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.

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.