Queer Beacon

Dot The I (2003) - LightShed 5

Bad movie.  Great plot with truly remarkable twists and all, but the movie is unfortunately unwatchable.

Here, Natalia Verbeke plays a Spanish girl about to get married.  On her hen night, she goes out with a bunch of girls, all in drag king outfits, with fake mustaches and all.  The maitre d' of the joint asks Natalia to perform this French ritual which requires her to kiss another guy one last time.  She chooses Gael Garcia Bernal, who plays a Brazilian in the movie (he is actually Mexican).  The kiss goes way too well.

The acting is risible at best.  You would not believe it's the same Gael who lead Bad Education and Motorcycle Diaries.  I guess he needs firm directing hands. 

Now our queer review.  In the hen night scene, one of Gael's friends points to the table with the hen party girls and says: "Lesbians!" He sort of laughs and says something like: "Hey, whatever rocks your boat!"  Good light, right?  Oh, when Gael is about to kiss Natalia, he removes her fake mustache.  That's ok though, I don't like guys with mustache either.

Date Movie (2006) - LightShed 6

You will have some good laughs and you might actually like this movie if you know exactly what it is: a patchwork of references to other movies and celebrity newsworthy moments, a lot of which are forced into the movie without much context.  Here, Alyson Hannigan is a big boned -- as in dinosaur big boned -- young lady in search of her prince charming.  The prince charming is toad Adam Campbell.  A few good rap songs.

Gay content was peppered throughout the movie, quite constantly, but in somewhat contradictory manner.  Some references just sought a cheap laugh, but I was actually expecting most of them to be of this sort, but, to my surprise, the majority of references were closer to a positive light.  I counted the references, and the positive balance stood out.

The positive scenes include (i) a fat guy dancing with another fat guy; (ii) the fact that this one date specialist (a mini-me version of Hitch) claims to have hooked up a bunch of couples, all failed couples, including Jennifer and Brad, Ellen and Anne Heche, Matt and Ben; and (iii) reading into the mind of an older guy who is into Puerto Rican men.  Also, the lead male character might have been a female to male transsexual, but this is not clear.  All these was portrayed in a pretty positive light.  The borderline scene included a revelation that the lead character lost his virginity to a house maid (played by Venezuelan Mauricio Sanchez), and the negative scene included a kid who did not want to be dressed like a cowboy (it is implied that it is due to the obvious reference to gayness of Brokeback Mountain).  A Michael Jackson reference was also in the movie but I believe that any non-retarded moviegoer would see the big difference between Michael Jackson (portrayed as a bad guy here, of course) and the gays.  So I'm leaving the Michael Jackson part out.

Derailed (2005) - No Gay Content

Nada. The movie is decent, but not that good.  Here Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston are both married (not to one another) and have an affair.  Frenchie Vincent Cassel starts to blackmail them with a French accent.  Rent it, but not right now.  You can wait for one of those days when there's not much else in the videostore.

Domino (2005) - LightShed 6

The movie tells us the story of Keira Knightley’s character, a model turned bounty hunter (yes, that’s right), all the while bringing back to life Mickey Rourke, and two guys from 90210 (can you believe it?). The movie is quite entertaining, with several twists in the plot.

Our possible gay here is played by Joe Nunez. He acts pretty gay but the fact is never really discussed in the movie. Queens = visibility.  Visibility = better life for the gays.  It's that simple.  It was quite nice to see him just fitting in with his girl gang (Mo’nique is hysterical in the movie).

The Dying Gaul (2005) - LightShed 8

The movie stars Peter Sarsgaard as a young, up-and-coming screenwriter who catches the professional attention of Campbell Scott’s character, a movie producer. Patricia Clarkson is excellent in the role of Scott’s wife. The movie is excellent.

The movie takes place in 1995, probably because some of its events, today (only 10 years later), would seem a little farfetched.

The movie is great in showing the hypocrisy in the movie industry, a hypocrisy which continues to exist today but seems to be diminishing.

Early on, Scott tries to convince Sarsgaard to change a major theme in his screenplay so that a straight story is told (rather than a gay story). Scott, who at this point in the movie is not yet known not to be straight, says to Sarsgaard “America hates gays.” The audience at my screening (at the Vancouver International Film Festival) was half appalled and half laughing, but it was clearly a harsh critic on the system (rather than homophobia from the movie industry – which is what this site intends to eradicate). Scott soon after starts hitting on Sarsgaard and an affair ensues.

The whole movie is very much gay with some quite revealing man on man action. Really worth seeing.

I cannot say much more lest I will spoil your movie (and I only do that for Shipwreck movies – so that you are not encouraged to see a movie that spreads homophobia). Go see this movie.