This review is out of the closet.....
Jun 27 '01 (Updated Nov 05 '04)
The Bottom Line These are about activism, humor, romance, tears, forgiveness and overcoming...good movies all
Well now, here is an interesting film genre – and perhaps should be broken into sub-categories, funny vs. gay pride vs. Aids movies. To simply call the genre gay movies makes it an amelioration of many types of movies with a common theme. Therefore, I have to say that these are my ten favorite gay movies. They probably do not represent the ten most powerful statements of sexual choice – or the ten greatest gayploitation films – certainly a mixture of comedy, drama, drag, and passion. So here they are, with my reasons, my loves, and my own passions.
#10 - God’s and Monsters – Another Ian McKellen movie, there are three on this list. Recon he is being tied to a specific roll…probably so. Great movie, with Brandon Frazier dealing with questions of identity, which he is and can he maintain his friendship with Ian’s character. Story of James Whale – the movie director who created Frankenstein and Bride of…. he has a stroke, and Brandon’s character (he is the gardener – kind of an interesting stereotypical fantasy thing there…hehe) befriends him and that leads to their friendship and the gardener modeling for him.
#9 - If These Walls Could Talk 2 – This was a series of three short stories about lesbians from different eras, the first from the sixties, the second from the seventies, and the last from now. Each of the three vignettes really tries to specifically address a strong social issue as it relates to gay couples.
Okay, so the Dido song was stone-cold-rockin, and Sharon and Ellen were just way way too much fun. The social issue in this one was that they wanted to have a baby. They worked at getting pregnant, and dealt with loving each other through that, and their decision to have a family. While this portion got the strongest promo from HBO – it was not my favorite part.
The section from the seventies is more or less dealing with the social ostracism that can come with standing out, and telling the world who you are. This girl does so, and is put upon by her friends…who really were not friends if that is the way it went…she finds that her soul is the most important thing…not the wannabe, poser friends.
And the sixties piece was my favorite, dealing with the legal rights of gay couples. Partners since the sixties, when one of the women dies, her family comes in and just begins to take over everything. Ignoring the wishes of her in her death, as well as that of her partner of fifty some years. This one made me mad, mad me cry and made me want to see legislation enacted…this one was about the fight, and it was a powerfully written and acted piece.
#8 – Bent – an amazing movie – gay in Nazi Germany is just one of the cases of the most horrible timing imaginable. To find oneself in the heart of one of the worst political groups in the history of the planet for dealing with differences. Yet another Ian McKellen movie, he just keeps popping up…hehe – anyway, this ends up a touching love story, and a story of survival, under the worst possible circumstances.
#7 - Priscilla Queen of the Dessert – Okay could this have been more of a romp? I just love this movie. Three drag queens head into the Australian outback (Alice Springs) to do their show. It’s your basic gay drag queen, riding in a bus, road trip movie. And oh my god, do they encounter some craziness. There are bus breakdowns, hateful and fearful hillbillies (do they have those in Australia?), an amazing dance number with the Aborigines in the middle of the outback, some interesting drug trips and a cook out… Fun and funny film, particularly hilarious is the Vietnamese stripper that they encounter in a little town in the outback who knows some interesting tricks with ping pong balls…which makes even the jaded drag queens blush and chuckle.
The movie culminates with the show in Alice Springs, where Hugo Weaving’s (the Matrix) character Tick (our hero) comes face to face with his son, who loves him and embraces him. So the drag queens make good, they have a lot of fun and end up with their sweet child.
#6 - Love, Valour and Compassion – Okay, this is a summer party movie – eight gay men in a big summer house romping, rambling, talking, making love, and scaring the crap out of each other. Was this subtitled eight men out? Oh no, that was the baseball movie…hehe
Okay, so i have to say that i never enjoyed Jason Alexander so much. He plays the buffoonish character. The man who loves Broadway musicals and is dealing with his HIV status. There are a couple of HIV positive characters at the house in the summer, a deeply monogamous couple who love each other and spending time with each other and their friends, there is a sexy young Latin, there is a lot of heavy dialog and endless conversations.
This is an extremely funny movie, touching – another where i just do not have enough tears to keep watching it – you will cry. It’s kind of an interaction movie, who is going to do what next, will the characters process through dealing with former lovers being all around them…how will it all go. An interesting film, worth a watch. This one I would definitely have to call a gaychic flick.
#5 – Birdcage – Robin Williams is brilliant as the club owner and aggressive partner in the relationship that he has with Nathan Lane (the less aggressive partner). I started to call Robin Williams the dominant partner, but that is not necessarily the case here (or in any relationship, homo or hetro). That is, in fact, a good deal of the humor of this movie. At one point, Robin Williams describes Nathan Lane’s character by saying that “Albert is practically a breast.” This is describing his nurturing characteristics and extreme sensitivity to his female side…He loves the strong Turkish coffee that their hilarious house-man (played by Hank Azaria) makes, he does the shopping, he is a chocoholic, he faints, he delightfully swishes his way through scene stealing scene after scene. Moreover, way deep at the heart of it all he is a wonderful husband/wife and mother/father to Robin Williams and his son.
What makes the movie so outrageous is not the wonderful caring relationships, but that they take place in the midst of a notorious drag club. In fact, that is just sort of the way that the couple makes a living, a very comfortable living. The son (Dan Futterman) comes home from College announcing that he is going to get married, ironically to the daughter of an archconservative Senator played by Gene Hackman. In one of his funniest roles, Hackman is surrounded by conservative humor delivering lines about the Pope and Billy Graham as both too controversial and liberal.
Well obviously, with that attitude, trouble was brewing for these love struck kids. The movie climaxes with a visit from the Senator and his wife to the home of Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, and the movie ends with the same sort of manic humor we saw with movies like “The Party”, ending with a surprising and funny twist.
#4 – Philadelphia – Well, here we have yet another Aids and legal rights movie. This one is something really special. For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last ten years or so, Tom Hanks won the Oscar for best actor for this with his performance as a lawyer in a big firm who turns out to be HIV positive and gets fired. He is convinced that he was set up, and let go because he was sick. Jason Robards does a great job as the head of the law firm that has Hanks working his way up the chain.
Antonio Banderas plays Tom’s partner and nurses and loves him. Tom has to go through the film and find a lawyer, which he eventually does in the ambulance (hearse i guess in this case) chasing Denzel Washington. Ahh the ever-volatile Denzel – he does a hilarious job of playing the TV lawyer guy, who says to everyone, just explain it to me like i am five years old. He ends up fighting for Tom’s rights and winning the case against the law firm. There is no end to the powers of this movie.
The two crying scenes for me are a basic throw away scene (as the director once described it), where Tom steps out of the law office after trying to find a lawyer again unsuccessfully, and he stands there on the corner of the street…terrified, grieved, so very sad…and his face just slowly melts, fades and dies. He is wearing a vintage Phillies hat and has sores evident and it just kills me. The other is the opera scene where Tom is describing for Denzel what is going on in a small piece of opera. He describes the music with passion, the passion that he has for life, and that maybe he had illuminated for him as he felt that life draining away through tubes. The movie is brilliant and so worth watching.
#3 – Maurice – Here is perhaps my most obscure choice. Hugh Grant plays a conflicted Englishman (isn’t he always)…who is having a summer affair with his dear friend played by James Wilby. England and America are probably two of the only nations on the earth who force the closet to exist at all. And this plays out exactly that way. There is a scene in the film where one of the characters is arrested for being gay, and Grant observes it. He is terrified, does not feel like he can pursue the dear loving friendship that he has with Wilby’s character. He ends up getting married and settling for a partner that he is not as in love with as he was with Maurice. This movie is really all about the powerful prejudices of early 19th century England, and their Victorian mentality. It is about love and passion and romps through the fields. Its about conflict and pain and denial of love. Really a fine film.1
#2 - It’s My Party – One of my very favorite movies. Eric Roberts is positive, and he is dying. He decides to go out with a party, and so gathers his friends, family and loved ones around him to say goodbye to them all. It is a powerful movie about making our choices in both life and death, and explores the incredible moral dilemma that has beaten up anyone who knows they are checking out. This one has some tender love scenes between Eric and his partner played by Gregory Harrison (from Trapper John) – and could they have been a cuter couple…i don’t think so – there is a lot of cool build up there, skiing together, riding horseback through the southern California mountains, going to Hawaii.stinkin yuppies.
Anyway, Eric ends up HIV positive and Harrison bails on him. Eric’s character perseveres and he keeps moving on with his life. Harrison shows up at the party in an attempt to clear his conscience. He is rebuffed and rebuffed until finally Roberts gives in and says good-bye to him. Marlee Matlin is brilliant as the deaf sister, Olivia Newton-John plays a good friend, Eric Segal as the estranged dad, Roddy McDowell as the voice of the Catholic right – and oh goodness me Bronson Pinchot in his best roll since he played Serge in Beverly Hills Cop was just absolutely hysterical. He was the comic relief, the voice of cattiness, and the protagonist of Harrison’s character. He is also positive and is trying his best to laugh his way through it.
This movie takes a strong look at Aids, at conservative vs. flamboyant gay lifestyles, at the conflicts inherent in dealing with a dying lover, particularly a contagious one and most importantly dealing with a dignified death. It deals with love and forgiveness, which are themes that i am an extreme sucker. I love this movie and the fact that by the end, there is forgiveness.
#1 - And the Band Played On – is my favorite gay movie by a stretch. This one has such impact and such great actors and was so so very well written. Randy Shilts did exhaustive research on his story – and it is a great precursor to Tom Spanbauer’s new novel – In the City of Shy Hunters. This movie is about the quiet war between the West Coast (very militant) and the East Coast (more passive) gay communities politically. It is about the Regan era, and the thousands of lives that it cost for their fears and compulsive angers. This movie is about the American Red Cross keeping its head in the sand in the name of money – choosing to act as though nothing was wrong, when they knew that it was. In addition, it asks the question – how much is a life worth, how much is enough…and when do you pull out all the stops and really try to help a situation without having gone through every slow and painful scientific protocol.
So as to actors, all I can do is say wow – Matthew Modine, Steve Martin, Lilly Tomlin, Richard Gere, Alan Alda (who you never knew you could hate like this), Phil Collins, Glen Headley (could she be more beautiful?), Ian McKellen (who was just brilliant as crusader and groundbreaker Bill Krause), B.D. Wong, Patrick Bauchau (could he be any more beautiful?), Swoozie Kurtz, Richard Masur (yeah One Day At a Time) and Jeffrey Nordling as Geatan Dougas – thought to be patient zero.
This movie traced the discovery of the Aids virus, the first discoveries by doctors all over the world, and then the information slowly gathering (over two to three years) into pockets and then on to the CDC. From there, it began to slowly filter to the high-powered research of the Pasteur Institute in France, the CDC in Atlanta and the National Cancer Institute. The lack of funding, the pain of the deaths and the people who poured their lives into trying to wake the world up to the worst plague we have encountered as a people. The doctors in this story are truly heroic; some are criminal in their selfish motivations, but not most. It is an amazing movie, one of my very favorites.
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
deaser26
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Location: Land of Bweebada Babada
Reviews written: 412
Trusted by: 152 members
About Me:
...jazz was never meant to be a museum piece, under glass... Miles Davis
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.