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.
2024 Entry #021 01-16-24 “Atomic Blonde” is a 2017 American action thriller film directed by David Leitch (in his feature directorial debut – he later directed “Deadpool 2” and performed in “V for Vendetta”) from a screenplay by Kurt Johnstad (“300”), based on the 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart. The film was co-produced by the film’s star Charlize Theron (“Sweet November”, “Monster”, “Head in the Clouds”, “The Old Guard”, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”), and also features James McAvoy (“Bright Young Things”, “Wimbledon”, “Deadpool 2”, “It Chapter Two”), John Goodman (“Revenge of the Nerds”, “Roseanne”, “ParaNorman”, “Love the Coopers”, “The Conners”), Til Schweiger (“Intimate Affairs”), Eddie Marsan (“EastEnders”, “V for Vendetta”, “Deadpool 2”), Sofia Boutella (“Star Trek Beyond”, “Modern Love”, “Rebel Moon”), and Toby Jones (“Orlando”, “Mrs. Henderson Presents”, “Infamous”, “Doctor Who”, “Christopher and His Kind”, & the Harry Potter films as Dobby). The story revolves around an undercover MI6 agent who is sent to Berlin during the Cold War to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents.
I really like Charlize Theron and she’s incredible here as Lorraine Broughton, the film’s central character. I wasn’t sure I was into this movie when it started but I got much more into it as it continued – until something happened that spoiled that for me. Spoilers follow. The film features a lesbian subplot that was not in the original book. This reportedly came from writer Kurt Johnstad, who suggested it after Theron was “thinking about how do you make this different from other spy movies”. Leitch has insisted that the scenes are not there to be “provocative”, but “more about if you are a spy you will do whatever it takes to get information” and how the main character “find[s] her intimacies and her friendships in small doses”. All of that is fine – it’s welcome, until the film’s villain murders the undercover French agent lesbian love interest, played by Sofia Boutella. The kill happens relatively late in the film and I kept hoping the character wasn’t dead, and while the dangers of their jobs make the death a likely outcome and we have Theron’s character avenging her lover, the ick of another lesbian character dead hurt my enjoyment of the movie and took a film that I initially thought I’d be recommending to friends and turned it into something I will likely never view again.
On the flip side, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the film’s excellent soundtrack which features: David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Banshees, A Flock of Seagulls, ‘Til Tuesday, The Clash, Peter Schilling, HEALTHY, Tyler Bates, Nena, Ryal, Robert Ponger & Falco, Re-Flex, Kaleida & Marilyn Manson.
2024 Entry #012 01-07-24 “If Only You Were Mine” is a 23 minute 2017 Slovakian short romantic drama film which was directed by David Benedek (“Together”), who co-wrote it with Jakub Spevák (“Together”) & Ján Stiffel. The story follows a young graduate named Dominik (Jakub Jablonský), who is experiencing his first relationship with a man named Adam (Peter Martincek). Dom struggles with his complicated feelings and an eating disorder. The relationship doesn’t last as Dom expresses love for Adam who is in a different place emotionally – which hurts Dominik, though he quickly rebounds.
Another short collected in “The Male Gaze: Hide and Seek”, This was difficult for me to watch. I suffer from disordered eating myself, though it’s very different from what Dominik experiences – it was close enough that it hurt me. While too brief to really sink its claws in, I appreciated that this was a story with a lot to say about various aspects of life, and I could relate to much of it. I also appreciated Dominik’s relationship with his mother (Judita Hansman).
2024 Entry #008 01-04-24 “Stanley” is an 18 minute 2017 Brazilian short drama film which was written and directed by Paulo Roberto.
The story follows a young man who kills birds for his family to eat, plays David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” on his guitar, then goes to a club where he and another young man dance with a woman. After leaving the bar they share a motorcycle ride to a lake where birds feed. The young woman sleeps, one of the guys swims and later the other guys fucks him. They talk afterward and you learn they went to the same church when they were little though only one of them remembers this. The one who remembers asks the other about his brother Stanley, whom he was friends with when they were young and it is revealed that Stanley killed himself. And that’s that.
This was okay. I actually thought I would like this one more than I did as I tend to love Brazilian films – I love the sound of Portuguese, and I had read an excerpt of dialogue from it which served as a description of the short, which I liked a lot. Sometimes a short feels wholly satisfying on its own with no need for more. Sometimes a short is great but you want more and would welcome a feature length version. And then there are ones like this, which feel like a fragment of something larger, which are not horrible, but are also not completely satisfying on their own. It’s not bad; there are several elements that work very well, and yet none of it feels like it matters in the end.
This short was in the same collection as the previous two. I’ll likely watch the rest of them soon, but not tonight.
