Seraphine: A Review Monday, Sep 7 2009 

art and movies thisgaudygildedstage 10:27 am

On Friday, PJ and I saw Seraphine, a movie about Seraphine Louis, a French painter who lived from 1864 to 1942. Here’s the trailer:

Louis painted in the “naive style” and was discovered by Wilhelm Uhde, who was one of the earliest collectors of works by Pablo Picasso and George Braque. Louis was a domestic servant for middle class families when Uhde first saw her one of her still-lifes in 1912. His patronage of her work was interrupted by World War I.  He fled the advancing German army and did not see Louis again until 1927. Uhde then worked to get Louis’s paintings exhibited, and in 1929 she began to see great success. But the Great Depression undercut her ability to sell her work, and in 1932 she was admitted to a mental hospital, where she spent the rest of her life.

Seraphine recounts Louis’s discovery by and subsequent relationship with Uhde. Yolande Moreau plays the title role. Not knowing anything about Louis before seeing this movie made watching Moreau’s performance more interesting, I think. Early in the film, we see that Seraphine isn’t like everyone else. At first, this just seems to be the stereotypical “artist’s temperament.” Later we realize that she’s suffered from mental issues all along. Moreau therefore has the difficult job of conveying to the audience Seraphine’s mental instability without making her seem totally crazy from the get go. I thought she did a great job of making us care about her character. She also gives us a great sense of Louis’s connection of painting as a religious experience.

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(500) Days of Summer: A Review Tuesday, Aug 18 2009 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 1:50 pm

Over the weekend, PJ and I saw (500) Days of Summer starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Gordon-Levitt plays Tom, a relatively recent college grad who couldn’t find work in an architectural firm so he’s working as a writer for a greeting card company. He believes in true love and thinks he’s found it when he meets Summer, played by Deschanel, one day at work. Here’s the trailer:

As the trailer states, this isn’t actually a “love story” in the traditional sense, which is what I really like about it. Director Marc Webb, who’s been a video director up until now, and the film’s writers attempt to experiment both with genre and form in this movie. We’re told from the beginning that our protagonists will not end up together. This movie, therefore, relates their meeting, dating, and relationship demise rather than their meeting, courtship, and marriage. I love anti-romances, so I like this element of the film a lot.

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Save Me: A Review Sunday, Aug 9 2009 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 2:58 pm

Last night, PJ and I watched Save Me on dvd. It stars Chad Allen as Mark, a drug addict who also happens to be gay. When he nearly overdoses (again), his family more or less commits him to an ex-gay ministry, Genesis House. They hope to cure two ills — his addiction and his “broken” sexuality — with one stone, or something like that.

Here’s the trailer:

Overall, I really liked this movie. It’s a good, heart-felt gay independent film. I think the way to think about it is that it’s a love story set in an ex-gay ministry. As such, it could have been cliched and boring. Instead, it tries its best to be respectful of Christianity (and even ex-gay ministries) while calling into question their motives and efficacy.

I really appreciated this attempt at respect. Its success lies mainly on the shoulders of Judith Light, who is wonderful as Gayle, the co-leader of the ministry. She gives a quiet, subtle performance for most of the film, slowly revealing her history, heartache, and motivation in trying to help homosexuals “recover” from their “brokenness.” She could have made this character a monster or a joke. Instead, Gayle ends up being the heart of the film, a character we can’t help but love even as we judge her actions, goals, and efforts.

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Julie & Julia: A Review Saturday, Aug 8 2009 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 5:58 pm

Last night PJ and I saw Nora Ephron’s new movie, Julie and Julia, starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell, a writer who decides to blog about making all of the recipes in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. Here’s the trailer:

I’ll jump right to the chase: I loved everything about this movie. As a kid I loved watching Julia Child’s PBS show, so I was really looking forward to seeing what Meryl Streep could do with this character. But the commercials looked a little cheesy, and based on that I thought that her accent as Child might be distracting and that she might be too over the top. I wasn’t sure she would pull it off.

But if I weren’t already a Meryl Streep queen, her performance in this movie would make me one! She is amazing in this role. I forgot that she is Meryl Streep after the first few seconds of her being on screen. She embodies Julia Child. She channels Julia Child. She IS Julia Child.

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Billy Was a Deaf Kid: A Review Monday, Aug 3 2009 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 9:34 pm

This past weekend, PJ and I finally got a chance to watch Billy Was a Deaf Kid, the first feature film by Burke and Rhett Lewis. Back in June, Rhett Lewis left a comment on my blog, asking if I’d like to see his movie. I wrote him back and said yes, so he sent me a screener. I’ve been meaning to watch it for the past month but hadn’t gotten a chance until Saturday.

Here’s the trailer:

Rhett Lewis stars in the picture as Archie, a guy in his late twenties who spends a day hanging out with his girlfriend, Sophie, played by Candyce Foster, and his brother, Billy, played by Zachary Christian. Billy is deaf, but Archie insists that he can hear with the aid of a toy radio.

I have to admit that one of the reasons I took a few weeks to watch the movie is that this is the first time I’ve reviewed a film knowing that the artists behind it would likely read the review. It’s easier to pretend that no one reads my blog and certainly that no one who isn’t already one of my friends reads it. Add to that the fact that the writer-director-star suggested I watch it, and I felt very self-conscious about watching and reviewing it.

I was especially worried that I would hate the film. Then what would I do? To date, I’ve mostly tried not to review movies that I really disliked, though a few have snuck onto the blog. After Lewis sent me a copy, I worried that not reviewing it would be the same as writing that I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to disappoint him after he had gone to all of the trouble of sending me a copy.

Fortunately, all of my worries were misplaced: I loved this movie and thought that it was one of the best movies I’ve seen in quite a while. It is charming, subtle, and beautiful to watch. It’s an excellent film.

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SotW: Were the World Mine Friday, Jun 12 2009 

movies and music and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 4:07 pm

Last night, PJ and I watched the movie Were the World Mine, a queer take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Tom Gustafson and starring Tanner Cohen as Timothy, a gay high school student who uses the recipe in Shakespeare’s comedy to whip up a love potion to make the boy of his dreams fall in love with him. I’ll use this post to offer a brief review of the film, but first here’s the video of the title song from the movie, which is my song of the week:

I really like how the film makers use Shakespeare’s play to create what also stands as a great queer-affirming song. And Cohen does a great job singing the song. I’ll post the lyrics and more about the movie after the break.

The movie is a nice gay fantasy. Timothy is a student at a private school. He’s constantly abused by the school’s jocks, the members of the championship rugby team. When the school’s English teacher (luminously portrayed by Twin Peaks‘s Wendy Robie) stages Dream for the senior play, Timothy and the jocks have to work together on it. (Timothy is cast as Puck.)

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Baghead: A Review Saturday, May 30 2009 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 6:05 pm

Earlier this week, PJ and I watched Baghead on DVD. Baghead is about four unemployed (and unsuccessful) actors who, after seeing an underground director’s sub-par work, decide that they can write and star in their own movie with at least as much success as the bad director seems to be enjoying. To write the movie, they decide to go out to a remote cabin in the woods and do nothing else over a weekend. Here’s the trailer:

The only thing I had heard (from PJ) about the film before seeing it was that it was a mumblecore movie, a genre that I really like. I’ve previously blogged about two movies by Andrew Buljalski and three movies by Joe Swanberg.

Calling this movie “mumblecore,” however, doesn’t quite turn out to be true, but it’s certainly a good starting point for understanding how the film establishes certain generic expectations and then purposefully abandons those expectations.

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I’ve Loved You So Long: A Review Tuesday, May 12 2009 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 10:45 am

Recently, PJ and I watched I’ve Loved You So Long, a French movie starring Kristen Scott Thomas that we had wanted to see for the past several months. I thought that Scott Thomas was going to be a real contender for the Best Actress Oscar this year, but it turned out that she wasn’t. I just have to say up front: she was robbed!

Here’s the trailer:

Scott Thomas plays Juliette, a woman who has just been released from prison after serving a 15-year sentence for murdering her young son. With no where else to go, she moves in temporarily with her younger sister, who barely remembers her, since their parents pretended that Juliette didn’t exist once she was charged with the crime. The movie follows Juliette’s reintegration into society and explores the sisters’ relationship as they get to know one another for the first time as adults.

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Star Trek (2009): A Review Monday, May 11 2009 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 9:53 am

Over the weekend, PJ and I saw the new Star Trek movie starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto. Here are two of the trailers for the film:

As everyone knows by now, this movie is a reboot of the Star Trek franchise. After showing us a couple of scenes from their respective childhoods, it relates how James T. Kirk and Spock first meet (at the Star Fleet Academy) and quickly get on the wrong side of each other. A major crisis to Vulcan, however, ends up uniting the two as they square off against Nero, a rogue Romulan played by Eric Bana who is out to destroy every planet that is part of Star Fleet.

My overall impression was that Star Trek is an entertaining movie but no where close to being the “best movie I’ve seen in the past two years,” as a friend of a friend intimated. The highlight of the film for me was Zachary Quinto as Spock. First off, Quinto is totally hot. (I strongly object to AfterElton ranking him a mere 94 in their Hot 100 list. He definitely deserves to be in the top 2 or 3!) But more importantly, Quinto is excellent as Spock. He strikes just the right note of logical control over seething subterranean emotions. There’s a great moment when his relationship with another character is revealed to Kirk; Quinto is perfect in his rapid switch from passion to total nonchalance. He’s completely great in this role. I can’t to see (hopefully) future depictions of him going through pon farr, the Vulcan mating urge!

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Three Quick Movie Reviews Saturday, May 2 2009 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 6:59 pm

I’m way behind in blogging, so to catch up a little I thought I would review three movies that PJ and I watched over the last week: Wendy and Lucy, The Examined Life, and Holding Trevor.

This past week was the Athens Film Festival. I only made it to two films, the first of which was Wendy and Lucy. Here’s the trailer:

This movie stars Michelle Williams as Wendy, a woman driving from Indiana to Alaska to find work in a cannery. Her companion on the trip is Lucy, her dog. Wendy and Lucy is a quiet little film that follows Wendy as she deals with a series of setbacks over a few days. The film is ultimately heartbreaking, not because anything overly dramatic happens (it doesn’t) but because we see the difficulty with which Wendy much make some very responsible choices. It’s a beautiful film, and Williams’ performance is great — she dissolves into this character — but I was left feeling a little too manipulated by the film’s plot. I found it hard to sympathize with the choices Wendy confronts, but I don’t want to go into any more detail than that. It’s a good film but not one I’d want to see over and over again.

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