It’s a tale as old as time: A young gay man and his best girlfriend fall in love with the same beautiful boy. This plot and its lesbian equivalent have been at the center of entirely too many bad independent films. I don’t think it is so overused because it’s such a great storyline, but…
Gregg Araki’s last two movies, while wildly different from each other, were leaps and bounds better than his weird, ultra-low-budget films (like The Living End and Totally F***ed) that helped define queer cinema in the 1990s. Mysterious Skin (2004) was based on Scott Heim’s now classic novel about growing up troubled and gay in Kansas,…
About halfway through the excellent indie fish-out-of-water comedy Cedar Rapids, Tim (Ed Helms) is sitting on a bench by the Iowa River with his new friend Joan (Anne Heche), who he has just met at the insurance convention they are both attending. Tim explains why he thinks being an insurance agent is such noble work….
When I saw the first TV ads for The Roommate, I may have squealed, “Oh. My. God! It’s Single White Female with Leighton Meester!” In the back of my head, I knew that there were a number of factors that meant The Roommate wouldn’t be nearly as good, mostly having to do with Leighton Meester…
Last week, the Oscar nominations were announced, and The King’s Speech led the pack with a whopping 12, including Best Picture. If you’re like me, and you follow awards season with the sort of obsessiveness that, say, a Packers fan is following the playoffs this year, this was slightly eyebrow-raising. If you’re more of a…
by Ted Gideonse Directed by Ivan Reitman Written by Elizabeth Meriwether Starring Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, and Kevin Kline At every multiplex Rated R Movie studios like to drop bombs in January. Usually these are movies that the studios are contractually bound to release but which they would rather do so quietly, so that not…
by Ted Gideonse Directed by Michel Gondry Written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg Starring Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, and Christoph Waltz At every multiplex and in 3-D. But the effects are tacked on; a waste of an extra $5 Rated PG-13 If someone is out there ranking pop culture bear icons, Seth…
Written and Directed by Sofia Coppola Starring Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning At the Landmark Hillcrest Cinema Rated R by Ted Gideonse Somewhere, Sofia Coppola’s quiet cinematic poem about Holly-wood ennui has one particularly gay moment. Movie star Johnny Marco, played by Stephen Dorff, has a regular masseuse, but when she is unavailable a masseur…
