bgthomaswriter Review of Turtle Hill, Brooklyn

Turtle Hill, Brooklyn (2013)

Was Afraid It Was Going to Be the Classic Low Budget Awful Gay Movie...and I Was Very Pleasantly Surprised!

[8/10 · 12 April 2016]

Well...I was worried at first because of the film/lighting quality…and I wound up loving this little movie! Very soon—and this is a first for me— the "low" quality became a "character" in the film for me and I thought it worked brilliantly. It made it so real. The whole movie felt real and it almost seemed at times that I was a voyeur, somehow invisible the very real people in this story. It was like it was happening as I was watching. The dialogue was so real and I have to wonder if some of it was stream of consciousness writing. As if maybe some of the actors were given free reign to just talk at the big party that was the setting for the movie. And almost all of the actors were terrific, with only two falling short as far as I was concerned, and I am not even going to say their names. Why bother? And Will, the star and co-writer, was incredible as well as gorgeous. I am going to find more of his movies. I just kept thinking over and over, this is real. Not just the classic movie were a ton of people show up and deliver lines. These guys felt real. It had a few of the classic tropes—and at the risk of giving spoilers—there is the evil straight relative that thinks the hero of the story isn't normal and needs to be fixed, a cheating lover, fear of commitment—but there is a reason those tropes exist. They work. And in this case, they are often a part of life, gay or otherwise. In the end, while this movie was a "gay" movie, this was simply a movie about people. And I loved it.