Month: July 2024

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Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

2024 Entry #56 07-25-24 “Deadpool & Wolverine” is a 2024 American superhero comedy film based on Marvel Comics which serves as both the 14th entry in Fox’s X-Men film universe and the official 34th film in the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film was directed by Shawn Levy (“Stranger Things”, “Free Guy”) from a screenplay he wrote with Ryan Reynolds (“Buying the Cow”, “The Nines”, “Deadpool”, “Deadpool 2”), Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Zeb Wells.

I’m going to avoid spoilers, including plot info here as the film is still in theaters, and I have friends who still haven’t seen the film – which is packed with surprises that I don’t want to spoil.

Having said that, Deadpool is back and he’s more openly pansexual than ever – and this time he brought lots of friends, including cameo roles for openly queer Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, a teenage member of the X-Men & Shioli Kutsuna as Yukio, Negasonic Teenage Warhead’s girlfriend and fellow X-Men member – both returning from previous Deadpool films. I’m sure there are other elements which I could mention, but it’s been nearly a month since I saw it and I only remember the highlights – because I didn’t write this right away. Lol

The movie is a fun action / comedy – with extreme comedy action violence and much raunchy humor. The film has been a huge success, having joined the billion dollar club and already ranking as the highest grossing rated R movie of all time.

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The Craft: Legacy (2020)

2024 Entry #55 07-21-24 “The Craft: Legacy” is a 2020 American supernatural horror film, written and directed by Zoe Lister-Jones, who is openly queer. A legacy sequel to 1996’s “The Craft”, the film stars Cailee Spaeny, Gideon Adlon (“When We Rise”), Lovie Simone (“Orange is the New Black”), and openly trans Zoey Luna as four teenage girls who practice witchcraft as a coven. Additional cast members include Nicholas Galitzine (“Handsome Devil”, “Bottoms”, “Red, White & Royal Blue”, “Mary & George”), Michelle Monaghan (“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”), and David Duchovny (“Twin Peaks”, “Sex and the City”, “Queer Duck: The Movie”), with Fairuza Balk (from the original film) making a cameo appearance as her character, Nancy.

This was a disappointment. The first film is a guilty pleasure of mine; a cute teenybopper horror flick with enough style to get by and enough fun performances to remain entertaining long after the fact. But this sequel lacks most of what made the original worthwhile. The performances are all over the place and most of the characters are either annoying or extremely underdeveloped, often both. The movie gets points for featuring a transgender witch and a male bisexual character but the former is one of those underdeveloped characters and the latter is murdered, so was it really worth it in the end? Lead actor Cailee Spaeny comes off the best and Nicholas Galitzine is fun while he’s around, but nearly everyone else is either totally wasted or feel like they might be in an entirely different film. Fairuza Balk has more charisma in her single scene than many of the main characters.

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Deadpool 2 (2018)

2024 Entry #54 07-21-24 “Deadpool 2” is a 2018 American superhero film based on the openly pansexual Marvel Comics character Deadpool. Distributed by 20th Century Fox, it is the sequel to “Deadpool” (2016) and, to my way of thinking, the thirteenth installment in the X-Men film series. The film was directed by David Leitch (“Atomic Blonde”) and written by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Ryan Reynolds, who all worked on the original “Deadpool” and the upcoming sequel “Deadpool & Wolverine”. Ryan Reynolds (“Buying the Cow”, “The Nines”, “Deadpool”, “Deadpool & Wolverine”) also stars in the title role alongside openly queer Brianna Hildebrand (as lesbian character Negasonic Teenage Warhead), Josh Brolin (“Milk”, “Women in Trouble”, “Avengers: Endgame”), Morena Baccarin (“Firefly”, “The Good Wife”, “Deadpool”, “Deadpool & Wolverine”), Zazie Beetz (“Black Mirror”) & T. J. Miller (“Deadpool”). In the film, Deadpool forms the X-Force to protect a young mutant from the time-traveling soldier Cable.

The Queer Factor: Wade Wilson / Deadpool is more openly pansexual in this sequel, hitting on men and women constantly. Additionally, Negasonic Teenage Warhead has a girlfriend in this film, Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna); all three of these queer characters will return in the upcoming sequel. Also, the film goes out of its way to paint the anti-mutant villains as a kind of gay conversion camp, and then the hero takes great joy in killing them.

The Sequel Factor: For what it is worth, I enjoyed the first film more than this one, but I do still enjoy this movie. They’re both entertaining and fun, hyper violent and sexual, but this film is a bit unfocused and not all of the jokes land. I have high hopes for the sequel though, which we’re planning on seeing in theaters this week.

Be sure to stick around through the credits for some essential information.

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Michael Lost and Found (2017)

2024 Entry #53 07-09-24 “Michael Lost and Found” is a 19 minute 2017 short documentary focusing on Mike Glatze, his wife Rebekah Glatze & Mike’s former lover, Benjie Nycum. The story of these 3 played out in the news and later in a 2015 film “I Am Michael”, which I’ve avoided because I thought I knew the whole story. Mike and Benjie were two of the main creative forces behind “XY Magazine”, which was aimed at gay youth in the 90’s, when I’d never seen anything like that before. I was just out of the target audience, being in my early 20s, but I collected the magazine because it made me feel like positive change was possible in what felt like a deeply conservative and anti-LGBTQ time in my country. However, Michael Glatze later announced he was no longer gay and that he was part of an anti-gay religion, which felt like a huge betrayal to many who found his work inspiring.

Having said all that, I saw that this documentary was available in my collection and gave it a shot and I found the piece quite healing. The conversations that are had are open, seemingly honest, and reveal the rest of Michael’s journey and Benjie’s honest connection with him. I will likely see the film adaptation of this story at some point. I very nearly watched it the next day, but so far it hasn’t happened.

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Birder (2023)

2024 Entry #52 07-09-24 “Birder” is a 2023 dramatic thriller which was written by Amnon Lourie and directed by Nate Dushku, both of whom served as producers on 2019’s “Maplethorpe”. The film stars Michael Emery (“The One”, “Petunia”, “Shameless”) as Kristian Brooks, a birdwatching serial killer who invades a nude queer campground in New Hampshire, ensnaring locals with his dark fetish, highlighting the dangers of consent.

The film sells itself as being in the same family as the superior 2013 French erotic thriller “Stranger by the Lake” and I loved that film so I gave this movie a chance. Unfortunately, the acting and directing in this are far lesser in this effort which means that it’s difficult to take any of this seriously and what could have been a very serious, very disturbing chiller becomes a comical demonstration in how not to make this type of film. There are glimmers here and there of what this movie could have been, however the poor acting and directing make the various kills wholly unbelievable (divesting them of any sense of danger or depth) and while there is nudity aplenty with several erections on display, the sex also fails to convince, which was just another reason why “Stranger by the Lake” blew this film out of the water.

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They / Them (2022)

2024 Entry #51 07-07-24 “They/Them” (or “They Slash Them”) is a 2022 American slasher film written and directed by the openly gay John Logan, in his feature directorial debut; he had previously been known as a critically acclaimed writer for film (“Gladiator”, “The Aviator”, “Skyfall”, “Spectre”, “Alien: Covenant”) & TV (“Penny Dreadful”, “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels”). The horror film follows a group of LGBTQ teens and a masked killer at a conversion camp and stars a host of LGBTQ talent, including non-binary actor Theo Germaine (“Work in Progress”, “The Politician”, “Adam”, “Holy Trinity”, “Equal”), openly gay Austin Crute (“Booksmart”, “Daybreak”), openly gay Cooper Koch (“Daddy”, “A New York Christmas Wedding”, “Swallowed”, “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”), openly trans actress Quei Tann, openly non-binary Darwin Del Fabro. The film also stars Kevin Bacon (“Queen’s Logic”, “Wild Things”, “Beauty Shop”, “Will & Grace”, “The Closer”, “Where the Truth Lies”, “The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special”, “RuPaul’s Drag Race”) & also features Carrie Preston (“My Best Friend’s Wedding”), Anna Chlumsky, Anna Lore, Monique Kim, Hayley Griffith, Boone Platt & Mark Ashworth.

The film is a fun & extremely queer take on films like “Friday the 13th”, which Kevin Bacon famously appeared in, only this time the film is very inclusive and the homophobic assholes are the villains – and while the film plays up the queer kids as victims, SPOILER, the only people that die have it coming – except for a poor dog who is shot in a bloodless offscreen death that is once again used to demonstrate who the villains are.

I had a good time watching this, but it’s not what I was expecting. The film is relatively tame as far as gore goes, which feels odd for this genre. And while the film plays up the evils of gay conversion, and the idea that the campers are safe in a Friday the 13th rip-off may seem refreshing but that twist is kind of lame too because at times it feels like nothing is happening. One of the other things I didn’t like was that there are several campers in the group who never speak or they aren’t developed enough to qualify as characters, even in scenes that would suggest that they would have to talk. I found myself wondering who those characters were and so anytime they showed up and continued to not talk it annoyed me. But this a pretty harmless movie all things considered with a lot of positive messaging and a few minor scares.

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Break Me / Knus meg (2018)

2024 Entry #50 07-06-24 “Break Me” (aka “Knus meg”) is a 15 minute 2018 dramatic short Norwegian film which was directed by Irasj Asanti (“Inkognitiv”, “Eyewitness” / “Øyevitne”) who co-wrote the film with Nina Anderson. The story concerns young kurdish immigrant and closeted homosexual cage fighter Mansour (Ravdeep Singh Bajwa) who must choose between his head and his heart (Fredrik Skogsrud as Andreas) after his father discovers the truth.

Short and to the point, at turns sexy and heartbreaking, this is one of those shorts that walks a fine line.

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Interview with the Vampire: Part II (2024)

2024 Entry #49 07-01-24 “Interview with the Vampire: Part II” is the second season of AMC’s adaptation of the 1976 vampire novel and is far more LGBTQ friendly than even the source material, which I loved as a kid for its coded queer characters – and which are made wholly, wonderfully, devastatingly central in this version of the story. This season mainly adapts the second half of the first Vampire Chronicles novel. Season 3 has been ordered and will adapt “The Vampire Lestat”. A spin-off series, “The Talamasca”, is in the works and this series has some ties to “The Mayfair Witches”, AMC’s adaptation of Anne Rice’s “Lives of the Mayfair Witches” trilogy – but sadly, I can’t recommend the latter as it struggles as an adaptation and fails as an attempt at quality television. Season 3 of this series will likely be out in 2026.

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