Movies Dearz

Movies naturally reflect the times and the culture in which they are made. With this in mind, it is inspiring to watch the 1961 lesbian-themed drama The Children's Hour back-to-back with Imagine Me & You, a cheerful dyke comedy made in 2005. I recently did so thanks to a magnificent boxed set of ten GLBT classics of the past 49 years entitled the Cinema Pride Collection. It is now available for purchase exclusively from Amazon.com.

The Children's Hour stars Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine as the headmistresses of an all-girls school who are accused by a spiteful student of having an "unnatural," homosexual relationship. Adapted from a play by Lillian Hellman, the film co-stars a young and handsome James Garner in addition to Miriam Hopkins and Fay Bainter. The latter was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, one of four nominations the movie received.

While the filmmakers are clearly sympathetic to the women's plight — probably as much as one could be in 1960's Hollywood — The Children's Hour notoriously climaxes with MacLaine's lesbian character committing suicide. Today, this tragic finale leaves a bad taste in many viewers' mouths thanks to a greater understanding and acceptance of GLBT people.


Hopkins' statement in the movie, "A whole culture is changing," had proven prophetic by the time Imagine Me & You was released in 2006. In it, a newly married woman, Rachel (Piper Perabo), briefly locks eyes with the female florist at her wedding (the lovely Lena Headey) and they become smitten with each other. The florist is comfortably and openly lesbian, while Rachel experiences being attracted to someone of the same gender for the first time. Rachel's husband (the charming Matthew Goode, who recently played Colin Firth's lover in A Single Man) is understandably confused.

While not everyone in Rachel's family takes easily to her new relationship, the movie is blessedly devoid of the angst that characterizes so many earlier GLBT-themed plots. It quickly becomes clear that our community has come a long way since 1961.

The Children's Hour and Imagine Me & You serve as the chronological bookends of the Cinema Pride Collection. In between are such gems as the 1978 French comedy La Cage aux Folles and its Americanized remake, The Birdcage (1996), starring Nathan Lane and Robin Williams; My Beautiful Laundrette (1986) which features a hot young Daniel Day-Lewis and Gordon Warnecke as lovers who overcome class and ethnic differences; and 1998's The Object of My Affection, with Jennifer Aniston as a relationship-hungry woman who falls in love with her gay roommate, played by the super-cute Paul Rudd.


The set also includes the now-classic The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) in an "Extra Frills Edition" that contains a director's commentary, deleted scenes and bloopers among other bonus features. Terence Stamp gives a wonderful performance as aging drag performer Bernadette that obliterated the then-dominant image of him as the villainous General Zod in the Superman movies. Full of hilarious, quotable lines and great musical numbers, the movie also won a well-deserved Oscar for the drag queens' outrageous costumes.

Completing the Cinema Pride Collection are Bent, a powerful 1997 film adapted from the acclaimed play about the plight of homosexuals in a Nazi concentration camp, starring Clive Owen and Sir Ian McKellen; Boys Don't Cry, which won Hilary Swank her first Academy Award as Best Actress for her performance as Brandon Teena, a real-life transgender teen who was tragically murdered; and 2001's Kissing Jessica Stein, an acclaimed romantic-comedy wherein a historically straight woman responds to a classified ad from another woman.

In addition to providing older GLBT viewers a trip down memory lane, the Cinema Pride Collection can provide a powerful educational service for young people coming to terms with their sexuality. Thanks to 45 years of development in the presentation of GLBT characters and images in movies, they are coming out in a generally more accepting environment. It is important, though, for all of us to remember our past as a community and look to the future with pride.

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

“Why didn’t I see the script for High Art?”

Julianne Moore remembers asking director Lisa Cholodenko that question when they first met at a "Women in Film" luncheon. “It was a very 'actorly' thing to say,” she laughed. The part in question went to Ally Sheedy, but Cholodenko ended up creating the role of Jules in The Kids Are All Right specifically for Moore, who has been attached to the project for five years.

Moore is an icon in the GLBT community for a lot of reasons. She’s played gay or bisexual characters in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, The Hours, Boogie Nights and this year’s Chloe, and also played the unsuspecting wife of a closeted Dennis Quaid in Todd Haynes’ gorgeous Far from Heaven. She’s committed to women’s reproductive rights and speaks out against policies like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and Prop 8. Playing Annette Bening’s committed partner was a joy.

“You know, I just loved (Jules). I love how she’s someone who’s so present emotionally and so good at connecting with people and communicating but is incredibly lost. Her oldest child’s leaving for college, the next one’s going to go in a couple of years, and she’s at a point in her life where she’s going “What have I done with the last eighteen years and what am I going to do with the rest of it?” Like Nic (Bening’s character) says, she really puts the cart before the horse, she acts “as if”. The searching quality I really loved about her. Emotionally, I think she’s the one who’s got the antenna. I liked that she feels first and thinks later.”


“The thing that Annette and I have going for us is that we’ve both been married for a really long time and we’re both parents. So the degree of affection that we show to one another commented on how the characters felt for one another and how connected they were. Even though there’s different stuff going on with them, they still touch each other and sit on the couch together and kiss each other hello. We wanted them to be affectionate and married.”

On meeting donor dad Paul (played by Mark Ruffalo), Moore remarked, “Jules is much more open to it. The one thing she’s secure about is her family. She’s not secure about herself, but she feels really solid about this family.”

One of the best parts of Moore’s performance is the way Jules seems to blossom when Paul appreciates her talent as a landscape designer. “I think what you’re noticing is that I have a real attraction for characters in transition and human stories. In film, you want to see someone go through an emotional arc. The great thing about film acting is that you want to put yourself in a position where you’re having an experience on camera.”


Moore understands how Jules and Nic get to the place where they’ve been together twenty years and pick on each other’s habits. “I think any of us who’ve been married or partnered for a long time, you know that there are ups and downs. It’s like Jules says, “Marriage is hard.” You’re not the same person you were when you met somebody, you’ve changed. There’s a lot of time, a lot of history ... there are going to be a lot of things about each other that you don’t like because that’s just how life is, and there are going to be things about someone that you can’t live without.”

And when one partner strays? “Another journalist told me that the person behind them at the screening said, “I wouldn’t take her back.” And I said, “Yeah? And how old were they?” They said, “About thirty.” I said, “Well, give them another thirty years.” Once you’ve invested the time and have the children and the life ... a lot of things happen in life. At my age, I know a lot of people who are getting divorced; and the ones who stay together haven’t gone through anything less than the ones who are getting divorced. They’ve hit the wall at some moment or the other. Everyone has a different tolerance level.” She gets why people would split up, but hopes people understand Jules’ motivations.

Moore concedes that GLBT couples face the pressure to be these perfect family units. “For same sex couples, it’s that thing that people used to say about race. If you’re going to be the only African-American student in the school, then you had to be the best student. For gay families, then you have to be the best parents. In this case, with these women, I think Nic, being the perfectionist, particularly feels that, and you see that energy in Annette’s performance.”


She noted a twenty-four year AMA study of the children of gay parents that was reported in the New York Times, saying, “They found that collectively, they are more well-adjusted, they are better students, all of that. They have been cherished and parented and “polished to a high shine”. I think there’s an incredible amount of pressure whenever you feel you’re a minority and you’re being watched that you have to be better than everybody else. I also think it’s interesting, as same-sex parents, you don’t have a baby by accident. You’re going into parenting with a real desire.”

I kind of liked that (Nic and Jules) each had a child biologically and that there were some genetic resemblances as well. It was kind of cool,” she explained, adding that she and Josh Hutcherson (who plays son Laser) subconsciously started matching each other’s energy.

Moore would be flattered if The Kids Are All Right garners Oscar attention, but wants people to see it more than anything. Moore has a few intriguing roles coming up, including the thriller Shelter with Jonathan Rhys Meyers, as the Virgin Mary in the comedy Elektra Luxx and opposite Steve Carrell in an untitled romantic comedy.

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

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

Happy third anniversary to Movie Dearest!
Special thanks to my contributors, the Men on Film — Chris Carpenter, Neil Cohen and James Jaeger — and to all our readers!

Here's to another great year,

- Kirby

Marriage is hard, especially when there’s a whole segment of the population working overtime to deny you the very right. It’s refreshing then to watch a film like The Kids Are All Right where the fact that the parents are two women is utterly commonplace. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore play Nic and Jules, an upper middle class, comfortable couple with a son and daughter conceived via artificial insemination. As the proud moms get ready to send Joni (Mia Wasikowska of Alice in Wonderland) off to college, their lives are turned upside-down. At the urging of her brother Laser (Josh Hutcherson), Joni contacts their donor father, who turns out to be Paul, a funky restaurateur (Mark Ruffalo) who’s ducked commitment his whole life. Faster than you can say, “Guess who’s coming to dinner,” Paul inserts himself into Nic and Jules’ lives in very different ways.

The Kids Are All Right moves past the gay marriage debate to the question of what comes next. Nic and Jules are great mothers, but there are cracks in their perfect family unit that the outsider brings to a head. Nic is a perfectionist and Jules is a dreamer who never seems to settle on a job very long. Their children mirror them, Joni being the over-achiever and Laser being the underachiever who’s drifting toward juvenile delinquency. Paul bonds with Jules in a not-so-appropriate way after he hires her to design his back yard, which leads to the biggest controversy in The Kids Are All Right. Out director Lisa Cholodenko and writer Stuart Blumberg (Keeping the Faith) have fun making a mess of Nic and Jules’ carefully constructed life, but the confrontations and revelations are dramatic and ring true, especially during a buoyant dinner party at Paul’s where it looks like everything is going to “be all right”, but turns out to be anything but.


The Kids Are All Right is a smart, well-written slice of modern life that explores real issues facing GLBT families and married couples in general. How do you get past a betrayal when you can’t really face the relationship issues that brought you there in the first place? The line, “So this is my fault?” is uttered, without an ounce of self-awareness. Do children of same sex couples miss the influence of an opposite sex parent? Do breadwinner spouses secretly want their less-motivated partners to fail in order to maintain control over them? Too much is left open at the end, and some of the plot points are hard to swallow, but Cholodenko infuses the film with a sometimes raunchy and freewheeling spirit that is very appealing, and her fantastic cast bare all in bringing it to life, especially Ruffalo, Moore and the gorgeous Yaya DaCosta (The Messenger).

While The Kids Are All Right isn’t the feel-good comedy it seems from the trailer, you’ll find it a thought-provoking look at modern parenting.

UPDATE: The Kids Are All Right 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.

Thanks to the generosity of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, one of our lucky readers will receive a free DVD of Atom Egoyan's sexy thriller Chloe starring Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson and Amanda Seyfried.

To enter, all you have to do is send an email with the subject line "Chloe on DVD" to the email address below. Please include the address you want the DVD shipped to along with your full name.


All information received will be kept confidential. Contest restricted to US residents only please. The winner will be chosen randomly and announced next Saturday, July 17.

The DVD and Blu-ray will be available July 13; click here to watch the trailer.

UPDATE: This contest is now closed; click here for the results.

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.