Movies Dearz

Nic and Jules are a seemingly happy, committed lesbian couple with two teenaged children, an athletic son and a college-bound daughter, conceived through artificial insemination via an anonymous sperm donor. When the kids secretly decide to seek out their father, however, it results in all sorts of complications for this unorthodox family.

This is the fertile plot of The Kids Are All Right, a new dramedy directed and co-written by lesbian filmmaker Lisa Cholodenko (High Art, Laurel Canyon). The film got a generally favorable reaction at January’s Sundance Film Festival and opened the Los Angeles Film Festival last month. It receives a national theatrical release starting today.

Academy Award nominees Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as, respectively, Nic and Jules. Seemingly a textbook case of opposites attracting, Jules is an artistic but jobless, wannabe landscaper while Nic is a driven, successful ob-gyn doctor. The always welcome Mark Ruffalo (Shutter Island) plays Paul, the former sperm donor turned popular restaurateur who unwittingly comes not only between the women and their partial-progeny but also between Nic and Jules themselves.


The cast, which also includes Mia Wasikowska, who made a splash earlier this year in the title role of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, and Josh Hutcherson as Jules’ and Nic’s kids, turns in uniformly excellent performances. I hadn’t seen Bening in a few years, not since her turn as gay writer Augusten Burroughs’ unhinged mother in 2006’s Running with Scissors. Subsequently, I had forgotten somewhat how good and honest an actress she is, but The Kids Are All Right quickly reminded me.

With so much talent in front of and behind the camera, I had expected the script for The Kids Are All Right to be better than it is. The dramatic and comedic elements grow increasingly uneven as the film moves along. Cholodenko can’t be faulted exclusively since the screenplay was co-written by Stuart Blumberg, who wrote the similarly imbalanced Keeping the Faith, the 2000 movie about a priest (played by Edward Norton) and a rabbi (Ben Stiller) who are best friends until a woman comes between them.

As the relationships between Jules and Nic and their children deteriorate, the script becomes strained and introduces a hard-to-swallow sexual relationship between Jules and Paul. While Paul’s motivation seems somewhat clear — he likes his new role as a father and would like a family of his own, albeit without the responsibility of actually raising children — Jules’ decision to get intimately involved with him is baffling on pretty much every count: as a spouse, as a mother, as Paul’s contracted landscaper and, of course, as a lesbian! Hello?


I can’t help but feel that Paul ends up unfairly vilified at the film’s climax. In fact, none of the males in The Kids Are All Right are treated well with the exception of Laser, Nic and Jules’ son, and even he is cursed with a ridiculous name. Laser’s best friend is an immature skateboarder who likes to urinate on stray dogs, and the older Latino man Jules hires as a landscaping assistant is falsely accused of using drugs and fired once he catches on to what Jules and Paul are doing during work hours.

In the press notes, co-screenwriter Blumberg states: “There isn’t a message (in the film) about gay marriage. There is maybe some of that old joke, ‘Gay people deserve to be as miserable as straight people…” While the movie may not make a political statement and doesn’t delve into the pros and cons of gay marriage, it does uphold the value and significance of committed relationships whether between members of the same or opposite sex.

Despite its script’s considerable shortcomings, The Kids Are All Right is a timely, engaging story that provides the sublime pleasure of watching two lovely, exceptional actresses in great form, and as lovers to boot.

Reverend's Rating: B-

UPDATE: The Kids Are All Right is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.com.

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.

Nothing is sadder than a big fat set-up at the end of a bomb for a sequel that will never happen. That is, unless it’s at the end of M. Night Shyamalan’s bloated but vapid “epic” The Last Airbender. Much has been made of the fact that the dreaded director of such horrors at The Happening, The Village and Lady in the Water cast Caucasians in the Asian-inspired lead roles. He’d have a leg to stand on if any of the actors he chose could act, but alas, their performances are as flat as an anime drawing. And speaking of flat, the so-called 3-D in The Last Airbender is barely noticeable — not surprising since it was yet another retrofit like Clash of the Titans.

Found in an ice floe, Aang (Noah Ringer) is the titular character, a little bald and tatted-up tyke who if nothing else, acts better than Jake Lloyd in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. He’s the Avatar, but not the tall blue cat lizard kind, the “if he learns to control all four elements, he’ll save mankind” kind. Too bad he threw a hissy fit and ran away from class, only to plunge into freezing water and get entombed in a block of ice for a hundred years. See kids? Stay in school! He’s rescued by cutesy brother/sister act Sokka (Jackson Rathbone, much better in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) and Katara (Nicola Peltz) but watch out! The banished prince of the evil Fire Nation is hot (get it?) on the little Lama’s tail, ready to serve him up to his mean dad to prove his manhood. Dev Patel glowers through his first role after Slumdog Millionaire as if he can hear his career capital evaporating.


I’ve never seen the Nickelodeon animated series and I am certainly no fan of Shyamalan’s infamous ego that shows up in every frame of his films, but I can’t really dog-pile onto The Last Airbender like my fellow critics. I didn’t think it was horrible on a Battlefield Earth level, but rather it’s utterly bland and forgettable, save for some nice visuals and production design. I was also grateful that we weren’t treated to another stellar acting performance by M. (Night? Shyam-Wow?). Usually, those are like the anti-Hitchcock moments I dream of in his other films, much like grade schoolers tease each other with the grossest smells or bodily secretions they can muster. You know they’re disgusting and will nauseate you, but you can’t help but anticipate them with glee. An M. Nightmare cameo in The Last Airbender, however, would have spoiled the delicate aura of innocuousness that permeates the film, reminding us that it was indeed directed by the same man who cast Mark Wahlberg as a smart biology teacher and sent cast members running through the fields shrieking, “It’s the wind! It’s the wind!” in The Happening.

You’re better off going to just about any other movie this summer, even Jonah Hex, since chances are they will make you at least feel something. The Last Airbender, on the other hand, will exit your mind like a slightly putrid breeze.

UPDATE: The Last Airbender is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.com.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

O-Lan Jones is hardly a household name, yet one readily recognizes her face. Named after the main character in Pearl S. Buck’s classic, China-set novel The Good Earth, Jones is a veteran of Tim Burton’s popular films Edward Scissorhands (in which she played the kooky, God-fearing neighbor Esmeralda) and Mars Attacks! She has also appeared in such non-Burton hits as The Truman Show, Natural Born Killers and Married to the Mob.

In addition to her film and TV work, Jones has an extensive theatre background. She began her professional acting career in New York when she was 16. While performing off-off Broadway, she met and soon married playwright-actor Sam Shepard (they divorced in 1983). According to Jones’s bio, “Of the more than 80 plays she has acted in, only two have been performed prior to her involvement in them.”

Now living in Los Angeles, Jones has been the driving force behind a bold new theatrical project, Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands. Described as “a large-scale, genre-bending contemporary opera,” it will be performed July 8-July 18 at a vacant, 25,000-square foot former car dealership in Culver City, CA.

The unorthodox setting is appropriate for this community-created, green-minded production. Seven years in development, Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands features sets and costumes, designed by Snezana Petrovic, made out of recycled and re-claimed materials by local artists. It also boasts a cast of 20 and a nine-piece live orchestra under the direction of David O.


Jones is a delight to speak with as well as a visionary director. “I was musing with friends one evening about songs and dances about real lands,” she told me regarding the initial inspiration for her new project, “and I got to thinking about what would be the indigenous songs of people from imaginary lands?”

As she reflected on this further, she came to define such places not so much as fantasy worlds like Narnia or Oz but rather stages of life forgotten, feared or idealized, including “lands of childhood, adulthood and old age.”

The show’s two lead characters, Tom and Sue, have lost their identities and must travel to 21 different, imaginary lands embodying the pivotal moments in their lives to find themselves again. Their quest is played out on a variety of fantastical sets, and Jones promised excitedly that audience members will play an interactive role during each performance.

No less than 21 librettists and 11 composers collaborated to create the opera’s musical structure. “The big thing is for me is how it holds so much meaning, these songs and dances,” Jones said. When I spoke with her, she told me “The rehearsal process is going so fast; once (the production) was all cast, I felt like I got injected with rocket fuel!” Jones also said of rehearsals, “We’re learning that the in-between times are as important as the song and dance numbers.”

Jones has had an unusual number of highly-regarded directorial mentors in her career. In addition to Tim Burton, she has worked as an actress under Jonathan Demme, Peter Weir, Oliver Stone, Philip Kaufman and the late gay director John Schlesinger. I asked Jones which of them has inspired her the most in developing her own directorial approach.


“Tim Burton’s fantastic,” she replied. “The most important thing I’ve learned from him is his amazing intuition. There is something very inspiring about how he uses his intuition.  Jones also praised Peter Weir, who directed The Truman Show and received an Oscar nomination for it. “(Weir) was great at creating and maintaining the atmosphere. He also respected each member of the cast, including the extras, and had expectations of all of us. That impressed me, how he included everybody in the process.”

Since her current undertaking attempts to represent and draw in all members of the local community, Jones is openly supportive of the GLBT population. “Gays and lesbians are a particular community, and there are gay and lesbian members of this project who are helping to inform how we all connect,” she said. “Connection is the main idea here.”

If Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands is successful during its Culver City run, Jones and company plan to take it on tour. She spoke giddily of the prospective road show as being “like the circus comes to town to an abandoned building near you, like Circuit City!”

For tickets and additional information, please visit the Overtone Industries website.

Interview by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.

One of the best gay-themed films in recent years (at least since Brokeback Mountain) is making its debut on home video today. Tom Ford's A Single Man, adapted from the novel by Christopher Isherwood, is a suitably dramatic but also enormously stylish and disarmingly funny account of a gay man preparing to commit suicide in the wake of his partner's tragic death.

Taking place over the course of one day in early-1960's Los Angeles, A Single Man's strongest attribute is a magnificent, Oscar-nominated lead performance by Colin Firth as Professor George Falconer. I believe Firth would have won the Academy Award for Best Actor if a certain Jeff Bridges hadn't snuck in under the wire with Crazy Heart. Firth will have to content himself with his Venice Film Festival and BAFTA awards. His performance is subtle and frequently amusing as well as heartbreaking.


Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult provide excellent support. In addition to a director's commentary by Ford, the DVD has a great, 12-minute making-of documentary that includes insightful interviews with Ford and all the principle cast members. Worth noting among Firth's and Hoult's recollections is how "well put-together" fashion designer Ford was while shooting his first movie. Firth remarks that Ford "consistently looked better behind the camera than any of us in front of it."

As Ford himself notes, "Fashion is fleeting; film lasts forever." A Single Man deserves a prominent place in GLBT and general cinema history. If you haven't seen it — or even if you have — buy or rent the Blu-Ray or DVD today!

Congratulations to Terry A. of Chicago, IL, the winner of our "I Want A Single Man" contest, sponsored by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment!  Thanks to all who entered!

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.

This year’s Outfest, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, will boast 60 GLBT-themed feature films and 87 shorts from 23 different countries. The 28th edition of the oldest film festival in LA and the leading GLBT festival in the US will run July 8th-18.

Having had the opportunity to preview a number of the movies to be shown, I can attest that this year’s Outfest selections are generally more thoughtful and of higher quality than those I saw the past two years. As Outfest’s Executive Director, Kirsten Schaffer, rightly proclaimed, “This year’s incredible line-up celebrates all of the forward-thinking artists that push the boundaries for LGBT rights and equality.”


One such artist was the poet Allen Ginsberg, who is the subject of the Outfest Opening Night Gala film, Howl (the movie also opened the prestigious Sundance Film Festival earlier this year). James Franco of the Spider-Man series plays Ginsberg. Howl is the first dramatic feature from veteran documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, who made The Times of Harvey Milk and The Celluloid Closet among several acclaimed prior films.

The opening night festivities will kick-off at 8:00 PM on July 8 with a special presentation of the annual Outfest Achievement Award to lesbian actress Jane Lynch. Currently enjoying huge success as the domineering cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester, on the Fox TV series Glee, Lynch has also given memorable performances in such diverse films as The 40 Year Old Virgin, Best in Show and last year’s Julie & Julia.


Each year, Outfest features a foreign film as its International Dramatic Centerpiece. Contracorriente (or Undertow) will be this year’s selection on July 13. It is set in an exotic Peruvian fishing village where love between two men is forbidden. The film was a rare gay-themed winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Audience Award in January.

There are too many movies that I’d recommend to list here, but a few highlights are:

The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, an insightful and thoroughly enjoyable documentary about New Zealand’s legendary yodeling lesbian twins. Jools and Lynda Topp have been performing together since the 1970’s, and were pivotal figures in the 1986 passage of their country’s pioneering gay rights bill. If you want to learn the hysterical punchline to the twins’ joke, “Why can’t lesbians wear make-up when they go to Weight Watchers?,” see the movie!


Grown Up Movie Star, written and directed by the talented Adriana Maggs, is a smart, observant study of a teenage girl in rural Canada’s coming of age. Living with her closeted gay father doesn’t make things any easier for her. The movie also benefits from an excellent cast (newcomer Tatiana Maslany is a revelation as the teen, Ruby) and great, naturalistic — if dysfunctional — family rapport.

Children of God utilizes overlapping storylines and characters in its expose of closeted homosexuality and religious hypocrisy in the Bahamas. An attractive, interracial gay couple run afoul of the local fundamentalist pastor, who at one point privately sums up the motivation behind his anti-gay campaign thusly: “You have to give people something to hate; it brings them together.” The film is also worth seeing for its beautiful photography of sun-bathed, seaside locales.


Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight, with its title taken from Bonnie Tyler’s hit song of the 80’s, “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” is an admirably unsentimental documentary that turns its lens on 75-year old, transgendered drag performer Vicki Marlane. Still performing today after 59 years as a drag artist at Aunt Charlie’s in San Francisco, Marlane speaks candidly of her upbringing, legal run-ins, ill-fated love affairs and addictions. Marlane and the film’s producer-director, Michelle Lawler, are scheduled to appear at the Outfest screening.

Role/Play, the latest from Rob Williams, director of past gay hits Back Soon and Make the Yuletide Gay. It is a smart and sexy account of what might happen if a closeted gay soap opera star (hunky Steve Callahan) and an outspoken gay activist with marriage troubles (Matthew Montgomery, Callahan’s real-life partner) were to meet at a Palm Springs resort.


A Marine Story is timely to say the least, what with the current debate over revoking the US military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Based on actual events, the film focuses on a recently-discharged lesbian (a dramatically and physically strong performance by Dreya Weber) who discovers her troubles are just beginning once she returns to her hometown. Written, directed and even edited — all very well — by Ned Farr.

Standouts among the numerous recommended short films to be shown during Outfest are the cute and funny Go Go Reject, which features the adorable Heath Daniels as a stripper hopeful who is labeled as too skinny but who isn’t going to take “No” for an answer; Last Address, an unusual, quietly devastating travelogue of the final residences inhabited by New York City-based artists who died of AIDS; and Public Relations, an upbeat romantic-comedy in which two female personal assistants meet and fall in love.


For me, Outfest wouldn’t be complete each year without its Sing-Along Musical night at the Ford Amphitheater. The 2010 winner of the annual online vote by Outfest fans is Grease 2, the campy 1982 sequel to Grease. Hardly as well-received as its predecessor, Grease 2 is still entertaining and somewhat underrated. It stars Michelle Pfeiffer in her first big-screen lead role, as well as then-pretty Maxwell Caulfield, a then-hot Adrian Zmed and Judy Garland’s daughter, Lorna Luft. What’s not to enjoy? It will screen at 8:30 PM on July 15. Feel free to dress as a T-Bird or Pink Lady!

The hilarious-sounding new comedy Spork will wrap up Outfest during the Closing Night Gala on July 18. For a complete listing of films or to purchase tickets for screenings and related events, please visit the Outfest website or call (213) 480-7065.

Preview by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.

Have a happy and safe Fourth of July holiday!From Movie Dearest

I feel way too old to have spent six hours in the past year or so viewing The Twilight Saga. While it is easy to understand the super-successful supernatural book and movie series' appeal for romance-hungry teenage girls, their shared plot is pretty insipid stuff for anyone over the age of 17.

Obviously, I'm no "Twi-hard." However, my allegiance in the heated teenybopper debate between "Team Edward" (those devoted to the sullen vampire played by Robert Pattinson) and "Team Jacob" (fans of hunky, frequently shirtless werewolf Taylor Lautner) is to the latter. Lautner has charisma that Pattinson sorely lacks, although The Twilight Saga: Eclipse gives Pattinson the opportunity to play a wider range of emotions than in the first two movies. He even gets to smile and laugh! I hope he charged the producers extra.


Kristen Stewart continues to be hamstrung in the central role of Bella. Her expression is most often one of eyes-downcast blankness, but when she becomes concerned or afraid she appears constipated. I'm also increasingly frustrated by Bella's powerlessness at doing anything to help her situation. This isn't Stewart's fault, of course. The character is written as a pawn in the jealous-romantic (and sort of homoerotic, especially during a scene set in a frigid camping tent) rivalry between Edward and Jacob and, by extension, vampires and werewolves.

Edward and Bella get engaged by the end of Eclipse, but not much else happens in the movie. There's a lot of talk about how "a war is coming" to the characters' town of Forks, Oregon thanks to a bloodthirsty band of powerful "newborn" vampires created by Edward's arch nemesis, Victoria (a good but too-brief turn by Bryce Dallas Howard). Every time the film develops momentum toward this showdown, though, it is interrupted by a father-daughter chat, a marriage proposal, or one of Jacob's temper tantrums. And when Victoria's "army" finally arrives, it's maybe a dozen-strong and hardly an imposing force. The "war" is over in five minutes. With all the money the Twilight movies are raking in, couldn't they have afforded to hire some more actors or at least add a hundred or so vampires digitally?


Eclipse isn't awful but, like its two predecessors, it is a largely listless, apathetic affair. The last film, New Moon, perked up in its final half hour thanks to the intervention of some accomplished actors — notably Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning — as evil but humorous members of the vampire ruling class, the Volturi. Fanning reappears in Eclipse but all too sparingly.

There is reason to hope, though, that the upcoming adaptation of the series' final book, Breaking Dawn, will be an improvement over what has come before. Oscar-winning gay screenwriter-director Bill Condon (Gods & Monsters, Chicago, Dreamgirls) has been hired to helm the two-part finale. Maybe he'll give Bella a song or two and finally allow Jacob and Edward to acknowledge their latent attraction to each other!


I'm also happy to announce that another film adaptation from what is currently a truly literate literary phenomenon (no, not Harry Potter) is now hitting movie screens. The Girl Who Played With Fire is the second work — following The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo — in the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson's bestselling Millennium trilogy. The film version is opening next Friday, July 9, in a number of US cities.

It depicts the continuing adventures of crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (once again played by the very good Michael Nykvist) and the brilliant, abused and vengeful computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (the still-excellent Noomi Rapace). Separated for two years, they set out together via cyberspace to take down a ruthless sex trafficker and his cronies. Salander remains fiercely bisexual, and the new film features a steamy tryst between her and her best friend, Miriam Wu (Yasmine Garbi).


Director Daniel Alfredson took the reins from Dragon Tattoo's Niels Arden Oplev for the sequel. Oplev had a better handle on the technological dimensions of the story and making them exciting for viewers. The first film also had a slightly more engrossing plot, with a decades-old unsolved mystery as its driving force. The Girl Who Played With Fire is essentially two hours of waiting for a "will they or won't they" physical reunion between Salander and Blomkvist. The movie ends in something of a cliffhanger that will presumably be resolved in the third and final film, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which is scheduled for US release this October.

Still, The Girl Who Played With Fire is an effective cinematic take on a book series that has challenging things to say about women and men, sexuality, abuse and power. The Twilight Saga, which purports to cover some of the same territory, are simplistic children's storybooks in comparison.

Reverend's Ratings:
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse: C
The Girl Who Played With Fire: B

UPDATE: The Girl Who Played With Fire is now available on DVD and Blu-ray and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.com.

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.