Posts tagged gary morris
Calm down
RELAX … IT’S JUST SEX
USA, 1998
Director: PJ Castellaneta
Stars: Mitchell Anderson, Lori Petty, Jennifer Tilly
Review by Gary Morris
Relax … It’s Just Sex opens promisingly, with a very funny send-up of 1950s black-and-white educational films about “threatening” topics like homosexuality. A booming male voice intones “This is a lipstick lesbian … This is a gay man, or what some might designate as a gym queen …” while said lesbian and gym queen revolve mindlessly on a dais like specimens at a zoo.
The next scene we see is two naked men screwing blissfully in glorious color, a repudiation of the view of gay people as objects suggested by the opening. Writer-director P. J. Castellaneta keeps the laughs coming in the scenes that follow, preparing us for a lighthearted queer satire along the lines of, say, Kiss Me Guido.
It’s a little surprising, then, when the story moves into much darker directions, introducing a string of reality checks — HIV, gaybashing, wretched romances — that constantly threaten the cohesion of the likeable group of queer and straight couples and singles presided over by faghag supreme Tara Ricotto (Jennifer Tilly). It’s to the director’s credit that he modulates these elements, so there’s always some welcome cutting dish or satirical jab or authentic emotion to counter the film’s tendency toward cliché and sentimentality.
Group booking
BOYFRIENDS
USA, 1996
Director: Tom Hunsinger, Neil Hunter
Stars: James Dreyfus, Mark Sands
Review by Gary Morris
The bitchy, bittersweet gay ensemble movie a la The Boys in the Band or Love! Valour! Compassion! has become a familiar, if not always welcome, cinematic subgenre. All the elements of the drama are narrowed and the focus concentrated — the setting is mostly a single, claustrophobic space; the time is typically compressed into a single night or a weekend; and the characters are invariably a handful of old friends in their thirties or older who get together for what starts as a simple social gathering and ends with a series of breakups, breakdowns, and reconciliations, with a little bed-hopping thrown in for good measure. Sexy window dressing often appears in the form of an unapologetically lustful, younger, working-class twink-outsider who wreaks havoc on the couples’ relationships.
Boyfriends, which has all these elements, is a smaller and in some ways sweeter version of its more blustery cousins. Written, produced, and directed by Neil Hunter and Tom Hunsinger, it’s one of the better examples in the canon, wisely taking advantage of what might first strike the eye as drawbacks. Unlike Boys or Love!, there’s no theatrical pedigree and thus no pre-sold audience for this British production.
Boyfriends was shot on a shoestring in a mere 18 days with an unknown cast. But the lack of familiar faces, plus the intentionally rough lighting and framing, gives the story an immediacy and freshness that’s often disarming. Most of all, this well-acted film generously makes room for the complex traits of its couples-in-distress, incorporating sarcasm, sensuality, and psychodrama with equal skill.The setting of Boyfriends is an unpretentious country cottage (not reminiscent of the luxurious restored manse of Love! Valour! Compassion!) away from the bustle of London. Owner Paul (James Dreyfus) and his lover Ben (Mark Sands) invite two friends to join them for a pleasant gay weekend. Will (David Coffey) is a social worker who brings his latest trick, a whorish 20-year-old former client named Adam (Darren Petrucci). Goody-goody Matt (Michael Unwin) brings his boyfriend of three months, the promiscuous, distracted Owen (Andrew Ableson). Amidst all the cooking, cleaning, and nature walks, each of these three couples see their relationships, where they exist at all, unraveling before their eyes.
The Immortals
THE BOYS IN THE BAND
USA, 1970
Director: William Friedkin
Stars: Kenneth Nelson, Peter White, Leonard Frey
Review by Gary Morris
If William Friedkin’s grim gay thriller Cruising (1980) continues to send some queens, leather and otherwise, into seizures, The Boys in the Band (1970), by the same director, has taken on the aura of a sacred text of modern queerdom. And rightly so. This scathing but ultimately sympathetic group portrait of a gay birthday party that virtually self-destructs before the terrified eyes of mainstream audiences was the first Hollywood feature to take a close-up look at queer culture. In spite of a plethora of topical or dated references — “midnight cowboys,” marihuana hidden in Band-Aid boxes, Maria Montez — the film is brilliantly acted and has an emotional clarity and power that hasn’t dimmed over the years. It was also a breakthrough in obtaining an R rating from the usually prudish MPAA, which the year before had given the dreaded X to both Midnight Cowboy and The Killing of Sister George, which mined some of the same territory.
Good trip
THE TRIP
USA, 2002
Director: Miles Swain
Stars: Larry Sullivan, Steve Braun
Available on DVD - order here
Review by Gary Morris
After enduring the banality of Big Eden and the ineptitude of Circuit the past two years at Phoenix’s annual Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, I wasn’t expecting too much from the highlighted festival finale. But I was entertained by Miles Swain’s debut feature, The Trip, a surprisingly intelligent romantic comedy combining elements of The Graduate, Forrest Gump, Thelma and Louise, and Longtime Companion. Swain refuses to wallow in pedantic preaching, instead drawing memorable and likeable characters into the period piece.
New Hollywood
BILLY’S HOLLYWOOD SCREEN KISS
USA, 1998
Director: Tommy O’Haver
Stars: Sean Hayes, Brad Rowe
Available on DVD - order here
Review by Gary Morris
In the past few years, two distinct trends have dominated gay (male) cinema. First, and inevitably easier for mainstream audiences to handle, is the frothy, formulaic queer comedy a la In & Out or Kiss Me Guido. Then there are the dreaded “AIDS dramas” such as Love! Valor! Compassion! or Bent that usually drown in their own smarm. (There are also crude graftings of these two styles like the upcoming Unknown Cyclist, but the less said about that movie the better.)
Sister dear
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE
UK, 1968
Director: Robert Aldrich
Stars: Beryl Reid, Susannah York
Review by Gary Morris
Robert Aldrich ranks with Samuel Fuller and Nicholas Ray as one of the “golden boys” of postwar commercial cinema whose formal chops and aggressive social critique made that period so exciting. By the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, when culture gave way to counterculture, conventional wisdom has it that all three were washed up. That opinion can be supported for Ray, who made no films at that time. Fuller’s star had fallen with the butchered Shark (1967) and the enjoyable but minor Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1972).
But Aldrich was arguably at the peak of his powers, with a string of brilliant, demanding and not always commercially successful films that, taken as a unit, outstrip such earlier classics of his as The Big Knife, Kiss Me Deadly, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
The main drag
Review by Gary Morris
This sweet, sad sketch of a film is a rarity indeed; not only the first major commercial movie made in Singapore, but an exceedingly gay one from a culture not known to tolerate chewing gum, much less the parade of drag queens, prostitutes, and naked hunks who populate the insular world of Bugis Street. Surprisingly, the film was passed by the country’s board of censors in spite of its casual nudity (including full frontal male), its focus on the lurid details of a “deviant” subculture, and its sympathetic treatment of an infamous red-light district that modern Singaporeans would probably prefer to forget.
Book Of The Day
The ongoing marvel that is Gary Morris’ Bright Lights Film Journal, a superlative online resource, will soon be represented on book shelves with the impending release of “Action! Interviews with Directors from Classical Hollywood to Contemporary Iran”, now available at Amazon.
