2022 Entry #014 01-30-22 “The Badge” is a 2002 mystery-thriller film which was written and directed by Robby Henson. The film stars Billy Bob Thornton (“Tombstone”, “Sling Blade”, & Ellen’s historic “The Puppy Episode”) & Patricia Arquette, with Jenna Malone (“Life as a House”, “American Girl”, “Saved!”) & Thomas Haden Church (“Easy A”).
The story follows Thornton’s homophobic Louisiana sheriff Darl Hardwick, as he hesitantly investigates the murder of a pre-op trans woman named Mona, at the behest of the victim’s wife Scarlett (Arquette). As Hardwick struggles to find justice for Mona, he is forced to face much of his own prejudice and make amends with his gay brother David (Church).
I bought this movie when it was relatively new, but I put off watching it. I knew that the film dealt with the death of a trans woman, and while I’ve always been interested in seeing LGBTQ lives depicted, I wasn’t sure this would be worth it. This changed over the years as Alexis Arquette, Patricia’s sister, came out as a trans woman, and I figured she wouldn’t appear in anything that would be too offensive. And while there were times that I strongly disliked the characters in the film and I can’t say that it’s a great movie, it wasn’t the horrible nightmare of transphobic bullshit that I had originally feared. I can’t give it a solid recommendation, but I also don’t regret watching it.
2022 Entry #013 01-30-22 “Wild Things” is a delightfully trashy 1998 American neo-noir erotic crime thriller film directed by John McNaughton and starring Matt Dillon (“In & Out”), Neve Campbell (“54”, “Three to Tango”, “Intimate Affairs”), Kevin Bacon (“Queens Logic”, “Beauty Shop”), Denise Richards (“Nowhere”), Bill Murray (“Tootsie”, “Groundhog Day”), Theresa Russell (“Black Widow”) & Daphne Rubin-Vega (“Flawless”, “Sex and the City”, “Smash”, “Rent: Live”, “Tales of the City” “tick, tick…BOOM!”). The story is set in south Florida, where a high school counselor (Dillion) is accused of rape by two female students (Campbell & Richards), but the police officers investigating (Bacon & Rubin-Vega) suspect something more is going on.
I’m sure this movie makes a lot of people’s guilty pleasure lists. Most of the characters (like “Basic Instinct”) are horrible people, but they’re so much fun! But why is the movie on this list? Spoilers follow, which frankly, are more fun to discover on your own if you’ve not seen it. But if you don’t care, then feel free to continue.
The film reveals (or at least implies) that Neve Campbell’s character, Suzie Toller, was lovers with Denice Richards’s character, Kelly Van Ryan, before the start of the film…and that she is also (secretly) Kelly’s aunt. The question of if that backstory is true or not is because this a twisty puzzle of a movie and it’s possible that some of that backstory is forged…and yet even if it’s all a lie…there’s more. During the film, Suzie and Kelly have sex, both with Dillon’s Sam Lombardo along as an instigator, and on their own. In addition to that, there’s a subtle homoeroticism between Lombardo and Kevin Bacon’s Sergeant Ray Duquette. In the film, Lombardo calls Duquette a cocksucker and the reaction from the Sergeant is priceless; and maybe it’s just me, but it left me feeling like Duquette has sucked off Lombardo at some point. If that seems too tenuous, there’s a famous scene later in the film where Lombardo returns to his cabin to find Duquette in his shower, with Kevin Bacon going fully frontal, and the two seem totally comfortable with this scenario. Mix this with Bill Murray’s sleazy lawyer character questioning if the student accusing Lombardo is male or female, Lombardo’s deck hands and him later putting Duquette in that role and there’s a lot of suggestion going on.
I read somewhere years ago that the creative team had toyed with making the men lovers but that they felt like that might cross a line, and as much as I would have loved to see it, they were probably right. The LGBTQ audience had started boycotting films that portrayed all the queer characters in movies as murderous, duplicitous monsters…and they may well have skipped this movie if that were the case here. And straight male audiences, tend to not go for gay male movie storylines; the inclusion and upset over minor gay characters in recent animated and comic book based films is unfortunately testament to that. And of course straight men and women generally find bi or lesbian women either titillating or completely non-threatening. Still, this movie felt like something a bit more than the usual girl on girl tease.
2022 Entry #012 01-29-22 “Different for Girls” is a 1996 British / French dramedy film which was written by Tony Marchant and directed by Richard Spence. The film stars Steven Mackintosh (“Prick Up Your Ears”, “Rocketman”) as Kim Foyle, a post-op trans woman who has an unexpected run-in with an old school chum named Paul Prentice, played by Rupert Graves (“Maurice”, “Bent”, “Room to Rent”, “V for Vendetta”, “Swimming with Men”) – a longtime crush of mine.
At first, Kim wishes to avoid Prentice, who knew Kim before her change and defended her in school (when he believed she was a gay man). Although he’s confused by her choices and is at first ignorant of transgender issues, to his credit he sees no reason why they can’t continue their friendship and chooses to educate himself. There are complications due to family, other relationships, police brutality and other unexpected turns, but the film gives us the happy ending that these characters deserve.
I should note that there is a school of thought (which I agree with) that trans roles should be played by trans actors, because having cis actors play these roles contributes to violence against trans people. For more information on this topic, I highly recommend the fantastic Netflix documentary “Disclosure”. But having said that, this film was made before such information was widely known, the story is sensitively told and it has a lot of important information in an entertaining film. For instance, the film goes out of its way to inform the audience that Kim is a woman and that her attraction to men is heterosexual…which seems brilliant for a film from 1996. Nicely done.
This is another film that I’ve owned for decades and had seen once before. I remembered that I enjoyed it and I’m happy to say that I probably enjoyed it even more the second time through.
2022 Entry #011 01-29-22 “Golden Boys” is a 9 minute 2016 short which was written by Andrew Musselman & directed by Jill Riley. The plot concerns three men breaking into their old school to memorialize the death of a boy they bullied (often suggesting that he was gay) despite (or because of) the fact that they might be gay themselves.
I wish I enjoyed this more. The actors are fine and there are some nice images but I found the fragmented story confusing and it felt like I was missing a big piece of the story. The IMDB summary features several critical details that I don’t think were featured in the actual film, or at the very least, they weren’t made clear enough for this audience member.
I rented this from Amazon Prime; it’s part of the collection “The Male Gaze: Three’s Company”, which I’ll likely continue with soon.
2022 Entry #010 01-28-22 “Testosterone” is a 2003 romantic dramedy film. An adaptation of the posthumous gay-themed transgressional novel by James Robert Baker, the film was directed by David Moreton, whose “Edge of Seventeen” remains firmly in my top 5 LGBTQ+ films of all time. Moreton also co-wrote the screenplay with Dennis Hensley (“Reunion”, “Rubdown”, “If We Took a Holiday”).
The story follows David Sutcliffe (“Under the Tuscan Sun”, “Happy Endings”) as Dean Seagrave, a successful but creatively struggling thirty-something graphic novelist living in Los Angeles. As revealed in an inventively illustrated opening, Dean believes he’s found true love with his hunky boyfriend Pablo, played by conservative nutjob Antonio Sabàto Jr. (“Deadly Skies”), only for Pablo to disappear one night when he goes out for cigarettes. A good beginning for a darkly humorous story where nothing is as it seems.
I mostly enjoyed this movie the first time that I saw it around 2005, but revisiting it now, I’m very close to loving it. The cast is camptastic with fun turns by gay icons Jennifer Coolidge (“The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy”, the “Legally Blonde” films, “Single All the Way”) & Sônia Braga (“Kiss of the Spider Woman”, “Sex and the City”), with Dario Dukah (“10 Pesos”) as hot hotel employee Guillermo & electric performances by Celina Font as Sofia and Leonardo Brzezicki (“Smokers Only”, “Unmade Beds”; director of “Night”, “The Mad Half Hour” & “Wandering Heart”) as Marcos, a sister / brother double act who both compliment and contradict what we think we know. What is real and what is imagined is left to the audience to decide (which is always the braver choice in my opinion)…but no matter how the film is interpreted, there’s plenty to dig into here which I failed to notice the first time around. The line about snakes never dying unless you cut off their heads really resonated in a way that it didn’t before. And the suicide of one character that shocked and upset me the first time, still managed to do both the second time through, only now I’ve come away with a completely different interpretation of the character’s motivations, which changed the reasons I was upset and with who. And I honestly don’t know what to make of Sofia, but I found her mesmerizing every moment she was on screen.
Also, while I would normally avoid Sabàto Jr. like a biblical plague he’d likely wish upon me, I take comfort here as he likely regrets going fully frontal in the role of a gay man whore. ❤
2022 Entry #008 01-28-22 “Test” is a 2013 American drama film written and directed by Chris Mason Johnson (“The New Twenty”). Set in 1985 San Francisco, after the launch of the first HIV blood test, the film depicts the effects of the HIV / AIDS crisis on a professional dance company based in the city, as Frankie (Scott Marlowe), the central gay understudy, hopes for his chance to go on-stage.
This is another film that I only learned about in 2020, when I started collecting LGBTQ+ inclusive movies again. I added it to a list and I’ve finally gotten around to seeing it.
The acting was great. The locations were beautiful. The subject matter illuminated the past while remaining immediate and relatable. The music often brought on waves of nostalgia. And the choreography was breathtaking. This was a treat! And I loved the ending. ❤
2022 Entry #007 01-28-22 “200 American” is a 2003 romantic dramedy film which was written and directed by Richard LeMay (director of “Naked as We Came”, “Whirlwind” and producer of “Children of God”). The plot mainly focuses on the increasingly complicated romantic & sexual entanglements of a gay NYC CEO named Conrad (Matt Walton) and Ian / Tyler (Sean Matic), an Aussie hustler.
I purchased this title around the time it was originally released to DVD; I’d never seen it before but I’d started collecting LGBTQ+ DVDs by that point and I’d seen it in a TLA Video catalog. I watched it once. I remembered that the actors were attractive but that the movie looked like it had been recorded on video; it looked cheap, but that I had mostly enjoyed it…despite the acting being hit or (mostly) miss. I also remembered (SPOILER) that the seemingly gay-for-pay hustler came out in the course of the film, which I liked. The only thing that really changed for me this time around, despite me not having remembered most of the film, is that having moved to NYC in 2012, I now recognized a lot of the scenery in a first hand way. Also, for a movie that is focused on gay sex and the relationships that are centered on it, there’s a surprising lack of sex or nudity in the film. I don’t think I cared the first time I saw it, but this time I found it odd, dishonest and slightly frustrating. In the film’s favor…I will offer some light praise: I did occasionally find glimmers of potential, though they were fleeting, and late in the film, when I felt I’d really just like the movie to be over, a dumb joke made me laugh out loud for a good 30 seconds.
I’ve seen LeMay’s “Naked as We Came” and I remember enjoying it much more than this but I will have to revisit it as part of this LGBTQ+ viewing project. I also watched “Children of God” last year, which I loved, and I own a copy of “Whirlwind”, though I’ve never seen it. And though I didn’t hate this film, I can’t really recommend it either. I’d urge anyone interested in Lemay’s work to try the other titles I listed instead.
2022 Entry #006 01-28-22 “Foxfire” is a 1996 American teen drama film directed by Annette Haywood-Carter and is a modernized adaptation of the novel “Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang” by Joyce Carol Oates, which was set in the 1950s. This version moves the setting from upstate New York to the Pacific Northwest, centers the story on suburban families rather than the novel’s working class and changes the duration of the story from 3.5 years to just several weeks. This was the first film that I ever saw Angelina Jolie in and just like the film’s narrator, I fell in love with her, despite our sexualities not being the most compatible. 😉
Basically, Jolie’s heavily implied to be lesbian character shows up like the classically cool, archetypal drifter who saunters into town and shakes everyone up. Now, she doesn’t physically get the girl in the movie, but they clearly love each other by the film’s end.
I rented this movie when it was a new release; I watched it on April 5, 1997. I know this because I wrote a poem titled “Charming”, about the film’s characters, as soon as I finished viewing it. I liked it. It’s not a great movie in my opinion. It’s not life changing. But it’s good. I think the performances are what make it worth seeing, while I find the script to be weak at times. Oh. And I like (and own) the soundtrack.
2022 Entry #005 01-14-22 “Bedrooms and Hallways” is a 1998 comedy-drama film which was written by Robert Farrar (“Sunday Morning”, “RuPaul’s Christmas Ball”, “Courts mais GAY: Tome 6”) and directed by Rose Troche (“Go Fish”). The plot follows Kevin McKidd (“Nicholas Nickleby”, “De-Lovely”) as a gay man named Leo, who at the suggestion of a straight friend, join a men’s group, where his declaration of homosexual lust causes some unforeseen complications.
I’d seen this entry once before and I had vague memories of Hugo Weaving as a guy that likes to have sex in other people’s homes…but I also remember that this was a subplot, and for the life of me, I could not remember the main storyline of the film. I think part of that is because it’s just a very odd film. I also think that when I saw it the first time, I probably didn’t enjoy it, but that I enjoyed it more this time. It’s still a very strange movie with some odd pacing issues and some tonal problems but it features a very impressive cast and I think it makes a lot of interesting choices.
2022 Entry #004 01-07-22 “How to Survive a Plague” is a 2012 American documentary film about the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and the efforts of activist groups ACT UP and TAG. It was directed by David France (“The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson”, “Welcome to Chechnya”), a journalist who covered AIDS from its beginnings. The film is dedicated to the director’s partner Doug Gould, who died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1992.
A breathtakingly powerful documentary which covers familiar ground I’ve seen in other documentaries and narrative films, yet this managed to provide me with valuable information that I had somehow been deprived of until my viewing experience. Several similar works have been made over the years but they usually rely mostly on present day interviews to paint their stories, while this piece was produced using more than 700 hours of archived footage which included news coverage, interviews as well as film of demonstrations, meetings and conferences taken by ACT UP members themselves! Effectively and responsibly edited, this work is a treasure trove / time capsule that would be impossible to replicate without these valuable resources. Director David France has stated that they knew what they were doing was historic, and that many of them would die. And though the subject may seem treacherous, the story, as revealed here, is actually inspiring & hopeful, rather than bleak and depressing – with many untold or rarely shared stories of perseverance, success & triumph.
