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Reviews
Rock Haven (2007)
Delightfully restrained and cinematic
Having dated a conflicted Christian like Brady, this film hits all the right notes for me. It's a very realistic portrayal of a very real problem for many gay people. The film could easily have collapsed into a preachy mode but, instead, the writer exhibits remarkable restraint and just lets the facts speak for themselves. Some have commented they wanted a different ending, but I think this one is more credible than changing either Brady or his mom. These people are who they are.
Additional kudos for being highly cinematic -- a rarity in indie films, which tend to have more dialog than a radio drama. The score is hauntingly beautiful and appropriately romantic -- a nice compliment to the setting. In retrospect, there were a lot of waves, flowers and beach scenes, but on my first viewing of the film, it never seemed like padding to me. Brady had some heavy thinking to do at those moments, and the film needed to pause to let the audience think as well.
I also compliment the good taste of the romantic scenes. The main characters were wonderfully consistent and three-dimensional. The leads seemed to have a lot of chemistry and the acting was very good. My only minor complaint might be Director David Lewis casting himself as the reverend. His performance was a bit wooden.
If this had been a bigger budget film, I would have wished for Act 3 to begin with him actually going to the ex-gay camp, showing his growing rejection of the hypocrisy. But, I'm OK with this lighter treatment, so I'm giving the film a top score overall. Highly recommended.
100 Degrees Below Zero (2013)
Low budget fun
Among the latest crop of "Second Ice Age" films, some such much bigger budgets, this one isn't bad. It would make a rousing TV movie of the week. The biggest problem here is they got too ambitious with the special effects so, as many others have noted, a lot of them aren't up to par for what audiences expect today. Too bad, because it really could have been a good film. Steven Spielberg's "JAWS," one of the most successful "special effects" films of all time, has very little in the way of real visual effects. It's mostly implied by the music and sound effects, described in character dialog, or shown in photos and illustrations.
This has the feel of one of those 1950s sci-fi melodramas that started out as a poster: "100 Degrees Below Zero!"
The acting is a mixed bag and I blame the casting director for that. The three characters that have most of the screen time is where the money should have been spent. John Rhys-Davies is wasted in a cameo role.
I don't know what to make of the 20-something characters. The parts seem to have been written for younger teens, maybe 14-years-old, who would be more helpless and desperate to connect with mommy and daddy. I'd expect a college sophomore—and his freshman sister, brought up in a military household--to have more street smarts.
The dad's "at all costs" determination to get to his adult children is a bit of a stretch—again, suggesting the first draft of the script probably had the kids being around early high school age.
The best scene, for me, is the confrontation with the furrier. This would be a realistic scenario in a natural disaster situation. The film could have used more of these jeopardy sequences, giving the kids a chance to come up with inventive solutions.
It's worth a look if you don't want to think too hard.
Red Lights (2012)
Unusually good paranormal mystery loses its way at midpoint
First, I have to say I'm not a fan of paranormal stories. Too often they're like playing cards with someone who's changing the rules with each hand and the audience never gets to enjoy the thrill of solving a mystery when the rules are made up as the writer goes along. The first half of the film is terrific. Sigourney Weaver is in her element as expert in the paranormal who busts fakes. The antagonist is Robert De Niro, the only psychic she ("for a moment") believed to be real, and she's afraid of him. But with a nod to Alfred Hitchockc's "Psycho," our heroine (Weaver) is knocked off, presumably by the De Niro character or his aids., at the movie's mid-point. This leaves her sidekick played by Cillian Murphy to carry on. But he's a bit odd and obsessed with proving the De Niro character a charlatan. The twist ending is that the sidekick is the REAL psychic, but this reveal is sort of wasted with completely silly pyrotechnics and other special effects. And we're left wondering if he killed his own mentor during one of his psychic trances. Moreover, if he were really so psychic, why didn't he foresee the attack in the washroom or the trick with the watches. In short, it's an outstanding plot idea that's wasted on a mediocre script. The film also gets distracted by too many superfluous characters. It looks like one of those talent agency package deals to put as many of their newcomers in the spotlight of a feature film, in order to get Weaver and De Niro. So, savor the first half, the fast forward to the last 5 minutes at the end. Enjoy!
Hot Guys with Guns (2013)
Few hot guys, even fewer guns, but fun anyway
I saw this at the Palm Springs Gay Film Festival (aka Cinema Diverse) and I'm giving this an 8 because it was a refreshing departure from the usual paint-by-the-numbers gay film. Better still, it doesn't try to be a gay police procedural, as the lead characters are not cops, detectives or PIs.
Marc Anthony Samuel as Danny Lohman carries most of the film as an action hero actor wannabe who's taking a night course in how to be a PI. It's impossible to understand what he sees in his smarmy boyfriend Pip Armstrong (played woodenly by Brian McArdle). Jimmy Peppicelli is the ex-PI teaching the class, brilliantly played by Alan Blumenfeld.
It's a decent whodunit, although I figured it out too early. Like so many of these low budget, first time films, it gets bogged down with too many characters and pointless detours from the main story. For example, too much time is wasted on Armstrong's unfunny mother and Lohman's day job as a waiter.
A its best, it's a light, frothy gay date film to enjoy with a big bowl of popcorn. But if you want to see a much better made gay detective thriller, check out one of the Donald Strachey films starring Chad Allen.
Admission (2013)
Great story idea, loses its way in quirkiness
The fatal flaw of "Admission" is that Portia is portrayed as a self-absorbed, unlikable bitch though most of the movie. In fact, all of the main adult characters are so self-centered that it's hard to like any of them. The writer has tried to take a fairly ordinary story and season it with every herb of quirkiness she can sprinkle into the mix. The result is an odd mess and just falls flat at the end. The long, torturous scene with the admissions committee missed the rather obvious opportunity to reveal how you get into one of these Ivy League schools—a question asked over and over again in the film. It would have been a far more interesting to show the outrageous lengths parents and students will go to get into these schools. The writer could then have strung the audience along following the process for a couple of candidates, with the surprise reveal of the seemingly least likely, yet obvious in hindsight, winner.
Eating Out (2004)
Delightful gay date film
When you watch a gay indie film, you have to accept the fact its going to have a budget smaller than one episode of a TV game show. So if you're expecting Juila Roberts in "My Best Friend's Wedding," go rent the real thing and enjoy its $50M budget.
That said, there's a lot to like here. It's a twist on Victor/Victoria with a straight boy pretending to be gay to attract women. We get quite a few delightfully uncomfortable scenes where the straight dude has to put up or shut up. Personally, I would like to have seen this taken farther. If this were a European film, Caleb (Scott Lundsford) would have been persuaded to try gay sex and, perhaps, actually enjoy it--a little. This is probably why many reviewers criticize the film as "homophobic," because it seems to reinforce the notion that M to M sex is kicky. The very, very, very brief nude scene between Caleb and Marc is rather pointless. (I'm surprised the straight actors agreed to do it.) There was a missed opportunity for a very funny (and sexy) scene with the boys getting undressed for the big event--and Caleb being both modest about his own body, while very interested in Marc's.
The script could have certainly used a polish, bit it isn't bad. It's main weakness is the ending, which should have given more weight to the Kyle character (Jim Verraros) in the story line. As presented, the story seems to be about Caleb, but with the ending as written, the movie is really about Kyle. So we should have had some foreshadowing scenes to back up Marc's reveal about being a secret admirer all along. That would have taken the movie to the "comedy of errors" level I think a lot of reviewers have expressed disappointment about.
Casting is a bit of a problem too. Verraros is BY FAR the best actor of the bunch, but he's relegated to the "incidental sidekick" role for most of the movie. While he's not quite as gym toned as Caleb and Marc, he's got the cutest face and dresses like an Abercrombie model. Hardly the nerdy, unlovable character the script suggests he is. Again, Marc's reveal at the end would have made more sense if the audience had been aware of this earlier in the film. Where was the scene of Marc secretly attending Kyle's concert? That should have been scene one. (BTW, the character the audience MOST wanted to have do the gratuitous nude scene was scruffy A&F boy Kyle).
Caleb's family is one note too many. This 90 minute film tries to cram too many characters into a small space. The focus should have been on the characters in the love triangle (well, quadrangle in this case): Caleb-Marc/Marc-Kyle/Gwen-Caleb.
Finally, as others have noted, both Gwen and Tiffani are way too cartoonish to be taken as serious love interests. We can overlook this in the case of Tiffani, who is the comic-relief character of the piece, but it's hard to imagine soft-spoken, sensitive Caleb falling for bombastic Gwen.
Defying Gravity (1997)
One of the first feature-length "gay date" films
Before 1997, gay characters in both Hollywood and Indie films were most likely to wind up dead in the final reel, either by violence or disease. While there were a few upbeat short subjects as early as 1994, "Defying Gravity" was among the first feature-length films to portray what I'll call "regular guys" as gay (those without the usual gay stereotypes) who lived to appear in a possible sequel.
Alas, there was no sequel to this film and lead actor Daniel Chilson never again appeared on the screen. It's a shame because his understated, melancholy performance is quite believable and moving. I think this film played for only one week in first run in San Francisco. After seeing it on opening night, I related so strongly to the characters I went back to see it several times during the week and caught the very last showing as well. It was one of the first times I had seen young gay men who seemed to have a chance at a happy life together—a theme that's still all too rare today.
Writer/Director John Keitel would go on to be the film editor of 2003's gay-themed "Latter Days."
As far as I know, in the 16 years since this film was released, no other gay-themed entertainment film has explored the topic of a gay frat boy coming out—or even a gay fraternity. So, "Defying Gravity" remains a one-of-a-kind "must see."
Occupant (2011)
A great idea that ends up cheating the audience
What we have here is a fairly routine "old dark house" movie, with all of tired clichés that just fill time but don't advance the plot, e.g., the shower scene with -- what, exactly -- rust? That's never quite clear.
That said, I very much like the basic idea of this film. Van Hansis as Danny Hill is immediately likable. Steve Routman as lawyer Bertram Feinberg is also well-cast. But the cartoonish characters that fill out the rest of the cast suggest we're watching a dream sequence. Of course, that isn't the case.
Where this film goes awry is with the whole paranormal angle. When writers get into the supernatural, all rules of logic are off and the audience always feels like the writer is cheating. To be fair, writer Jonathan Brett does try to insert some kind of subtle explanation about demons in text our hero is forced to read from the Bible, when there are no other entertainments available. We also do see the killer early on -- in silhouette in the doorway, when our blogger chick is panning around with her camera.
I think this would have been much more satisfying to explore what a normal, 25-year-old guy would do when confined to an apartment for more than a week. What was the doorman's agenda? In the first scene, it appears he might have a sexual attraction for Danny, but that thread is never developed further. The blogger chick, clearly has some kind of hidden agenda, but that ball is dropped too. The landlord could have tried any number of interesting tricks to get him out of the apartment. There are lots of better possibilities than the paranormal here.
The biggest plot hole is that Danny sees the killer on the blogger chick's camera at the mid-point of the film and does nothing about it. Here the writer cheats the audience out of the fun of figuring out the mystery (albeit a thin on in this particular plot).
The suicide of the main character is a real letdown at the end. Audiences root for the violent death of someone who has been clearly established as evil earlier in the story; but here, we're still rooting for Danny to get this cheap NYC apartment right up to the end. We're left saying, "Really?" Too bad this script wasn't passed along to another writer or two for a fresh perspective and polish. It's a great concept for a low-budget film, but the audience is cheated out of a good time.