HOUSEKEEPING FOR BEGINNERS

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I don’t know why, until I actually watched Housekeeping for Beginners, I thought it was a Spanish-language movie. It even took a few minutes into the beginning of the movie for it to register: this doesn’t sound like Spanish. For a hot second I thought it was Portuguese. Was this movie Brazilian? I looked it up: of all places, this film is from North Macedonia. Have I ever seen any North Macedonian films before? Apparently, I have—Honeyland, a documentary I actually felt was the best film of 2019. And while that one was the true story of a rural beekeeper, this one is about an urban, blended queer family in the North Macedonian capital of Skopje. (It turns out, I even saw the previous film by the director of Housekeeping for Beginners: You Won’t Be Alone, about a shape shifting witch in 19th century Macedonia, which I did not like nearly as much, and did not have North Macedonia as a producing country, while this one does.)

One might rightly wonder how the hell I started from Spanish to that: within a European context at least, this film could hardly be further from Spanish. Such is the legacy of colonialism, I suppose—the English are hardly the only ones in the world to have such a history. Spanish is actually the second-most spoken native language in the world (behind Mandarin), which can make it easy to forget: there are 16 times as many people in the world who speak some other language. In North Macedonia, the dominant language is Macedonian, but there are other officially recognized languages, including Albanian, Turkish, Bosnian, Serbian, and one that becomes a key plot point in Houesekeeping for Beginners: Romani. That last one is the language spoken in the neighborhood of Shutka, an autonomous Roma community on the outskirts of Skopje.

It turns out, there is a lot to learn about this small corner of the world—a country of just under 10,000 square miles (barely larger than Vermont), a population of 1.8 million (about the population of West Virginia), its capital a metropolitan population of 537,000 (about the metro population of Huntsville, Alabama). Such is the case with just about every international location you can think of, actually—but here, writer-director Goran Stolevski, an openly gay thirtysomething man born in Macedonia who grew up in Australia, finds a unique way to turn our attention to it.

It’s not often we get queer stories in global cinema that blend queer life with racial and ethnic concerns, making Housekeeping for Beginners an unusually intersectional story. When the film opens, we see what appears to be two teenagers, Ali (Samson Selim) and Vanesa (Mia Mustafi), belting out along to a song they both apparently love, using household items as fake microphones. It’s a deceptively charming and simple scene, and only moves into a portrait of a rather chaotic household.

And the home includes a lesbian couple, Dita (Anamaria Marinca) and Suada (Alina Serban), and their gay housemate Toni (Vladimir Tintor). As we just hang out with this household for several minutes, it takes a little while to fully register what all the relationships are. Vanesa, and insanely cute little Mia (Dzada Selim) are Suada’s children. Ali, just a few years older than Vanesa, is Toni’s 19-year-old hookup—the opening scene of him singing with Vanesa really driving home how he’s rather young.

But, there are several other queer teens who also hang out at the house, which serves as a de facto safe house for kids who are rejected by their families or communities. And here, in a country with no legal recognition of same-sex couples or their children who are not blood relatives, this chaotically supportive mini-community they have created for themselves is massively disrupted when Suada is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

The first third or so of Housekeeping for Beginners focuses on this lesbian couple, how they deal with a prognosis understood early on to be hopeless, and how they drag their feet in regards to informing the family. It’s not a spoiler, per se, to say that Suada dies, because the overall point of this film is Dita dealing with both her promise to Suada that she will be the children’s mother going forward, and in particular Vanesa’s passionate rebellion against that scenario, all while navigating the legal hoops and deceptions necessary for her to stave off any threat of the children being taken away. Toni, for his part, is resistant to being pressured into playing the part of a straight father / family man type. Ali organically settles into his own position in the family, his relationship with Toni having complications of its own.

I was fully absorbed and moved by ths movie, a rare feat of ensemble storytelling in which every principal character has dimension and character development. It should be noted, also, that both Ali and Suada happen to come from the aforementioned Shutka community, a people for whom “gypsy” is considered a bigoted term, and they are people of color—making Dita and Suada not just a lesbian couple, but an interracial couple, and then Dita a White woman raising children of color. There are many references to this dynamic in the film, and when Vanesa insists on seeking out a grandmother in Shutka she hasn’t seen in several years, deep cultural differences quickly become apparent.

I can only imagine Housekeeping for Beginners would be seen in a far more intricate way by Macedonian audiences, and I would be fascinated to learn how the film was received there—it was indeed their submission for the Best International Feature award from North Macedonia, but, criminally, it did not make the cut among last year’s nominees. This is a film that absolutely deserves attention, both in its home country and abroad—even the most frustrating characters are deeply human, and the domestic situation portrayed is emblematic of evolving ideas of family the world over. I won’t soon forget this one.

Love makes a family, and so does not taking any shit lying down.

Overall: A-

DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS

Directing: C
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B-
Editing: C-

Here’s a protip: if you go to the movies a lot, and you see the same trailer before every single one of those movies, that’s a move that smacks of desperation. This is doubly the case if the movie in question opens in February, otherwise known as “Dumpuary,” the month when studios dump their movies they know aren’t going to work. And they they market the shit out of it (Argylle, anyone?), hoping to maximize opening weekend receipts before bad word of mouth can tank it.

Why did I even bother going to see Drive-Away Dolls then, you might wonder? Well, this one has relatively mixed, almost teetering into positive, reviews. And more importantly, it’s directed and co-written by Ethan Coen, writing with his wife and longtime collaborator Tricia Cooke. And Ethan Coen, along with his brother Joel, have long been among my all-time favorite directors—when they are working together. In 2021, Joel branched off on his own to bring us The Tragedy of Macbeth—he went highbrow, while Ethan went decidedly lowbrow. The secret to their success has historically been a unique blend of the two. It’s clear that these two just aren’t as great apart as they are together. Unfortunately, Drive-Away Dolls doesn’t quite work.

I wish I could tell you that Drive-Away Dolls were the “proudly unimportant lesbian comedy” that it was reportedly intended to be. It’s the perfect time for such a thing. This movie, however, could have been a tight, hilarious, 30-minute film short, which Ethan Coen managed to turn into the longest 84-minute movie I’ve ever sat through. How do you make a movie with interstitial scenes that feel like filler? Coen pulls off a genuinely dull magic trick. To be fair, in the end these psychedelic interludes—one of which inexplicably renders a twirling pizza with its toppings floating away—prove to be crucial to the plot. That doesn’t change how inessential and overlong they feel in the moment.

The one genuinely good thing in this movie is Beanie Feldstein, in a supporting role as a cop ex-girlfriend of one of the two protagonists. The leads, Margaret Qualley as Jamie the thick-accented Texan living in Philadelphia and Geraldine Viswanathan as Marian the repressed bookworm friend, have genuine charisma. They are also both straight women playing lesbians, and Feldstein feels a little like “legit lesbian cred” getting tossed in there for us queer audience members actually paying attention to these things.

(The original title was supposed to be Drive-Away Dykes, and then it got sanitized. And while it’s entirely possible either of the two leads could identify as queer, they are hardly the kind of out-lesbian actors that would have been more appropriately cast in the roles. Furthermore, and I did not realize this when first writing this review and am having to go back and edit a bit, Ethan and Tricia are essentially in a polyamorous relationship, still married to each other but both with other partners, and Tricia partnered with a woman. This would seem to give the film more “queer cred” than I initially assumed, but here’s the thing: it really changes nothing about how this film comes across.)

Feldstein, who was truly wonderful in Bookstmart (in which, ironically, she plays a straight girl best friends with a lesbian), really needs to be cast as the lead in another comedy that’s actually good. It’s what she deserves. It’s what we all deserve.

Should I tell you anything about the plot? It doesn’t matter, you don’t need to see this movie, but whatever. “Drive-away” is a term for drivers for hire who take a rental car from one location to another. Jamie and Marian take a quasi-spontaneous getaway, from Philadelphia to Tallahassee, by means of such a job—and wind up taking someone else’s job by accident, thereby also making off with the horrifying and/or hilarious contents of a hat box and a metal briefcase stashed in the trunk.

Coen apparently called in a lot of favors, because the cast of characters Jamie and Marion encounter on this road trip is truly stacked with stars: Pedro Pascal in a shockingly small part; Colman Domingo as the leader of the trio on Jamie and Marion’s tail; Bill Camp as the car rental clerk; Matt Damon as a Florida senator. For some reason, this movie is set in 1999, maybe so that the many questions Jamie asks at Florida businesses about whether they support queer people won’t feel too politically charged. Except, of course, this movie still exists in 2024, and the references stick out to the point of distraction, especially considering how little it has to do with the actual story.

Which brings us back to that “proudly unimportant” bit. Even proudly unimportant movies should aspire to something better than pointless at best and tedious at worst. More than once I thought while watching this movie, What are we doing? For most of its time, it’s just killing time. And a movie that is just killing time feels like an eternity—not what you want for what’s supposed to be a breezy, quirky comedy. To be fair, it did get a couple of good laughs out of me, especially one visual gag involing a dildo. It comes along far too late, after I grew exasperated with this movie’s inability to settle on a tone.

A collective less than the sum of its lesbian parts.

Overall: C+

ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

And here we get yet another charming, moving, gay coming-of-age story that just makes me wistful for what I could never have. Even if I could never have had the experience of the young characters in this story, what might it have been like for me had there even been a movie like this to watch when I was a teenager? When I was sixteen, I was alone in my bedroom, secretly lusting after the gay men in Madonna’s “Erotica” video.

There’s a bit of irony there, the means I had of tapping into dark sexual fantasy, as compared to Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which is almost shockingly innocent, about the blossoming of young love, of a kind the protagonist does not understand nearly as well as, amazingly, his parents do. This story, actually, is comparatively chaste, the physicality never moving beyond a couple of kisses, the holding of hands. It’s a good two thirds of the way through before it even gets to that. This movie is perfect for young kids around the age of puberty, maybe just past it. And what a beautiful thing, to get something legitimately age-appropriate that explores these themes, asserting that kids of all kinds are perfect just the way they are.

This kind of shit gets to me, it’s so far removed from the experience of my youth. Some stories work by being relatable, and others are more aspirational. I can only guess as to what it’s like to be a young person today with access to a movie like this—which, incidentally, is based on a multiple-award-winning 2012 young-adult novel by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, which I have immediately put on my reading list.

It appears, though, that this film is a pretty faithful adaptation, with many lines of dialogue lifted directly from the source text. If I have any genuine criticism of this film, it would be that sometimes the dialogue doesn’t necessarily translate perfectly to the screen—I must admit, at times, I found the script, co-written by Sáenz himself and director Aitch Alberto, distractingly just outside the realm of real-life delivery. Some of the lines feel a little oversimplified and slightly stilted.

Ultimately, it’s a small quibble—there are just so many other things to love about this movie, not least of which is the very specific universe in which it exists, about Mexican-American families in 1987 El Paso, Texas. Aristotle (Max Pelayo), or Ari for short, is a solitary boy who is unaware of his own abiding loneliness. He’s been faltering at swimming lessons, and then meets Dante (Reese Gonzales), who volunteers to teach him how to swim. They become fast friends, and maybe the first third of Aristotle and Dante is just a lovely, leisurely paced portrait of the evolution of their friendship. Nothing more is even suggested until Dante’s family moves to Chicago for a year thanks to his professor dad’s job, and in one of Dante’s letters he slightly scandalizes Ari by bringing up masturbation (this is the most frankly sexual the movie ever gets).

During their year apart, both Aristotle and Dante pursue relationships with girls, presumably because that’s all that occurs to them, and it’s just what’s expected. It’s great to see that, unlike many other films about gay people, the interactions with girls stay healthy and never end in any melodramatic heartbreak. This is much more about these boys slowly realizing who and what they are.

The truly unique element here is Ari’s parents, who are giving him knowing looks largely from the start. Ari has a beloved aunt who visits and when she tells him “You are perfect just the way you are,” it feels incongruous to him, and to a degree, even to us as viewers, that early on. I wasn’t even sure at first whether we were meant to understand that Ari’s parents know he’s in love with Dante before Ari does. I found myself thinking of the deeply empathetic father played by Michael Stuhlbarg in Call Me By Your Name. The key difference here is that these parents are not as articulate, maintaining a family secret about Ari’s incarcerated brother that keeps them, and especially his father, largely silent.

Perhaps most notable is how Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe avoids stereotype at every level—quite plausibly because both writer and the director are of Latin-American descent, telling a story about Mexican-American characters. There is a uniquely heartwarming mix of specificity and authenticity here, while also avoiding any of the cliches of toxic masculinity in parenting. Ari’s parents are clearly imperfect, just like anyone, but their love and concern for him is never in doubt.

We don’t get as much about Dante’s relationship with his parents, perhaps because they are portrayed as progressive intellectuals and we are meant to assume they’ll be fine. Dante does worry in one of his letters about their reaction to him, but the narrative never revisits that thread.

I suppose you could say that, had I been a producer of this film, I’d have had notes. On the other hand, sometimes imperfections add to the charm. While I found myself debating exactly how good I thought this movie was in its first half, it really came together for me in the end. I was both charmed and deeply moved by it, practically weeping by the time these boys finally come around to their inevitable fate. That’s not a spoiler, because you should know that this is a coming-of-age love story and not a tragedy, and that’s how they go; besides, the value is in the journey, the experience, both for them and for us. This is one movie I will likely seek out for a rewatch.

Sometimes a connection becomes an opportunity for discovery.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: HIDDEN MASTER: THE LEGACY OF GEORGE PLATT LYNES

Directing: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

Who the hell is George Platt Lynes? I had no idea, myself, until seeing this documentary film about him listed in this year’s Seattle International Film Festival schedule. It turns out, he was an artist of photography, in his prime in the 1920s and 1930s, who was by all intents and purposes openly gay. More to the point, he was incredibly talented, his work was infused with male sexuality, and that combination is likely the biggest reason his vast and stunning body of work has gone unnoticed for decades.

Anyone who knows anything about the cross section of art history and gay history has heard of Robert Mapplethorpe—who was clearly influenced by George Platt Lynes. Lynes pre-dates even Mapplethorpe by a good five decades.

After seeing Hidden Master, I am dying to see a major exhibition of Lynes’s work. But, as director and co-writer Sam Shahid tells us, no American museum will touch this body of work. Several art historians and curators are interviewed for this film, and Shahid briefly includes some commentary on the “double standard” of art exhibition that plasters the naked female form all over the place, even when sexually evocative—sometimes even provocative—and yet won’t do the same for the naked male form, which by contrast threatens people. There appears to have been multiple books published about him and his work, however, and I just placed a hold on the single one of them apparently carried by the Seattle Public Library.

That book was published in 1994 and evidently focuses on the body of work Lynes left to the Kinsey Institute—one of many fascinating things about George being that he both became good friends with famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey, and was an active participant in his research. Hidden Master, the movie, is a far more contemporary look at Lynes’s life and work, having been finished nearly three decades later.

What’s more, this film, ten years in the making, features interviews with multiple people who knew Lynes personally. In all but one case, the interview subjects passed away shortly after the interview, giving the film a bit of an “under the wire” quality. We’re talking about a photographer who was himself a stunningly beautiful young man a full century ago, after all. Even the interview subjects who knew him would have had to have been young even compared to Lynes when they knew each other—in the forties, or perhaps the early fifties. George Platt Lynes dyed of lung cancer in 1955, at the fairly young age of 47.

The crucial element of Hidden Master, though, is the countless examples of his work featured: a seemingly endless slide show of gorgeously rendered, black and white photos of male nudes, no less beautiful for how unsubtle they often are. The lighting of his subjects is incredible, and the themes of sexual desire are stunning, particularly for the time—people don’t know today how early on there was precedent for art like this, and that’s what makes this film so crucial. I could not stop thinking, as I saw example after example of Lynes’s photography, that I could have easily believed this work had been done today. God knows I never would have assumed these photos were taken between the twenties and the forties, without them being contextualized for me.

A fair bit is made of Lynes’s “physical snobbery,” in that he never chose average looking people as his subjects. His nudes were nearly all young men, and without exception the men were beautiful. Lynes also worked as a fashion photographer, his female subjects also exclusively beautiful. In apparently one exclusive case, he even had a sexual relationship with one of his women subjects. There are nude photos of her as well.

It should be noted, not all of his photos were sexual, although he seemed to have an appreciation for the naked human form whether it was sexualized or not. He even took nude photos of his brother, who was straight, and helped find more models culled from his college friends.

Which is to say, in just about every way you can imagine, George Platt Lynes was so far ahead of his time it’s mind boggling. This was a man fully self-possessed, comfortable in his own skin, casually defiant in his sexuality—all a full hundred years ago. He was himself so beautiful he fit right in with his subjects. He pushed boundaries in more ways than with his sexuality, also sensual, nude photos of Black and White men together. From today’s vantage point, there is an element of privilege there that both cannot be denied and which was about a century away from being even a hint of a part of anyone’s vocabulary. It’s even acknowledged in this film that the racial provocativeness has an element of exploitation to it.

Although not a lot of time is spent on it, there is some acknowledgement in Hidden Master that Lynes was an imperfect man, sometimes a little manipulative, particularly in sexual situations. To me, these details are classic elements of people whose beauty allows to get away with what others can’t. Somewhat on the flip side of this, Lynes was also the third partner in what we now would call a polyamorous relationship, and which itself lasted decades. Even by mainstream queer standards this is incredibly forward-thinking. There is no indication Lynes thought in these terms at all, however. He was only ever just completely and utterly himself.

I do appreciate the sexual frankness of Hidden Master, clearly a positive byproduct of having a queer story told by queer people. Given the nature of virtually all of Lynes’s male nudes, it would make no sense to shy away from it. It turns out Lynes did also take a few sexually explicit photos, just a couple of which do we see, during a brief discussion of the fine line between “art” and pornography, and how it gets applied differently between men and women. In any case, I could not find any indication that Hidden Master has received an MPA rating at all, but this film is definitely not for children.

I feel a deep, abiding appreciation for this film—not just its construction, but its very existence. It’s full of people who lament the lack of Lynes’s presence in any serious look at art history, and the film makes a very strong case for this man to get the kind of appreciation he has long been denied. His personal life at his particular time in history is deeply fascinating in its own right, but nothing comes even close to the vitality of the photography work itself. Whether or not you see this movie, do yourself a favor and just look him up. I am eager to learn more just because of this film.

Both erotically charged and a multi-level challenge to the viewer: George Platt Lynes is worth your time.

Overall: A-

SIFF Advance: THE MATTACHINE FAMILY

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Prominently featured in The Mattachine Family, as a narrative symbol, are the Mattachine Steps in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, dedicated in 2012 to the Mattachine Society in memory of Harry Hay, who cofounded the gay rights group that preceded the Stonewall Riots by 19 years. In the film, we see a couple of shots of the sign posted by the staircase, both of them too quick to retain its text fully: The Mattachine Steps - Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society on this hillside on November 11, 1950. Hay died in 2002 at the age of 90; 2012 would have marked his 100th birthday.

As our protagonist, Thomas (Nico Tortorella) and his lesbian best friend (Schitt’s Creek’s Emily Hampshire) are hiking up a hill to these steps, it is pointedly noted that the Mattachine Society advocated for White queer people. At another moment, though, Thomas’s voiceover narration ponders the chosen family of his husband, Oscar (Juan Pablo Di Pace), and their close friends, and how seventy years ago, they would have called themselves a “society.”

Hene the title The Mattachine Family, which is to be taken both figuratively and literally: the plot focuses on Thomas and Oscar’s evolving notions of actually raising a child. They’ve spent a year fostering a child to whom they have become very attached, and now are grieving the loss after the child has been reunited with his mother—pointedly, a mother who is doing well and clearly the right place for the child. The question, then, is whether to move forward with similar efforts that might result in a repeat of the same kinds of heartbreak.

The Mattachine Family is clearly a deeply personal film, largely autobiographical as told by director Andy Vallentine, who co-wrote the script with real-life partner Danny Vallentine. The two are also parents, and all of this makes me a little self-conscious about picking at the film’s contrivances. Such things are arguably part of the point, though: what movie made in Hollywood—independent or otherwise—doesn’t have its contrivances? This one just happens to have not just an organically diverse cast, but actually tells a story heretofore not depicted onscreen. This film may not be a grand masterpiece, but how notable it is still can’t quite be overstated, especially as it breezily normalizes the very kind of family many across the country are now actively working to criminalize.

Fundamentally, The Mattachine Family is about a long-term, committed couple grappling with diverging convictions about whether raising a child is the right decision for them. Instead of the more typical love story about whether two people are right for each other, this one is about how ideas of family planning test the very strength of a long-established relationship.

Watching this film, I was struck by its relative wholesomeness that exists concurrent with frank depictions of gay sexuality. It’s not lost on me that the so-called “frankness” would not necessarily register the same way if this were about a straight couple thinking about adopting a child. The key here is in how the film stands apart, just by virtue of it being a same-sex couple. Mind you, Thomas and Oscar are a long-term, monogamous couple. They’re even married.

There are some, and I don’t necessarily agree with them, who might argue that they represent the heteronormativity of “acceptable” ideas of same-sex relationships. They do have a more, let’s say, “free spirited” close friend (Jake Choi), who cheerfully talks about hopes for a threesome with his date. And it’s not like there is any moral obligation to make Thomas and Oscar more promiscuous just to remove them from notions of heteronormativity—especially if their marriage reflects the same truth of the film’s storytellers.

It’s sort of odd when a film that’s plotted in a fairly formulaic way still feels definitively like progress. The one genuine surprise was the gay father Thomas meets (Hacks’s Carl Clemons-Hopkins), who I really thought was being telegraphed as a potential source of infidelity—and then the story goes in another direction. Side note: that character’s lesbian coparent is played by none other than Heather Matarazzo, of Welcome to the Dollhouse fame, and she’s delightful as a “mommy influencer.”

Which is to say, The Mattachine Family isn’t all heavy moral dilemmas and drama. It has plenty of humor, giving it an overall very welcoming vibe. From start to finish, it invites you in, to feel what its characters are going through, to empathize with and to root for them, and the Valentines’ writing and direction make it easy to do so.

One man’s society is another man’s family.

Overall: B+

BROS

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

I really wanted to love Bros. And I did like it—it even made me laugh more than most comedies do. And I am a genuine fan of Billy Eichner, his overt obnoxiousness on Billy on the Street being a definitive part of his brand and appeal. And Bros is made for people who love romantic comedies, and even quite knowingly moves through all the same beats as any mainstream film of the genre. This is a film made for everyone lamenting the decline of romantic comedies, and it manages to scratch that itch by being just as serviceable a specimen as any other.

I just wanted it to be better than “serviceable,” which is, admittedly, a tall order. How many “great” romantic comedies are there out there, really? When Harry Met Sally… (1989) is arguably the best ever made; Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) seems largely lost to history and now rendered criminally underrated (seriously, if you’ve never seen that one, find it and watch it). Moonstruck (1987) is a straight up masterpiece. How long has it been since another romantic comedy came even close to the quality of these examples? Even the American Film Institute’s top 10 romantic comedies lists nothing more recent than 1993 (and Sleepless in Seattle is fun, but, if that makes the top ten of all time? this is not a genre known for most people’s best work).

How does Bros compare within a 21st-century context, then, which, frankly, lowers the bar? Four years ago Collider compiled a list of the best romantic comedies of the 21st century, and a lot of them are better films. The crucial difference with Bros is, of course, that it centers a same-sex couple instead of a straight one. And a whole lot has been made of how that breaks new ground, this being “the first American gay romantic comedy from a major studio featuring an entirely LGBTQ principal cast”—which is, it must be said, a lot of qualifiers. After all, Fire Island was already released this past spring, and it fits all but one of those same qualifiers, the only difference being it was released on Hulu. And that movie is certainly as good as Bros; some might say it’s better (on average I liked them about the same, for slightly different reasons) and they would have solid arguments to stand on. Hell, that one stars Bowen Yang as one of the principal characters, and he’s also in this movie.

And not for nothing, but Fire Island has a leg up on Bros in that its principal characters are mostly people of color. Bros is a little self-conscious about its “diversity casting” (a loaded term if ever there was one) while never directly addressing how it still centers white characters—which in itself is not necessarily something to criticize it for, except for how it quite blatantly “checks all the boxes,” or at least all the boxes it can, in its supporting cast. Eichner’s Bobby character is the Executive Director of an LGBTQ+ museum (was it absolutely necessary for him to the the Executive Director?), but the rest of his Board consists of two trans women (one White and one Black), a Black non-binary person, a White bisexual man, and a White lesbian. This is a knowing nod to the obsession with “covering all the bases,” like the self-conscious diversity of models on a college brochure, while still managing to actually check a lot of the boxes. (Incidentally, this Board does not include any people of color who aren’t Black, nor does it have any intersex or asexual people—which, I would bet anything, it would if the movie were made another ten years from now.)

The museum itself is a clear way for the film to “educate” viewers on queer history, which I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, this aspect of Bros did not teach me anything I didn’t already know, which made it feel kind of like a movie made to educate straight people. On the other hand, plenty of queer people also don’t know their own history, and if this movie teaches them anything at all, I’m not going to complain about that. That said, Eichner has so many extensive monologues in this movie—this guy talks, and talks—that a lot of the time, in the museum scenes, he’s throwing out so much information so fast that it often feels, again, like checking off boxes.

Bros opens with one of Eichner’s monologues, by the way, his being a podcast host (of course) offering an excuse for an introduction consisting of a large amount of voiceover. This opening bit kind of goes hard, though, which Eichner’s delivery that’s both rapid and extensive, and I got a little stuck on the idea that a solo podcast host, who evidently doesn’t even have guests on, would be a wildly popular one with a million subscribers. Bros barely gives an indication of the basic premise of his podcast (again, queer history), then mostly shows him waxing poetic about his frustrating sex life, what it’s like being gay these days, or answering live listener calls. Why the hell would so many people be listening to this?

It should be noted that Bros may be a gay story in which all the queer characters are (quite pointedly) played by queer actors, and all of that is indeed stuff to be proud of. But the director, Nicholas Stoller, is not gay, and I think this actually makes a difference, Eichnier having co-written the script with him notwithstanding. (Side note: Fire Island was directed by Andrew Ahn, an openly gay Asian American man.) There’s been an element of a lot of the press and buzz for Bros that feels a lot like straight guys patting themselves on the back for helping their queer friends get their movie made. And it’s not to say they have no reason to be proud of this movie, but there has been this widespread industry expectation that the movie will be a hit, and its opening weekend earned 40% less than projected. There is already hand-wringing about whether this means audiences aren’t “ready” for a movie like this, but there remains the possibility that the film just isn’t as great as everyone who made it thought it was.

And I know I’ve spent a lot of time picking it apart here, but I must stress that I did enjoy this movie. The more salient point is, I enjoyed it about as much as any average romantic comedy—the key word here being “average,” although I would even say this was above average, not that there’s a high bar there either; it doesn’t take much for a romantic comedy to rise just slightly above mediocrity. And to be fair, there’s a lot of things I did love about Bros, not least of which was its acknowledgment of how gay relationships are actually different from straight ones (yet no less valid); its sex scenes just as frank as any in a romantic comedy about straight people; and its unusually honest depiction of day to day queer life. (Although, and I’m sorry for constantly making the comparison in spite of its inevitability, Fire Island has a lot more casual drug use. Bros does depict the use of poppers in a sex scene, though, treating it as just a normal part of it, which for many it is.)

Plus, Bros does have a lot of very effective punch lines, and I laughed a good amount at it—albeit a little further into the film than I would have preferred; that opening sequence with the podcast-host voiceover really had me worried the movie would be actively bad. Thankfully, although there are many valid criticisms, the movie is actively good. And to be fair, it’s not trying to be anything it isn’t, either; the film itself doesn’t seem to think it’s any paragon of cinema, and only tries to offer what fans of romantic comedies want. And by and large, what those fans want is something of a specific formula, which this very much is.

Eichner’s love interest is Aaron, played by Luke Macfarlane, a guy largely known for Hallmark Channel romantic comedies—so, another example of slightly in-joke casting. Eichner plays a character I would likely find insufferable in real life, but these two men have genuine chemistry, which alone goes a long way toward making Bros work overall. It’s heartening to see even two perfectly attractive men (granted, one is much “hunkier” than the other) struggling to overcome very different insecurities, and sort of tentatively succeeding. Honestly, I would happily watch Bros again, and would likely enjoy it even more a second time, having already gotten the criticisms out of my system and allowing myself just to give into it without intellectualizing what is just meant to be a fun time at the movies. Which, to be fair, is exactly what this is in the end.

It’s unapologetically queer, unapologetically romantic, and unapologetically formulaic.

Overall: B

FIRE ISLAND

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

There’s a lot to love about Fire Island, this year’s first major “Pride Month Movie” release, streaming on Hulu since its release yesterday (June 3), and most of it has to do with representation. Written by and starring comedian Joel Kim Booster, and co-starring viral sensation and SNL cast member Bowen Yang, this is a movie clearly aimed to be a “mainstream release,” itself no longer unusual for a story focused on queer people—what sets it apart is its unapologetically plausible and realistic representation. This is definitively not a “family-friendly” movie, and not because it happens to be about a group of gay friends, but because it includes frank depictions of gay sex and casual drug use.

To be clear, though, the overall plot is surprisingly chaste, largely because it’s a modern adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice—very much in the vein of the classic 1994 high school adaptation of Emma that was Clueless. Granted, Fire Island has no chance of becoming the cult classic that Clueless did, but that’s just because of how much the movie industry has changed in the past thirty years.

Anyway, the casual observer might be forgiven for thinking the story is only about Howie (Bowen Yang), and his sweet, budding relationship with Charlie (James Scully), initially at the behest of Howie’s best friend Noah (Booster), who is so intent on getting Howie laid on an annual friends-group trip to Fire Island that he’s committed to not having sex with anyone himself until it happens. But, Charlie’s own group of friends are a much wealthier group, who overall rub Noah the wrong way, particularly a lawyer named Will (Conrad Ricamora), who Noah quickly writes off as a snob, responding in ways that only increase tension between them. Spoiler alert! By the end, this movie becomes just as much about the predictable trajectory of the slowly evolving relationship between Noah and Will.

If you are at all familiar with Pride and Prejudice, identifying which characters parallel those from the novel becomes a fun game. Noah is narrator Elizabeth; Will is Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy; Howie is Elizabeth’s sister Jane; Charlie is Jane’s love interest Charles Bingley. The diverse group of friends along the ride with Noah and Howie are, broadly speaking, the Bennet sisters.

The overall plot points of Fire Island do hew incredibly close to those of the novel, which is why, for instance, most of the time none of the aforementioned sex is ever centered in the plot. Noah and Will spend most of the story annoyed with each other, and Howie and Charlie spend most of it innocently getting to know each other. The unusual frankness comes in as background, sometimes as part of a punch line, such as when Noah crashes a bedroom orgy while looking for Howie, and all the guys stop their fucking just quickly enough to look around politely to see if there’s a Howie in the room. There is another scene in which Noah takes a potential hookup into a back room also filled with sex at a party, and yet another in which the group of friends are taking stock of their relatively pathetic collective stash of recreational drugs.

The great thing about all these details is just this: none of it is ever looked upon with judgment. It’s just, part of these gay guys’ world, secondary background details that they may or may not partake in depending on the circumstances or the mood. There is no self-loathing to be had in this movie, at least not as a result of one’s sexuality (they do discuss body image issues, in some cases in a way that’s a bit of a stretch, considering the conventional fitness of many of these guys who apparently feel out of place on Fire Island). There’s no tragic subplot about addiction, and there’s no hand-wringing or grappling with homophobia, a fact made easy by the convenient setting in one of the nation’s few small-town gay utopias. This story could just have easily been set in Provincetown or Key West.

All that said, if you strip away all these trappings that set Fire Island apart, and look strictly at its simple plot arc, as well as most of it’s dialogue, and it’s reduced to something little more than adequate. I can’t quite call this film “exceptional,” much as I really would love to. If I had my wish, it would be something with the staying power of The Birdcage, just without the conservative judgmentalism used for punchlines. Fire Isand could have been a great movie about gay guys on vacation, or it could have been a great modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but apparently it can’t be a great combination of both.

Don’t get me wrong, though: I still thought it was a fun, worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours at home. I might even have enjoyed seeing this in theaters. That said, the “house mother” who owns the place this group of friends goes to every year is played by Margaret Cho, whose comic talents are criminally underused and whose presence seems only to serve as “gay icon cred.” And although the guys who round out Noah’s and Howie’s group of friends are diverse in both ethnicity and—critically—body type, their existence as a bunch of flamboyant femmes seems a little too amped up at times. This is a movie clearly meant to feel unusually grounded, but then at times the wrong “camp knobs” seem to get cranked up to 11. At least Will is unusually quiet and reserved—elements that are used by Noah to judge him.

It’s wonderful to see a movie like this, not just made by and about gay people, but gay people of color: the director is Andrew Ahn, whose short film First Birthday was made as a means of coming out to his Korean parents. I’ve been a fan of Joel Kim Booster as a comedian for a short while (ditto Bowen Yang, but given his rising fame that’s less surprising), and I do think he has talent. But, this script focuses more on the Pride and Prejudice angle than on the humor that could have been added; it did make me laugh several times, but the script still could have used some punching up. It could be argued, actually, that the whole Pride and Prejudice thing is more of a distraction than it needs to be, and the movie would have been better served just as a wholly original story about gay friends on Fire Island.

This is the movie we got, though, and it still works for what it is, and the significance of what its very existence represents cannot be overstated. The more broadly the queer community sees themselves in film, and the more films are made with that in mind, the better off we’ll all be.

You’ll have a generally good time.

Overall: B

FLEE

Directing: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A
Animation: B+

Flee has to be seen to be believed. Or perhaps more accurately, seen to broaden your mind, about refugees, about people from Afghanistan, about the tumultuous modern history of Afghanistan, about the human experience. This is a window into a world and a past that puts the privilege of citizens of the Western World into sharp relief.

it’s also a uniquely incredible cinematic achievement. Flee is the first film ever eligible for an Oscar simultaneously in the Documentary, Animation and International Feature categories. Not since the incredible 2008 film Waltz with Bashir have I been so taken with and moved by an animated documentary film. I have to admit, that film was more immediately stunning on a visual level, helping render it both hypnotic and transporting. Flee, on the other hand, uses comparatively rudimentary animation in effectively specific, emotional ways. We left this movie in stunned silence.

The conceit of Flee is that Danish director and co-writer Jonas Poher Rasmussen interviews Afghanistan-born Amin Nawabi (who is also credited as co-writer) about his extraordinary life story, which he has not told a soul in his country of residence—Denmark—until now. Even when he begins referring to his story and his childhood, he casually references details that are later revealed to be part of the elaborate lie he told everyone in order to protect the family that actually did survive: that Afghan militants killed both his father and his mother, and kidnapped his sister. This was the story he concocted at the behest of the last in a series of human traffickers attempting to get him out of Russia and into Sweden. This after multiple unfortunate detours through Russia and, in one six-month period, Estonia.

Amin is not this man’s real name. The animation reportedly alters his appearance as well, which lends another layer to the choice of animation for this film. Many times throughout the film, Rasmussen switches to archival video footage. But, any time we see Amin and his family, whether in the present day or in the many flashbacks, they are animated. This is less an attempt at artistic flourish as it is a strangely comforting means of obscuring the vividness of Amin’s reality.

His extended traumas of childhood affect his relationships today. It feels like it was one of his few strokes of luck that he landed in a Scandinavian country, with its comparatively tolerant and permissive cultural attitudes. One top of all Amin’s family stresses, the kind of which most Americans can’t even fathom, Amin also turns out to be gay. There is an extended sequence after Amin finally confesses to his older brother and sisters in Sweden that he’s not interested in women, which, particularly if you’re also gay (like me) or queer, packs an acutely emotional wallop. It also bucks the stereotype of people from sexually repressed Muslim cultures.

Curiously, Amin never discusses religion in Flee, in spite of its massive influence on all of Afghanistan’s history. When it comes to Amin’s fears about the revelation of his sexuality, he doesn’t discuss any fear of God, but only the fear of being rejected by a family who had sacrificed so much for him to get the chance of a better life. His much older brother, who worked as a janitor in Sweden and scraped enough savings to attempt smuggling his family out of Russia, is ultimately supportive in a way many queer kids, even in America, can only dream of. There’s a scene where young Amin visits a gay bar for the first time, and I could only imagine that the un-self-conscious freedom on display was both intimidating and disorienting.

As for present-day Amin, there doesn’t seem to be any lingering issues with accepting his sexuality. Instead, his lingering issues have to do with how his traumas become road blocks to a healthy relationship with his current partner, who has never heard any of this backstory, and can only guess at the underlying cause of some of his subtly frustrating behaviors.

Flee is the kind of movie that not nearly enough people will watch, but which everyone should see. It’s great on a big screen in a theater, but luckily it’s also currently available on VOD for about six bucks. It’s undervalued. The idea that it reveals a dramatic story largely unrealized by xenophobic bigots, who might gain some understanding and compassion for immigrants and especially refugees, is the tip of the iceberg. This is a true story with plot twists that rival the most suspenseful of narrative feature films. It’s a literal illustration of resilience, as well as the lasting effects of deep trauma. This film is an experience I will not soon forget.

Amin and his mother, facing another in a llong ine of false promises

Overall: A

THE POWER OF THE DOG

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A+
Editing: A

The Power of the Dog won me over in a big, big way—also in a way that makes me very hesitant to reveal too much, especially in regards to the distinct turn the narrative takes about halfway through. It’s precisely that turn that made the movie great in my eyes, which puts me in a tricky position: how can I convince you how great it is if all I can tell you about is within the first half which, honestly, had me a little skeptical? Like, I was literally wondering how this movie was so criticially acclaimed. But, then I understood.

To be fair, it’s clear that not all audiences understand, at least not to the same degree. There are notable discrepancies between critical reactions and audience reactions: an incredible MetaScore of 88 on MetaCritic, where the user score is at 76; an astronomical 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, where the user score is 73%. Over at IMDb.com, the user rating is 6.9/10. Clearly the average viewer doesn’t hate this movie, but they also aren’t lionizing it the way critics are. Well, I guess I am just following my own flock here, because I am definitely falling down on the side of the critics—even though I spent the first half of the movie wondering if that was even possible.

Written by Jane Campion, whose 1993 masterpiece The Piano won her an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay as well as two acting Oscars (Best Actress for Holly Hunter and Best Supporting Actress for then-11-year-old Anna Paquin, the second-youngest person ever to win an Oscar), there’s something very fitting about The Power of the Dog’s distinctive tone and visual style. This film’s production comes from a unique position, in that it was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was already filming in Campion’s native New Zealand before the pandemic hit. Knowing that New Zealand was arguably the safest place on the planet for the first several months of the pandemic, it’s somewhat surprising to realize this movie was filmed there just coincidentally. Besides that—and I apologize if this creates the same effect of your viewing experience—I found myself consistently distracted by the beautifully shot landscapes, as the story is set in 1925 Montana. Who knew any part of New Zealand could plausibly stand in for Montana? There are multiple expansive shots of a roadway winding through rolling hills with distinctively large boulders dotting the landscape. Does any part of Montana actually look like that?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter. The Power of the Dog also has a fairly small cast, another coincidentally convenient thing about it having been shot during the pandemic, and its principal characters are fewer still, only four people: Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), the central character, is a gruff rancher with a penchant for tormenting virtually everyone around him, but especially his brother George (Jesse Plemons), whom he calls “Fatso”; George’s widow wife Rose (Kirsten Dunst; fun fact, she and Plemons are a real-life couple); and Rose’s barely-grown son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

And this is what I’m getting at when I refer to the first half of the film, as it is packed with tension, Phil going out of his way to make life difficult for his emotionally calloused brother, or striking terror in the hearts of Rose or Phil. Curiously, he never does this with physical violence; in fact there’s no violence inflicting onscreen between two people, although there is a bit against animals. More than once I was really afraid there would be, and that was kind of the point: there doesn’t have to be violence in order to stoke terror—only the threat of it. And, more to the point in this story, the violence is of a more mental sort. Phil, a deeply repressed man, has great skill at getting under the skin of others. In effect, he’s a 1925 version of a bully—an incredibly subtle one, but a bully nonetheless.

The thing is, none of this is headed anywhere near the direction you think it is, when the narrative takes its turn. Everything about The Power of the Dog is subtle, and this turn of events is no exception. Tensions continue thereafter, but of a very different sort. There’s a twist at the end that is quite impressive in its subtle execution, considering how fucked up you slowly realize it is.

The Power of the Dog is a bit of a narrative puzzle, and over the course of its second half they fall into place, linking inextricably into each other, with deep satisfaction. This is a superbly constructed film, easily Campion’s best since The Piano, a film destined to be a part of the upcoming Oscar conversation. So much of it could easily have been bungled in someone else’s hands, but this a solid piece of work that only could have come from Jane Campion. I’m eager to tell you more about its revelations, but I must resist, and implore you just to set aside a couple of hours, sit down and watch this film, going in cold: just watch it. It’s streaming on Netflix so getting that far won’t be a challenge. Getting to the end will be more than worth the time.

Taking the path you don’t see coming.

Overall: A

SUBLET

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

If you like movies that feature almost exclusively characters hanging out and talking, having interesting conversations, then Sublet is the kind of movie for you. That is, if you also find the contextualization of gay queer characters exploring Tel Avid compelling. That contextualization aside, if you’re not into “talky” movies, then this is one you’ll want to avoid. It’s all a matter of cinematic preference, really.

I quite enjoyed it. Sublet is directed and co-written by Eytan Fox, who has a history of exploring queer character in his films. He did the 2002 film Yassi & Jagger, a gay romance between two Israeli soldiers; he also directed the phenomenal film Walk on Water, about a bereft Israeli widower hit man who befriends a gay German tourist with the intent of gathering information about his Nazi war criminal grandfather, which wound up being my fourth-favorite film of 2005.

Fox is not especially prolific—he hasn’t directed a feature film since 2013—but he clearly has talent. That said, Sublet feels like a smaller film than some of his earlier works, at least in terms of production, theme, and ambition. That’s no major reflection on its quality; sometimes a story benefits a great deal from stripping down to simplicity. And even this film has its share of layers and nuance.

It’s the story of a short term relationship between men of two very different generations. We never learn the respective ages of Michael (John Benjamin Hickey), a New York Times travel writer visiting Tel Aviv for five days, and Tomer (Niv Nissim), the young man from whom he sublets his apartment and who winds up showing him around the city. But, we can find the ages of the actors, which are 57 and 27, respectively. That’s a thirty-year difference—an almost shockingly wide difference now that I consider it with actual numbers. It could be argued that the most impressive achievement of Sublet is that for most of its run time it depicts this relationship as platonic, until it isn’t. But it’s never creepy or especially salacious; in fact it’s surprisingly sweet. I can think of few, if any, other movies that manage to make such a relationship feel totally acceptable and natural.

Part of it is that the relationship is very brief, by design: Michael and Tomer only know each other for five days. Michael has a partner back in New York, and is processing a tragic event that occurred recently in their lives. Tomer actively avoids labels, which is why I hesitate to call him “gay” but he definitely qualifies as queer; he has idealistic ideas of living without any constraints of monogamy or even commitment. There’s a uniquely realized scene in which Tomer invites another young man over via “the Israeli Grindr,” as he puts it, “for both of us,” and ultimately it qualifies as the one sex scene in the film. It’s the kind of scenario in which one participant could easily be manipulating another, but it never comes across that way. At that point, though, Michael politely leaves the two younger men to each other, in that particular moment making the right decision.

Even this is a few days into Michael’s visit, his and Tomer’s connection developing organically. Fox introduces each day as the beginning of what becomes basically five chapters (“Day One,” etc). Tomer is intent on crashing on friends’ couches for the week, but Michael suggests he just stay at home and sleep on the couch, and in exchange Tomer will serve as his tour guide to see “the real” Tel Aviv for his travel piece.

As the story thus progressed, I was reminded of the Before Sunrise films, with such a focus on two characters forging a connection through a succession of intellectually stimulating conversations. The themes and topics covered in the Before Sunrise films are far denser than they are here, but it’s broadly the same idea. And in contrast to the Richard Linklater films, Eytan Fox throws in minority sexuality and cross-generational ideas and ideals. It makes for very compelling viewing, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I very much am. At times, the acting in Sublet feels slightly unrehearsed, but its well crafted script is its greatest strength. By the end, I was more moved than I might have expected to be at the start. That kind of pleasant surprise is always a welcome turn of events.

Sometimes it’s not so hard to bridge the gap.

Overall: B+

[available VOD, $4.99.}]