All the Rage (1997

All the Rage (1997)

 

Director: Roland Tec
Writers: Roland Tec (play), Roland Tec (screenplay)
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Language: English
Duration: 105 min
Year: 1997

 

Stars: John-Michael Lander, David Vincent and Jay Corcoran

 

 

All the Rage had its world premiere at the Castro Theatre during the San Francisco International Film Festival of 1997 after which it was released theatrically in the U.S. by Jour de Fete, a division of Rialto Pictures. In 2001, Strand Releasing brought the film out on DVD and in 2003, it was released internationally by Media Luna, GHB.

Hailed by Los Angeles Times film critic Kevin Thomas as "One of the sharpest, sexiest and most amusing satires of gay life and values ever filmed," it widely considered a hallmark of the Queer Independent Film movement of the late 1990s. This unique aspect of the film was highlighted in one of its first reviews by Dennis Harvey, writing about the film for Variety.

The film features music by a number of indie artists, including Merle Perkins, who recorded the song "Military Man".

 

 

Summary

What happens when a man looking for the perfect body finds that he loves someone for his mind? Christopher (John-Michael Lander) is a gay lawyer who's young, good-looking, successful, and happily out of the closet. However, he's not good with long-term relationships: he tends to be more attracted to men with good looks rather than substance, and he hops from one relationship to another with little thought of a lasting love affair.

One evening, Christopher meets Stewart (David Vincent) at a party, and to his surprise he's very much attracted. Stewart is a book editor who's witty, intelligent, and soft-spoken; he's also a bit overweight and no pin-up boy.

But when Christopher asks him out, he's amazed to discover that Stewart turns him down; it seems that Stewart is looking for someone sincere, and Christopher hardly seems to qualify. In time, though, Christopher convinces Stewart to give him a chance, and they become involved. However, old habits die hard, and Christopher manages to put a stake through the heart of their romance thanks to a one-night-stand with Stewart's hunky roommate. All the Rage was produced, written, directed and scored by Roland Tec, who adapted the script from his play A Better Boy. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide.

Says Peter Panthy

What to say about this film: that 12 years is nothing? It premiered in 1997 and yet it seems that nothing has changed so much time ... We have several prototypes of gay men in an age when "supposed" one is more emotional stability to form a couple.

It's beautiful as a man who jumps at hand. The intellectual who takes the time to know the other and fall in love, who realizes he was becoming increasingly isolated and would like to have a couple .. and a couple who already has long board and start to miss the novelty of sex, ... The hero has risen to more gay stereotypes, handsome, athletic and successful, but when it is shaken by love, can not sustain the commitment is stronger for it "temptation of sex without love" but later repents because they realize what is the difference of loving someone, and the only sleep with someone.

An interesting movie to reflect, and as valid today as yesterday.

 

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Pretty Boy (1993)

Pretty Boy (1993)

Smukke dreng (original title)

Director: Carsten Sonder
Writer: Carsten Sonder
Genre: Drama
Country: Denmark
Language: Danish ( with enlish subtitle)
Duration: 86 min
Year: 1993

Stars: Christian Tafdrup, Dicte, Rami Nathan Sverdlin

Author: WaxBellaAmours from The Great Northwest ( IMDB)

The Danish "Pretty Boy", being made available on DVD for the first time 12 years after it's original release, tells the story of another disillusioned modern teenage youth, this time a 13-year-old male hustler roaming the nocturnal streets of Copenhagen. Supposedly fleeing a dysfunctional home life and spending his nights hoping beds to find a place to stay, Nick (Christian Tadfurp) lives a transient and grimly solitary lifestyle as he tries to survive amidst the cold and unwelcoming world he's entered into.

Clearly yearning for a father figure, Nick grows smitten with one of his middle-age suitors, the carefully closeted Ralph (Stig Hoffmeyer), an Astronomist who shares Nick's fascination with the stars. Ralph may be his possible savior, but when he tremulously kicks him out when his girlfriend returns, Nick soon views the cowardly Ralph with a heartbroken contempt.

With nowhere else to turn, he boards with pawn-shop/antiques store owner Hartvig (Bent Hasselmen) in exchange for help with the business (rather than the usual sexual favors), which Nick supremely fulfills.

However, this environment soon gets him involved with an organized gang of adolescent hoodlums and hustlers that frequent Harvig's shop. This nasty Oliver Twist-esquire group make their living by seducing idiosyncratic middle age males with a taste for young blood only to rob them later, taking revenge on the sleazy "solicitors" who won't pay up and selling other stolen items to Harvig. Having brushed with them previously at the sleazy train station where he frequently hangs out, Nick soon moves in with the surrogate brood, led by the ruthless Rene (Danish pop star Benedicte W. Madsen), where their nightly escapades give Nick a taste of the nasty, nihilistic rush he's previously only skimmed upon.

Things start to get complicated when he falls for Rene, an obvious female guised as a boy who leads a rather normal life "off-duty", a complicated romance that becomes more problematic when Nick's old world starts intruding in... And that's all of this bizarre plot that I really need to give away.

The fundamental problem with "Pretty Boy" is not so much it's occasional over-the-top grotesqurie, it's unavoidably creepy subject or an odd stylistic resemblance to "Diva", but rather it's complete lack of a grip on a "story" that becomes more complicated and rushed then it needs to be, only feeling like another poison-penned rendering of modern-day Copenhagen in a disjunct and very confused form.

To be sure, "Pretty Boy" certainly jolts you awake at the begging, with one remarkably brutal act of casual violence as we see a bespectacled, late-30-ish waif of a man in a train stop bathroom get a relentless, out-of-nowhere beat down by Rene's gang of teenage hoodlums in front of the oblivious Nick, and it's a definite, if somewhat repellent, grabber to start off the fittingly bleak tale.

The rest of "Pretty Boy", however, is perpetually marred by the filmmakers complete indecisiveness (or, to be more frank, inattention) to his character's inner qualities and outward plight (not only Nick's bewildering, shape-shifting sexual preferences), as well as seeming awfully confused where to take an already over-wrought script that's ultimately just a packed trip lacking a destination.

Obviously, a film that dares to mingle in a world of child prostitution and teenage crime is going into areas that even most of the gutsiest filmmakers would fearfully avoid, and perhaps it's only natural that director Carsten Sonder feels a little too burdened to be able to propel the story past those basic themes or give any perspective. It certainly garnered some immediate controversy (though more so for some reportedly graphic nude scenes of young star Tadfurp (who admittedly looks much older), edited from the DVD cut), but that doesn't help mask the film's lack of a central identity, despite copious stories to tell. What is it, a sordid and occasionally bizarre coming-of-age story, a scathing portrayal of callous youthful violence and hedonism or, especially in the last act, a plot-heavy operatic tragedy? In short, all and none at the same time.

Ultimately, the film lives and dies with the actors, and that's where it ultimately fails. It's not so much the performers fault; the movie never gives them room to breathe, rarely letting them rise above a remote, somewhat sour blandness.

Tadfurp makes a decent debut as the title character, an earnest if somewhat uninspiring performer, but the movie never really decides on his Nick: is he just a under-nurtured, well-meaning kid that naively gets swept into a life of perpetual debauchery and petty crime in search of a family, or another aloof burnout with some serious underlying pshycological issues? The movie seems to toss both traits on the table but neither even start to gel; serious parts of his life are left fragmented and hopelessly vague, most notably the mutual obsession with Ralph (whose courtship barely plays throughout the movie except to give the story it's expectedly melodramatic finale) as well as his supposedly terrible home life (which actually seems to be a rather stable single-parent home, despite his mother's blithe promiscuity. Clearly there's tension underneath that the movie barely explores.)

Although most of the other actors are given little to do (and their portrayals are pretty much geared only towards sufficiency and nothing more), the only other supposedly pivotal perf is Madsen as the gender-bending Rene, which the movie foolishly tries to pass off the conspicuously feminine star as a cross-dresser who people would actually believe as a boy. Nor do they ever explore if this "practice" is strictly business or a dominant psychological obsession, as it seems to stress nothing about Nick's bizarre sexuality. Although Madsen initially seems slickly confident in a role full of crackling, malevolent potential, Sonder eventually loses interest in her, as Rene becomes another bland plot catalyst by the time she strikes up a romance with Nick, haplessly lacking chemistry with him or the rest of this odd and fatally unfocused misfire.

 

 

 

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Steam (2009)

Director: Eldar Rapaport
Writer:Eldar Rapaport (written by)
Genre: Short movie
Country: USA
Duration: 15 min

Stars: Amy Clites, Scott Hislop and Julien Zeitouni

 

Short about two men (Julien Zeitouni and Scott Hislop) alone in a steam room. They have oral sex and then one gets up to leave. All of the sudden he can;t find a door. They both search and NEITHER one can find one. They can't figure out what's gone wrong and start to accuse each other. However one of them slowly realizes who they are and why they are there.

It starts off as a gay sex short and ends up like a Twilight Zone episode! What the sex has to do with anything I'm not sure but it's tastefully done. The final revelation should have been obvious but I didn't see it coming. The acting by Hislop and Zeitouni is good and is helped by an interesting soundtrack (you'll understand what I mean if you see the movie). Worth catching.

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Wrecked (I) (2009)

Wrecked (I) (2009)

Directors: Bernard Shumanski, Harry Shumanski 
Writers: Harry Shumanski, Bernard Shumanski 
Genre: Drama 
Country: USA 
Language: English Year: 2009 Duration: 73 min



Stars: Forth Richards, Benji Crisnis and Theo Montgomery

Ryan (Forth Richards, I think, since much of the cast may be working under pseudonym) is a young wannabe actor. He has landed his first part in a play, but his happiness is short-lived as former boyfriend Daniel (Benji Crisnis, I think) shows up. Daniel is a drug addict, but Ryan takes him in (again) anyway, hoping to change him since he won't change himself. Daniel immediately goes back to his old habits, including introducing Taylor (no idea who played him) into the relationship. Ryan's life begins to spiral downward, and the film ends with a scene you could predict before you even popped the disc in the DVD player.

The three leads get nude, often. The Shumanski brothers wallow in Ryan's filthy world; you can almost smell the stale cigarette butts and warm wine in his squalid little house. However, the Shumanskis let their willing cast down. Some of the scenes are obviously improvised, and watching the young cast try to smoke and talk like adults before shedding their underwear is embarrassing to sit through. I began to mistake Ryan's constant naivete for mild mental retardation as Daniel goes through his drug addict and casual sex routine and elicits only tsk-ing and rolled eyes. The direction is sloppy (you can spot a cameraman in a mirror in one scene, and dates on cell phones never jibe), the editing is fair, and the music makes no impression whatsoever. The Shumanskis pad the film with unnecessary shots of the dudes waking up, getting their bearings, and dressing.

Richards plays Ryan like a drag queen channeling Bette Davis. He smokes too much, and swirls his hands, but shows no real emotion beyond mild contempt. I didn't care about him at all. Ryan demands Daniel get a job, yet we never see what Ryan does for a living. Crisnis is bland, never offering any reason why Ryan would fall for Daniel over and over again, despite getting hurt every time.

The only scenes that almost work are Ryan's play rehearsals. The play, as presented to the viewer, is a disaster. The director obviously wants to take Ryan to bed, his chain smoking assistant hates the world, and one of his co-stars is one of those Brando wannabes who must stretch and do annoying preparation for this piece of garbage he is "starring" in. Trust me, I have a theater background, and a lot of this is dead-on. Plus, these scenes provide a break from all the cocaine snorting and gay sex.

"Wrecked" joins the sad list of sexually explicit films that fail because of the script and direction, and not the sex. Move over, "9 Songs," "Shortbus," and almost everything Larry Clark has ever done, "Wrecked" and its truth-in-advertising title is here.

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Wrecked (2009)

• Directors: Bernard Shumanski, Harry Shumanski

• Writers:
  Harry Shumanski
  Bernard Shumanski

• Country:USA

• Genre:Drama

• Runtime:73 minutes

• Actors:
  Taylor

  Forth Richards
  Daniel

  Benji Crisnis
  Ryan

  Theo Montgomery
  Photographer Rodney

  Womack Daryl
  Kevin (as Peter Peterson)

  Peter Petersen
  Herself, Acting Teacher

  Beatrice Carina
  Actress

  Heidi Blissenbach
  Actor

  Garett Dragovitz
  Ryan

  Jake Casey

• Language:English

• Plot:An edgy drama about a gay teen's tumultuous decent into drugs and anonymous sex, Wrecked smashes cinematic taboos while it spins its cautionary tale. Ryan is an earnest 18-year-old trying to develop a career as an actor and getting his life on the right track. This course is quickly threatened with the sudden arrival of his sort-of ex, Daniel, who arrives at Ryan's door wanting a place to stay and offering the promise of a normal, loving relationship. But Daniel's drug addiction and attitude towards casual sex derail any hope for normalcy and soon ensnares Ryan in his own downward spiral. Handheld cameras, a hot young cast and a boldly upfront approach to sex combine to make Wrecked a unique film experience. Written by TLA Releasing

• Also known as:Défoncés (France - DVD title), Wrecked - ...abgef***ed (Germany - DVD title),

• Rating: (185 votes)