Posts tagged gay
“Young Adult” Is So Dark, It’s Black
Dec 23rd
“So Dark, It’s Black”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Young Adult, because of the successes this year of Bad Teacher and Horrible Bosses, could have been called Bad Graduate or Horrible Alumna.
Instead, it is called Young Adult, because the protagonist, Mavis Gary, is the ghostwriter of a series of young-adult novels, but also because even though she is 37, she acts as if she were still in high school, where she was the popular prom queen.
The film was directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, who previously worked together on the 2007 Juno, for which Cody won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and Mavis in this film has even been referred to as a grown-up Juno.
Charlize Theron plays Mavis, and when the movie opens, she is living unhappily in Minneapolis, where she learns that the wife of her high-school sweetheart, Buddy Slade, has just recently had a baby.
So, Mavis says, “It’s like he’s a hostage,” and she drives back to her hometown of Mercury, Minnesota, where she intends to win Buddy back, rescue him, or whatever other euphemism she can think of for stealing Buddy away from his wife and newborn baby.
However, before Mavis can meet Buddy for an “innocent drink,” she encounters Matt Freehauf, whom she doesn’t remember from high school even though their lockers were right next to each other.
Matt was and still is a geek, he is crippled, and then Mavis remembers that he is the “hate-crime guy,” the boy from their high-school days who was brutally attacked and crippled by some jocks for being gay, even though Matt wasn’t gay.
Mavis tells Matt that she is back in town to get Buddy back, because they were meant to be together, and Matt tells Mavis what she already knows, that Buddy is married and his wife just had a baby.
Matt lives with his sister, has a distillery in his garage, and Mavis keeps calling on Matt for alcoholic friendship when her plans to steal Buddy away from his wife keep not working out, especially when Mavis makes a scene at the baby’s naming ceremony.
Mavis believes that most people in Mercury seem to be so happy with so little, and yet it is difficult for her to be happy.
Young Adult is a comedy, but it is so dark, it is black humor.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Beginners” Gimmickers
Jul 7th
“Gimmickers”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
BEGINNERS is one of those movies whose trailer is intriguing and makes you want to see it, but then after you have seen it, you wish you hadn’t and conclude that it was a waste of time and money.
The reason isn’t just that the trailer gives away the whole story, even though it does, but the story still looks interesting, and it is based on the life of the writer and director, Mike Mills.
No, the reason is that the story is made gimmicky by the way it is told, the chronology is chopped up arbitrarily, and I lost interest in it about halfway through with all the back and forth and further back and further forth.
The story is about a man named Oliver Fields, who is played by Ewan McGregor. We see him cleaning out his father’s house after his father has died, and he says to a dog there, “Arthur, you’re coming with me now.”
The dog is a Jack Russell terrier, and we see subtitles that represent the cute thoughts of Arthur if he could talk and if he could understand what Oliver is saying to him.
We also see what are supposed to be clever graphic images from old advertisements as Oliver comments in voice-over narration about such topics as love, happiness, and homosexuality in society.
You see, Oliver’s father, who is named Hal and played by Christopher Plummer, announced six months after his wife and Oliver’s mother died that he was gay. And then four years after that, Hal died at 75 from cancer.
As if that weren’t enough turmoil in Oliver’s life, he meets a woman named Anna at a costume party, who is played by Melanie Laurent.
So, now we see scenes of the developing relationship between Oliver and Anna, flashbacks to scenes between Oliver and Hal, and even further-back flashbacks to scenes of Oliver as a young boy with his mother.
Some parallelisms are shown between scenes in the present and scenes in the past, but you might find yourself asking as I did, “What’s the story?”
Then, more like “What’s the point?”
In other words, what we have is a very simple story made intentionally and unnecessarily complicated with gimmicky visual comments.
BEGINNERS should have been called GIMMICKERS and it would have been more true to form.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Beginners – Movie Trailer
Jul 7th
Official Website
Movie Review
The film is structured as a series of interconnected flashbacks. Following the death of his father Hal, Oliver reflects on his relationship with him following the death of Oliver’s mother Georgia. Shortly after her death Hal came out as gay to his son and began exploring that aspect of his life. Hal finds a boyfriend, Andy, and surrounds himself with a circle of gay friends. Hal is then diagnosed with terminal cancer. Following an extended illness during which Oliver helps care for him, Hal dies. Several months after Hal’s death, Oliver meets Anna, a French actress, at a party and they begin a relationship. Oliver’s unresolved emotions around his father’s death and his parents’ life together, along with Anna’s conflicted feelings about her emotionally unstable father, initially interfere with their relationship but they resolve to stay together.