Queer Beacon

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) - LightShed 7

I wish we lived in a wold where, if they couldn't come up with a movie like Benjamin Button, they just wouldn't make a movie at all; we would have the guarantee of being completely swept away to another world for the price of a movie ticket. Seriously, movie-making doesn't get any better than this; and, if you ask me, I don't think this movie was nominated for enough Oscars (but for one or two scenes here and there -- which we could have done away with -- the movie is perfect).

In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Brad Pitt is a guy who is born old and grows younger with age. That superb circumstance allows the movie to portray the impossible and heartbreaking love story between our aging-challenged Brad Pitt and a person aging as we all do (played by Cate Blanchett). I started crying at the scene when a 7-year old Cate sees the old-looking Brad for the first time.

The acting is superb across the board (Cate easily deserved a nomination for her role here).

We had a tiny bit of gay content. In one scene, Cate Blanchett tells Brad that there are a few lesbians in her dance company and that one of them proposed sleeping with her, she seemed proud of that, she was very non-judgmental -- and so was Brad's character. Nice. Later on, when we see some of the people within her dance company, you could see some guys who could have been gay (ok, I'll say it: they looked pretty gay) -- but we don't really know that, so I'm leaving that out.

 

You absolutely must see this movie.

Four Christmases (2008) - Shipwreck 4

This was pretty bad, I went to see it with a couple of friends from Brazil (a straight couple-- they liked it and laughed quite a bit).

In Four Christmases, Vince Vaughan and Reese Witherspoon play a couple terrified of spending Christmas with their families -- they don' want to confront their ghosts. Their attempt spend Christmas away from their families in Fiji fails when all flights are grounded due to bad weather and they end up on TV (this after having lied to their families -- they had said they were going to Burma to save children or sth like that). Seeing them on TV, their families talk them into spending time with them.

We have a bit of gay content.  While visiting Reese's mom family, we learn that the husband of Reese's sister (played by Kristen Chenoweth) "has experienced with men" -- Kristen reveals the news as a way to tell Reese how much she knows about her husband (and, to a lesser extent, how forgiving she is); Reese, meanwhile, knows nothing about her boyfriend Vince. Kristen might have talked about the gay experience in a somewhat positive light, but I think it came off as being just for laughs, at our expense.

Later in the same visit, Reese`s mom shows Vince pictures of Reese's lesbian phase (she basically had a very butch friend growing up; but soon after we learn Reese didn't actually know her friend was a lesbian). Vince shows what appears to be his support and understanding of the "lesbian phase" and I did want to see the scene in a good light, but at the end, again, I think it was all really just for laughs, at our expense ("at us, not with us" king of thing).

I must say, though, that if this is the way that homophobia is going to be portrayed, we are probably on a good track as at least there seems to have been an effort to not just go all purely derogatory on us; as I pointed out, the light can even arguably be seen as neutral to positive.

Independently of the gay content, the movie is pretty bad -- a waste of Reese's (and ours) time.

Milk (2008) - LightShed 10

What a great movie. I saw it at the Chelsea Clearview Cinemas in NY. Opening night. The audience was full of fellow homosexuals and they helped me boo at the end of a National Guard ad aimed at attracting young people. I felt like booing immediately and so did everybody else. The nerve on these people: to show an ad for an institution that condemns who we are right before the most gay-important movie of the year...

In Milk, Gus Van Sant tells us the story of Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn), the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US.  

Early in the movie we see discrimination against Milk and unnamed gays -- we see gays being beaten up and harassed by the police and we see Milk shaking hands with a businessman who wipes off his hand right after touching the hand of a gay guy.  Sick of living in a homophobic society, Milk takes matters in his own hands and starts to campaign for change; the campaigning takes place in the few street blocks around where he lived with his boyfriend in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco, the hope was that the acceptance he'd be able to engender in those city blocks would spread throughout the country.

I was anxious to see this movie for many reasons but most of all because a good movie with a major gay theme comes by only once in a while (was Brokeback the last major gay themed movie before Milk?) -- when a gay movie like this does come by I feel like it needs to over-perform in order to get the greatest number of straight people into the theaters so that they can see we can actually be quite normal, if not heroic.Although I prefer a movie that shows us in the best light possible, I'm usually also fine with a movie that portrays us with our defects (or what can be perceived as defects).  This is what this movie does. We show up in full form. We see Milk dazzling big crowds with forceful speeches, we see him successfully arguing our case before allies and enemies alike, we see young gays who are intelligent and relentless in the pursuit of equality -- but we also see Milk picking up a handsome young thing (James Franco, who so continues to amaze me with his performances that he has become my "protégé" since after Pineapple Express) in a NY subway in the beginning of the movie (the ease with which gays pick up other gays is usually seen as bad by society, I think -- envious bitches); we also see all sorts of gays in bad shape one way or another -- they can come ashamed and in the closet, suicidal, and they can come really fucked up in the head (like Jack, one of Milk's boyfriends -- played by Diego Luna).  

I do think the movie (if seen as an ode to Milk's legacy) loses some of its force in its portrayal of Dan White (played by Josh Brolin).

 

 A Dan who is disgusting and purely homophobic would have suited the hero-biography style better -- it would make things easier (good vs. evil). But this is not it. In the movie, Dan is an ordinary loser who feels like he needs to upstage Milk, and upstaged he can't be.  Milk implies Dan is a closet case repressing his homosexual feelings and keeps constantly undermining Dan's political abilities (or lack thereof) -- I left the movie feeling like the assassination of Milk by Dan can be interpreted as more of a general mental instability by the ordinary loser, and not necessarily a mental instability that is gay focused and strictly homophobic. I'm yet to see The Times of Harvey Milk to see if that documentary sheds more light on that aspect of the story.

The movie is excellent and really grows on you -- I think I like it more now (a few days after I saw it) then right after it.  I think the "Dan not really being that homophobic" got to me a bit, but that was erased by the memory of the many outstanding scenes the movie has to offer (like the scene in which Harvey Milk picks up Scott in the subway).

One last comment: I hate the 70's look; so, I think everybody looks fugly in the movie (but they sure can act -- the acting is excellent across the board).

Juno (2007) - LightShed 6

Juno is excellent. In the movie, Ellen Page (remember her from Hard Candy?) is 16 and she is carrying Michael Cera's baby.  Too young to deal with it all and unwilling to do an abortion, Page decides to give her baby away to Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman, who play one of those perfect suburban couples.

The movie is a joyride despite the seriousness of the subject (teenage pregnancy). The soundtrack is full of first-rate alternative rock songs and the acting is really solid. Page certainly deserves the attention she is getting for her performance in Juno, but she is not alone. Olivia Thirlby, who plays Page's best friend (an unlikely friendship between a cheerleader and Juno, the screw-up goof-ball);  Allison Janney, who plays Juno's step-mom; J.K. Simmons, who plays the father, and Cera and Garner are all excellent.

We also have gay content, not all good though. In our first gay tidbit, Juno says that, ideally, she would give her baby away to be adopted by a nice lesbian couple. That is super nice. But then, later in the movie, when Garner is wondering about baby names, she suggests a name that Juno thinks is gay (I think the name was Marianne or sth like that).  Juno  said "gay" as though it was not necessarily a bad thing, there's no hate in her voice, but still we'd be better off if people didn't use " gay" to mean sth uncool (remember this post about whether it's okay to say "gay"?). Then, finally, Juno is just walking around in this mall with her best friend Thirlby when they bump into Garner, who was also shopping in the mall with her " girlfriends."  When Thirlby hears that, she asks whether Garner is gay. Of course, Thirlby just got it wrong, as Garner was referring to girls who are her friends, not actual girlfriends. That was pretty neutral.

You should definitely see this one on the big screen.

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.

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.

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?)

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007) - LightShed 10

I cannot believe how much buzz this movie got.  The actors (Kevin James, Adam Sandler, and Jessica Biel) were everywhere.  You turned on your TV and there they were, promoting Chuck & Larry. 

If you watched pretty much any TV show during the past month or so, you know that Chuck & Larry is about two firefighters (Kevin and Adam) getting into a domestic partnership in order for Larry (Kevin James) to maintain pension related benefits for his kids, a little girl and a little gay boy.

The movie is mediocre.  Maybe reading a few bad reviews will help you lower your expectations and allow you to enjoy the movie -- that kinda worked for me.

As for gay content, there is a lot of it, of course.  A lot of it, especially in the first half of the movie, is really bad on the gay side.  Really bad.  I will talk about that first, and then about what in the movie makes me think it deserves the highest positive gay rating on the Beacon: LightShed 10.  I will talk about the positive stuff after the jump because it will ruin the plot.

I see four really big problems with Chuck & Larry: (i) it suggests gays should not get rights lest people abuse the system with all sorts of fake marriages/domestic partnerships; (ii) Adam Sandler (whom we are made to like and stay on his side) uses "faggot" to refer to gays; (iii) Adam Sandler hits Kevin James hard on the face when Kevin approaches him with kissing intentions; and (iv) Kevin and Adam give Kevin's gay son a hard time for being gay-bound (the kid likes musical theater, etc.).

I think the movie overcomes the problems above, except for the first one, and that is very sad.  Gays are in need of rights and acceptance so that they can be happy and stop being bashed and killed on a daily basis.  I think that, despite the effort made in the movie to the contrary (I talk about that effort after the jump), there's still a message that fraud can occur, and that is a message that assholes like Bill O'Reilly, who might be looking for a cheap, idiotic, argument against gay rights, will find in Chuck & Larry.  So, that's really bad.

Beforing moving on to the positive aspects of the movie, let me address an important criticism the movie has received.  I read somewhere that one reason the movie was homophobic was the fact that the gays in the movie were mostly stereotypical characters, basically queeny, effeminate guys, particularly the gay son and this firefighter who is all macho and then, when it turns out that he is actually gay, he turns into a flaming 'mo the minute he comes out. 

I can see how stereotypes hurt people and how stereotypes shouldn't be encouraged.  But I think the argument against stereotypes of gays as super happy queens is actually based on a not so noble argument; the argument may actually be: If there were no effeminate / queeny gay men, it is possible that we would already have equal rights because we would have an easier case for how normal gay people are; it would be easier to show that we really are equal and "normal".  But that is not what life and happiness should be about.  Life should be about people being happy no matter how they look, talk, walk, etc.  What the hell is the problem with a guy being effeminate?  Again, I know society sees that as a problem, but why do we have to comply with assigned roles?  Here's what needs to be changed: people who see a problem in an effeminate man (or a butch woman, at that).  That's where the problem lies.  The mind of those people, that's what needs changing.  And, mind you, that sadly includes a lot -- I mean a lot -- of gays too.  People need to accept that a man can be effeminate and that a woman can be butch and everything else in-between.  Femmies and butchies are people just like you and me, and deserve the dignity all human beings deserve.  So, you need to seriously reconsider your views on effeminate men and butch women if you have a problem with them.  They must be embraced and that needs to start with us gays.

Just one last think before jumping into the reasons why I think the movie deserves a LightShed 10. The movie is surprisingly racist towards the Chinese.  Adam Sandler tries to get a few nasty laughs out of this Chinese guy in the movie.  Not nice.

Read on for the remaining of my gay discussion, or go see this mediocre, but very gay-important, movie.

Open Water 2: Adrift (2006) - LightShed 5

I actually liked this one.  In Open Water 2, we see Eric Dane shirtless the entire movie, agonizing with his hot fellas (old high school buddies) in the open sea.  Here's the plot: they all hop into the ocean, all of them -- and, get this, they forget to lower the ladder necessary for reboarding.  Don't you just hate when that happens?

Right in the beginning of the movie, Susan May Pratt, an old fling of Dane's, is holding her baby when she and Niklaus Lange (one of the buddies on the boat) barge into a room where Eric Dane (looking like a real boat captain) is banging some Barbie; walking away from the incident, Niklaus says something like: "Now that baby is going to grow up to be a Popeye lover or a lesbian." Okay, right?

Then later, Eric Dane is making a toast in celebration of his best friend's birthday (that's Niklaus), and at the end of the toast Eric praises Niklaus "great ass." 

Oh, and did I mention Eric Dane is shirtless, and then naked (although we don't actually see much) the entire movie?

Bug (2007) - LightShed 9

I am ambivalent about Bug.  The movie is very well done, the acting is solid across the board, everybody is good in it, especially Ashley Judd -- her performance in Bug brought me memories of Charlize Theron in Monster for some reason (and that was one of the best performances ever).  But the movie itself, the plot, is such a crazy downer. 

So, I can't really recommend the movie.  Basically, Ashley Judd plays a woman who's been through a lot, she gets a nasty visit from her ex-husband who's fresh out of prison (played by a hot Harry Connick Jr.) and she invites this stranger (played by Michael Shannon) to stay with her -- next thing you know, they start seeing bugs everywhere.

We had some interesting gay content. 

Ashley works at a small town lesbian bar for a living, and she is best friends with this super cute lesbian-co-worker (played well by Lynn Collins).  There is quite a bit of info on Lynn adopting a child, and about other lesbians and all.  Ashley kisses Lynn on the lips (a goodbye-type kiss) a couple of times.  All very sweet.  Nasty Harry Connick Jr. curses a few times against our lesbian and Ashley's new guest (Michael Shannon), but Harry is a total loser, so no harm there.  Moreover, our lesbian character seems to be one of the few sane people in the story; so, kudos for the portrayal of us gays!