Movies!

Okay, so I stole the password to the blog from Emily, Webmaster Extraordinaire. Procrastination lends itself to a variety of awesome things, like YouTube and finding movies that are of interest to the LGBTQ community. For those with too much free time, or not enough motivation, searching through trailers to LGBTQ movies, and then watching the good ones is a really fun way of wasting 4-12 hours of your life. C.S. Lewis, of "Narnia" fame said that we read to "know that we are not alone." I think that movies can do the same thing, opening us up to new options, or ways of thinking, as well as providing us in the Community with role models, both historical and fictional.

So: The ones that I've found and enjoyed (and some I didn't, but which people say are awesome, so I include):

Milk: Milk tells the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person ever to be elected to public office, which he was in San Francisco in 1977. Harvey Milk was one of the first leaders of the gay movement, and was often called the Mayor of Castro Street. He was active in the gay community until his assassination, along with the mayor of San Francisco, by fellow supervisor Dan White. Milk won two Academy awards: Best Actor (Sean Penn, for his brilliant performance) and Best Screen play (written by Dustin Lance Black, who also writes for the show Big Love and looks a lot like our own Robert). Milk also stars Emile Hirsch, as activist Cleve Jones, James Franco, Diego Luna and Josh Brolin as Dan White. See also the documentary about Harvey Milk's life, available on hulu.com.

Brokeback Mountain: Brokeback Mountain won Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Soundtrack in the 2005 Academy Awards. BBM, as it is lovingly called on the internet, is about two cowboys in the 1960's who meet while herding sheep one summer on Brokeback Mountian. They fall in love, but duty and societal pressures separate them, although once every few years they meet up again in Wyoming. The film is sad and slow to start, but beautifully done. BBM stars Heath Ledger as the repressed Enis Del Mar, and Jake Gyllenhaal, as the rodeo riding Jack Twist. Also featured are Michelle Williams, who plays Enis' wife, and Anne Hathaway, who plays Jack's.

Okay, so those are two that won major awards. I'm sure that bigger movies will come to me, but for now, a brief survey of more independent films:

Get Real: Who here hasn't ever fallen for someone completeyl inappropriate? Get Real is about a very sexually active gay teen named Steven, who, while trolling the public lavatory for a trick, meets John Dixon, head of the school's track team, and the most popular boy in school. They begin a relationship, but John's insistance that he keep it a secret tears them apart, especially as Steven tries to come out. Get Real is cute, and is set in the UK, so expect boys in uniforms with lovely accents.

Beautiful Thing: More English boys, but this time they are in working class London. Jamie is the son of a single mother, and Ste comes from an abusive family. They are neighbors and one night, after Ste gets beaten up by his drunk father and brother, he crashes at Jamie's house. they realize that there is sexual chemistry, and begin a relationship. Beautiful Thing deals with Jamie's mother's acceptance of her son's relationship with another boy, and with Jamie and Ste's exploration of the gay scene.

Latter Days: Oh the mess that comes when you mix religion and sex. Tsk tsk. Aaron is a naive mormon missionary who goes to Los Angeles for his Mission. He meets Christian, an openly gay, party-animal man-whore, who is dared by his friends to seduce one of the missionaries. He is successful, which leads to a major crisis of faith for Aaron. He goes through rejection, de-gayification and other problems, and Christian realizes he's a bad person and has to changed to get the man of his dreams. Yes it's cliched, but it's cute, and you should watch it because it's happy, and the supporting characters sing, give us wise gobbits for living our lives, and cheeky one liners. Oh and it has Joseph Gordon-Levitt in it, and he's just that good looking.

Shelter: Zach is a talented artist from a poor neighborhood in Southern California (I think it's San Diego, but I can't remember). He sidelines his art school dreams to help his family (his alcoholic sister hasa 5 year old son). He meets and falls in love with his best friend's older brother Shaun. Expect surfing and Southern California machismo, and then lovely surfing/prolongued morning sex montage. Angst and happy endings. More cliches, but it's happy, so shut up.


I don't like sad movies, or ones where everyone dies because they can't be together (although Milk and BBM do end in death and misery, sort of) so I won't talk about them. If you want movies where everyone dies, watch West Side Story.

Juste une question d'amour (Just a Question of Love): French gay movie FTW? Hugely adorable. Laurent is an agriculture student in his last year at university. he's out to his friends, but not his homophobic family. He helps a fellow agricultural scientist, Cedric, with an experiment, and they fall in love. Cedric tries to rush Laurent out of the closet, their mothers get involved, and it becomes a little messy, but it all works itself out in the end.

There are other movies, but we've had 7 movies with male leads, so lets see some lesbians up in here.

D.E.B.S: A spoof on the whole action flick/boarding school romance genre, but with a lesbian twist. Amy is a top-secret operative in a paramilitary organization called DEBS. Lucy is the heiress of a major organized crime fighting ring. Fromt every movie you've ever seen, you know that they are bound to fall in love and live happily ever after. Still, there is drama, declarations of love at prom, and a few chases and bang-'em-up-shoot-'em-up scenes.

But I'm a Cheerleader: Poor Megan! One day, she's a cheerleader, has a boyfriend (and yeah, he's a bad kisser, but...) and a family. The next, she's been told she's a lesbian, and has been shipped off to a weird de-gayification place, where the attendees are taught how to conform to their gender stereotypes. She meets Graham, a daring and exciting lesbian who challenges Megan, and encourages her to discover who she really is for herself. Also features RuPaul as one of the ex-gay camp counselors.

IF these walls could talk 2: This HBO movie tells the stories of three sets of lesbians in 1961, 1972 and 2000 who all lived in the same house. The first couple are the deeply devoted older couple Abbey and Edith. Abbey dies, and her family comes to collect her things. My favorite section, set in 1972, features a group of hippie feminist college-age lesbians who share the house. We are especially interested in the character played by Michelle Williams, who meets and is immediately attracted to Chloe Sevigny's character, who dresses like a man, drives a motor-cycle, and is too butch to be accepted by Williams' friends. The final segment features Ellen Degeneres and Sharon Stone, who are a commited couple who wish to have a baby that is exclusively theirs. This segment contemplates how far we've come, and shows some of the strides the gay and lesbian community has made.

Imagine Me and You: At Rachel's wedding to her long-time boyfriend, Heck, she meets Luce, the florist. Rachel becomes infatuated with Luce, and their friendship grows into something more. Rachel's feelings are complicated by her feelings of obligation to Heck, who is adored by her family, and who she loves, although not as much as she loves Luce.

Gray Matters: Gray and Sam are best friends, perfect room-mates, dance partners, and everyone assumes they're the perfect couple. Only hitch is that they're brother and sister. In order to avoid confusion, they decide to search for each other's perfect mate. When Sam finds Charlie, a beautiful, sexy, smart woman, Gray is over-joyed, but one drunken night in Las Vegas, Gray and Charlie kiss, sending Gray into a confusing search for her sexual identity. Can the dynamic duo survive? (yeah, we're working it here in Arielle's house of fun!)

Loving Annabelle: Annabelle is a rambunctious teenager, new to the exclusive Catholic girls school where she meets Simone Bradley, her dorm head and English teacher. Annabelle's rebellious ways frighten Simone, but she is drawn to Annabelle's magnetism and passion. I hear this is a beautiful movie, and it comes recommended, but let me know what you think...

The Truth about Jane: Usually, in movies, parents are either perfectly accepting from the beginning, or they are the bad guy. Seldom are parents seen as being complicated or having any kind of depth. In the Truth about Jane, Jane is a 15 year old girl who is realizing her sexuality, and beginning to come out. Her mother, played by Stockard Channing, has gay male friends, but is surprisingly harsh and unaccepting of her daughter's sexuality. Surprisingly, her father is much more accepting, which goes against the general stereotype that mothers are understanding and fathers are harsh with their homosexual offspring.

Transgendered and Transsexual people are not entirely accepted in our society yet, so there are not that many movies that portray transexuals in a positive way. Nonetheless, I have included two that I enjoyed.

Transamerica: Felicity Huffman stars as Bree, a Female-to-Male transsexual who is just about to go under the knife for sexual re-assignment surgery. One week before her scheduled surgery, she gets a phone call from a boy who says he is her son, from a one night stand in college with Bree's college girlfriend. Bree goes from LA to New York to get the kid, intending to dump him off in Indiana, where he came from, but circumstances intervened, and Bree meets many fascinating people on the way home.

Beautiful Boxer: If one were to walk down the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, you'll see transsexuals and cross-dressers and every other kind of gender and sexual expression. these "in-between people" are called Khathouies, and Bangkok has become a hot-spot for sexual reassignment surgery. Beautiful Boxer tells the true story of Parinya Charoenphol, or Nong Toom, a young boy from Chiang Mai, in the north, who feels a desperate need to become a woman. To support his family and to raise money for his surgery, he becomes a professional muai Thai kick-boxer. His coach learns that Nong Toom is a transsexual, and encourages him to wear make-up and take hormones. Nong Toom gains international fame, but at what price? It's mostly in Thai, but most versions I've found have English subtitles, and the translation isn't awful.

Happy Watching!!!

--Arielle, Movie Freak, and GSA Member