Queer Beacon

There Will Be Blood (2007) - No Gay Content

In There Will Be Blood, Daniel Day-Lewis plays an oil tycoon in-the-making. He plays a man thirsty for oil power, does it all with his bare hands and will stop at nothing to get what he wants -- surprising, huh?  He nasty, of course. 

I thought the movie should have been shot in two parts, the first with his rise, the second with his, uh, fall.  As it is, the movie feels rushed towards the end (they tried to pass it off as artsy, but that didn't fly with moi).  Having said that, I still think the movie is excellent -- Daniel gave us the best performance by a male lead. Ever.

No gay content.

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.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) - No Gay Content

What a perfect, somber, vehicle for Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.  They both rock in Sweeney Todd.

In the movie, Johnny is unjustly imprisoned by this nasty judge -- when he's out of the joint all he wants is revenge.  Helena helps him out. 

Again, the acting is superb, but I didn't really like the songs.  The movie is good but could have been much better.  I think the plot should have us see more of Johnny's perfect little life before his imprisonment so that we could better taste his revenge.  As it is, the movie feels almost gratuitously gory -- revenge for revenge sake.  Just my two cents...you should still see the movie.

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.

Waitress (2007) - No Gay Content

What a gem of a movie.  Waitress is excellent and you shouldn't miss it.

In Waitress, Keri Russell waits tables and bake pies at this small joint in the south.  She is married to a jealous Jeremy Sisto, she is sick of him and she wants out.  She bitches about life with her girlfriends Cheryl Hines and Adrienne Shelly (who is also the director, killed before her movie opened), and bakes great pies, all the while having an affair with her gynecologist Nathan Fillion.  This waitress story is well told.

Cheryl Hines and Adrienne Shelly deserve recognition for their work.  They are really great here. 

The soundtrack is excellent too. Waitress is out on DVD and Keri Russel is on August Rush, now in theaters.

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.

3:10 to Yuma (2007) - No Gay Content

Every now and then I will forget how much I hate Western movies and I will go see something like 3:10 to Yuma.  Here's my basic beef with Westerns: they glorify bad guys -- and there's a lot of that in this one. 

In 3:10 to Yuma, Russel Crowe is the badass robber who is aprehended and needs to be delivered to a train heading to prison.  Christian Bale is the good guy who helps the law enforcement folks in their effort to put Russel in jail.  The movie is pretty boring except that the last half hour gets pretty interesting; the result is still a mediocre movie, though.

On some level, I think Russel and Christian fell in love with each other, but maybe that was just in head...no actual gay content was present.

Now I just have to forget my hate for Western movies one more time to go see Jesse James when/if it comes out.

Michael Clayton (2007) - No Gay Content

People are thinking way too much of this flick.  In Michael Clayton George Clooney plays Clayton, a lawyer who solves personal problems of the other lawyers and big clients of this fancy NY firm.  I heard somewhere that he plays a broken man fixing the problems of other broken men, and that's a good description -- the movie focuses on Michael's efforts to deal with a partner (Tom Wilkinson) who goes postal in the midst of a ginormous mass tort lawsuit.  The acting is okay, I couldn't see all the Oscar potential people are talking about.  The movie is very good, you should see it, just don't expect that much.

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).