Queer Beacon

Eastern Promises (2007) - Shipwreck 2

Cronenberg's superb A History of Violence left me with high expectations for his next movie, and that is, in a way, unfair to Eastern Promises.  EP is a great movie, but it is not even in the same category with A History of Violence.  The building blocks of EP's plot are quite interesting, but the execution, the details (especially the ancillary dialogs) are lame; distracting at best (like the cheesy-ass attempts at comedy from Naomi's racist uncle).

In Eastern Promises, Naomi Watts is a nurse who helps out a teenage mother.  The teenage girls dies during labor and Naomi feels like she needs to find out the whereabouts of the girl's family so that the baby can be sent them.  In her quest for information, she becomes entangled with the Russian mafia.  We have Armin Mueller-Stahl as the big boss, Vincent Cassel as his son, and Viggo Mortensen as the family's, uh, driver.  That's all you need to know.

In Eastern Promises you get the gory violence Cronenberg is famous for right in the first few minutes.  There are other gory scenes, one of which is quite original.  Viggo fights two guys -- totally naked.  The two guys are not naked but Viggo is, which, I think, adds a very interesting layer of risk to the fight.  We see Viggo's parts swinging left and right, dodging the blades and small knifes.  Superb.

Eastern Promises packs quite a bit of gay content, but my discussion of the homo scenes will ruin the part of the plot.

Breakfast with Scot - LightShed 10

What a cute movie. 

In Breakfast with Scot, Canadian hottie Tom Cavanaugh is a former Toronto Maple Leaf hockey player who is gay, he is married to the team's lawyer (Ben Shenkman) and they become the parents of an 11-year-old boy. The boy is super-fem and that challenges Tom's perception of what it means to be gay, a man, masculine, a father etc.  It's all good.

Breakfast feels like a holiday family movie -- that's probably intentional and could explain why our gays are asexual (all we get is one grandma-type kiss between Tom and Ben).  Still, great light for the gays; we are shown to be parent material; normal.

Gone Baby Gone (2007) - Shipwreck 4

I am quite impressed with Ben Affleck's directorial debut.  I think he put together a great movie: dialogs are meaningful, regional accents are done right, the plot is full of twists and turns, and, more important, the acting is first rate.  Pretty much everybody does very well -- Amy Ryan, who was unknown to me, kicked ass as a trailer-park trash mom whose little daughter goes missing.  Casey Affleck (I always liked him) is also very good as a private dick out to help the search for the missing girl.  Ed Harris, who can be excellent, was a little off -- I'm blaming Affleck; but, still, great job.

As expected from trailer-park crack-whores, the mother homo-curses a few times (mostly 'faggot').  She is pretty much alone though; so, the light for the gays is not that bad.

Death at a Funeral (2007) - Shipwreck 3

In Death at a Funeral, Matthew MacFadyen's dad dies and his funeral is a complete disaster.  We see all sorts of uncomfortable situations -- all (poorly) tied up by a single bottle of Valium (actually filled with some sort of acid).

The movie relies way too much on the workings of the powered-up-Valium pills, which keep crossing the paths of many of the invitees and supporting the mayhem.

The first victim of the crazy Valium pill is Alan Tudyk, who then goes on to spend most of the movie high and naked.

In addition to the Valium plot, the story pretty much revolves around Peter Dinklage's character and his affair with the dead guy (we learn that from the trailer).  With the Shipwreck rating, you can tell I did not like the way in which the gayety was handled. 

To the movie's credit, I couldn't tell any homophobic slurs, but still, I couldn't help but come out of the movie with the impression we were made fun of in a bad way.  My hubby seems to agree with my take on the movie, but a great friend (gay, also Brazilian, hot and sort of single) who saw the movie with me thoroughly enjoyed it -- I think he was not at all bothered by the portrayal of the gays.  I don't know, maybe just the bitter old queens are bothered by this one...

I will talk about the gay content in Death at a Funeral after the jump (I will reveal a lot, be warned).

Fur (2006) - LightShed 8

This one is pretty creepy, but in a nice way. 

Fur's main character is called Diane Arbus (played by Nicole Kidman) -- the movie goes out of its way to make sure we know the story is not about real-life photographer artist Diane Arbus. 

In the movie, Kidman is fascinated with people who are usually thought of as freaks.  She is not fascinated as one would be in a circus, she really feels alive around different people. She befriends a few trannies and gays.  That was super nice.

The movie gets creepy as she falls for a uberhairy Robert Downey Jr. and cheats on her perfectly hot husband (played by Ty Burrell).

The movie is well put together, the acting is decent, but if you actually see this one, you should see it because of its kitsch value (in any case, don't expect much).  The flick is out on DVD.

The Nanny Diaries (2007) - LightShed 7

What a pleasant surprise I had with The Nanny Diaries.  Initially, this would have been too much of a chick flick even for me, but I am glad a good friend dragged me into this one -- well, it was also nice to sit in the cool air of the theater, it has been hot here in NYC.

In Nanny Diaries, Scarlett Johansson is a college graduate trying to find out who she is; in an effort to take some time off to figure out her life, she nannies Laura Linney's little brat and falls for 'out-of-her-league' Chris Evans, who plays a rich Harvard graduate who lives in the same building where Scarlett nannies.  Laura is the Upper East Side's upper crust and makes Scarlett's life miserable.

Few bits of gay content.  First, when Scarlett is considering what she should do with her life she pictures herself as many women; she pictures those women walking around the streets of NY, the camera freezes the frame with the particular woman under consideration, and we see a little explanatory card...one of such cards lets us know that one of the women is a Park Slope lesbian attorney.  Cute.  Then, Laura Linney (the devil) says she went to Smith but that that does mean she is a lesbian. 

Finally, Scarlett's pal from college, played by Alicia Keys, shares an apartment with a gay guy (played by Nathan Corddry) -- Scarlett even teases her for being too happy, as though she were in a Will & Grace episode.

Superbad (2007) - Shipwreck 4

Superbad lives up to its hype.  I think Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (the three main characters) do a terrific job -- that is especially the case for Mintz-Plasse, who plays the instant classic McLovin. 

In Superbad, Jonah Hill is on a quest to lose his virginity in his last days of high school, he drags his best friend Michael Cera and not so best friend Mintz-Plasse along for the ride.  The three are social outcasts.

Jonah's plan involves getting lots of alcohol for all people in this party he was (almost miraculously) invited to.  He thinks that if he is able to get this girl drunk he'll have a good shot at lovemaking.  The entire movie revolves around this one day in his life.

Unfortunately, Superbad is not so good for the gays.  There are a couple of "faggot" slurs used by bullies teasing Jonah Hill.  That is not so bad fo us, though: they are bullies who learn a lesson at some point.  But later in the movie, Jonah Hill calls Mintz-Plasse "faggol" (sounding like a mix of "fag" and Fogel, the name of Minz-Plasse's character).  Nothing really major, but we would be better off without that..."Gay" is also used a couple of times to refer to something bad or tacky. 

A potentially redeeming factor would come from the exchange of "I love you's" between Jonah and Michael (we see that scene in one of the trailers).  I thought they were going to make out or something, but we get nothing.  After the I love you's they sleep next to each other and Jonah Hill wakes up with an awkward attitude, as if he is embarassed by something that might have happened at night.

Also, Bill Hader's character briefly mentions an arrest of a man-she; the reference is kinda neutral to bad (it seems to me, trannies are always being arrested in comedies).

Wild Hogs (2007) - Shipwreck 0

The movie really is as bad as you think it would be.  In this piece of trash, William H. Macy (I didn't expect him to sink this low), Martin Lawrence (blank), Tim Allen (vomit) and John Travolta (double vomit) are a bunch of middle-aged losers trying to have some fun in a road-trip on bikes.  In their journey, they are confronted with a gang of real, nasty, bikers led by Ray Liota (vomit).

There are many homophobic (or at least heterosexist) jokes and innuendos in Wild Hogs; but what really locks in the Shipwreck Zero is the violence against gays the movie promotes.  On two occasions, John Travolta's character threatens to kill whoever smells him up close (a comment prompted by the fact that William H. Macy smells him while riding 'bitch' on his bike) or looks at his genitals (a comment prompted by his agreeing to swimming naked in this silly pond with his other butch buddies).  Travolta is supposed to be a good guy. 

The bad guys, as expected, take it even further and actually act on their homophobia.  One of the gay characters, played by bad guy Kevin Durand, is constantly talking about the things he would like to do to other guys, kinda inadvertently describing things only a gay guy would do.  At one point, he says he would put the balls of all the wild hogs in his mouth, and in response to that, Ray Liota, the gang leader, punches him hard on the face.  In the movie, Kevin is beaten for describing a gay act.  Although Ray Liota's character beats his buddy up many other times for other reasons, the beating for the gay comment was particularly sad, and, unfortunately, glorified. 

The other more common homophobic innuendos included the scene which you can see on the trailer, where John C. McGinley (the smart-ass doctor from Scrubs) plays a naughty gay cop lustful for the wild hogs.  Most of the scenes in which McGinley takes part are homophobic (even though those scenes were not nearly as bad as the ones in which violence against the gays is glorified).

Shame on writer Brad Copeland and everybody involved with this piece of crap for letting homophobia in their movie.  It is hard to understand how Wild Hogs could have been the #1 movie for so long -- it was awful and not funny at all.  The movie was unfortunately released on DVD on August 14.

The Simpsons Movie (2007) - LightShed 7

I am not the biggest fan of the TV show, but for some reason I was really waiting for The Simpsons Movie and was expecting a lot from it; unfortunately, the movie does not deliver as many laughs as I had expected.  You will get quite a few laughs, for sure, but you should probably lower your expectations.

In The Simpsons Movie, Homer does something really stupid (surprise!) which causes the city to be trapped into this huge glass dome; after that, all sorts of madness and mayhem ensue. 

The citizens of Springfield find out it is all Homer's fault and seek revenge, while America's favorite family try to keep it together.

I was glad to see the bits of gay content in the movie, only one of which (the first one) was kinda bad.  Right in the beginning of the movie, people are in church and all of a sudden Flanders (the evangelical Republican 'do-gooder') stands up saying he has something to announce -- Homer immediately crosses his fingers and starts wishing "gay, gay gay"; that was pretty funny, and could be seen as offensive (more likely) or not.  Homer doesn't like Flanders and wishing Flanders would say he is gay would work as a punishment for Flanders, and that wouldn't be nice, to be gay is not a punishment.  If you read this blog with some frequency, you will know that, usually, I think it is good when an idiot does something negative for the gays; I usually think that people will be repulsed by an idiot's homophobia; but the same reasoning cannot be applied here: Homer is an adored idiot; he is not just a common idiot; so, I don't think audiences would feel repulsed by his bit of homophobia.  On the other hand, Flanders is an evangelical who has marched in the "Walk for the Cure to Homosexuality" and Homer could be wishing he was gay just so that Flanders would come to accept himself as a gay man and stop hating himself and the gays (I know, this interpretation is a stretch...but whatever).

Also on the kinda bad side, Homer almost kisses a (male) pig.  But in the end, I think those two little ambivalent scenes weren't that bad; additionally, we have a few other scenes which were more clearly neutral (or even positive).

Another scene with gay content involves Bart's shocking frontal nudity.  This is actually a weird scene -- I don't really understand why it is there (maybe it is meant to show Bart is growing up; I don't know...).  What happens is, Homer dares Bart to skate to a burger shop naked, and he, of course, accepts the challenge. 

On his naked way to the burger joint he passes in front of Ralph Wiggum, who, after seeing Bart naked says something like: "I like boys now".  So, maybe there's some information on this mysterious character.  Boys can like boys too.

Then, on another scene, Marge is trying to flee from the police, and, as she is walking into this motel room to hide, two male cops get near her -- at that point she is thinking the cops are going to arrest her or something, but they start making out and bulge into one of the motel's room -- making out.  Hot. Nice. Marge walks safely into her hideout.

I kept waiting for Smithers to make out with his gross boss Mr. Burns, but (actually, thankfully), that never happens.

There were a lot of kids in my theater and I think it's nice for them to get used to the idea that men can like men.  The movie opened yesterday and you should see it.

Factory Girl (2006) - Shipwreck 4

What a depressing movie.  It's good, but depressing...and bad for the gays.  The movie is not out to get the gays, I don't think, but whoever watches it can't help but feel that the gays either helped destroy a poor rich little girl or sat and watched and did nothing while the girl destroyed herself.

In Factory Girl, Sienna Miller plays, very well, the role of Edie Sedgwick, a precursor to Paris Hilton who came from big money and wanted to be famous in NY. 

Edie suffers quite a bit throughout her childhood, from being committed to a mental institution to being abused by her father; Edie then goes on to suffer some more in the hands of a manipulative Andy Warhol, played, also very well, by Guy Pierce.

The movie is not all bad for the gays.  First the good stuff: There's a very sweet scene in which Edie is recounting the story of a very close friend who was gay and was rejected by his family.  The gay's family put the little gay in an institution and some time after that the gay commits suicide -- that marks Edie for life because she loved that gay very much.  That was very sweet, sweet enough to almost move the movie's rating into a LightShed zone.  Also good: the monster of a father Edie has, says to Andy Warhol's face that he is a faggot, and this is over a fancy dinner with lots of people around -- the slur was good here because the movie has us strongly against Edie's father; so, his being a homophobe is no surprise and fits his evil character well.  It goes to show that only nasty idiots say that word.  Another bad guy who doesn't do much to save poor little Edie is played by Hayden Christensen, who plays a musician (apparently based on Bob Dylan) whom Edie falls for; he tries (but not too hard) to protect Edie from Andy Warhol and utters one or two homophobic remarks at Andy...not nice. 

We have those two bits of gay positive content, but in the end, the light for the gays is not good.  I left the movie with a feeling that the plot construed Andy as a bad, greedy guy -- there's nothing really wrong there, but (and this is bad) the movie also gives us the idea that the fact that Andy was gay had some effect on his evil deeds.

Factory Girl is a good movie, it's just out on DVD, but watch it at our own peril (did I mention it's depressing? and portrays the gays in a bad light?)