THEGAYUK

Tag: Movie Genre Drama

All movie reviews for films in the Drama genre

  • FILM REVIEW | Boyhood

    ★★★★★ | Boyhood

    This engrossing story of Mason Jnr. growing up from a kid to a young man starts when he is just 6 years old.

    He lives with his older sister Samantha and their mother Olivia in an ordinary suburban home that they simply cannot afford. His rather immature father Mason Snr. who acts like a big kid himself at times, roars into his life occasionally and apart from trying to play the role of Dad for a whole 12 hours at a time, contributes little else to help the family survive. So Olivia decides it’s time to make what will turn out to be the first of many moves as she continually struggles with both paying bills and leaving the drunks that she, unfortunately, marries along the way.

    This initial move is to Houston to be near the children’s Grandmother and to enable Olivia to study for the first of the degrees she will earn, and also juggle holding down a full-time job. Along the way, she marries her professor who has a son Mason’s age and a daughter too, and for a few years, they all get to play happy families. When the Professor’s alcoholism manifests into bullying Mason and the other children and physically abusing Olivia, she walks out of the house taking Mason and Samantha with literally only the clothes on their backs.

    For shy and somewhat introverted Mason this needs to start all over again in a strange school without any friends is tough. Samantha is more outspoken and angry with her mother about it, but she at least has the outgoing personality to adapt more easily to their new environment.

    Complete with her Degree and now studying for her Masters, Olivia has moved the family again so that she can start teaching in a small town outside of Austin. One of her mature students becomes both her next husband and the next alcoholic who tries to manipulate her and the children. Mason by now is a troubled teenager struggling with his adolescence and about to graduate high school. His father has remarried and with a new baby in tow and has become the respectable adult that Olivia had wanted him to be 16 years ago, so he can at least help his confused son move forward to deal with whatever new challenges college life will have in store for him.

    This remarkable film made over 12 consecutive years sees this tender and profound story unfold in real time as we witness this cast of actors playing the family grow up and grow old in front of our very eyes.

    There is such a fluidity to the whole piece that it’s hard to even consider the notion that when the Richard Linklater the director/writer started this project in the summer of 2002 that he knew exactly how this extraordinary movie of his would pan out. To see a family mature together and somehow pull through a whole series of near-catastrophic scenarios like this and come out stronger and intact at the end is nothing less than astonishing. At the end when Olivia is single again and just about to watch Mason finally leave her to go to college she has a small meltdown as she looks back at the past 18 years and cries out ‘I just wish it could have been better.’ But even she could not deny that what she had enabled them all to achieve was incredible.

    In this epic masterpiece of a flawless movie, Linklater’s attention to every single detail paid off so handsomely. Starting with the cast of Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke as Olivia and Mason Snr but more especially the unknown young Ellar Coltrane with a superb breakthrough performance as Mason Jnr that was totally pitch perfect and wonderfully fresh as too was Linklater’s own daughter Lorelei who played Samantha. He needed actors of this calibre for as the years rolled on, each of the characters developed in a much deeper and profound way than one would have initially have imagined, especially Mason Snr. who we were ready to write off as lightweight in the beginning.

    Linklater’s attention to every aspect got personal too as he owns the GTO that Mason Snr. drove as his pride and joy as it somehow made him feel like the rock star he never was.

    This audacious experiment that has resulted with such a brilliant and compelling cinematic treat will undoubtedly end up on many ‘best movie lists of 2014’, including mine.

    P.S. This concept of making a movie in real time seems so brilliant now that it’s a surprise that more filmmakers haven’t tried it before. Acclaimed Brit. director Michael Winterbottom’s ‘Everyday’ released in 2012 was filmed over 5 years but with a very little plot this very tedious drama turned out to be his worst movie to date. The nearest equivalent is Micheal Apted’s award-winning documentary TV series ‘7 Up’ that has revisited a group of ‘children’ every 7 years for 5 decades now.

    Is in cinemas Nationwide

  • FILM REVIEW | I Am Happiness On Earth

    ★★★★★ |  I Am Happiness On Earth

    Mexican filmmaker Julián Hernández’s latest cinematic treat is essentially a film within a film.

    Its protagonist Emiliano is an openly gay director whose current movie that we see in progress on screen involves filming real-life dancer Gloria Conterras and some of her students. It soon becomes apparent that Emiliano’s interests in the dancers go way beyond this project as he lusts after all the cute male ones, and soon becomes the lover of one of their number.

    For the seemingly emotionless Emiliano having a handsome lover like Octavio is simply not enough to satisfy him even though it is obvious that the young dancer is hopelessly in love with him. Monogamy equals monotony in the director’s eyes, but even with a succession of hot rent boys who are willing to satisfy his every desire, Emiliano is never happy. But then again it’s hard to know what will. He is very handsome, has a successful career that has given him both fame and fortune and seeks solace in some casual drug and alcohol but still feels completely empty.

    The movie with its sparse dialogue and its emphasis on aesthetics of these handsome Latino men and little attempt to include a conventional plot, makes this a typical Hernández movie. And one that is possibly better than A Thousand Peace Clouds Encircle the Sky and Raging Sun, Raging Sky that won him his two prestigious Teddy Awards from the Berlinale. He has this remarkable ability to photograph his men in the most seductive and sublime manner that when naked they seem so erotic and sensual that make the scenes of intimacy seem so natural and totally beautiful without ever appearing to be remotely just basically explicit or crude in any.

    There are, as always, more than a few questions when certain (of the few) strands of the story seemed to go off-kilter… such as the abandoned Octavio seeking comfort with making out with two girls as if he had now suddenly embraced bisexuality. But then again Hernández never even attempts to make our jobs easy with his lyrical style of filmmaking that focuses more on a vision that encourages us to stretch our imagination a tad more than usual.

    He is helped to this end with a heart-beating cast led by the stunning Hugo Catalán who made such an impact in ‘Clandestinos’ a few years ago, and newbie actor Alan Ramirez as the beautiful dancer Octavio.

    If you like a conventional start, middle and end to your movies, then this is certainly not one for you. However, if you are up for a very intricate piece that is shot almost like a ballet with its seemingly choreographed moves and against an exhilarating soundtrack (composed by Arturo Villela) that is steeped in both passion and pain (with sex too), then you will revel in this extraordinary new movie.

    When Emiliano says ‘I love you’ (as he often did), he means it for that moment. The trouble is that it is followed by a lot more moments. It’s doubtful if he ever will truly find happiness on earth.

  • FILM REVIEW | Begin Again

    ★★ | Begin Again

    When I sat watching writer/director John Carney’s latest movie that was hoping to follow on with the surprise success of his last hit…

    Instead of being enthralled by the warbling tones of singer/songwriter Gretta on screen, I just couldn’t get a certain Sondheim lyric out of my head. ‘Once, yes, once for a lark, Twice, though, loses the spark’ which so summed up my feelings about the sickly sweet story unravelling in front of me.

    Like his first movie ‘Once’ (which spawned the Tony Award winning Musical of the same name) this is the tale of a troubadour. In this instance Gretta who had accompanied Dave her budding rock star boyfriend to New York where he was being treated like royalty as he recorded his first album. Up to this point they had written songs together but the record company just wanted his music and they gave him anything and everything he wanted to ensure he produced a hit. It included a pretty assistant who stepped into his bed when Dave went off to LA without Gretta.

    When she discovers this she storms off in a huff and lands on the doorstep of Steve a fellow Brit and ex-college mate from Bristol, whilst she plans to fly back home to the UK. He’s also a musician, a pretty bad one though, and he persuades her to accompany him to an open mic night at a small local bar. He forces her to perform and her wispy willowy lament goes down like a lead balloon except in the ears and eyes of Dan a drunk recently-fired record company executive who thinks she is a star in the making.

    However no-one else does and as he cannot get her signed up with a record label, Dan sets out to make an album with her to prove that they are all wrong. As he is penniless and cannot shell out for a studio he hits on the idea of recording it all live on different locations on the streets of the city with the help of a few other hippie musicians willing to work for free. It makes for a pretty travelogue for the some of the scenic and hip places of New York that actually end up with a starring role in the movie.

    As this unlikely pair of singer and manager/producer make music Gretta has to deal with the fact that Dave is getting famous but wants her back, whilst Dan is trying to re-connect to both his teenage daughter and his ex-wife whom he is estranged from. Hence the title of the movie, although only one of the two chooses to go it alone whilst the other decides to begin again by re-visiting their past.

    The essential ingredients of making a movie about a singer/songwriter are that you need someone with a good voice and give them some good material to sing. This sadly has neither. The irritating and somewhat awkward Gretta as played by the oh-so-British Keira Knightly can limp through her songs but they sadly lack the energy and lasting power of the ones in ‘Once’. Mark Ruffalo energetically throws himself into the role of music genius Dan but there is the uncomfortable frisson between him and his protege who are never sure if they should have a romantic connection as well. I’m glad they don’t as they are so worlds apart that it would almost seem creepy.

    Kudos though to young Hailee Steinfeld who was perfect as Dan’s daughter Violet, and also to handsome Adam Levine (ex Lead Singer of Maroon 5) making his acting debut as Dave for at least giving some real musicality to the piece.

    I’m sure that despite all that it lacks it will still find an audience especially amongst aficionados of all those TV talent shows. I however can simply summarise it up with the same word that I counted Gretta used at least four time in the movie: it’s just cheesy.

    Begin Again is in cinemas now.

  • FILM REVIEW | The Last Match

    ★★★★ | The Last Match

    It’s still very tough and even quite dangerous being gay in some places, none more so than in the oppressive machismo society of Cuba. So when two male teenage best friends acknowledge their attraction to each other, life starts to get very complicated for them, and we have the sense from the outset that it cannot possibly end well at all.

    Yosvani and Rey both play football every day on a scrap of land in the midst of a poor slum neighbourhood in Havana. Yosvani lives with his fiance and her unscrupulous black-marketeer father in a comfortable middle-class apartment. Rey, on the other hand, lives in a cramped shanty-like two room dump with his wife, their baby, and Theresa his shrill and demanding mother-in-law. It is she who actively encourages the young man to prostitute himself with male tourists willing to pay for a quickie or a whole night of passion.

    With no hope of anything approaching a real job on the horizon, he is happy to oblige but draws the line at doing anything he considers is ‘gay’. Which actually seems to be very little when we see him in action enjoying himself giving his all to Juan a handsome visiting Spaniard

    Rey’s few encounters with Juan make him overly confident and he ends up spending more money than he can afford to buy black-market shirts and sneakers from Yosvani’s father-in-law. He perpetually lives more than precariously on the edge and when he is flat broke he pawns Theresa’s few possessions which results in more anger from her until he redeems them again after he has turned another ‘trick’.

    It’s obvious from the word go that Yosvani and Rey much prefer hanging out on the soccer pitch together than spending any time at all with their respective partners. One night after the two of them have been on a drinking binge they lose their inhibitions and hesitatingly kiss each other and somewhat surprise themselves how much they like it. They like having sex together even more, to such an extent that they cannot get enough of each other. However, because of their home situations, they have to keep this budding relationship very much on the down low and they manage to do just this until one-day Yosvani’s father-in-law gets the wind of what is going on.

    It’s at about the same time that Rey suddenly gets a lucky break when a Scout offers him a chance to train to become a professional soccer player. This is another reason not to go public with their love affair but it’s actually too late as they are already at the point of no return. And then just as we had supposed, the inevitable ending is both tragic and sad.

    Directed and co-written by Spanish filmmaker Antonio Hens (‘Clandestinos’) this heartbreaking well-crafted wee drama is completely engaging as if so accurately portrays the price that young men have to pay when they discover their sexuality in such an unaccepting and intolerant culture. The hypocrisy that it is acceptable as a means to an end as long as you don’t enjoy it, makes this sad tale even more poignant.

    Hen’s young inexperienced lead actors did a fine and convincing job, particularly Reinier Díaz who nailed the character of Rey so perfectly. And less this should put you off going to Cuba, I should tell you that it was all filmed in Puerto Rico!

  • FILM REVIEW | Five Dances

    ★★★★ | Five Dances

    Alan Brown’s latest movie has one of the most accurate titles that pulls no punches and is exactly what it promises i.e five dances.

    Held together by the strands of a wisp of a tenuous plot, it is however still a sweet and sensual coming-out-tale thanks to the presence of a charming young dancer who proves he is quite a mean actor too, despite his inexperience.

    Four dancers and a choreographer are in a Manhattan studio learning a new piece of contemporary dance to perform at the opening night of a Festival. Amongst their number is naive 18 year old Chip who is fresh off the bus from Kansas having won a scholarship to study with the Joffry Ballet. The others assume that his parents back in the Midwest must be proud of him, but the reality is that his divorced alcoholic mother is about to be evicted so makes daily menacing phone calls to her only son.

    Chip is homeless so when Cathy one of the other dancers discovers this, she takes pity on him and takes him home and lets him sleep on his couch. Theo another of the quartet takes another type of interest in the newbie and late one night makes a pass at him. A totally confused (and virginal) Chip runs off but not for long as next night he is back and this time encouraging Theo to go all the way.

    That’s essentially it in terms of plot, but this one after all is all about the dancing, and in particular young Chip learning how to really express himself through movement. The choreography by Jonah Bokaer is exhilarating and so beautifully photographed to accentuate every graceful move, and it’s capped by a sensuous soundtrack by singer/songwriter Scott Matthew.

    Brown is quite the master at bringing every sinew of sexuality into stories of young love into his movies as he did so wonderfully well in ‘Private Romeo’. Here when Chip and Theo are making love it mirrors the dancing in terms of its intimacy and is sensuous rather than explicit. The whole cast dance like angels and young Ryan Steele as Chip maintains that purity and innocence when in the very sparse script he so cutely conveys his turmoil coming to terms with both his threatening mother and the fact that he now has his first ever boyfriend.

    You don’t have to be a contemporary dance fan to love this one, but if you are, it does help.

  • FILM REVIEW | The Golden Hour

    ★★★★★ | The Golden Hour

    This story about Guatemalan teenagers trying to escape their life of poverty and illegally cross the Mexican Border after a long and arduous journey en route to the USA, is one of the saddest and most dispiriting I have seen in a very long time. It starts with three friends Samuel, Juan and his girlfriend Sara who disguises herself as a boy, but a native Indian called Chaulk also latches on to them soon after they set out.

    The first of their many frightening ordeals occurs in small Mexican town where the Police round them up and immediately deport them back to Guatemala, but not before they rob them of their few possessions and their boots. They quickly find their way back to the Border but Samuel has already had enough and wants to go home. Juan has taken an instant dislike to Chaulk who he thinks is after Sara, but she insists he travels with them, so they all set off again.

    It’s not too long before the train they have jumped on along with hundreds of would-be migrants is stopped by the Mexican Army, but this time the three of them manage to escape and seek refuge in a sugar plantation. Back on the train, and this time it is halted by a band of Drug Traffickers who relieve everyone of anything remotely saleable and capture all the women including Sara who is spotted despite her disguise. When the two boys try to save her they are viscously beaten up by the gang and left unconscious in the middle of nowhere.

    Chaulk revives first as Juan’s injuries are more severe and the young Indian carries him to safety and nurses him back to health. Soon they are back on another train yet again and are easily lulled into false sense of security by another Guatemalan kid who promises them a job with his Uncle as they will need money to pay smugglers for the final stretch of their journey. It is a trap and they are about to be held hostage for ransom but as this gang is led by a fellow Guatemalan, Juan is let free. However as he won’t leave without Chaulk as he had saved his life, he offers the Captors the few dollars he has to buy the Indian’s freedom.

    It is sadly not the end of all the dangerous obstacles they will have to overcome on this seemingly endless harrowing journey.

    The movie’s original title is ‘Juala de Oro’ which translates into ‘Golden Cage’ and this is exactly what the kids get for all their dreams. The US willingly accepts illegals cheap labour but will not allow them the proper papers to rise beyond this lowly position. Despite this, and the continual fear of being caught and deported every single day, there will be hundreds of thousands other kids like these, that will still risk their lives for the hope of a better existence.

    Directed and co-written by Spanish filmmaker Diego Quemada-Díez (who was a cameraman on many of Ken Loach’s movies) it has a beautiful backdrop of stunning Mexican and Guatemalan landscapes that sometimes makes you forget the sheer poverty and the hardships of its inhabitants. The movie relies on amateur actors, but it is the sheer power of the story that makes it so watchable and also the reason it has won several awards including Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival.

    In Cinemas in the UK

  • FILM REVIEW | Turtle Hill, Brooklyn

    ★★★★ Turtle Hill, Brooklyn | It’s a sunny Sunday morning in Brooklyn and Mateo wakes his boyfriend Will up with a cup of coffee and a cupcake with single candle alight on top.

    (more…)

  • FILM REVIEW | Hawaii

    When Martin (Mateo Chiarino) gets stranded in the small Argentinian country town he grew up he ends up sleeping rough by the river and goes looking for odd jobs to feed himself.★★★★★

    His search takes him to a large estate where he manages to get some work only to discover that it’s present tenant is Eugenio (Manuel Vignau) one of his boyhood friends. Eugenio is now an affluent writer working on a new novel and he is spending the summer looking after the large house in his Uncle’s absence.

    With sparse dialogue, in fact there is barely a word spoken in the first fifteen minutes in what is essentially a two-hander story, Martin withholds the truth about his rather desperate circumstances and pretends that he is living with his Aunt. The balance of power between the two men who are essentially from different social classes, is very potent as each of them tries gradually to relax the protocol between boss and worker. Particularly on Eugenio’s part when he begins to realise that the friendship he feels for his childhood pal is developing into desire.

    As the two men start to hang out together more when they have both stopped working, the few carefully chosen words they use to talk hold a myriad of feelings although it is very clear that neither of them have any idea of how the other feels about what is evolving here.

    This, the third full feature from writer/director Marco Berger is the most simplest of tales that he stunningly unfolds in an impeccably subtle provocative manner. With a series of incessant long stares and discreet longing glances there is obviously a powerful struggle that each of these men are dealing with as there relationship progresses over the long hot summer. Berger makes their story so completely compelling that we are invested in its outcome to the very end.

    Credit too for casting two very gifted actors for their talents and not for their pretty boy looks (not that they are by any means un-attractive) and for the keeping the nudity (seemingly somewhat obligatory in gay-themed movies these days) down to a bare minimum, despite the heavy eroticism of the piece.

    For me, this was filmmaker Marco Berger back on the form he showed in Plan B his excellent debut movie. His second film Absent aka Ausente may have won the prestigiousTeddy Award at Berlinale but it was a disappointing affair.

    Very hot.

    P.S. The reason for the title can only be revealed when you see the movie without spoiling the plot.

  • FILM REVIEW | Fruitvale Station

    Fruitvale Station

    In the opening sequences using grainy footage from onlookers cellphones we see how this story is going to end. Not long after 2009 has just been welcomed in by this happy boisterous New Year crowd travelling on the BART train in Oakland, California when Oscar Grant, a 22 year old African-American is shot in the back by a white Transit Police Officer.

    Oscar and his friends had been hauled off the train at Fruitvale Station as suspects in a fight that had just occurred, the fact that the men who had antagonised them were all white and were not pursued by the angry and aggressive police presence was no accident.

    In this stunningly powerful narrative the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant III is sadly a very true fact. What follows next is a dramatisation of what Oscar was up to the day he was killed.

    He was apparently no saint, but after a short time behind bars for dealing in marijuana, he was determined to make a go of things.When he loses his grocery store job and is almost desperate enough to start selling pot again, he throws away his stash as he knows that another arrest would take him away from his girlfriend and young daughter who is totally devoted too. It is in fact the women in his life, including his church-going mother, that are his driving force but in his determination to be the ‘man’ of the family he hides his financial struggles from them all behind a web of lies.

    It is a totally compelling movie on every level and even more so when you appreciate that this is the debut of writer/director Ryan Coogler, a 27 year old African-American from Oakland fresh out of Film School.

    What Coogler does so brilliantly is show that behind the statistic of another black man needlessly killed by an undisciplined white authority figure, that this was a very real person just at the start of what should have been a long happy life. There is plenty of emotion in his take on events, and very noticeably, no rage at all.

    Michael B Jordan (The Wire) turns in a terrifically sensitive portrayal as the good-natured Oscar, Melonie Diaz (Be Kind Rewind) is his supportive girlfriend Sophina, and in a powerhouse performance Octavia Spencer as Mum proves that her Oscar win last year (The Help) was no fluke. And credit to Forest Whittaker for taking this project on and producing it.

    In the light of the aftermath of the recent Trayvon Martin killing, this heartbreaking story has even more resonance now. The saddest aspect of all is that we know that many more young men will still needlessly lose their lives simply because of the color of their skin.

    Winner of Awards at both the Sundance & Cannes Film Festivals, this is totally unmissable, and easily one of the best ‘real

  • FILM REVIEW: Errodity(s)

    FILM REVIEW: Errodity(s)

    The only thing horrifying about Steven Vasquez’s new anthology of gay teen movies of the supernatural is some of the acting.★★ (more…)

  • FILM REVIEW | Getting Go

    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.

    Buy now from Amazon