Queer Beacon

Hellbent (2005) - LightShed 10

What a nice gay flick.  I so wish I had this movie growing up. 

We gays can die in horror movies too, just like anybody else, but not because we are gay, of course, but because we are represented; and more than represented, we are right on the path of the killer, making the same stupid mistakes straighties make in their horror movies, and there are a lot of those mistakes here; you know, the moves that make you go "uh oh, don't go there, girl!" Yeah, those.

In Hellbent, five gay friends are out partying on Halloween night when a killer gets in their way. 

Hellbent takes place in a gay world, the few straight characters in the movie are barely extras. 

As is the case with straight horror movies, the cast is smoking hot; but instead of your usual stereotypical sorority cheerleader making out with Joe-the-football-stud, you get Bryan Kirkwood and Andrew Levitas (both stereotypically hot, the two hottest hotties in my opinion) making out with other guys.  Yay!

Bryan's character was called Jake, the butch loner who befriends our lead gay, a cop wannabe played by Dylan Fergus.  Andrew plays Chaz, a bisexual who will hump anything that moves.   

There are no big departures from straight horror (and that's what makes this movie so good), but this time you can watch a horror flick with your date and totally relate to the story.  I think it will make more sense to grope grab your loved one, tight, while watching Hellbent -- it did for me.  You have got to buy or rent Hellbent.

I will talk about an interesting fact in the movie but that will seriously ruin the plot.

[SPOILER AHEAD]

C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) - LightShed 10

Excellent movie.  You should believe the hype behind C.R.A.Z.Y.  Watch the trailer here. 

I saw this flick at the Seattle International Film Festival and the lines were huge, more so than for other movies in the festival.

In this French-Canadian dramedy, Quebecois Marc-Andre Grondin is a teenager going through self-discovery.  That was for me the most important aspect in the movie, but there were quite a few other family issues addressed (father-son relationship, father-wife relationship, growing up in the 60s, etc.).  You are guaranteed to laugh out loud, and cry. 

I have to admit I had some problem giving C.R.A.Z.Y. the much coveted (as if...) LightShed 10 score, but I think the light was overwhelmingly positive after all.  The gay coming of age we see in the movie shows the pain and complexity you would see in real life.  I could relate to several parts of the movie and I believe you will too.

Our gay Marc-Andre does not want to be gay.  "I'd rather die than be gay."  Our main character tells his shrink, in an appointment arranged by his father, who wants his son to be straight.  To "cure" him.  All very painful to watch.

In Brokeback we are told by Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger's character) that boys learn to hate gays at an early age and that you should hate yourself if you are gay (that is the case 'till this day in many many parts of the world).  In C.R.A.Z.Y., we actually see the self-hate process at play.  How it all starts.  You see the first time a boy is called a faggot, how harsh that is, and what that does to him.

It took director Jean-Marc Valle (pic on the right) 10 years to come up with C.R.A.Z.Y., and I can't wait for his next flicks.  Look what he said about the movie:

“I wanted to show my sons [Émile and Alex] that everyone has something to offer. I wanted to show them that acceptance of people who are different is the way to go.”

Awesome.  We need more straighties like that!

The soundtrack is excellent, great Pink Floyd and David Bowie songs (like Major Tom, etc.).  The movie also had lots of Charles Aznavour and Patsy Cline songs -- I don't really like those, but they made lots of sense in the movie.

I will discuss one more incident in the movie, but the discussion will reveal a bit too much.  Read on or go get this movie as soon as you can.  As of now, the movie is not available on Netflix, but you can get it on Amazon.

[SORT OF SPOILER AHEAD]

Elizabethtown (2005) - No Gay Content

Very good movie. 

Here, Orlando Bloom bombs at a huge shoe project from the company he works for.  He makes the company lose hundreds of millions of dollars, he gets fired, gets dumped by his girlfriend, and his father dies. 

Suicidal, he goes back to his town in Kentucky, Elizabethtown, to deal with it all.  On the way, he finds Kirsten Dunst.

The reviews said the movie was mediocre at best, and I sort of understand where they come from.  There were a few hard to believe, or just tacky, scenes, like the one where Orlando is flying in an empty airplane.  However, I liked the movie a lot.  It was very entertaining.  Orlando and Kirsten were able to keep it together, I thought, and Susan Sarandon (who played Orlando's mom), Alec Baldwin (who plays his boss), Judy Greer (the sister) and the soundtrack provided excellent support.

I was a little sad to see a nice chick flick without any gay content :-( 

Maybe it had something to to do with Tom Cruise being one of the producers).

A Good Woman (2005) - No Gay Content

Mediocre movie.  It starts off really bad, but it gets a little better.

I cannot believe they managed to screw up -- they had a great plot and a nice cast (Scarlett Johansson and Tom Wilkinson). 

Helen Hunt was also a lead here.  I love her, I do think she is pretty, but she was not the right one for this role.  She is supposed to steal Mark Umbers from Scarlett.  No way Jose.

The movie is based on Lady Windermere's Fan, from Oscar Wilde, so you can expect some awesome lines.  Too bad the delivery was not there.

No gay content :-(

I guess you can rent this, but don't expect much, at all.

Lie With Me (2005) - LightShed 6

This one just broke the mediocre barrier, but it did.  It's a good movie.

Here, Lauren Lee Smith is a super slut.  She has never had an actual date.  All she wants is anonymous, protected (yay!), sex.  Think Sex and the City's Samantha and multiply that by a thousand.  That's Lauren Lee Smith's character. 

She goes around town whoring it up, and she meets Eric Balfour.  She has her first date with him and they like each other.  But will her whore instincts be stronger than what she has with Eric?

Eric is hot in Lie With Me.  This is one sexy movie.

"Down on my knees for the very first time I remember there was all this hair in my mouth. I didn't think that was what it would feel like and the guy kept forcing himself in my face saying "please, please, please." He sounded like a little girl...I didn't know if I was supposed to close my eyes or keep them open."  That's a line from out slutina. 

The soft, mellow tunes were excellent.

This is the first movie in our I Can't Believe It's Not Porn category. 

I have never seen so much penis and vagina in a movie.  Ever.  You will not believe the amount of dick time Eric Balfour gets.  You see his erect penis for chrissake!  Fully erect.  You can try to watch that scene here (probably not for long though -- it's really explicit, be warned).

We see another guy's dick too (that's Michael Facciolo, who seems better equipped than Eric by the way), and quite a lot of Lauren's vagina.

With all that sex going on, all we got was a tiny bit of content for our gay movie review.  In one scene, Lauren Lee's mother is talking about her new place and she mentions her new landlord is nice, and that he lives downstairs with his boyfriend.  Excellent, even if very short (that's why the LightShed score was not higher).

Hidden (Cache - 2005) - LightShed 6

Very good movie.

In Cache (that's the original French title), Daniel Auteil is the host of a round table on the public television in France.  Juliette Binoche is his wife. 

They start to get some weird videotapes that let them know they are being watched.  Creepy.  Cryptic.

Director Michael Haneke also wrote the screenplay.  He squeezed in a bit of gay content for our gay movie review.  In one scene, Daniel Auteil is editing one of the episodes of his TV show, and we hear one of the guests talk about Rimbaud.  We see that Daniel Auteil wants to cut part of the dialog to have his guest go directly to a talk about homosexuality.  Very nice.

Daniel Auteil goes sort of frontal in the movie.  We barely catch a glimpse of his tool, it's very dark in the room, but he does bare all.

Do rent this movie right now.  The DVD includes an interview with Haneke (pic on the right).  Make sure you see that too. 

The White Countess (2005) - LightShed 5

Good movie. 

Here, Ralph Fiennes is a blind American diplomat.  He opens a "bar" in Shanghai.  It is the 1930s and the Russian aristocracy had lost its power.  Natasha Richardson is a Russian countess who becomes Ralph's muse. 

Lynn Redgrave plays a bitter bitch.  She lives off of Natasha's hard work, and yet, she feels all superior, just because she doesn't whore it up.  Everybody is very good in the movie, directed by James Ivory.

We got a tiny bit of content for our gay movie review.  In one scene, everybody is ballroom dancing and we catch a quick glimpse of two girls getting quite intimate.  We don't actually see a kiss but I think the scene was enough to strongly suggest girl-on-girl action.  Nice.

Game 6 (2005) - No Gay Content

Awful movie.  Michael Keaton sucked hard.  Such a pity, I thought that he was sort of making a come back since White Noise (which was pretty good), but this will probably set him back.

Here, Michael Keaton is a playwright who loves baseball.  Michael skips the opening night of his play to go see the 1986 World Series.  Robert Downey Jr. is a ruthless critic who will watch the opening night.  Boring.

Don't bother with this piece of crap.  Ebert & Roeper gave this movie Two Thumbs Way Up.  I say Two Thumbs Way Up my butt.  Ops, that didn't come out right.

The House of Sand (2005) - LightShed 5

Excellent movie. I saw it at the Seattle International Film Festival.  You can watch the trailer for this Brazilian movie here (sadly, the trailer is pretty bad and does not reflect the quality of the movie).

The House of Sand is set in the early 1900s.  Fernanda Torres' husband drags her to the middle of nowhere in the state of Maranhao, in the northern part of Brazil.  It's a beautiful place, but all they get is sand as far as the eye can see.  It appears they are running away from debt. 

Torres, in turn, drags her mom with her.  The mom is played by her real-life mom, Fernanda Montenegro.  Montenegro is the only Brazilian actresses ever to be nominated for an Oscar.  She got her nomination in 1999 for her role in Central Station (she lost to Gwyneth).  The House of Sand shows a few generations into Fernandas' family in an ingenious way (you need to watch the movie to know how).

Seu Jorge (who is also a singer -- a famous singer in Brazil) knows his way around the 'neighborhood' and helps Fernanda out with food, etc.  By the way, Seu Jorge's rendition of Life on Mars, from David Bowie, is one of the nicest songs ever, you have got to check it out.  He did it for Life Aquatic.

We had a tiny bit of content for our gay movie review. In one scene, Fernanda Torres wanders into some barracks and starts to go through the objects there.  She picks up an Eca de Queiroz book and inside it she sees a few pictures, one of the them pretty naughty.  The naughty one displays three people, two girls and a guy.  Here's the setting for the picture: the girl is laying down on the couch providing bj services to the guy, meanwhile, she has a girl down on her.  Yay!  Go lesbians / bisexuals!  The picture is barely onscreen, it's shown for just a very brief moment, but you see the two girls clearly.

Oh, and Fernanda Torres goes frontal, and we see Seu Jorge's butt.  That was a pretty hot scene.

Young Brazilian director Andrucha Waddington (pic left) is not bad looking in a scruffy way. 

This is what should be called a family movie.  Fernanda Montenegro is Fernanda Torres' mom, and Torres is married to Andrucha.

Just Like Heaven (2005) - Shipwreck 4

Mediocre movie.  See the mediocre trailer here.

Here, Mark Ruffalo moves into an apartment previously inhabited by Reese Witherspoon.  Reese's spirit haunts the crap out of him.  Jon Heder is a psychic who tries to help Mark.

I love Reese, she's been one of my girls since Election.  I like Ruffalo since Eternal Sunshine, where we see a lot of him in underwear.  I think Jon Heder's Napoleon Dynamite was one of the funniest characters ever.  Even so, Just Like Heaven just didn't work.  It couldn't.  The premise was all bogus.  The movie was bogus.

Now to our gay movie review.  Ivana Milicevic (that's her on the right) plays Ruffalo's hot neighbor.  She is hot indeed.  In one scene, she is all over Ruffalo on the couch and she wonders what is wrong with the single guys in San Francisco.  Seriously, bitch needs a clue.  She says that whenever she sees a handsome guy in San Francisco, it turns out it's really a lesbian.  It is not clear to me whether her problem with San Francisco guys is really positive or negative for the gays.  In cases like these, I would normally go for a positive light (when in doubt I'm trying to stay positive), but in this case I'm going negative because we had another suggestion the movie was not good for the gays.

Early in the movie, when Mark Ruffalo is looking for an apartment, his real estate agent tells him that the couple who lives in the place they are about to visit are always in Palm Springs (that's gay enough, right?).  Once Ruffalo and the realtor are inside the house, Mark Ruffalo stares at the butt of two or more of those male Roman statues and he kinda of nods in disapproval and decides not to give the place a try.  Like renting a gay apartment is out of the question.  Whatever Mark. 

I was a bit mad at that scene and I was actually even more upset that everything was only very thinly suggested, almost like the type of veiled homophobia in the Dodge Caliber ad.  There is no hard evidence that homophobia was at play in either the realtor scene or the hot Ivana scene, mentioned above. 

Sadly, I suspect the type of homophobia displayed by Mark's character in the realtor scene is quite common.  You don't need to explain why you are not renting or buying or hiring, you can just find some excuse to mask your real prejudices. 

A San Francisco movie without gays is just sad.  To me it's like an African movie without black people, or an Israeli movie without Jews.