Reviewing Jane: Follies And Nonsense, Whims And Inconsistencies Do Divert Me, I Own, And I Laugh At Them Whenever I Can

In which we review (almost) every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen, as I read through her extended bibliography for the first time.

Year: 2016

Director: Byrum Geisler

Cast: Ethan Sharrett, Chase Conner, Brandi Price 

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

The only thing shocking about the fact that they made a gay version of Pride and Prejudice is that it took until freaking 2016 to do it. This is homophobia at work, ladies and gentlemen. (For the record, I'm aware that there is a long history of queer Austen adaptations in theatre, but this ain't no blog about plays, is it?) That movie was called Before the Fall, and it is just as low budget and awkward as the gay cinema I came to know and love as a fresh-out-the-closet teen. So at least some things never change.

That and the fact that gay casting directors ALWAYS know how to cast a hot romantic lead. This is the first Darcy where I haven't had to squint real hard to find particularly appealing.

The interesting thing about Before the Fall is that in its update of the source material, it doesn't just gender-swap Lizzy Bennet. There's a lot of elements that are shifted around here, and it's actually kind of fun to see where they ended up, even if they were changed just for the sake of being different rather than any sort of narrative need.

Here's what we're dealing with. Ben Bennett (Ethan Sharrett) is an attorney in small town Virginia who accidentally insults the client of his coworker George Wickham (Jonathan Horvath). That client is Lee Darcy (Chase Conner), an alcoholic who pushed his girlfriend during an argument about the fact that they haven't had sex in a year. We're treated to a truly bizarre flashback about Darcy's dad working a gas station attendant while his son waits in the car, so we know that the man has been struggling with his sexuality.

Cut to several months later, when Nature Preserve board member Chuck Bingley (Jason Mac, who is unspeakably hot and should have been cast as Ben Bennett, but whatcha gonna do) brings Darcy - now in recovery - to a welcome party at Ben's. Over the course of a truly insane amount of hiking trips, the two are thrown into a tumultuous acquaintance that affects their lives forever, as well as those of Darcy's shrill, homophobic girlfriend Cathy Burge (Carol Marie Rinn) and Ben's BFF Jane Gardiner (Brandi Price), who falls for Bingley immediately and treats us to the film's only sex scene which is between two straight people for reasons that are entirely impossible to fathom.

Who invited you people? You have twenty of your own movies!

So basically, not only is there a gay element, but Darcy and Lizzy/Ben have essentially swapped personalities. Ben is the rich one whose pride is harming their relationship, and Darcy is the poor sap who is prejudiced against him thanks to an overheard comment. Does this alter the dynamics of the story in any way? OK, no it doesn't, but I feel like it should. We're too many degrees away from the source material for that to matter though.

Before the Fall is merely a lark. It plays with the toolbox provided by Jane Austen in ways that are fun to spot if you're as deep into her work as I am, but not entirely worthy of their own feature length motion picture. And some of the narrative wrinkles they add send the story down rabbit holes it can never quite recover from. Giving Darcy a girlfriend was a huge mistake (first of all, with the way their relationship makes them feel trapped, the filmmakers should have at least committed and made them husband and wife, otherwise it doesn't make a whole lot of sense), and leads to a lot of nasty little accidental subtext that implies that it's not abuse if it's not a felony, and that Cathy is the true villain in all of this because she's a shrill, hysterical woman. Painting her with a brush of homophobia and bitterness doesn't absolve Darcy of pushing her to the ground, which is a thing we see happen. In slow motion. Repeated three times like it's The f**king Graduate.

This is probably the right time to mention that the filmmaking itself isn't superb, but expecting any sort of technical brilliance from a hyper-indie gay film is like eating at Taco Bell and expecting not to spend an hour in the bathroom afterward. Shots awkwardly cut off people at the neck, the comic relief moments provided by two execrable gay stereotypes have the pacing of a drunken turtle, and the acting is a little underwhelming. This is pretty par for the course, honestly. 

Although, unusually, one thing Before the Fall does pull out all the stops on is its nature cinematography. If this were just a travelogue of Virginian hiking trails, it would be an unimpeachable masterpiece. The color scheme and gentle autumnal tranquility of any exterior shot sends you plunging into a perfectly serene mood, and that atmosphere does wonders for the mostly inane story playing out within its confines.

Forget these white doofuses, look at that beautiful lake!

So all in all, Before the Fall isn't a complete and total waste of time, just most of one. It's a gay film that neuters the sexuality of its leads, fails to understand its source material and the implications of the diversions it takes, and fails to drum up any sort of chemistry between the two leads in the first place. I know nothing about the ages or actual sexualities of Sharrett or Conner, so I won't blame either of those things, but Ben is presented as unbearably milquetoast and all of Conner's generally fine smoldering glances right off his impenetrable armor of blandness. 

This could be the fault of a script that fails to justify why anyone would particularly want to fall in love with him, and has Darcy's transition into a romantic lead take literally the entire movie. This could be the fault of an editor who has no idea how to drum up tension, even in scenes where characters are literally yelling at each other. This could be the fault of a complete and total misunderstanding of human relationships, and especially the blossoming of homosexual thought and feeling. It doesn't matter what the reason is, though. It's a weak little trifle any way you slice it, and there's no one ingredient that could have improved the listless mush of a story we're presented with here.

TL;DR: Before the Fall is a predictably mediocre effort, but it's more engaging than one might expect.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1128

Other Films Based on Pride and Prejudice 

Pride and Prejudice (Leonard, 1940)

Pride and Prejudice (miniseries - Langton, 1995)

Bridget Jones's Diary (Maguire, 2001)

Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (Black, 2003)

Bride & Prejudice (Chadha, 2004)

Pride and Prejudice (Wright, 2005)

Unleashing Mr. Darcy (Winning, 2016)

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Steers, 2016)

Before the Fall (Geisler, 2016)

Marrying Mr. Darcy (Monroe, 2018)

Christmas at Pemberley Manor (Theys, 2018)

Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe (McBrearty, 2018)

Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta (Baraka, 2019)

Simon Says

Year: 2018

Director: Greg Berlanti

Cast: Nick Robinson, Jennifer Garner, Josh Duhamel

Run Time: 1 hour 50 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

There was a time in my life when I would have welcomed a Love, Simon with open arms. As a gay teen, I devoured stuff like this. Only, the thing is, I never had a Love, Simon. I came out circa 2010, which doesn't seem that long ago, but in gay years, it feels like centuries. Sure, I was living in a world that had already given us Another Gay Movie (a remake of American Pie that's kind of awesome and whose title falsely posits that there are enough gay teen movies around that you could possibly be sick of them) and Were the World Mine (a glorious musical that retools A Midsummer Night's Dream).

We no longer live in a world starved for gay YA content, but Love, Simon is still the first studio film with a considerable budget to tell the story of a gay teen. That's incredible. Only, pretty much every gay high school movie necessarily deals with the age-old issue of Coming Out, and you know exactly what I don't need at my stage of life? 

Although, to be fair, Coming Out is at least third on the odious gay movie cliché scale, behind AIDS and Let's Fix Some Straight People.

But whether or not I needed Love, Simon, the world deserves Love, Simon, flaws and all. We need to allow gay movies to be just as mediocre as every other movie, because how else will we achieve true equality? So let's not get mad, let's get cracking with that plot summary.

Simon Spier (Nick Robinson) is a regular average teen, just like you. Assuming that you are an affluent white person in a nuclear family with 2.5 kids and a gross income that's literally gross because you're rich enough to afford a nauseatingly oversized McMansion. Only he has a Big-Ass Secret! You guys, he's gay! (The fact that the opening monologue to this effect assumes that the audience is entirely straight is either an oversight or a reassuring sign that we're living in a post-homophobia world)

When a classmate of his - known only as Blue - reveals that he's in the closet on an anonymous secret-sharing web site, Simon contacts him under the pseudonym Jacques (inspired by a photo of a trip to France with his parents, just like every average family has). While he gets close to Blue via email and attempts to find out his true identity, he is being blackmailed by theater geek Martin (Logan Miller), who screenshotted his emails and is using them as leverage to get inside information on Simon's hot friend Abby (Alexandra Shipp).

He wants to come out, and he finds courage in Blue's emails, but he's worried about the effect it will have on his parents (Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel) and his best friends (Katherine Langford and Jorge Lendeborg Jr.).

Pictured, from left to right: Spider-Man: Homecoming, Jurassic World, X-Men: Apocalypse, and 13 Reasons Why. These teens are doing just fine.

Honestly, Love, Simon is more than OK. It's... fine. Look, it's gentle and charming, and the fact that you won't be rolling in the aisles is mostly made up for with the warm-blanket atmosphere that permeates the whole thing. And Nick Robinson is game for the kind of low key character-based humor the movie is working with (the script is from the co-showrunners of This Is Us, who aren't exactly the second coming of Charlie Chaplin). The only people who really runs away with the humor here are the outspoken drama teacher played by Insecure's Natasha Rothwell, and maybe Tony Hale as the oversharing vice principal, though it would be nice if they hadn't clearly shoehorned him into random scenes in scenes so visibly nabbed in reshoots that you can taste the greenscreen.

What Love, Simon does get almost exactly right is the way emotions in high school play out, with all the big, stupid decision-making that that entails. These characters make fools of themselves in public about every twenty minutes, and their sloppy, overheated approaches to romance make you feel right at home. And anyone who has distractedly drifted through their daily routine while anxiously waiting for their phone to buzz with a message from a particular sweetheart will relate to Simon's achey, breaky hormones.

The film is also visually kinetic enough to keep the teen brain occupied, especially during the scenes where Simon imagines what Blue is doing, pasting on the face of whatever classmate he's hypothesizing his pen pal to be at that moment. Love, Simon shines the most when it's a romantic mystery, which it is for a good three-fifths of the time.

The question being who let this potential Blue get those highlights.

And there's one element I unequivocally love, which uses a repeat shot of Simon ordering coffee to show how even the tiniest details of his routine change with every decision he makes.

Unfortunately, those other two-fifths are Coming Out porn to the highest degree. I speak from experience when I say that I know full well that having liberal parents doesn't make the process any easier internally, but Love, Simon exists in a world where the stakes are well and truly null. What it gets right about the coming out process (the way the school will go ahead and assume you're dating the only other out gay kid in school - in my case, it's because I was, but whatever; the way it forces your heterosexual exes into a period of intense self-examination; the way you turn to the Internet for advice on how to live the Gay Lifestyle) is overshadowed by the toothless barrage of hyperbolically supportive conversations that form pretty much the entire final half hour of this movie.

There is an awkward Christmas scene that captures a family interaction in one perfect little crystal, but mostly Love, Simon ignores those feelings (and the repercussions of Simon's actions, especially as it relates to his hideously precocious younger sister) in favor of yet another tearful Oscar reel moment. Although, I will give credit to Jennifer Garner for selling the hell out of her Call Me By Your Name soliloquy in the third act.

Nothing but respect for MY Michael Stuhlbarg

There are a thousand teens out there right now who desperately need this movie, and I'm so glad they have it. But the parts that fail to speak to me aren't quite redeemed by what's ultimately a fun bit of fluff that isn't worth getting your panties in a knot over. There's no reason for an adult to watch it, other than to give that box office a necessary boost in hopes that they'll keep making these things and maybe strike gold at some point in the future.

TL;DR: Love, Simon is a charming little wish-fulfillment trifle.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1155

OK, Brennan

Year: 2017

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg 

Run Time: 2 hours 12 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

As a gay film reviewer, I felt personally and professionally obligated to watch Call Me By Your Name, the new film from Italian director Luca Guadagnino, which has been nominated for a pile of Golden Globes and will surely be one of the most buzzed-about Oscars titles in the coming months. (Plus, as a horror fan, I needed to do some reconnaissance on the man who is currently helming the Suspiria remake.) I'm happy another gay film is getting such a big awards push. The years were long between Brokeback Mountain and Moonlight, and it's time for LGBT stories to hit the big time. But until our stories become mainstream in a legitimately major way, we're still stuck in the Oscarbait realm, a genre that I don't really like all that much.

Pictured: Me attempting to interact with fancy-people movies.

Based on the novel by André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name tells the story of six long weeks in the dead of summer in 1983. At a palazzo in Northern Italy, 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) finds his lazy days are beginning to heat up with the arrival of graduate student Oliver (Armie Hammer), who has come to intern with his anthropology professor father (Michael Stuhlbarg). Other than some initial resistance and the inevitable end to their time together, there is very little drama to be had here. Their love blossoms as they lay in the grass and lounge by the pool. And sometimes Oliver actually does some work, though you start to wonder if Michael Stuhlbarg doesn't just cart in students so his son can get it in.

At any rate, his Father of the Year award is in the mail.

It's difficult for one to review a film so purely dedicated to the depiction of aesthetic and sensual pleasures. Especially when one didn't really like it quite as much as the rest of the world. But let me say this: If the sole reason you're watching Call Me By Your Name is to get some gorgeous, sun-dappled shots of the Italian countryside (and you have every right to approach it this way), you will love this movie. But after a certain point it begins to feel like a screensaver and not an actual narrative.

It does capture that feeling of time ticking slowly in a summer daze, the seconds seeming almost too lazy to drift by the way they normally do. However, accurately representing the feeling of boredom isn't something I'm really looking for in a motion picture, and as much as the lush camerawork takes in the awe and splendor of the beauty of nature, it doesn't quite manage to let you feel the sheer heat of the summer. Characters are splashing around in pools and rivers, so it clearly ain't winter, but the film is too pretty to let them sweat. It all feels sealed off from any real-world experience, which isn't really helped by the fact that Elio is living out his teen angst in a gorgeous palace in one of the most breathtaking natural landscapes in the world, with parents who love and understand him and a strapping broad shoulder to cry on.

I just don't feel inclined to feel sorry for him, I can't put my finger on why...

To be fair, it's not like the purpose of every movie is to be relatable. And to be fairer, there is some excellent work here in two people in the first throes of falling in love can create a bubble around themselves, finding a space for their passion to grow in a beautiful vacuum apart from all the other factors in their life and environment. And while it's certainly not exciting, it's never truly boring. There's always some new vista or terrible dance sequence to keep you occupied.

But now that I've just barely nicked a toehold onto the concept of music, I must speak my piece about the score to this film. It's just plain aggressive. Its constant piano trills feel like it was played by someone with hammers instead of fingers, and the two or three times it dips into an original Sufjan Stevens acoustic noodle, the lurching leaves a pit in your stomach. And by George, are those Sufjan Stevens songs two of the most treacly, infuriatingly juvenile tracks ever provided for an Oscar contender, and I'm including that song from Trolls that got nominated last year. It feels like something I would have written when I was 14, and there's a reason I wasn't being asked to score major motion pictures in junior high.

OK, maybe I'm just complaining extra hard because the rest of the critical sphere is revering this film as a new modern classic and I just don't get it. But allow me one more: There's a scene with a peach here that - as I understand it - is a direct lift and even a sanitization of a scene from the book. But with it, the movie takes a swerve into territory that feels like a cross between John Waters and David Cronenberg, and it fits like a square peg into no hole at all.

Let me tell you, if I had witnessed the events of this film in real life, I would certainly not feel the urge to be kissing either of these people.

OK, because I'm going to give Call Me By Your Name a 7/10, I should probably start saying some nice things about it. Like I said, it's certainly a visual feast. And I would definitely like to commend one Mr. Hammer, who manages to turn a brash American idiot into a delicate, loving dreamboat in a way that actually feels organic and all contained within the multitudes of one single personality. Chalamet and Stuhlbarg have been getting all the attention lately, and they are good, but this is an ensemble piece through and through. Everyone commits to the feelings and tone of the film, and even if those things aren't ones I particularly respond to, that's something worth celebrating.

TL;DR: Call Me By Your Name is a lush, pretty romance that ends up feeling just a teensy bit empty when all is said and done.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1057

Swimming In Miami

Year: 2016

Director: Barry Jenkins

Cast: Mahershala Ali, Ashton Sanders, Naomie Harris

Run Time: 1 hour 51 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Gay movies are tough. It’s difficult when your sexual identity is linked to a cornucopia of hot button issues, because the only wide-release gay movies that squeak by are the ones that interact directly with those issues. And you know where movies about social issues invariably end up? The whirling typhoon of overseriousness we call the Oscars. It’s a vicious cycle that has led to the most notable gay movies being the dour Philadelphia, the terrific but dour Brokeback Mountain, the ambiguously sullen Weekend, and f**king I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

Moonlight is a member of that massively unpleasant genre, coupled with the even more primordially depressing genre of Oscarbait Movies About Black People. So it’s a damn miracle that it ended up being watchable and, in patches, occasionally splendid.

I’ll get through an entire Oscar slate one of these years!

Moonlight is divided into three distinct parts (because you know a movie’s great if it has chapter titles), each depicting a stage in the coming-of-age of Chiron (Alex R. Hibbert as a child, Ashton Sanders as a teen, and Trevante Rhodes as an adult), a young gay man growing up in the mean streets of Miami.

To a lesser extent it is also about the people around him, at least to the degree that they influence the formation of his identity: his mother Paula (the lovely Naomie Harris, giving a performance that will inevitably be called “brave”), the drug dealer Juan (Mahershala Ali), Juan’s girlfriend Teresa (Janelle Monáe, whose transition from “R&B starlet” to “respectable actress” has been terrifyingly, imperceptibly fast), and his best friend Kevin (Jaden Pine, Jharrel Jerome, and American Horror Story: Roanoke’s André Holland).

Sidebar: Trevante Rhodes might hold the world record for Most Impossibly Buff Human Being Who Isn’t The Rock.

Moonlight is one of those movies that’s more fun to discuss than it is to sit through. As a portrait of a boy attempting to form an emotional, compassionate identity in a culture that values toughness and resilience, it’s an alternately warm and devastating character study. And probably the best thing about it is that it’s not explicitly about being gay. Although Chiron’s homosexuality informs every aspect of his stunted identity, it’s about the universal themes of love, self, and human connection. Of course, watching this all play out onscreen is about as exciting as watching an infomercial for socks.

To be fair, my brain doesn’t come equipped with the arthouse gland that allows people to sit through a long-winded parade of human misery and come out declaring it a masterpiece (I prefer short-winded parades with more stage blood). And while Moonlight is more than just misery porn, I find that it struggles to strike a balance between art and realism. 

Most of the film is straight-laced, almost documentarian drama that uses long takes and naturalistic lighting to douse the film in the gritty reality of the Miami ghetto. But it takes random leaps into bold, colorful, almost Italian arthouse cinematography that feel completely disjointed, desperately jockeying for your attention. These movements come too infrequently to be anything other than distracting, and they’re not so gorgeous that the movie couldn’t have gone on without them. Especially in the third, weakest chapter, these intrusions almost feel like the film is mocking us for actually getting into the story.

Take the film’s best scene: A moonlit seaside conversation between two boys that carries oceans of meaning beneath tentative words. It’s stripped-down perfection, using nothing but dialogue and the human face to provoke mounting erotic tension in the audience. Moonlight is at its best when it’s simple, because its delusions of aesthetic grandeur merely remind you that the visual style is mostly less than phenomenal.

Although, who could complain about this shot?

Moonlight is more like a novel than a film, packed with subtext and recurring symbolism that’s a thrill to dissect, but could just has easily have been presented as a text piece rather than a work of cinema. As a story, it’s important and heartfelt. As a film it’s nonessential.

That’s perhaps not very fair to a film that showcases well-etched characters portrayed by a bevy of talented actors and promising newcomers, but it’s so dry you could use it to cure meat. I’m in no way saying that it’s bad. Moonlight is terrific. But it’s not the type of movie I would consider taking a friend to or –Heaven forbid – owning on DVD.

TL;DR: Moonlight is a decent character study that tries way too hard to be Important.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 780

Aging Out

Year: 2014

Director: Ira Sachs

Cast: John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei
Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Queer cinema tends to be a rather bleak affair. Because of the dearth of LGBTQ-related stories, filmmakers tend to think that since they're already pushing the envelope, they may as well make a dreary message picture about AIDS or hate crimes or coming out. Films about gay individuals rarely explore their humanity, instead turning them into martyrs for some cause or another.

Love is Strange is not one of those films, and for that we must thank it. In and of itself, it's not a particularly terrific film, but for there to be a vibrant and varied tapestry of films regarding these topics, there have got to be some duds, just for spice.

Speaking of duds, check out these slick getups.

Love Is Strange tells the story of two longtime lovers, Ben (John Lithgow) - a painter - and George (Alfred Molina) - a musician, detailing how their eventual marriage ruptures their lives from the outside. When George is fired from his position as the conductor for a Catholic school choir due to his wedding being perceived as a political statement, they can no longer afford their rent.

Against their wishes, the newlyweds are separated until they can find a new place. Ben is sent to live with his nephew Elliot (Darren E. Burrows), his wife Kate (Marisa Tomei), and their son Joey (Charlie Tahan). Their family dysfunction is not caused, but is certainly exacerbated by Joey being forced to share a bunk bed with his ancient relative as he blathers on endlessly while dripping memories from his head like a sieve. George shacks up with a relation of his own - young cop Roberto (Manny Perez) and his similarly be-copped boyfriend Ted (Cheyenne Jackson).

The film does everything it can with angles and composition to emphasize space - the tightness of living in a New York apartment with other people, especially uninvited houseguests, being key to the entire narrative. It accomplishes this clearly and with grace, but despite a functional visual style supporting the theme, mere cinematography can't be the Atlas carrying the world of a story on its shoulders.

Much like Joey, cinematography could barely carry a grocery bag without breaking into a sweat.

Thankfully, Love Is Strange has four solid anchors. The two leads are uniformly terrific, displaying the craft they've honed for decades, and Marisa Tomei shines as the resolutely imperfect, arrogant housewife who struggles to fit her internal issues with her external perception of herself. Cheyenne Jackson likewise magnetizes the viewer, albeit in a much smaller, thankless role. But his easy performance brings a sense of naturalism to what could easily have become a stilted, overdone premise, especially considering that the dysfunctional family isn't exactly a shunned topic in the annals of indie cinema.

But in spite of all of this solid work, Love Is Strange is an unutterably messy narrative. Weeks slip by unnoticed between scenes and the central conflict of the second act of the film is so ludicrously inane that I was halfway convinced I was watching a heavily-veiled satire - SPOILERS [There are countless family meetings, arguments, and accusations about all the time Joey spends with his new, slightly older friend Vlad (Eric Tabach) alone in his room. Like any reasonable parents, Kate and Elliot are concerned that Joey and Vlad are... stealing library books. I'm really shocked the MPAA let this kind of scandalous material run by them unchecked.]

What begins as a sprawling dysfunctional family narrative quickly pares itself down to just the essential people and moments, yet most of the thematic, core material about love and perhaps strangeness occurs offscreen. Lithgow and Molina are by far the most seasoned and committed performers onscreen, but they are kept apart for far too long. Deprived of a dramatic foil, each character slowly dilutes until there's nothing left but a thin smear of color. An alarmingly ill-advised scene in the climax relies on an emotional intimacy with these characters that hasn't been present for a good thirty minutes, feeling for all the world like a high school production of Les Misérables - it's emotional and resonant in theory simply by displaying the thing that it displays, but any emotion evoked is absolutely not earned by qualities present in the work itself.

Unless those emotions are related to pretty men in cop uniforms.

And don't even get me started on the ending, by far the worst scene in the entire film, placing the entire crux of the narrative on the uneven shoulders of the clunkiest performer and quickly disintegrating any remaining goodwill with vapid, generic independent film imagery.

But Love Is Strange isn't exactly the scourge of the Earth despite its flaws. The performances are largely on point, there is some sparkle of wit in the humor, and it is perhaps the most effortlessly diverse film of 2014. It's always nice for a film to depict interracial relationships, especially in a New York setting considering that the city is a larger melting pot than the one at the Hershey factory.

But we've finally reached the point where multiple, varied, layered ethnic characters can be integrated into a storyline by the American media without the flop sweat of tokenism present in earlier decades, especially on TV shows like Friends and movies like all of them. In combination with the intelligent queer narrative that comes into play, it's like a diversity variety hour, and a pretty terrific example for what films should strive to look like in the future.

I'll be happy if I never see Love Is Strange again, but it's nice to see a movie prove that the world can be depicted as it really is - messy, diverse, angry, loving, loud, exciting, and even strange.

TL;DR: Love Is Strange is a massively sloppy narrative but remains reasonably enjoyable throughout.
Rating: 6/10

Should I Spend Money On This? I wouldn't. It'll end up on HBO Go sometimes probably. Click through it if you're binging, but don't set a date and bust out the popcorn.

Word Count: 1017

Shannon Speaks: Cinema du Weird

Having bored friends is great for providing content. Today my good friend Shannon returns after the glowing success of her first Popcorn Culture feature with a piece about weirdness on film.

Let’s be honest: most people value their time and decide to spend it only watching fun, entertaining, insightful films. And then there’s Brennan, who gets an equal kick out of wasting, I mean investing, his time in any movie, almost purposefully being drawn to especially bad ones. I mentioned in my last submission to Brennan’s glorious blog that Brennan and I have watched some pretty strange movies together… some of which were his fault and some of which were not. Still, I thought that I should write another post and this time feature some of these movies that put the horrible in horror. Here are the five weirdest movies I have ever watched with Brennan, enjoy!

[EN: I do not endorse that ALL of these movies are horrible. Disclaimer: The opinions represented in this post do not necessarily reflect those of the blog author.]

The Five Weirdest Movies Brennan Has Made Me Watch

#5 Pieces (1982, dir. Juan Picquer Simón)

Brennan is always better at explaining this than I am, but essentially this movie is the Tacatá of movies, because like the club hit (and one of Brennan's and my favorite jams), it is a movie performed in one language but made by men from a different country who really have no need or business making a movie in a different, non-native language. It would be like if Brennan and I deciding to accomplish both our film homework and our Spanish homework in one project. Basically, it just sucks. So the dialogue in this movie is horrible, or amazing, depending on how you look at it.

[EN: Amazing is how I look at it. Pieces is one of the more electrifying bad movies with gonzo performances and a bonkers final shot. You can look forward to seeing it soon in Census Bloodbath!]

#4 Suspiria (1977, dir. Dario Argento)

Brennan and I watched this when I arrived home after a weekend Ultimate Frisbee tournament, and I was spent. So naturally I fell dead asleep in the middle of this horror classic. But even the fifteen minutes (give or take) that I saw of the movie was enough to dub this one of the weirdest movies. All I remember is ballet, (which is weird enough) and a girl getting thrown out of a window into a room full of needles. Why does a ballet academy have a room chock-full of needles? I would find that kind of need-less, wouldn’t you? (har har). But then again, when you have a ballet studio run by witches, I feel like needles would be the least of their worries.

[EN: Oh Shannon, your puns are worse than my dad's. This is the one film on this list that I view as an artistic masterwork. You can check out my review here.]

#3 The Wizard of Gore (1970, dir. Herschell Gordon Lewis)

I was really excited to see this movie! Brennan got it off of Netflix as a gift watch for me because he knew that I love the 2009 indie hit Juno, in which the main characters have a rather heated discussion comparing Dario Argento movies (Suspiria, see above) to Herschel Gordon Lewis movies, specifically The Wizard of Gore. As it was said in Juno, The Wizard of Gore did indeed have “buckets of goo.” However, it also had a thin plot and lots of loooooooong monologues by the Wizard himself. Instead of a heart, or a brain, or courage, this Wizard only awarded major gaping saw wounds in his “volunteers.” The adaptation is equally weird, but I think more entertaining, and not as slow.

[EN: You're welcome Shannon for showing you all the Juno films. Check out my review of Wizard of Gore here and its remake here.]

#2 Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966, dir. Harold P. Warren)

The camera could only take 27 seconds of film at a time. That should be enough to put this on the list, but you may as well add the overall weirdness of the plot and the strange Dracula-esque dude who collects wives like polygamy was going out of style. The ending of Manos is unfortunately amazing, which makes me kind of sad that I put this on the list, but then again this movie is indeed really freaking weird, so here it will stay.

[EN: Not for nothing is Manos the most popular episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you don't know what that show is, click here and thank me later.]

#1 Bubba Ho-Tep (2002, dir. Don Coscarelli)

Elvis is alive. John F. Kennedy was turned black by the government in an effort to keep him protected from another assassination attempt. They are room neighbors in a nursing home, where a cursed bug thing is killing old people. All of that was fine, but the fact that Bubba (Elvis) talked about how sad he was that his *ahem* “richard” no longer worked and was rather graphic in describing what was wrong with it just made the rest of the movie abhorrent. I DETEST THIS STUPID MOVIE. I WANT THOSE TWO HOURS OF MY LIFE BACK.

[EN: I would like to add that, in addition to the attention lavished upon Elvis' dick, a campy premise is played absolutely straight in the most stultifying manner possible. But Roger Ebert loved it so what do I know? Check out my review here.]

BONUS: Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild! (2008, dir. Todd Stephens)

Brennan and I, in our first semester of college, got really into the American Pie series, binge-watching them all. After we finished the very heterosexual American Pies, we decided to compare it to the gay parody series called Another Gay Movie. The first movie was okay, making cheap jokes at the stereotypes of gay males and even the one lesbian in the film, but overall it was ridiculous and still fun. However, Brennan and I popped in the sequel to the already bad movie and watched it for less than five minutes before taking it out of the DVD player.

It just couldn’t be done. Keep in mind that Brennan and I sat through all the horrible movies listed above and pretty much enjoyed them (other than Bubba Ho-Tep), so the context should speak volumes about how gosh-darn horrible Another Gay Sequel was. You want a real, terrifying horror? Think about the fact that some people actually were able to sit through the entire movie. Now that’s scary.

[EN: There is no scientific evidence available that anybody has seen this film through to completion, not even the filmmakers. It might even close with 45 minutes of blackness. The world will never know.]

Fin!
Word Count: 1140

A Day Late, An Hour Short

Year: 2002

Director: Stephen Daldry

Cast: Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman
Run Time: 1 hour 54 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Everybody remember Sergio? He wrote this article last week about films that (bar a couple) I basically never would have seen or reviewed if not for his considerable influence over my free time. Although he neglected to mention The Hours (presumably to maintain a low Meryl Streep count and avoid tipping the scales), this is the film he chose for his most recent entry in my dramatic cinema education.

But for all the good and interesting things contained in The Hours, it also represents a lot of the elements of the genre that make it so hard for me to access. It is abstract to a fault and it ushers powerful moments across the screen to provoke a response, but never actually imbues them with power in a cinematic context. Save for one moment, the film is more or less as effective as cinema as Stephen Daldry actually reading the bestselling novel upon which the movie is based out loud.

The performances are great, the writing is effective, but the staging is wan. Stephen Daldry simply isn't a director. Over his 16-year career he has directed but four feature films, lately having dedicated himself to producing Paralympic telecasts. This is an actors' movie for sure, perhaps even an editors' movie. But the lack of a keen directorial presence prevents the film from fully blossoming into an audience's movie.

If you like the story, it'll keep you occupied. But the transition from page to screen is simple and without affect.

Much like this functional scarf/sweater combination.

The Hours tells the story of three women separated by time but linked by a single work of literature. Virginia Woolf (an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman in a prosthetic nose) writes her novel in 1923 Richmond, England. In 1951 LA, Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), a milquetoast housewife, struggles with her place in the world while reading the novel. And in 2001 New York City, Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) plans a party for her longtime friend Richard (Ed Harris), an AIDS-suffering poet who has long drawn comparisons between Miss Vaughan and the title character of the novel.

In each timeline, the film explores the events of one single day and how that day shaped the lives and outlooks of these three women, as viewed through the filter of the story of Mrs. Dalloway. I would highly suggest reading this novel before viewing the movie, as I'm certain it enhances the experience. Unfortunately I did not, providing yet another disconnect between myself and the screen. The novel is explained somewhat in the context of the film, but it does not actively reach out to guide viewers in the right direction.

This can unfortunately make the film seem a bit chilly at times, especially in the Virginia Woolf segments, none of which would be entirely compelling without the saving grace of Kidman's sharp-edged performance.

Some edges are sharper than others.

Luckily the film is provided three incredibly talented actresses (Ed Harris is also terrific, though he is neither an actress nor a frequently seen character). Meryl Streep delivers a breathtaking scene in what only amounts to be the middle of her character arc, paving the way for even more terrific character development. Julianne Moore is the least riveting of the three, but this is by choice, considering the inherent weakness of her character's resolve. As the film continues on, her performance gains more and more traction.

The Hours should thank its lucky stars for these indelible performances, because without them the film would have sank like a stone in the luggage racks of the Titanic. What it does receive, thanks to multilayered characters that act outside of the confines of the dialogue itself, is a sense of gravity. The themes present in each of the separate storylines get pulled into orbit around these three women and form a cohesive whole.

(That was a darn layered gravity pun right there. Stop for a minute and appreciate that.)

There's also some highly interesting lesbian subplots that don't quite coalesce into a coherent thread, but maintain a sense of oneness among the characters and provide a delightful entry point for LGBT analysis that very few drama films can claim.

So while depression dramas can't typically be described as anything other than depressing, The Hours can thank its lead actresses for being capable of ultimately leaving the audience with feelings of fulfillment. It would have been a lot better in the hands of a man or a woman who knew how to visually tell a story beyond just pointing a camera at people saying stuff, but it's an all-the-more compelling platform for a trio of magnetic performances.

TL;DR: The Hours isn't a cinematic masterpiece, but the acting talent pulls it all together.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 815

These Are The Gays Of Our Lives

Year: 2014

Director: Chris Nelson

Cast: Nicholas Braun, Hunter Cope, Dakota Johnson

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I could count the number of good gay comedies I've seen on one hand. But enough bragging. Chris Nelson's microbudget picture Date and Switch, in spite of its warts, is one of the better ones I've seen in several years.

Perhaps the best would be Were the World Mine, an impeccably stylish musical based on A Midsummer Night's Dream. Then you have your Patrik, Age 1.5's, your Hedwig's and your lengthily-titled drag queen road trip comedies (a bizarrely specific subgenre populated by the terrific Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and To Wong Fu Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar). But other than that and a smattering of other standouts, LGBT stories generally eschew comedy, preferring to be immersed in the midst of heady tearjerker drama.

Date and Switch is absolutely less of a personal affair than those classic comedies and has much less to say about the current state of society, but it fits in quite well with 2014's slate of surprisingly pleasant funny flicks.

It's like watching the Empire State Building hang out with a McDonald's.

Michael (Nicholas Braun of the short-lived TV series 10 Things I Hate About You) and Matty (Hunter Cope) are high school best friends despite both actors clearly being at least six years older than me, a third-year college student. I mean, they're old even by the standards of a slasher fan, committed to watching a genre where 20-year-olds routinely claim to be 14.

When they make a pact to lose their virginities before prom, Matty decides it's probably the right time to come out to his best friend, leading them both on a personal journey through what it means to be a gay man and how/if that changes the nature of their relationship.

Things get mixed-up when Michael falls in love with Matty's ex-girlfriend Em (Dakota Johnson) and Matty falls in love with Greg (Zach Cregger), a considerably older young man even by the already considerably old standards this film has set for itself. The fact that Greg had rear-ended Michael's car outside a gay club doesn't earn him a high place in his esteem.

Although his impressive beard probably should.

There are quite a few laugh out loud funny lines sprinkled throughout the film, keeping it popping along at a terrifically brisk pace. I won't list them here, although I did in my notes, rendering them almost entirely useless. And the two leads have an easy chemistry in spite of the wet-behind-the-ears Cope's tendency to slip into overemphasis and indication like a high school drama student. In this vein it is a lovely - and successful - hangout comedy.

What damages the film the most, however, is the total lack of weight and import given to the comic structure set up at the core of the film. What could be a blisteringly funny teen sex farce consistently makes the wrong choice at pivotal moments, turning it into a funny, but rather more low key and tepid affair.

The Midsummer-esque partner swapping is hardly given a second glance, ditto Michael's shrill attempts to assimilate himself into gay culture. And a drunk dinner table scene that could have been the comic centerpiece of the entire thing implodes with a soft whump.

Much like this bubble pile once 2 AM hits.

It's a Blue Ball comedy is what it is, with pristinely poised farcical elements refusing to materialize into something ridiculous and hilarious. And thus I lament the film Date and Switch could have been, despite the fact that the film it is isn't one to brush off right away. It's not often that a friendship between a gay teen and his straight best friend is explored so thoroughly and thoughtfully and with such a funny approach.

As both of them grow up and learn about themselves, Michael realizing that his best friend is the exact same person he always was and Matty realizing he doesn't have to change his life to fit the stereotypes he believes about the gay community, the film proves its worth as a documentation of the travails and realities of modern high school life.

It annoyingly spends way more screen time on the heterosexual half of the storyline, forcing most of the homosexual relationship to take place offscreen, but its heart is in the right place and the story is an important one that hopefully is going to get a lot more coverage in the succeeding years. 

I absolutely would not mind if Date and Switch began the trend of heartwarming comedies that explore teen metamorphosis in a more enlightened age. It's perhaps not a tremendously great film but it would certainly be worth remembering as a pristine example right at the beginning of the movement.

TL;DR: Date and Switch is flawed without a doubt, but carves its path with heart and humor.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 827

Out Of The Closet, Into The Fire

Year: 2014

Director: Ryan Murphy

Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Julia Roberts

Run Time: 2 hours 12 minutes

When Sergio first told me about wanting to see the HBO film The Normal Heart I thought "Oh yippee, another dreary gay movie about AIDS." You see, as a gay man it is always nice to see movies about people who think like you, act like you, whatever, instead of the boring heteronormative poobah you get everyday. But the use of AIDS has become such a tired trope that it has become a running joke that you can't watch a movie with LGBT characters without it becoming a tragedy.

So I was understandably wary. Especially considering that director and executive producer Ryan Murphy has a history of headlining ambitious but messy productions *cough* Glee *cough*. But The Normal Heart, a story of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980's based on a play of the same name by Larry Kramer, despite being almost exactly what one might expect in terms of frothy period drama, is also one of the most harrowing portrayals of the disease put onscreen to date.

This ain't no "straight man learns to love the queers" story like The Dallas Buyers Club or Philadelphia, nor is it a quasi-romanticized Bohemian art piece like Rent. The Normal Heart is a straight up medical horror film, depicting the queasy reality of life for gay men in the early years of the decade as they were being cut down in record numbers by a disease that nobody understood and struggling to find anybody willing to help them.

It's gonna be pretty hard to be funny in the captions on this one.

Ned Weeks (Mark Ruffalo) is a gay reporter/activist who, along with several of his close friends, begins the Gay Men's Health Crisis organization to try to spread awareness and promote AIDS research after the death of his friend Craig (Jonathan Groff). With the help of the scrappy wheelchair-bound Dr. Emma Brookner (Julia Roberts), he and the board of the organization work tirelessly to right the wrongs committed by the American government, who seem to be content simply allowing the gays to die in record numbers.

As more and more of his friends and acquaintances end up dead, Ned's anger grows until he is constantly lashing out at the establishment on the air and in person, always shouting, never pulling a punch where he can help it. He can't stand the inequality of a world where a plague that is killing hundreds of people can simply be ignored by their own leaders because they don't want to get their hands dirty with LGBT policy. Perhaps his approach is tiresome and alienating, but it is the exact response a crisis of this level deserves.

When he falls in love with the debonair LA Times reporter Felix Turner (Matt Bomer), he begins to soften until the fateful day that Felix begins showing symptoms. The film turns into a race against the clock as Ned pushes harder and harder for adequate research, drug importing, and social recognition in a world where dead gay men are given no autopsy and stuffed into garbage bags. He's shouting into a void, trying vainly to save everybody he loves from near total annihilation in the face of a new plague.

If that doesn't sound like a horror film, then you clearly haven't seen as many as I have (which, in all likelihood, is probably the case even if you agree). An alienated man with friends and loved ones dying all around him while people in positions of authority are either helpless or unwilling to give aid (pun absolutely not intended)? That could be any slasher movie. That could be any number of haunted house pictures. That IS Jaws.

Two scenes in particular, a wild beach party on Fire Island where Craig's healthy exterior begins to falter and a subway ride where a symptomatic Matt Bomer sees the impact of his condition, literalize that horror undercurrent in a strikingly obvious and resolutely impactful way through jarring editing and stunning cinematography, two of the most (and some of the only) visually impactful moments in a film that derives most of its power from dialogue and performance rather than framing and color.

Unless you count skin tone.

Ned is met with opposition from both sides. Hey, you try telling an entire population of gay men who have fought their entire lives for the right to be physical with one another that maybe they should cool it on the whole "having sex" thing for a while while we wait for funding.

I rarely stick with movies over two hours long, especially ones that depict the political process in as much detail as this one, but The Normal Heart has an edge on those other films. It is an absolutely true story, a mind-blowing outrage that 1) Happened just barely over a decade before I was born - that's pretty modern if you ask me and 2) Has gotten nowhere near the amount of press that it deserved.

Sure, people will say that it's sensationalist, that there's two sides to every story. Maybe some straight people wanted to help. Whoop dee doo. They didn't. Not really. And it's hard to ignore the importance of the gay side of the story in the HIV epidemic, but that is exactly what has been happening for decades.

Which is clearly a mistake because: fabulous.

The film itself is haphazard, but strong. Ryan Murphy tips his hand somewhat with a lengthy series of bombastic and on-the-nose Awards Bait speeches and those surreptitious shifts in character that he is so known for. And the film, especially toward the end, has very little in terms of narrative thrust or momentum. The film can be aimless in terms of storytelling more often than it hits the mark. But man, can Mr. Murphy wield an emotional sledgehammer.

The sheer tortuous reality of The Normal Heart is an emotional wringer, operated by winning performances from A-list actors. Julia Roberts and The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons especially bring the film an emotional core that shakes your bones and keeps you thinking about the film, even days later. And Mark Ruffalo is a fine actor who turns in a terrific performance, but he pales in comparison to the actually gay actors bringing their all around every corner - most of them, like Parsons and Bomer, drawing upon recent coming out experiences to fuel their rage and alienation.

Even the minor characters bring it all to the table. In fact I'd argue that the little known Danielle Ferland, who doesn't even have a picture on her IMDb page, turns in the most harrowing and committed performance in a cast full of tremendous talents turning it up to 11. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was crying in the car the morning after thinking about her scene. And I'm emotionally sturdy enough to handle LA traffic every day on my way to work.

I really should be getting an award for that.

The Normal Heart is an utterly necessary film for our generation and it's lucky enough to have a wide array of stars that will hopefully draw in viewers from a much broader demographic than it might have. It's inelegant and at times overwrought, but there is no denying the tremendous importance of bringing history to life in the most tactile, emotionally raw format imaginable. And not just for gay people. For everybody.

Because this fight isn't over. HIV transmission in America is still at epidemic rates and climbing. It doesn't get the press that it used to once people chilled out about the gay panic and focus shifted to Africa, but everybody - gay and straight - is putting themselves at risk because of lack of awareness. Gay men are still at highest risk of transmission because they are naturally exposed to the top tier of risky behaviors by default, but this is happening everywhere. A quarter of new infections are contracted by heterosexuals yearly and the CDC estimates that, if we don't get more careful now, over half of college aged gay men will have HIV by the time they are 50 and the risk to straights isn't much less terrifying.

Maybe this isn't what The Normal Heart set out to do, but the bleak, terrifying depiction of real life events should spur a new generation to learn the risks and how to prevent them. Living in the sheltered 21st century, it's easy to reduce the impact of what history teaches us, but the film hits a nerve, bringing the horrors of the past to today like no other.

We need to see it, both to learn the true story of the AIDS crisis and to prevent another from striking. To win a war, you have to start one. And that, hopefully, is exactly what The Normal Heart is going to accomplish.

TL;DR: The Normal Heart can be clunky at times but it is a harrowing and utterly necessary film.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 1509