15 Years (15 Shana)

If men rolled out of bed looking like this, we’d all be gay.

(2019) LGBT Drama (Breaking Glass) Oded Leopold, Udi Persi, Ruti Asarsai, Dan Mor, Tamir Ginsburg, Lint Balaban, Ofek Aharony, Or Asher, Keren Tzur. Directed by Yuval Hadadi

 

Reaching middle age can be a terrifying proposition. Our entire worldview has to change. No longer are we young and indestructible; we are reaching a point in our lives where we have to take stock and prepare for the future rather than live in the moment. Even though 40 isn’t what it used to be, it still has great psychological significance for most of us.

Yoav (Leopold) has reached and surpassed that milestone. In fact, he’s 42 and outwardly, at least, he seems to have things figured out. A successful architect with a beautiful apartment in Tel Aviv that he shares with his partner of 15 years, Dan (Persi) who is a lawyer. They lack for nothing. They are surrounded by friends. Life is sweet indeed.

Yoav’s best friend since childhood is Alma (Asarsai) who has continued that relationship into adulthood. She is an artist and at the opening of a gallery show for her art, she makes the surprise announcement that she is pregnant. The news floors Yoav; as her best friend, he is offended that he wasn’t the first to know.

Even worse from Yoav’s point of view is that Dan is now thinking of fatherhood for himself and that is something Yoav emphatically doesn’t want. His mother has been dead for a while and his father is dying in a nursing home which Yoav refuses to visit; when on the phone with a representative there, he coldly tells them “Then let him die without seeing me.” That’s just the beginning of a downward spiral for Yoav who begins to resent Alma for her life change and Dan as well for wanting one. Yoav is pushing the two people closest to him away as hard as he can; when his firm loses an important project, the stress is clearly beginning to show. But what’s behind Yoav’s sudden change into jerkhood?

Well, to be honest, we never really find out for sure. Hadadi, who also wrote the film, drops cryptic hints; clearly his relationship with his parents is strained – one wonders if they never accepted their son’s sexuality, but Yoav is convinced he’d make a lousy father whereas Dan is just as sure that Yoav would make an excellent dad.

Yoav is at the center of the film and his relationships with Dan and Alma are the movie’s heart; the relationships are thankfully believable; both Alma and Dan are legitimately hurt by Yoav’s actions which he is unable to adequately explain. When questioned about why he’s behaving this way during a crucial scene, he keeps on repeating petulantly “I don’t know!” which gets tedious but then, I think that’s the point.

Hadadi does a great job to create a character who is unpleasant and barely likable; we get occasional glimpses of a different side to Yoav but mainly we begin to get tired of the man’s self-centered narcissism. Yoav has become so in tune with his own needs that he has ceased giving any thought to anyone else’s. He resents Alma because the change in her life is going to affect him. He resents Dan because he has a life goal that is different than his own. We are left to suss out the reasons for the behavior but at a certain point, we just don’t care. A dick is a dick is a dick, as they say.

The relationship between Dan and Yoav is actually pretty realistic; we don’t often get representations of successful gay men in long-term relationships and even though the one depicted here is crumbling, it certainly doesn’t reflect badly on Dan who is bewildered at his love’s behavior and beyond hurt. Eventually the two split up but it is clear that Dan is very much in love with Yoav. Whether Yoav is in love with anyone besides Yoav is a revelation I’ll save for your viewing – can’t leave too many spoilers, right?

Kudos to Hadadi for portraying gay men with depth and even, in the case of Dan, compassion. I also very much admire that Hadadi never wastes a moment; each scene portrays what it needs to and the n Hadadi moves on to the next one. While there might be a couple of sex scenes that may have been a little bit extraneous, Hadadi also reminds us that not every sexual encounter goes the same way. There are different rhythms, different contexts.

I think if we saw a bit more of what Dan saw in Yoav in the first place the movie would have been more powerful. Nonetheless, this is one of the most powerful pieces of LGBT cinema that I’ve seen in quite a while and it is well worth seeking out if you enjoy the genre or better still, if you just like damn good movies.

REASONS TO SEE: Hadadi wastes no time; every scene is efficiently composed and only precisely as long as they need to be.
REASONS TO AVOID: Yoav is so unlikable that after awhile audiences may not be able to identify with him.
FAMILY VALUES: There is sexuality and some profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film has to date won three Best Narrative Feature awards at three different Film Festivals, including the Chicago Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, Vudu
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/28/20: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet, Metacritic: No score yet
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Junebug
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: Until the Birds Return

F(l)ag Football

A band of brothers.

(2015) Sports Documentary (Abramorama) Cyd Ziegler, Wade Davis, Jared Garduno, Drew Boulton, Tall Paul, Christophe Faubert, Joey Jacinto, Roc, Shockey, Shawn Rea, Molly Lenore, Brenton Metzler, Jeremiah Phipps, Jim Buzinski, John, Alon, Brian, Duffy, Juan Gibbons, Neil Giuliano. Directed by Seth Greenfield

 

There is a misconception of gay men that they are limpwristed and effeminate who are more into figure skating than football. The truth is that there are all sorts of gay men; some are indeed more in touch with their feminine side but there are others who are just as macho as Mike Ditka.

The National Gay Flag Football League grew out of pick-up games that gay men put together to play football. Many found playing football in any sort of competitive manner to be uncomfortable for them while others wanted to use it as a means of meeting new people with similar interests. Something unexpected happened however; the teams of predominantly gay players began to bond. Like, really bond as brothers. Starting in New York City, the idea of gay leagues began to catch on in cities around the country. Eventually, the National Gay Flag Football League was born.

A competitive tournament of gay teams around the country culminating in a championship game was the brainchild of sportswriter Cyd Ziegler, himself an ultra-competitive football player. His team, the New York Warriors, became the dominant team winning three Gay Bowl championships in a row. In Gay Bowl IX however, they were dethroned by the Los Angeles Motion led by – Cyd Ziegler who had moved out to the City of Angels.

The Warriors, led by team captain Wade Davis (a former NFL player) were chomping at the bit to regain the title that they’d lost. The Motion, sporting two of the best quarterbacks in the league in reigning MVP Drew Boulton and Christophe Faubert, were just as motivated to repeat. The dark horse was the Gay Bowl X hosts the Phoenix Hellraisers, led by quarterback Joey Jacinto who has a cannon for an arm and Jared Garduno, the team’s heart and soul.

The documentary follows the three teams as they prepare for the weekend event. We hear from the players, many of whom found the acceptance here that they couldn’t find in the gay bar and club scene. As the movie goes on some of the players talk openly about their coming out and some of those stories are heartbreaking. Davis tells us that his extremely religious mother, whom he had been especially close to as a child, essentially washed her hands of him. Los Angeles captain Brenton Metzler talks humorously of how his sister, a lesbian wishing to deflect her parents attention away from herself, outed him against his wishes.

There are a lot of clichés about football, how it builds character and forges bonds not unlike those forged by soldiers. One of the movie’s chief successes that as the movie goes on we begin to realize that these aren’t just gay men; they’re men period. Just like straight men. No difference whatsoever. Well, other than the fact that they prefer men as romantic and sexual partners.

A word about the latter; the tagline for the film “A documentary about coming out…and scoring” does a disservice to the movie. Throughout the film the players make it clear that there is nothing sexual for them about playing the game; it’s all about the competition and the game itself. Their minds aren’t going to “His tush sure looks good in those jeans” for the most part. The sexual innuendo of the tag line contradicts this stand and reinforces the perception that gay men have no control of their sexuality. Well, no more than straight men do anyway. Come to think of it, the film’s title doesn’t do its message any favors either. These men are as tough as nails regardless of their sexuality but I suppose that since the point is trying to change perceptions of gay men that to a certain extent their sexuality has to be part of the equation but still it feels like they could have been a bit more sensitive to the film’s overall message that these are talented, hard-working and masculine football players who happen to be gay. Their sexuality is part of who they are but it isn’t the only thing that defines them.

The movie spends an inordinate time at player practices to the point of tedium. The cumulative effect of this is that when the actual games are played, it becomes anticlimactic to the viewer. Other than the actual championship game, little time is spent on any of the other games that go on in the tournament (the winning team and runner-up will have played seven games in the course of three days which is grueling for any kind of athlete) other than brief snippets and scores. We don’t really see the results of all the practicing until that championship game and even then we don’t really get a sense of the teamwork that goes on.

I’m not sure that this is essential viewing from a cinematic standpoint but from a social standpoint this film is a teaching moment, serving to humanize gay men and put faces on them that aren’t necessarily RuPaul’s (although some of the Phoenix players don dresses to put on a charity fundraiser drag show). Anything that is going to help break down stereotypes is a winner in my book.

REASONS TO GO: Your perception of what gay men are might get changed. The outing stories are heartbreaking in places.
REASONS TO STAY: Far too much time is spent observing practices.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of profanity and some sports violence..
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The most recent Gay Bowl was played in Washington DC. The 2017 edition will be played in Boston.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/20/17: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Freedom to Marry
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Hearing is Believing

Color Me Kubrick

John Malkovich doesn’t think much of the reviews.

(2005) Dramedy (Magnolia) John Malkovich, Honor Blackman, Richard E. Grant, Bryan Dick, Burn Gorman, Leslie Phillips, John Leyton, James Dreyfus, Marisa Berenson, William Hootkins, Ayesha Dharker, James Faulkner, Jim Davidson, Henry Goodman, Rebecca Front. Directed by Brian W. Cook

 

Once upon a time there was a con man named Alan Conway (ironically enough) who made his way through London by convincing people he was the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. Although looking nothing at all like him, he managed to pass himself off to a number of people with a combination of charm and brazenness until he was discovered.

Conway (Malkovich) uses his assumed identity for everything from drinks to sexual encounters with young men. He makes vague promises about roles in movies in both cast and crew; he gets in tight with a renowned stage artist named Lee Pratt (Davidson) on the promise of developing a show in Vegas for him. At last the New York Times theater critic Frank Rich (Hootkins) helps expose Conway’s ruse.

While the events are real enough, Cook and writer Anthony Frewin took enough liberties with the story to make the film, as they describe it, true-ish. The real Kubrick became aware of Conway but was helpless to do anything about it as his victims refused to press charges out of sheer embarrassment.

This is Malkovich’s film and he turns in a performance that is equal to any of his best-known works. He is obviously having a good time with the character who in turn was having a good time with his deception. One gets the sense that Conway was amazed at how taken in people were by his shenanigans and got a big kick out of it. Malkovich is also getting a big kick out of it and that not only contributes to the enjoyment of the movie but is almost entirely the raison d’être for the film.

Unfortunately, there’s a little too much of Conway doing his thing and it’s often the same thing. There were a lot of scenes that seemed unnecessarily repetitious and I found my attention wandering at a few points in the movie, never a good sign. Fortunately, they had Malkovich to regain it and over and over again he did just that.

Personally I would have liked to have seen more of the aftermath of his doings; basically they’re treated as harmless and amusing by the filmmakers and I suspect they were anything but. We also get no sense of what Kubrick thought of all this, whether he was amused, annoyed or angry – all we know is that he wanted it to stop.

This is certainly worth checking out if for no other reason than to watch Malkovich at his very best. The movie overall is good fun, mostly harmless but certainly there’s a devilish edge to it that makes you feel wicked for enjoying it quite so much. It’s not quite a guilty pleasure because it’s actually a pretty good film – but you feel guilty for taking pleasure in watching it just the same.

WHY RENT THIS: A deliciously arch and twisted performance by Malkovich.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Lost my interest in places, a big no-no.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s some sexuality here.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Both the director and writer of the film worked with the real Stanley Kubrick on several of his films near the end of his career.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: Nothing really but footage of the real Alan Conway turns up on the making-of featurette which gives you a little more reason to watch it.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $497,009 on an unreported production budget; it’s unlikely the movie turned much of a profit if any at all.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Catch Me If You Can

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: Johnny English Reborn