denny321 Reviews

The Fall of '55 (2006)

An important story, well told

[9/10 · 9 May 2022]

The 1955 Boise scandal is by far the best known example of a McCarthy-era homosexual witch hunt, thanks to the 1965 bestseller The Boys of Boise, by John Gerassi. But Gerassi's book was very much a product of its still-homophobic times. As an important touchstone in the history of LGBT rights, this story begged to be retold with a modern sensibility, and made accessible to an audience who have been offered very little information on the pitfalls of being gay in the era.

The film does a remarkable job of presenting the truly astounding facts of the case, giving insight into the culture of Boise at the time, and documenting the lives of many of the people involved, on both sides of the investigation. Clips of interviews with some of the witch hunters, filmed decades after the fact, are chilling for the persistent, antiquated mindsets they reveal.

Many today will be shocked to learn something like this ever took place in America. The sad truth is that while the Boise investigation was among the largest of its type in American history, it was by no means an isolated event. Similar events were occurring in cities and small towns all over the country, but few have been as well documented.

The Fall of '55 is an important film in that it exposes a history few today are aware of, either inside or outside of the LGBT community. It is a well-made film in that it presents a level of detail that will interest even those who thought they already knew the story, and does so without bias; the facts are allowed to speak for themselves, and no more explanation is needed. It is essential viewing for anyone with more than a passing interest in the history of civil rights and social justice in the U. S.

From Zero to I Love You (2019)

Nothing but blah

[4/10 · 8 January 2021]

This is a movie about a white closeted married guy who dates a black single guy with a history of dating white closeted married guys. While the premise seems to hold the potential for an engaging story and the production is at least competent, it falls hopelessly flat in every respect. It simply isn't dramatic enough, funny enough, heartwarming enough, or steamy enough to be worthwhile. Everything here is skin deep. There's no reason for the audience to get behind a guy who seems to see his devoted wife and daughters as mere baggage, and shirks his responsibilities to them at every turn. A couple doleful piano notes as the boyfriend is left hanging again (as if he couldn't see it coming) isn't near enough to tug at my heartstrings. I'd suggest the filmmakers go out and live a little, and find something more substantial to write about. But at least they got the title right - there's plenty of Zero, a bit of I Love You, and not much in between.

Oh, and - there's not a closeted guy on the planet who'd ask his secretary to send a dozen roses to a man.

1500 Steps (2014)

Religious propaganda

[5/10 · 24 July 2020]

In the Bible, Job is a pious man whose life goes sour when Satan makes a bet with God that he can make Job renounce his faith. Next thing you know, Job's livestock is dead, his family is dead, his house caves in, he's covered with open sores, but he keeps the faith. God wins the bet, so he rewards Job with a whole new family - and they're even better than the dead ones.

In this film, Jonas - who goes by "Jobe" - suffers the afflictions of his Biblical namesake, or at least their cheesy teen flick equivalents. Dead mom, a drunken ogre for a dad, and a brand new high school where the "cool kids" instantly brand him an outcast for no apparent reason. He makes friends among the other outcasts and garners a bit of success on the track team thanks to a couple of helpful coaches, even manages to steal away his chief tormentor's girlfriend, but is shunned by one and all when he tests positive for drugs. With no opportunity to clear his name by a retest, high school athletics in Jobe's world seems to be the most merciless sports federation on the planet.

Alex Fechine as Jobe does a passable job of mostly suffering in silence and cracking the occasional smile, and he isn't bad to look at either. The other characters are cardboard cutouts, timeworn clichés that are remarkable only for their mindless cruelty. Even so, the film is engaging enough until the last fifteen minutes. Jobe, who up to this point hasn't shown us any religious bent, suddenly curses God and throws himself into the ocean, is miraculously rescued and exonerated, and regains his faith. From there, God fixes everything. Jobe doesn't even need a new girlfriend because the old one who rejected him and went back to her ex is at his side again, oh boy! And never mind all the loose ends that are left hanging, like what was the bad blood between dad and the coach all about; the important thing is to pray, and God will answer! ...or, apparently, to renounce your faith and let people come swarming out of nowhere to put you back on the right track.

Even with its flaws, the film had a chance of being an interesting drama until that deus ex machina ending. Sadly, the whole film turned out to be a setup for some Christian proselytizing. Holy hoodwink!

Wish for Tomorrow (2014)

"Based on True Events"... in a deceitful way

[4/10 · 20 July 2020]

Billed as "Based on True Events", this is a fictionalized, Australianized, watered-down version of the American documentary film Bridegroom, which was released just one year earlier. It's the story of two young gay guys who've each relocated to the big city (Sydney here instead of L.A.), meet and fall in love but are dealt with brutally when tragedy strikes, by homophobic parents and a legal system that grants no rights to gay couples. It's hard to call this a dramatization since the source material contains much more gripping drama. While the documentary was truly heart rending, this film is no more than "sorta sad" - and that applies to both the story and the production. It plays like a flaccid Lifetime Network movie.

The impact of the central tragedy is diluted by a failure to establish the guys' enduring love and strong sense of partnership beforehand, as well as the depths of despair and misery afterward. Their relationship is more cute than loving, the aftermath more mopey than world-shattering. The conflicts are brimming with trite boilerplate reactions on all sides that don't feel genuine at all. Scenes of high emotion seem beyond the capabilities of both screenwriters and cast. This is maybe the first fictionalization in film history where the good guys aren't nearly as good, nor the bad guys nearly as bad, as they were in real life.

It's also likely the first fictionalization in film history where the two romantic leads aren't as attractive as the people their characters are based on.

The film is further marred by some very strange choices - a dance number that appears out of nowhere (?!?), a couple gratuitous dream sequences. And I'm sure gay men everywhere were cringing as much as I was when the guys became engaged and launched into a much-too-long joking argument over "who's gonna wear the dress?"

But the most disturbing part comes in the superimposed text at the end of the film, which reveals that "Michael" told his story to several million viewers on YouTube and became a popular speaker and Australian gay rights advocate. Except for the "Australian" part, this is the life history of Shane Bitney Crone, the American on whom the character of Michael was based - and who received a "Dedicated To" in the end credits. It's a grossly inappropriate and unnecessary attempt to sell the audience on the idea that the story really happened to two Aussie guys - and most viewers who hadn't seen the documentary were probably fooled by the filmmakers.

Shame on them.

Geography Club (2013)

Cute guy who does stupid things

[3/10 · 6 June 2020]

This is one of those movies where you're constantly screaming at the lead character, "Don't do that!" It's exceptionally tiresome, especially in this case where there would have been no bad consequences for doing the right thing and plenty for doing the wrong thing.

Russell is a cute, gay, closeted, and otherwise unremarkable high school kid who is pulled in two very wrong directions. His fat, nerdy, obnoxious "friend" Gunnar demands Russell help him score with the babes by dating his crush's bestie, while his secret boyfriend - star quarterback Kevin - recruits him for the football team where he meets toxic jocks who prod him to become a homophobic bully.

In each case, all Russell had to do was say "No." Instead he goes along with everyone's schemes, compromising every shred of integrity he might have once had - and is predictably outed as a result. Somehow he doesn't recognize that the completely self-absorbed Gunnar is only using him for his own gain, or that Kevin manages to avoid all the homophobic nonsense that Russell allows himself to be drawn into. Hell, Kevin even gives Russell a kiss in the locker room - not right out in front of the team, but in a place where they easily could have been seen.

Sadly, we see very little of Russell and Kevin's relationship - nothing more than a couple brief chats, and a chaste kiss now and again. It feels like the real meat of the film is missing. The filmmakers decided to spend much more time on the painful, cringeworthy contortions Russell goes through to maintain his friendship with Gunnar, who at no moment is the least bit likable. I guess the choice was made because that kind of material is easier to write and easier to sell - but it gives the whole film the aspect of a Porky's sequel. And it undermines any worthwhile statement the film could have made.

But the real tragedy is the ending. Finally outed against his will, Russell gives Kevin an ultimatum - out himself to the whole school as well or they're through. It's unconscionable that the filmmakers portray Russell as the "good guy" for making this demand and Kevin as the "bad guy" for walking away. Kevin is closeted because he thinks it will hurt his chances of getting a college football scholarship - and he's right; going to college is way more important than having a high school boyfriend. Russell is acting like too many other gay men who were closeted and behaved badly for years, but as soon as they come out expect everyone else to do the same. No one should be forced to come out before he or she is ready. Ever. And it's shocking that no other review I've seen picked up on this.

It's sad that Russell is left alone at the end of the film - but he surely deserves to be.

Check Point (2017)

Not a legitimate effort to make an enjoyable film

[1/10 · 5 May 2020]

This is a classic case of a film made by people who really didn't care at all if it was any good. They hired a couple actors with recognizable names who could sleepwalk through inept dialog and poorly choreographed action, came up with a plot that sounds arguably engaging when reduced to a one-liner, made a distribution deal with Netflix and Showtime and called it a success. Whether anyone actually likes it is immaterial. In its own way this is a far poorer effort than anything made by Ed Wood, because Wood actually believed his films were entertaining.

The plot involves a two-stage effort to take over the USA: steal a decommissioned battleship now serving as a museum in a small North Carolina town and sail it up the Potomac to attack Washington, and simultaneously send commandos through a secret Civil War era tunnel linking that very same small North Carolina town (holy coincidence!) to the White House to assassinate the president.

In order for their plot to succeed, here's a few things that need to happen:

• The museum piece battleship must still be completely functional and stocked with live ordnance

• The Potomac must be dredged out to accommodate the battleship's 38' draft (the river is only 10'-20' deep near the city; there's a reason Washington isn't a major seaport)

• The Woodrow Wilson Bridge must be opened to accommodate the battleship's 170' height above waterline; the 14th St bridges don't open and may need to be removed

• A single vintage battleship must be able to destroy the US government completely, targeting from a distance of a couple miles by an inexperienced crew

• The US military must be incapable of sinking a single vintage battleship before it destroys the US government

• The Civil War era tunnel, untrod for 150 years, must still be intact over its entire 250+ mile length

• The secret tunnel, a well known local legend in the small North Carolina town, must be unknown to the White House (and not plugged up with cement long ago)

• The president needs to be at home (and not out golfing or attending a campaign rally) when the commandos show up

• The Secret Service must be ineffective at protecting the president from a small group of commandos who appear to be mostly over 50 and have just traveled 250+ miles in an underground tunnel

I can't say any of this film was legitimately enjoyable but here are my two favorite moments:

• During the battle on the battleship, the roided-up good guy spots the roided-up bad guy and tacitly they both put down their guns and fight barehanded. This is an overused plot device usually played out between longtime antagonists but here the two guys have never even seen each other before. The message seems to be when muscleboys meet they're swept up in a homoerotic frenzy and set aside the mission at hand (saving America or destroying America, respectively) to spend ten minutes mashed up against each other.

• During the final battle, the bleached blond, big-breasted truckstop-looking good girl fights the bleached blond, big-breasted truckstop-looking bad girl, and the shaved-head, bearded good guy fights the shaved-head, bearded bad guy (I wondered why they hired so many shaved-head, bearded/goateed actors until I got a look at the writer/director - those guys must have a club or something). They might have taken a cue from the old Westerns and put white hats on the good guys and black hats on the bad, just so we could tell them apart!

Bottom line: if I was a high school creative writing teacher I would flunk any kid who couldn't come up with a more believable plot.

The Blonde One (2019)

What we have here is failure to communicate

[4/10 · 20 December 2019]

Gabriel moves into the spare room in his coworker Juan's apartment. Juan wastes time with his idiotic friends. Juan plays around with his girlfriend. Juan plays around with Gabriel.

Blondhaired Gabriel, the man of the title, barely says a word, maintains a blank look and hardly moves throughout the entire film. Juan doesn't say much either; his dialogue consists mainly of "Do you want a beer?" and "Let's get something to eat." But at least he smiles once in a while. Gabriel is a block of wood, with no personality whatsoever.

He lies on his bed reading.

He sits on the couch watching TV.

He rides a train.

He works in a wood shop.

These little slices of nothing, repeated over and over, seem to comprise most of the running time of the film. They'd be fine as counterpoint to actual drama but in between, nothing much happens. Gabriel rarely speaks more than a word and shows no emotion at all, ever. During the sex scenes he's completely passive, practically motionless, and adamantly stonefaced. I don't even think he's breathing hard - if he's breathing at all.

The wood shop scenes are something of a metaphor for the entire film. Gabriel and Juan drill holes in little pieces of wood, and cut them into smaller pieces. There's no finished product, no indication of what they're building, no sense that there's any point to their work. And if the filmmaker is using this to represent something beyond his own poor storytelling skills, there isn't any hint of that either.

It seems we're intended to infer (because he sure won't say it out loud) that Gabriel wants a relationship, and Juan is a jerk because he doesn't. But wait... it's clear from start to finish that Gabriel is staying with Juan only until his mother gets her spare room ready, at which point he'll move in with mom and his young daughter in another town. If he stays with Juan he'll be abandoning his daughter. If he lures Juan into a romance and then leaves... well, who's the jerk now?

All of these subtleties are left to the viewer to figure out, because the guys just plain don't talk about it. Or about anything.

I like artsy films. I like atmospheric films. I even like bleak films, if that bleakness is meant to convey something. In this case, there just doesn't seem to be any underlying philosophy. There's only a filmmaker trying to copy an artsy style without understanding why it worked for someone else.

Communication is the key to a successful relationship. It's also the key to good filmmaking. Unfortunately, there ain't any of that around here.

Aleksandr's Price (2013)

A muddled, amateurish mess

[3/10 · 29 May 2019]

I thought I'd better offer an honest opinion to balance out the high ratings apparently conferred by writer/director/star Pau Maso's family and friends. This film is an amateurish, muddled mess.

It's framed as a therapy session for gay hustler Aleksandr, who tells his story in a series of flashbacks. This setup is completely unnecessary, and detracts substantially from the film by repeatedly killing the momentum. The therapist, "Dr. Mary", shows no compassion at all for her patient; she sounds like she's reading her lines off a Xeroxed sheet. She asks questions that I hope no professional therapist would ask, and says things that I hope no professional therapist would say (telling an extremely distressed guy he's "strange" won't win any awards for bedside manner).

Aleksandr, who seems to have developed his Russian accent by studying Mr. Chekov in the 1960s Star Trek series, makes one incredibly bad decision after another, to the extent that we feel even less sympathy for him than his therapist does. Suffering one traumatic experience after another, he continues to let bad things happen to him with no resistance offered or judgment exercised whatsoever. After the THIRD TIME a trick hands you a glass of mysterious liquid and says, "Drink it," you either turn and run away or you give up your right to feel you've been taken advantage of.

Tom, the character who seems to be Aleksandr's greatest potential ally, is confusing at best. His dialogue is written as if he's genuinely concerned, but the actor's delivery is so flat - a perpetual cheeriness that sounds like he's speed-dating - we aren't sure if he truly wants to help Aleksandr, or is just looking for a quick and easy hookup.

And then there's the "twist" near the end - not really a plot twist at all, just a ridiculously improbable happenstance. Based on everything we've learned so far, there's no reason to believe this particular incident would be so much as a blip on the radar, compared with a dozen or so other traumatic experiences little Alek has been through. Apparently, this is the one that lands him in therapy - although how and why are never explained.

Mr. Maso isn't a bad looking guy. Too bad he can't write, direct, or act.

Age of Summer (2018)

Surf, sand, sun, and shallowness

[3/10 · 17 April 2019]

Judging by the high ratings (Two 10's? Really?) it looks like the filmmakers have been busy casting their votes here on IMDb. The cinematography is indeed quite good but everything else is fair at best, and quite often grossly deficient.

Starting with the tired old plotline of a kid from the Upper Midwest who's suddenly plopped into the So Cal cool zone (Side Out, Beverly Hills 90210, Tribes of Palos Verdes, et cetera, et cetera...), it begins by rehashing familiar stereotypes and then essentially goes nowhere. The paper-thinness of the characters is perfectly exemplified by the male lead, who nicknames himself "Minnesota" apparently to underscore his newbie-ness to one and all (we never do learn his real name). From there, we're treated to endlessly cringeworthy moments as our hapless, prepubescent-looking and implausibly naive hero tries desperately to be accepted by the "cool kids" while mooning over his unattainable heartthrob Brooke, who is not only "out of his league" as he puts it, but clearly out of his maturity level and seemingly out of his entire species.

The film is set in 1986, for no apparent reason - there isn't much to establish a mid-80s atmosphere, and there are a number of obvious, careless anachronisms (board shorts were not yet in vogue back then, tatted up guys were confined to trailer parks, and nobody had ever heard of a "fist bump"). All in all this has the feel of a vanity project by a writer/director who was most likely a hapless, androgynous Minnesota tweener among surf gods in 1986 Hermosa Beach himself.

But the real victim of this waste of good scenery - aside from the audience - is the LA County Junior Lifeguards, a truly worthwhile summer program that has taught vital beach and ocean skills to generations of kids. Here, it's depicted as a cliquish and exclusory group run by an abusive bully. If this movie were all I had to go on, I wouldn't let my kids anywhere near it.

Bigger (2018)

A nice propaganda piece for the Weider Empire

[5/10 · 20 October 2018]

As a biography, Bigger hearkens back to the days when Hollywood biopics cranked out knights in shining armor using whatever mixture of fact and fiction they thought would fill the seats and send everybody home happy. Joe Weider is a presented as a blemish-free altruist who only wants to help the world become a fitter place; various inconvenient aspects of Joe's private and professional lives - including the timing of his two marriages and the existence of his daughter, legal difficulties stemming from highly exaggerated claims of his products' effectiveness, questionable treatment of business partners, and strong presence in the gay-oriented "beefcake magazine" market of the 1950s and early 60s with titles like Adonis and Body Beautiful - are either glossed over or ignored completely. Meanwhile, the villainous foil "Bill Hauk", officially claimed to be a composite of several real-life characters but pretty clearly a representation of U.S. Olympic weightlifting coach and rival muscle mag publisher Bob Hoffman, is a cartoonishly evil, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, violent thug. Exec produced by nephew Eric Weider, the film plays like the Weider Empire's bid for Joe's sainthood.

Historical inaccuracies and omissions aside, as a movie it just isn't very satisfying. The years flip by so quickly it's difficult to build up much momentum, and we're often left wondering exactly how last year's big dilemma played out. Tyler Hoechlin as Joe does a capable job mimicking Weider's distinctive Polish/Yiddish/Quebecois accent but tacks on an awkwardly stilted manner of speech; oddly, both of these are absent in the always-classy Robert Forster's portrayal of Joe as an old man. The labored delivery combined with Joe's single-minded obsession with fitness makes him appear to be a sort of Rain Man of bodybuilding, and only succeeds in distancing the audience from the character. Repeated anti-Semitic attacks and accusations of homosexuality fail to build the viewer's sympathy after the first few instances, with a mounting array of epithets not heard for a while in a non-Tarentino movie.

The film tries hard to present Joe Weider's life story as a classic David-versus-Goliath struggle. But given the ending we already know, it's pretty clear that this David's goal all along was to become an even bigger Goliath.

I Am Jonas (2018 TV Movie)

A haunting, well-made drama

[8/10 · 28 September 2018]

Jonas is a clearly troubled 33-year-old gay man who drifts through life listlessly, seemingly haunted by something in his past. As the film opens he's being arrested for some sort of altercation in a gay bar. A sympathetic female cop recognizes him as a former classmate, and Jonas is drawn into memories of high school and meeting Nathan, the boy who would help him discover his sexuality and become his first love.

From there the plot skips between two parallel tracks as we follow his high school romance and watch his adult life disintegrate before his eyes. Soon we come to realize how strongly he clings to his past, until the two timelines meet head on and the event that has shaped his entire life is revealed.

This is a moving, emotionally charged drama, much higher quality than you'd ordinarily expect of a made-for-TV movie. The ending seems a bit rushed and abrupt - we'd like to spend a little more time exploring Jonas's feelings in both timelines after the big reveal and before the sweet-but-sad final scene - but this was likely due to TV time constraints, and in any event serves to demonstrate just how quickly life can take an unexpected turn. My only other complaint is that while the entire cast does an excellent job, Jonas, Nathan, and their classmates are way too old to be ninth graders. They could have easily been made two or three years older without changing a thing in the script; as is, it just looks wrong. The best bet for the English-speaking viewer is to simply assume there's a typo in the subtitles, the boys are really 17, and go from there.

Condor (2018–2020)

This genius sure makes bad decisions

[3/10 · 30 July 2018]

As a big fan of the film "Three Days of the Condor", I greeted the TV adaptation with a mixture of hope and apprehension. The plotline of the film was so taut I wondered how it could be stretched out into a series. After watching the first seven episodes, I learned the answer: they padded it out with nonsense.

Joe Turner is purportedly a genius but the decisions he makes are beyond poor. With full knowledge that rogue CIA assassins and every law enforcement agency in Washington DC is on his trail, he proceeds day after day to go visit everyone he knows, putting himself and all of his friends and relatives in grave danger. Apparently he does this because "cracking the case" is more important to him than the personal safety of himself and his loved ones.

With a trusted uncle who happens to be a highly ranked CIA agent, Joe could easily pass along his knowledge of the conspiracy and let the pros handle it while he disappears into the woodwork. But instead he insists on playing Nancy Drew, and puts himself and everyone around him at risk.

All of these bad decisions are necessary so the producers can satisfy what they seem to perceive as the viewers' relentless thirst for strained relationships, clever plot twists and endless backstory in lieu of plausible drama. "Condor" is not so much an adaptation of either the novel or the film as it is an implantation of their basic premise into the template of "Prison Break" or "Shooter", two series that obviously provided inspiration for this muddled mess, and that suffer from the same combination of overstretched plot and not enough good ideas to sustain them.

A second rate writing team should never attempt to portray a character as a genius. They'll only end up exposing their own limitations.

1:54 (2016)

Gratuitously bleak and ultimately pointless

[3/10 · 17 June 2018]

The minute someone finds out you're gay, your life is over. That seems to be the message writer/director Yan England is sending with 1:54.

The film opened in Los Angeles the very same week as Love, Simon. The plots of the two are remarkably similar: a closeted high school boy is blackmailed by a scheming classmate under threat of exposure; he capitulates to the blackmailer's demands but is exposed on social media anyway, and becomes a pariah to the entire student body. But while Simon lives in an artificially shiny-happy world where diversity of all sorts is accepted and encouraged, 1:54 plays out in a just-as-implausible homophobic nightmare world evocative of decades long past, where the mere hint of anything gay brings scorn, ridicule, persecution, and an eventual, mandatory death sentence.

This story might be relevant if it were set in Guatemala, Turkey, or Iran but seems grossly inappropriate for present-day, suburban Montreal. Same sex marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau famously marched in Toronto's gay pride parade. Yes, high school bullies still exist, and some gay kids take their own lives as a result. But North American high school and college athletes have come out as gay in record numbers in recent years, and nearly all have enjoyed the strong support of their teammates. Meanwhile, poor Tim of 1:54 is beset on all sides by a mindset that gay means girly, and homos have no place in sports; when his sexuality becomes known, his teammates unanimously turn on him, and the epithets and pejoratives fly. It seems England is sadly out of touch with the prevailing attitude of high school kids these days. Actually that's probably a good thing - for the kids.

But the film's biggest flaw is the complete failure to provide Tim with any character growth whatsoever. It's fitting that he's a track athlete because he just goes round and round in circles. Over a timeline that covers an entire school year he's bullied, witnesses the suicide of his best friend, finds acceptance through his athletic success, is blackmailed and then outed in a most spectacular fashion, crashes his car, receives the support of his father, his coach, and a trusted friend... and never changes a bit. He's a sullen, withdrawn, self-loathing loser at the beginning of the film, and while the audience is teased now and again with a glimmer of hope, he's still a sullen, withdrawn, self-loathing loser at the middle of the film, and remains so all the way to the end.

Tim does nothing to defend either himself or his friends. He refuses to stand up for himself or take charge of his life in any way. His bold decision to confront his antagonist - "Fuck Jeff!" - is abandoned the instant it looks like there may be a negative consequence. At no point during the film does he either accept himself or even admit to himself that he is indeed gay. All this serves only to alienate the audience. Any sympathy we had for Tim is long gone by film's end, transmuted into frustration at his uselessness, and anger at England for subjecting us to this pointless exercise in self-pity, ending of course with the traditional 1980s-cliché death of a gay man.

Maybe the most telling indication of how completely the film misses the mark comes after Tim's sexuality is exposed to his classmates. His father and his coach quickly petition the school board to take Tim out of school and allow him to finish the term at home, without even asking if he'd rather go back to class and deal with the fallout himself. Apparently they intend to save him from public disgrace by hiding him from sight, like a pregnant girl of the 1950s.

Love, Simon got wide distribution, was a hit with straight as well as gay high school audiences, and played at major theaters around LA for two months. 1:54 played on one screen in all of LA for a single week, and was seen by practically nobody. I think distributors and audiences made the right choice.

And as long as I'm dumping on the film, here's a few more things I couldn't ignore:

Who is the guy who gives Tim a blow job? At first he seems to be a drunken hallucination of Tim's dead friend Francis; if they weren't played by the same actor, I sure couldn't tell. I didn't know until they were caught in the act whether he was real or a fantasy - but since he was in fact real, and apparently another classmate, why wasn't he ridiculed and harassed as Tim was? After all, he was the one on his knees...

How does Tim score an invitation to compete at the Provincial Championships, without running in a single track meet since age 12? Is Quebec that hard up for high school athletes?

I groaned when England used the tired old device of having the stadium announcer call the race as if he's a TV play-by-play commentator. This never, ever, ever happens in real life but is somehow considered obligatory in the movies; have filmmakers never attended an actual sports event? Moreover, it's essentially a two-man race, we're already very familiar with the competitors, and there aren't many intricacies to be explained in two laps around the track. If England thinks he needs a narrator to provide drama, he must not have much faith in his skill as a director.

With 200m left to go in an 800m race, it is completely implausible that the runner in second place would expend the time and energy to taunt his opponent; by the time he can blurt out, "Look at what Pat's doing over there," he's lost the race. And it's even more implausible that the lead runner would listen and be distracted enough to look at a guy on the sidelines. An 800m race is an all-out endurance sprint; at the 600m point there's absolutely nothing in your head except making it to the finish line. In terms of plot, it was unnecessary - Tim could have won the race or Jeff could have beaten him fairly without changing the rest of the story. It only provides England one more opportunity to drag poor Tim through the mud, which he seems compelled to do at every turn.

When the video of Tim's blow job is posted online, his teammates see it instantly. Because they have nothing better to do than play with their phones when they're competing at the Provincial Championships.

Finally... I can't help but notice Tim's two homophobic bullies are the girliest-looking guys in the film. Especially the main antagonist Jeff, with his flowing locks pinned up on his head to run his race; he looks absolutely queenish alongside the very butch Tim. I can't tell if this is intentional irony, or if it's some hopelessly misguided Quebecois notion of what the "cool kids" look like.

Love, Simon (2018)

Cute, Sweet, but Ultimately Flat

[7/10 · 18 March 2018]

The premise is good and I enjoyed the film overall, but there were way too many places where I thought to myself, they really should have done a better job. It seemed to me they tried too hard in some parts, and not nearly hard enough in others.

The most mystifying choice of all to me was the timeline. The movie opens in October of Simon's senior year in high school, and ends shortly before graduation. I assume this mirrors the source novel ("Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda") and intends to take the characters on an epic journey through a succession of major high school events: Halloween, football season, Christmas, etc. But there just isn't enough story in the screenplay to fill that span of time. Dragging out the material that fits into 109 minutes over a seven month timeline seriously detracts from the film's credibility as well as the characters' integrity.

Simon is plausibly terrified at the prospect of being outed to his classmates and family - even in this day and age it's more the rule than the exception, and it's good to see this dealt with on screen, particularly in a film intended for a mainstream audience. It's very scary for a teenager to realize his life isn't going to be what he thought it was "supposed" to be, especially in the midst of the herd mentality of high school, where misfits are summarily rejected. But the steps he takes to hide his sexual identity from his best friends, while easily chalked up to teenage insecurity if they played out over a week or two, become unconscionably bad behavior when drawn out over two months.

As a result, when he finally is outed he becomes a pariah to his classmates and friends for pretty much all of the remaining five months of the timeline - a long time for lifelong friends to stay angry even under the circumstances without appearing to be completely heartless, and a long time for poor Simon to have nothing to do but mope around and be miserable. To be honest, Simon's social exile is the best part of the film, since his emotional anguish plays very real and provides some genuinely heartwarming and heart-rending moments. But moping around from Christmas until May is a bit too overwhelming.

Meanwhile, they're finally preparing to stage that school play they've been rehearsing since October - seriously, does any high school drama club rehearse a play for seven months? And the football team is still holding practices. In May. Long season, huh guys?

I can only imagine the novel contains enough material to fill out the timeline in a way that satisfies the reader. But given the constraints of a screenplay it would have felt much more true to life, and had a much greater emotional impact, if the timeline had been condensed into a month or so. Dragging this story out for nearly an entire school year robs it of the sense of urgency that the film medium can deliver so well.

Bottom line, I think it's great that the film was made, and is giving mainstream audiences an appreciation of some of the issues faced by gay teens. I'd recommend it to anyone. But in the end I can't help thinking about how easily it could have been made so much better.

Beach Rats (2017)

Good idea, poor execution

[5/10 · 7 January 2018]

Most reviewers seem to give this film lots of stars, or nearly none. I'm going to break from the herd and give it 5 out of 10. I'm awarding 2 stars for Harris Dickinson's body, and 3 more for attempting to tell a story that hasn't been given its due. The film industry (both US and foreign) would have you believe that a gay man discovers his sexuality by meeting someone special and spending quality time with him, whether herding sheep on a mountain or playing volleyball at an Italian villa. In truth, even in this day and age the vast majority of gay men go through an often desperate and anguished journey of discovery and self-acceptance alone, with no one to lend a hand aside from the occasional hookup. It's a story that should be told. Sadly, this film does a pretty awful job of telling it.

It's hard to imagine at what point writer/director Eliza Hittman, a straight female, thought she understood the struggle of young gay men well enough to invest herself in making this film. Moreover, I can't figure out what audience it was intended for - the gay men who'd quickly spot its obvious flaws, or the straight people who'd have no interest in a story that revolves around gay sex with random strangers.

It's painful to sit and watch Frankie make one bad decision after the next for an entire film, and just as painful that he never really suffers as a result. The things he does to ingratiate himself to his worthless friends are maddening - he steals his dying father's pain medication so they can get high, steals his mother's earrings to buy them tickets to a party, sets up the film's lone arguably nice guy to be beaten and robbed, all with no negative personal consequences. Meanwhile, these three guys he's so eager to please seem to bring absolutely nothing to the table. It's a complete mystery why he wants to hang out with them at all. And an even bigger mystery why he'd risk exposing his secret life to these troglodytes just to supply them with weed.

The central premise of having Frankie meet men for hookups in an online video chat room specific to the Brooklyn area shows a laughable unfamiliarity with the way these things work. Video chat rooms are for guys to jerk off together on camera, not for guys to arrange meetups. If such localized video chat rooms ever existed they're long gone in this age of Grindr and similar cell phone apps, but I guess a laptop screen is more cinematic than a smartphone. The way Frankie's more seasoned hookup Jeremy reacts to his inexperience and self-repression also reveals a genuine ignorance of the way a gay man would handle that situation ("It's okay, I like a challenge" - seriously??).

It's perhaps most telling of all that every single male character in the film is sleazy, and almost all of the gay men are physically repulsive. Jeremy comes off in the best light, but he tries to lure Frankie with pot and admittedly uses the hookup site "a lot". The sole arguably positive gay role models are a couple Frankie spots holding hands on the subway - but the hands are all we see; the camera doesn't even show us their faces. Meanwhile, the three female characters (Frankie's mother, sister, and girlfriend) are all ostensibly good people with no significant flaws.

I don't know if this film was meant for a gay audience, but it definitely should not have been made by someone who doesn't know what it's like to be gay.