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Sleuths in Sheep's Clothing  In theaters just a couple of months ago, The Sheep Detectives was high on my list of must-see movies but, as often happens these days, we were not immediately on it so our window of opportunity closed scarcely before we even realized it was open. Then, a couple of days ago I noticed The Sheep Detectives featured in the queue of new movies now playing on Prime. Great news, I thought, before realizing it was...well...Prime. Even though I've been with Prime for years, I've come to realize that membership is really a double-edged sword: there's the sheer quantity of discounted merch, zero shipping costs and the convenience of orders and returns vs. the sometimes-iffy picture quality and long buffering delays for their streaming movies. Throw in Jeff Bezos and all his baggage (including his ghastly new wife) and you've got a whole extra level of ick .  Nevertheless, we drew the blinds, turned out the lights, curled up on the couch-recline...
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  Pride Keeps It Together (Forever and Ever) It is the Fourth of July and if I'd been thinking ahead, I'd have posted my piece on Shortbus here instead of on June 29th. After all, it's a bit more patriotic than today's entry given the fact that there's a marching band in Shortbus as well as a man crooning The Star-Spangled Banner up another man's ass. Which pretty much sums up the state of our union right now.  But enough about that, let's talk about 1991's Truth or Dare , a music documentary that has nothing at all to do with the conman-in-chief's "Freedom 250" tribute to himself, and everything to do with one of the most polarizing and, at one time, ubiquitous pop culture figures that isn't him. We're talking about Madonna and, in this case, her Blonde Ambition World Tour  which was captured on film by music video director Alek Keshishian in 1990. Originally intending for the production to be a straightforward concert film, Ke...
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Pride and the Men of the Moors Over the last 3 weeks, I have watched and posted my takeaway on several films that I've felt are consequential to Pride Month. By highlighting the power of the shared bonds that have allowed LGBTQ+ people to find a sense of community and self-acceptance despite all odds, these movies remind us of the necessity of living authentically, and never allowing your spirit to be suffocated by the ills of conformity.  In Francis Lee's film debut,  God's Own Country , protagonist Johnny Saxby's chief source of torment is himself. The young adult son of a hardscrabble sheep farmer on the beautifully desolate moors of West Yorkshire, Johnny finds himself taking on more and more responsibility after a stroke leaves his father temporarily disabled. The problem is that Johnny is not particularly industrious. He is also something of a shit. Emotionally closed off, this young lout is the product of an environment that consists solely of his stern and deman...
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  Pride and the Kids at the Back of the Bus With July right around the corner, I am down to my final three movie posts for Pride month which, for purposes of this blog, will not, in fact, end on June 30.  This may not be a bad thing since I'm not feeling the patriotic feels that the Trump administration is trying to force down our throats this year. True, the Fourth of July will be America's 250th Birthday but I have to wonder if the Founding Fathers, if suddenly resurrected from their tombs, might prefer hanging out with me and watching John Cameron Mitchell's celebratory,  Shortbus --a film about true unity and pride--than be stuck in the stifling heat of Washington D.C. amid the stink of this administration's bombastic, self-referential merrymaking. Except, given that our  august  forefathers likely never witnessed a man attempt to fellate himself, much less watched a woman insert a vibrating egg into her vagina (except for, maybe Benjamin Franklin who spent ...
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Pride and the Prisoners of Love  A disembodied arm swings a trussed bouquet of flowers back and forth from a jailhouse window as a different arm repeatedly reaches out from the adjacent window in a futile attempt to catch hold of the flowers. A prison guard looks through a peephole and is mesmerized by the swaying motion of an inmate holding a bouquet and fondling himself. Two men in a forest stop to make love in a clearing framed by overgrown blossoms when the idyll is interrupted by a harsh reality. Jean Genet's 1950 homoerotic art classic is stuffed full of symbolism, most potent of which is the floral motif running throughout the 26-minute Un chant d'amour . Flowers were a defining element of Genet's work as a playwright, poet and novelist, and here they underscore Genet's theme of men striving for intimacy while being condemned to eternal longing. Genet's first (and only) film, Un chant d'amour ( Song of Love )   was originally conceived as arty gay porn fo...
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