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Reviews
Misfits (2009)
Nowhere near as good as it sounds
Sounded good. But honestly. The premise was never lived up to. And the constant "jokes" about gay sex, crossdressers being "perverts", the female characters meaningless aside from their sexual potential - ugh. It's like the viewpoint of an emotionally and progressively stunted heterosexual male teenager writ large. Like the world needs more of that.
It's a Sin (2021)
Oh such mixed feelings
Like some other reviewers I'm a little bemused at all the 10 stars. I guess this is because the outbreak of AIDs - and the dreadful ostracising of gay men dying from it - is being tackled for the first time in this way in this generation. Which is great. I just wish the execution had been a bit better.
The characters are too superficial to do this important topic justice and the story is rushed. Keeley Hawes is one of my favourite actresses but her character-arc as Ritchie's mother is just weird and unbelievable. Actually a lot of the characters are - they talk in ways that are just not realistic. Their dialogue is all telling and no showing, with much modern thinking that wouldn't have been expressed that way back then.
Jill annoyed me too. Lydia West is usually a compelling actress but Jill was a one-sided creature, all maternal and sacrificial with no life of her own. I longed for her to have more depth and ambiguity.
Olly Alexander has a spark, though. He is brilliant at portraying emotion. He's also very cute, and with a top script and a top director he could go on to great things. This wasn't quite it. Nathaniel Curtis as Ash also stood out for me. I wished that the author had chosen to make more of Ash and Ritchie's relationship - spent more time developing it, making us care about it. As such, it was all painted in way-too-broad strokes.
I'm glad this was made and that I watched it. And it will have been a success if it teaches younger generations even a little of the attitudes prevailing at that time, and just how horrific a disease it was before scientific research enabled people to take preventative drugs and live good lives while HIV positive.
Still, with a longer run of episodes and less "cartoonish" writing, perhaps this could have been the 10 some think it is.
Looking (2014)
Wow 10/10
Wow. I never give things 10/10 but Looking has to be an exception.
The writing, acting and directing are first class, and it's very funny. The characters are rounded and flawed - you care about them, but they aren't perfect - just like real human beings! They are forced to confront themselves at various points, and find out who they are, which isn't always what they thought they were. Uncomfortable though that is, these are experiences we all have in our lives, and are rendered with integrity and humour here.
All three of the (very different) main characters were beautifully cast. Jonathan Groff was immediately relatable as the anxious, rather naive, nice-looking white boy Patrick. Dom played by Murray Bartlett looked (presumably intentionally) like something straight out of Tales of the City with his tache, a guy on the cusp of early middle age, realising that he needs to take a leap into doing something more solid with his life (workwise as well as sex/relationship wise). And Frankie Alvarez - diminutive in stature but not charisma - was stunning as Agustin, a seemingly confident guy sliding down the path into self-negating oblivion, before trying to rebuild himself.
I really liked that the main parts weren't too Hollywoody. They didn't look like Instagram models. OK, so none of them are exactly ugly, but there wasn't any of that Tom Daley abs stuff that is (at least to me as a straight woman) really off-putting and unrealistic. They had soft bits and hairy bits just like real dudes!
The sex scenes were not overly graphic, but they seemed fairly realistic, and were often romantic and tender as well as funny (just like real-life sex). There were also lots of nice views of the male body and attractive boys making out. (Despite being half the population, women don't often get the chance to view storytelling through eyes other than the "straight male gaze" and it's always a breath of fresh air to have men/male beauty objectified on film. That women can often only find this approach in gay male-themed films is telling, but another story.)
The other characters were also well cast and, as a Brit, it was nice to see British actors such as O-T Fagbenle and Russell Tovey in there (as well as British director Andrew Haigh). I've never been a huge fan of Russell Tovey (didn't like him at all in recent BBC drama Years and Years) but the part of Kevin works for him. Is it because the role he plays is similar to his own character, a working-class gay bloke with a bit of an attitude problem? Not sure.
As a female viewer, I would've personally liked to see a few more fully fledged female characters. However Lauren Weedman was very funny and relatable as Doris, the ballsy and acerbic kind of woman gay men tend to love, and had an amazing chemistry with Dom. You really believed they'd known each other for years.
Otherwise, perfection. Even with Russell Tovey in the mix ;)