Tag Archives: Gay/Queer

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CAPSULE: QUEENDOM (2023)

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Queendom is currently available for VOD purchase or rental.

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DIRECTED BY: Agniia Galdanova

FEATURING: Jenna Marvin

PLOT: A queer Russian performance artist fears for her freedom as she clashes with the law.

Still from Queendom (2023)

COMMENTS:  wrote that the responsibility of the artist is to “keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.” It’s difficult to imagine anyone embodying this principle more explicitly than “drag” artist Jenna (sometimes spelled “Gena”) Marvin.

I put “drag” in quotes, because, although her act is drag-inspired and drag-adjacent, that term hardly describes Marvin’s bizarre performance art. The locals who are discomfited by her appearance clearly recognize that she is challenging gender norms—she is frequently met with the Russian word for “fag”—but her costumes are so otherworldly and alien that they don’t meet a strict definition of cross-dressing. Tall, lithe (almost a ballerina body), and completely hairless, Jenna adorns herself with elaborate makeup and an assortment of bizarre sartorial choices including ruffs, duct tape, giant pipe cleaners, tentacle fingers, surreal latticed headgear, and so on. The only consistently feminine element are the high heels that accessorize every outlandish outfit.  She ventures out in public to, at best, stares, and at worst verbal abuse and harassment. She also makes short films for Tik Tok and Instagram—often set in amazing Siberian wilderness locations—where she takes out her frustrations by thrashing around in the mud in wild interpretative dances. Most dangerously, she attends protests against the Putin regime. In one, she dresses in a stilleto-heeled mockery of the Russian flag, which gets her thrown out of college; when the Ukrainian invasion comes, she walks down a Moscow street nearly nude wrapped in homemade barbed wire, which earns her a citation from the police and the threat of a court date.

With no narration and only a tiny bit of direct questioning from the documentarian, Queendom is almost entirely a fly-on-the-wall affair. It conveys enough information to keep you grounded in the developing story, although some knowledge of recent developments in Putin’s Russia is helpful. Anti-LGTBQ sentiment is encoded into the law there; faces of protestors or Jenna ‘s artistic collaborators are often blurred or carefully kept out of frame out of a sense of caution. But the social ostracism Jenna faces is perhaps even more telling. (“We have fear and subservience in our DNA,” Jenna’s friend tells her, referencing the country’s Soviet legacy.) Jenna’s contentious relationship with her grandfather—who, we gather, raised her—takes up a large portion of the story. Grandpa supports her, in his way, but does not pretend to understand either her sexuality or her creativity. His main concern is that, if she’s going to continue dressing as a freak, she better figure out how to make some money at it.

In the end—mild spoiler alert—Jenna does not go to prison or (worse) succumb to conscription, but is able to flee Russia to a European capital where she feels at home in a far more tolerant society. She has more courage than most of us, but does not, like Alexei Navalny (whose protest she attended dressed as the flag) have the ultimate courage to become a martyr. And who among us would? If I were in her heels, I would have fled far faster. She may have a duty to keep a margin of nonconformity alive—but she also has a responsibility to keep herself alive.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…more than a mere cabaret act, Marvin’s myriad outfits are a thrilling combination of theatricality, circus craft, avant-garde performance art, high camp, and something more otherworldly besides — as if H.R. Giger and Derek Jarman had a grotesque, unsettling baby… as well as the straight documentarian footage, there are surreal vignettes, Marvin creating visual art with her outfits and her emotions.”–John Nugent, Empire (contemporaneous)

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CAPSULE: ALTERED PERCEPTIONS (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Jorge Ameer

FEATURING: Oran Stainbrook, Matt Fling, Danny Fehsenfeld, Vincent Giovanni, ,

PLOT: Pandemic, violence, and sedition threaten to destroy the United States; a father and son embedded in opposing political organizations are its last hope.

COMMENTS: Like most movies, Altered Perceptions ends with the standard notice, “This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.” I’m going to go ahead and ignore that. With characters like slimy Senator Ted DeMarcos, bigoted Governor Ron San Diego, and an obvious George Santos look-alike as a spineless henchman (sportingly portrayed by director Jorge Ameer himself), it is clear just which politico goons the filmmaker is referencing. Indeed, the protagonist’s name—Alex Feretti, son of Dr. Feretti, a Whitehouse disease big-wig—echoes a certain Dr. A. Fauci of pandemic fame.

And what a pandemic! Sure, Covid was bad enough, but it seems that the vaccines and boosters for it trigger a nasty mental deterioration coupled with homi- and suicidal violence in many who received it, especially blacks and HOMOsexuals (emphasis mimicking DeMarcos’ singular pronunciation). This leads to chaos in the country, which a gallery of secessionist goons take advantage of, ultimately requesting that all Blacks and HOMOsexuals who have received the vaccine voluntarily check in to observation facilities in America’s South and Southwest. And oh yes, it affects the elderly, too (cue not-at-all-President-Biden being called on to step down); and what with the pre-eminent disease guy (aforementioned Doctor F̶a̶u̶c̶i̶ Feretti) being a prominent homosexual, it’s all looking very bad for various put-upon groups.

The paragraph above is ill-wrought, so as to better give you an idea of the narrative flow of Altered Perceptions—and I haven’t yet even touched upon the fully-frontally nude time traveler who is desperate to enlist the help of Alex Feretti, who is not only the son of the nationally known doctor but also the top aide to Senator DeMarcos. These shotgun blasts of social commentary, interspersed with interludes of well-intentioned guesses at what a gay relationship is like, crackle over the course of two hours as we watch society collapse from both macro- and micro-focus. And before I forget, there’s a strange plot from North Korea brewing as well.

Jorge Ameer kept my interest throughout, it is true. But much of that stemmed from the constant crinkling sound I heard as the plot unfurled. The screenwriter is a neuropsychologist, and while axes are ground, its never clear what they ultimately end up swung at. Ameer is obviously earnest, but his technical (and storytelling) proficiency is only a few notches above Tommy Wiseau’s. The acting ranges from C- to B+, with son Feretti scoring the former and father Feretti the latter, rendering their interactions one-sidedly stilted. And while I don’t hold clunky special effects against anyone, others do—and are so warned.

Still, I much prefer a film’s reach to exceed its grasp than vice versa, and while I could reel off any number of further quibbles, I’d feel petty doing so. Ameer takes a stab at making a Big Movie with Big Ideas under the restraints of a low budget. If you will allow the use of a crummy double-metaphor, Altered Perceptions is like a slice of Swiss cheese: there are plenty of holes; but also like a slice of Swiss cheese, it holds together just enough to make it a notable addition in the greater Sandwich of Cinema.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… this is a glitchy, channel-surfing trawl through recent American history, where the dialogue is stylised and repetitive, the characters dumbed down, and the narrative unbelievable to the point of surrealism. Yet this is part of the point: for here, as in a Neil Breen film, artifice is foregrounded, the medium is the message, and ultimately it is the viewer’s perceptions which are altered, as Ameer – who also plays one of DeMarcos’ aides – infects us all with the maddening irrationality of America’s contemporary culture wars.”–Anton Bitel, Projected Figures (contemporaneous)

Altered Perceptions [Blu-ray]

Altered Perceptions [Blu-ray]
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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: WILD TIGERS I HAVE KNOWN (2006)

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DIRECTED BY: Cam Archer

FEATURING: Malcolm Stumpf, Patrick White, Max Paradise,

PLOT: Logan, a junior high school student, explores his own identity and sexuality, developing a crush on a slightly older “bad boy”.

Still from "Wild Tigers I Have Known" (2006)

COMMENTS: The administrators are good at irrelevancy; the mother is good at volatility; the classmates are good at bigotry; and Logan is good at maintaining his solitude. He watches old movies, listens to late-night radio, and thinks. He thinks about death, he thinks about his peers, and lately he’s been thinking a good deal about Rodeo, a cynically charismatic, older schoolmate. Cam Archer’s feature debut, Wild Tigers I Have Known, is above all thoughtful. As it meditates on its protagonist, the narrative flow is meandering, with Logan approaching daily challenges and joys and starting to form an underlying identity.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this movie should have hovered closer to “barely endurable” for me. However, it did not. (Had this been from a French filmmaker, I blanch at the prospect of my tirades about entrenched boredom and hack-handed pretension.) The variation in its filming style helps. Shots of Logan’s quotidian activities—unpleasant locker-room encounters, sudden outbursts from his mother, the respite he finds in old media—are intercut with more abstract cinematic representations: of memories, sexual fantasies, and day-dreams. The gauzier surrealism of these interludes occasionally bleeds into the realism of this boy’s life, but never smothers it.

Mostly, though, Wild Tigers I Have Known succeeded in maintaining my active interest because of its charming leads, genuine tenderness, and fitting ambiguity. It is unclear just what path Logan embarks upon, appropriate for someone of his age. Is he gay? He claims otherwise. Is he something different? Maybe. His relationship with an older boy hovers somewhere between friend and lover (never made quite clear), and Logan’s self-awareness evolves as the background metaphor (beware the mountain lions) plays out like an iron fist in a velvet glove.

Perhaps more than anything else, the closing shot won me over. This genre is (understandingly) populated by movies with depressing overtones and even more depressing endings. Wild Tigers I Have Known has a good share of setbacks for Logan, and ambient cruelty. But there are lights in his life, and though he may not quite know who he is or what he’s after, his dreams and memories begin to merge, if only a little, by the end. Cam Archer explores a slice of life before leaving his character to develop away from our prying eyes. Logan bids us a fond farewell, waving gaily at the camera before traipsing over the crest of a hill.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A surreal, fragmented masturbatory fantasy whose vision of adolescence borrows elements from Elephant, Tarnation, Mysterious Skin and Donnie Darko…”—Stephen Holden, The New York Times (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by “Henner,” who called it a “Strangely told coming-of-age story” with “Strong imagery and lots of dreamy stream-of-consciousness scenes.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Wild Tigers I Have Known [Blu-ray]

Wild Tigers I Have Known [Blu-ray]
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CAPSULE: DICKS: THE MUSICAL (2023)

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Dicks: The Musical can be rented or purchased on-demand.

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Josh Sharp, Aaron Jackson, , Megan Mullally, Bowen Yang, Megan Thee Stallion

PLOT: Craig and Trevor, two alpha male salesmen, discover they are identical twins separated at birth, and scheme to get their eccentric parents back together to form a family.

Still from Dicks: the Musical (2023)

COMMENTS: If you’re offended by a portrayal of God as a foul-mouthed gay Asian who’s cool with incest, you’re Dicks: The Musical‘s target audience. That is to say, director Larry Charles is targeting you, the way Ron DeSantis targets a Disney princess drag queen elementary school read-along. With consent jokes, vagina jokes, on-screen gay sex jokes, and (lots of) jokes mocking straight white men, Dicks finds ways to shock in this unshockable age.

Dicks‘ desire to transgress is its strength and its weakness. There’s a place in the cinema universe for mid-budget midnight movies in the “I really shouldn’t be laughing at this “mode, and they don’t come around that often. (Rocky Horror made a lot of grandmas blush in its day; the 1999 South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut is probably the last major release with a similar traumatize-the-squares strategy.) On the other hand, it can be tiresome to watch a movie that’s this in-your-face all the time. At some point, my face got tired of having Dicks in it. I can’t say I laughed out loud too often, but I did gasp out loud at one grossout scene near the end (I suspect you’ll know which one I’m referring to when you see it). The funniest bit—perhaps tellingly—is a tongue-in-cheek post-credits sequence where Nathan Lane wonders how his showbiz career has come down to him spitting chewed-up lunch meat at puppets.

Despite not looking that much alike, stars Sharp and Johnson are indistinguishable, both to each other in-movie sense and in the function of their characters. They really are two men playing one character: well-endowed (or so they loudly sing) alpha male salesmen who score with the babes but are not-so-surprisingly repressed homosexuals. The real fun to be had here is in watching Mullaly and Lane as outrageously inappropriate parents who would (or at least, should) embarrass NYC’s most shameless narcissists.

Surprisingly, Mullaly is a great singer; equally surprisingly, given his long Broadway career, Lane is not (although he makes up for it with ace comedic timing). The songs are mostly amusing and perfectly serviceable, with Megan Thee Stallion’s “Out Alpha the Alpha” rap (which features her walking men on dog leashes) serving as the show-stopper. With its sneering Black-girl swagger, “Alpha” sounds just like a regular Megan Thee Stallion hit (I assume; can’t say I’ve ever heard a Megan Thee Stallion song).

The movie’s weird credentials come in the form of a pair of running-joke parental eccentricities: Lane’s pet “Sewer Boys,” two troll-like creatures he keeps in a cage and feeds masticated ham, and Mullaly’s detached vagina, which “fell off” one day (and walked away!) but which she now keeps in her handbag. We see it. It ain’t pretty. But Dicks ain’t about pretty, except for “that’s pretty gross.”

Dicks: the Musical is a strange project even for A24, which is now reportedly pivoting to more mainstream fare after the Oscar success of Everything Everywhere all at Once. This outrageous niche release buttresses their image as the studio willing to risk money on bizarre projects, but it’s ultimately a loss leader: the poorly attended theatrical release (a gross of a little over a million against its twelve-mil budget) will be followed by a much sooner than average appearance on VOD starting November 10.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a decidedly big swing and a genuinely weird take on the musical that has its moments, but also feels a bit stretched too thin given its concept. There are absolutely highs to this weird wonderland of genitals and Sewer Boys—especially with that third act—but for a comedy that needs to build and build to this idea justice, Dicks: The Musical too often relies on the same jokes told over and over again with a narrative that can’t continuously build the absurdity.”–Ross Bonaime, Collider (festival screening)

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CAPSULE: JAGGED MIND (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Kelley Kali

FEATURING: Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Shannon Woodward, Shein Mompremier

PLOT: A young art curator who is having mysterious blackouts and confused memories meets a potential girlfriend who seems too good to be true.

Still from Jagged Mind (2023)

COMMENTS: Billie is a stunning, smart, lithe second-generation Haitian with a chic job at an upscale art gallery. Her periodic blackouts and memory lapses—which she suspects may be a result of very early onset Alzheimer’s—must make her a pain to be around; that’s the only possible explanation as to how she could have any problem landing, and keeping, a high-class girlfriend. She does have minor but unexplained sores on her thigh, and she does tend to go into a fugue state whenever a voodoo priest accosts her while jogging, but other than that, she’s a prize. So thinks Alex, who comes on to her with a smooth, practiced approach, buying Billie a glass of expensive wine when she spots her alone at a Little Haiti bar—multiple times, because Billie never remembers their last meeting. Is Alex merely taking advantage of Billie’s neurological condition, or is something even more sinister going on?

The fractured first act grabs your attention for the first fifteen or twenty minutes of Jagged Mind‘s runtime, but unfortunately, the script doesn’t capitalize on this strong setup. Let’s face it, Groundhog Day was three decades ago, and the “time loop” plot device is now approaching the point of cliché. It takes some real inspiration to find a new angle on it, and Jagged Mind isn’t up to the challenge. One major problem is that the movie drops in its twist at an awkward juncture, about midway through, meaning there is no guesswork left for the final act. People hoping for a twisty psychological thriller will find that the mystery resolves too quickly, while the opening is too baffling for those expecting a popcorny horror-thriller. Furthermore, the mechanics of the plot device are illogical: for one thing, it’s not satisfactorily explained why Billie, specifically, must solve the paradox herself rather than, say, the apparently competent voodoo priest. It gets less satisfying the longer it goes on.

Having said that, while it’s not exactly good, Jagged Mind is nowhere near as bad as its 4.3 rating on IMDb might suggest. The script is weak, but the film is made quite competently, with the cinematography (capturing Miami’s neon glow and Little Haiti’s colorful charm), the editing, and Woodward’s villainous turn coming close to being standouts. The central relationship is presented believably, and it addresses serious issues. The sapphic element is sexy but not exploitative; lesbians should enjoy seeing themselves as central characters in a horror movie, but straights will not feel alienated (or titillated) in any way. There’s a lot of promise here that doesn’t get capitalized on, but Jagged Mind is a workmanlike entry that fits into its value-added free-on-Hulu slot: the kind of thing you can watch on an impulse and not feel cheated (which you might if you paid good money for it). It’s the kind of movie you might watch once, then catch again later because you’ve totally forgotten you saw it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Presenting a potentially fractious relationship by way of a fractured narrative, the story and technique of Jagged Mind are much more intriguing on a theoretical level than they are in practice. “–Mark Dujsik, Mark Reviews Movies (contemporaneous)