Category Archives: Movies

Gender and Sexuality, Love, Movies, Religion

Movie Review: Latter Days

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This past weeken, I watched Lattere Days. This is a tale about a gay man, Christian, living in Los Angeles who meets, sets out to bed, and eventually falls in love with anotehr young man by the name of Aaron. Of course, Christian’s plans are complicated by the fact that Aaron is a missionary for the LDS church, just starting his two year mission.

The remarkable part about this movie is that it’s not just a movie about a young man from a religiously conservative background coming to terms with his sexual orientation and being excommunicated from his church (and presumably biological) family. This is also a movie wherein a cynical and superficial gay man begins to take a closer look at his own life and initiates a search to give it deeper meaning. In effect, this movie seeks to strike the balance between criticizing harmful repression and taking an honest look at the emptiness that can come from the superficiality we sometimes fall into while trying to escape the latter. In effect, both boys face their own demons as a result of coming into each others lives.

The scenes between Aaron and his mother after he’s found out and sent home are well done. Particularly, the scene where Aaron challenges his mother to actually look at him is quite incredible, and something that I think most gay people with religiously (or otherwise) conservative parents can appreciate on some level. Of course, even Aaron’s mother has her moment, when confronted with Christian’s act of love in coming to Idaho just to tell her how sorry he is for the loss of her son (at this point, Christian was falsely led to believe that Aaron had committed suicide).

This was truly a touching movie, and one I think many people will be able to connect with on one level or another.

Gender and Sexuality, Love, Movies

Movie Review: FAQs

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Apparently, I started an unplanned tradition when I wrote my previous review of the movie, Dorian Blues a couple weeks ago. This past weekend, I decided to watch the 2005 movie, FAQs, and I find myself with the desire to similarly review it.

First of all, let me just say that producer Everett Lewis did an excellent job in this movie. It’s a truly moving tale about a group of gay men (and one young lesbian, though she plays such a bit part, unfortunately) trying to not only survive in the face of the hate directed towards them, but to be themselves and thrive because of it. India — a young man living on the streets of LA after his homophobic parents disowned him — is rescued from a pair of gaybashers by an old drag queen, Destiny. Destiny gives India a home and begins to teach him to protect, love, and respect himself. Destiny, India, and Lester (a young lesbian Destiny similarly saved and “adopted” in years past) are soon joined by Spencer, who becomes India’s main love interest in throughout the rest of the movie. The plot of the movie then revolves around the dual themes of “saving” India’s would-be bashers (who turn out to be closeted queers themselves) and India trying to convince Spencer to give up on his plan to kill his parents, who had abused him until he ran away. These dual themes perfectly frame the central message of the film: Love conquers all if you just give it a chance. One of my favorite quotes from the movie was when India tells Spencer, “Our kisses are like bombs going off in the straight world.”

Of course, the movie itself had plenty of “bombs.” There are several highly erotic scenes in which various boys are shown caressing, kissing, and rubbing up against one another. And while no genital contact is shown (though there are a few scenes involving full frontal nudity in non-sexual settings), I imagine that this might be a bit “explosive” for some viewers. (Personally, as someone who often wryly jokes about “gratuitous straight sex scenes” in most movies, I found it a nice change.)

One of the problems that I had with this movie, however, was that it was too optimistic. There were several potentially dangerous scenes (some of which were created by an overly-optimistic India who tended to make unwise decisions) in which someone could have died, yet everyone made it through the movie virtually unscathed. The particular scene which bothered me was when Quentin — one of the bashers from the start of the movie — shows up at the boys’ home with a gun after having gotten their address off his answering machine from a message India told Guy to leave. Considering that the movie had been building up a highly distrought Quentin — who not only held a gun under his chin at one point, but also was shown firing said gun at a roadside sign fantasizing about killing his former friend “turned fag” — it just seemed like a poor climax. It also sends the message that doing something stupid like giving your home address to a known basher — even one you think is really gay and needs to be “saved from himself” — is okay. It’s not. It’s dangerous, and it’s stupid. So Lewis gets points taken off for being too optimistic and implicitly encouraging needless and foolish risk-taking.

In closing, I would like to say that I particularly liked the final scene. Without giving too much away, I will just say that I found it appropriately cyclical.

Gender and Sexuality, Movies, Personal Development

Dorian teaches to let go

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I just finished watching Dorian Blues. It’s a curious movie that I had never heard of until I ran across it in Blockbuster’s tonight. I have to say that I’m glad I rented it, as it was well worth watching.

The movie centers on Dorian, a young man who discovers he’s gay and attempts to deal with his self-discovery in light of his less than supportive family. The movie takes us through his senior year at college, his conversations with his therapist, his first sexual experience, his coming out experience, his first relationship in college, the eventual breakup, and the resulting depression. All through these experiences, Dorian consistently demonstrates himself an intelligent and wonderful man, held down by past hurts and his unwillingness to let them go.

Most of Dorian’s problems stem from his relationship with his father, an overly demanding man whose general displeasure with his older son only became more intense when Dorian came out to him. This situation was further exacerbated by a mother who would do anything to avoid a confrontation and a younger brother, Nick, who loved Dorian but was constantly held up by their father as the “perfect” son, who Dorian should strive to be more like. This of course, created a strain in the two brothers’ relationship, though the two tried their best to support each other in their own way. This emotional baggage weight down Dorian in every aspect of his life, causing him to be bitter and edgy. This cost him more than one friend and even the perfect relationship.

In the end, Dorian and Nick — who had been visiting his older brother at NYU — end up making the trip back home to attend their father’s funeral. Their father had died of a heart attack due to stress — most likely due to the fact that Nick had been cut from Syracuse University’s football team earlier that week and had therefore lost his scholarship.

The bes scene of the movie was the conversation between Dorian and his mother outside the church just before his father’s funeral. In it, his mother confronts her son about the fact that he had become mean and disapproving lik his father. She tells him, “I want you to be a good man, despite the fact that your father was never good to you…and your mother never stood up to him and made him stop.”

I cannot express how appropriate this theme is. Far too often, coming to term with one’s sexual orientation is the easy part. The hard part is learning to let go of all of those past hurts and fears, as well as the defense mechanisms and bitterness that we tend to build up in the process. Learning to let go of these things so that they don’t continue to affect our current lives is a painful and difficult process. Watching this movie enabled me to revisit this lesson, identify with Dorian’s character, and experience this letting go process one more time.

And I have to admit that scene where Dorian is franticly brushing his teeth was well worth a laugh.

Movies

Thoughts on “Revenge of the Sith”

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Last night, I bought and watched “Revenge of the Sith” on DVD. I neglected to catch the film when it originally came out in theaters, so this was my virgin viewing experience. Overall, I found it an enjoyable film.

I think the thing that stood out to me was how Annikan’s transition from up-and-coming Jedi to the monstrous Darth Vader was portrayed. Lucas’s decision to make the combination of Annikan’s pain over losing his mother and fear of similarly losing Padme the fulcrum and primary motivator for Annikan’s change was masterful. It created something that we could grasp as the hero fell and was reborn as a villain. Personally, as someone who prefers a villain whose motives I can at least understand if not support over a villian who’s just plain evil for no apparent reason, I appreciated Lucas’s mostly masterful explanation.

Of course, that’s not to say there wasn’t a rough spot in that part of the story. Lucas did lose me during the pivotal scene. I was with the program right up through the point where Annikan stopped Mace from killing Palpatine. But when Annikan immediately turns around and begins to follow Palpatine’s order to kill all the Jedi at the temple wihtout question, I felt Lucas had dropped the ball. The transition from a confused Annikan who just wanted to spare an admittedly evil man who could save his love to a dispassionate killer of younglings was just too rough for me. There needed to be something more to smooth out that last stage of the change.

The other thing I liked is how Lucas skillfully slipped the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy into the movie. During the entire movie, Annikan was motivated by his fear brought on by the knowledge that Padme would die if he didn’t find a way to intervene. But in the end, it was his actions, and his realignment with the Sith that directly led to the fulfillment of his nightmarish foreknowledge. As in the case of MacBeth and the visit with the Oracle in the first Matrix movie, it begs the question: Would Padme have lived if he hadn’t had those dreams in the first place?

I also liked the moments of insight into the mentality of the Sith that Palpatine offered from time to time. With the story of Darth Plagaris (Sideous’s own mentor, perhaps?), we learn why that the relationship between the student and teacher is a treacherous one which must inevitably lead to the death of one of them. This is brought on by the combination of fear and lust for power. Either the master must destroy the pupil before said pupil becomes too powerful, or the student must kill the master so that he might survive and ascend to mastery himself. It leaves me wondering why Sith would take a pupil in the first place. But it does explain why there are only two of them. In such a cutthroat relationship, there’s never time to teach a second pupil as long as the first survives.