands, as usual, are not just restricted to writing and directing but are all over the movie from the editing to the soundtrack. He truly is a renaissance filmmaker and one that is seemingly maturing along with his movies which frankly get better and better. Multi-award winners … this one picked up a Jury Award at The Cannes Film Festival and then a César Award (French Oscar) for Best Foreign Film, but despite all this acclaim, Dolan’s movies have yet to make any significant breakthrough at the Box Office. This, however, may just be the one to give him the success that his movies so deserve.

  • FILM REVIEW | 54, The Director’s Cut

    ★★★★★ | 54, The Director’s Cut

    The movie opens with a very hunky bare-chested young man in a New York street late at night trying to cover up and keep warm. You can hear him start to explain. “I’m not going to bulls*** you, it was the greatest party in the history of the world. My boss said the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. Maybe it did. One thing for sure it was the ultimate escape from a f***ed up city in a f***ed up time. But like any great escape, it never lasts”

    He’s talking of course about the infamous Studio 54 which was THE dance club in Manhattan, that for a few short years in the late 1970s was where all the celebrities hung out and partied whilst all the desperate would-be’s were kept outside behind the velvet ropes begging Steve Rubell the co-owner and ringmaster to be let in. Their efforts were all in vain as you had to have either a certain look or a gorgeous body for him to relent and admit you in to mingle with the stars. Shane a rather gormless New Jersey boy who was as cute as hell was in the latter group. This is his story, which started off when Rubell told him to remove his shirt and after he stripped to his waist he got invited into more than just the Club, and he stayed until the party ended.

    What naïve Shane encounters inside the Club quickly blows his mind. Hedonistic excess and debauchery with people openly having sex whilst bare-chested glitter-painted waiters nimbly passed around the packed dance floor with silver trays carrying drinks laced with phials of coke. There are bodies everywhere and all of them behaving badly. Hesitant at first he soon joins in and as he discovers that he loves being the centre of attention he learns to parlay that into getting what he wants. He is very soon a regular fixture and asking a somewhat besotted Rubell for a job. He starts at the bottom as a lowly barboy but literally f***s his way to becoming the next new hottest bartender which is one of the most coveted jobs in the place.

    Rubell’s self-indulgent rapacious greedy lust for money and power knows no bounds and the seemingly unstoppable raging success of the club means endless drug-fuelled sleepless days and nights as he lures Shane and his other young staff into satisfying his sexual needs with the promise of promotion or a handful of cash. His creepy persona (a startlingly wonderful dramatic performance from Mike Myers) influences the once innocent straight Shane who readily now jumps in bed with older celebrities of both sexes as he earns a reputation of being able to literally screw them unconscious. His now insatiable appetite has him also making passes at both his married best friends who are also his roommates.

    For Shane, it’s simply a case of rags to riches story and when the IRS finally takes heed of Rubell’s public boasting of tax-avoidance and raids the Club, it’s back to rags again. He’s had his trip to the dark side and now it’s time get back into a light that is not just from the reflection of a disco glitter ball.

    Written and directed by Mark Christopher, this new Director’s Cut fulfils an ambition he has held since the original movie was released some 17 years ago. He’s added some 36 sparkling minutes, which makes a great deal more sense of Shane’s story, and it also reinstates all the sex and the morally ambivalent characters that frightened the distributors way back then. All’s well that ends well and Christopher’s love letter to the heady days of the New York disco scene is now a sheer joy.

    With the exception of Myers, the cast was relatively unknown. Newcomer Ryan Philippe, whose experience prior to this had been playing a gay teenager on Days Of Our Life (the first gay character on US daytime TV), played Shane so passionately. He not only looks the part … be prepared to swoon like Rubell when he first takes off his shirt to reveal THAT chest … but he imbues his role so perfectly with such convincing innocence. Playing alongside him were a very young Salma Hayek, Neve Campbell, and almost totally un spottable in his very first movie role Mark Ruffalo. Christopher has scattered quite a few celebrities playing themselves as regular habitués of the Club, some of whom you may not even recognise until the credits role at the end.

    As Shane so adroitly summed up the whole scene “one moment it is all around you and the next it’s gone forever”. Very true, but now thanks to this excellent entertaining movie we can relieve part of it again for at least 90 minutes.

  • FILM REVIEW | Three In A Bed, Where is the chemistry?

    ★★☆☆☆ | Three In A Bed
    three in a bed film review

    After his mother dies, twenty-something-year-old struggling musician Nate has taken on her mantle and the responsibility of looking after his two self-centered sisters.

    When both of his sibling’s lives take a turn for the worse: one finds out her live-in boyfriend is cheating on her and the other discovers that the married man she has been dating has got her pregnant, they move in with him in his small one-bedroom apartment. It doesn’t give him much privacy or independence at a crucial time in his life when he is slowly discovering his sexuality.

    The object of his affection is Jonny the boy-next-door who quickly falls in love with a confused Nate, but when the going soon gets rough, Jonny runs off to France to drown his sorrows by getting a job erecting tents! Nate discovers that not only does he miss Jonny, but also that he finally has something to write a song about.

    This micro-budget romantic comedy set in Manchester and funded mainly by actress Jody Latham who plays one of the sisters, is full of good intentions and a great deal of enthusiasm. Sadly that does not make up for the painfully weak script or some extremely lame acting that makes one wince instead of smiling much of the 81 minutes. What was particularly disappointing was the lack of any real chemistry not just between the two men but with the siblings too and all the other characters.

    The movie has a happy ending for Nate but not necessarily for us. When there are three in a bed, sometimes that can be at least two too many.

  • FILM REVIEW | Map To The Stars

    ★★★ | Map To The Stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • FILM REVIEW | Whiplash

    ★★★★★ | Whiplash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • FILM REVIEW | Hyena, Slick and Brutal

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

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  • FILM REVIEW | Still Alice

    ★★★★★ | Still Alice

    Beautiful, pitch-perfect, Sublime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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