Short Takes: ‘Addicted’ (2014) ★★

Not to be confused with Addickted (click at your own risk), because this adaptation of Zane’s 1998 book is for the ladies and therefore above such crudeness. The dick is merely implied.

And lead character, Zoe Reynard (Sharon Leal) is all about the dick, though, as she explains to her therapist Dr. Marcella (Tasha Smith, acting like an Oprah-bot), she has a very fulfilling life, with a loving (and very hot!) husband, two beautiful children, and she owns her own successful business merchandising artworks of up-and-coming artists. Plus, all her employees love her! Her assistant Shane complements Zoe’s fashion sense the moment she walks in the door, and her best friend/…um, I’m going to say vice president, Brina (Emayatzy Corinealdi), is so devoted to her job that she dismisses the very idea of Zoe paying her more to do it. There’s no sex and I’m already getting a semi just thinking about this woman’s life.

But Addicted wastes little time getting to the sex, showing Zoe and that hunky husband of hers, Jason (Boris Kodjoe) enjoying some hot R-rated boning less than 10 minutes in. After they come, Zoe reaches beneath the sheet for Jason’s sticky dong, asking if he’s ready for round three(!), only to be disappointed when Jason drifts off to sleep. (Lady, give him a chance to recuperate from round two; you two aren’t 18 anymore.) Then, just like that, Zoe deems her sex life boring and goes to her home office to get off to Internet porn, which she evidently does frequently as she keeps a vibrator in a desk drawer. Lord help her if her children or her mother—who lives with them to take care of the kids and give her daughter “hmm-hmm” looks—goes hunting for a pen.

That all changes when she meets famed (but never photographed) artist Quinton Canosa (William Levy) at Atlanta’s High Museum. Quinton understandably sets her girlie parts a-tingle, so it’s no surprise that she readily fucks him. Well, “readily” might be overstating it, as Zoe does try to push Quinton away, telling him that what they’re doing is not right, a protest he quickly silences by going down on her.

But Quinton is not enough. Zoe hits the clubs, hooking up with the dangerously sexy Corey (hey, it’s Tyson Beckford from Chocolate City) in a suspiciously vacant (and clean) restroom and sneaking out to join him at artfully lit sex parties. Zoe is so hooked on cock that she begins to neglect her family and her business. She knows she needs to quit both these guys, but she’s too busy getting rocks off to worry about hitting rock bottom.

Though it’s not the trash treasure I hoped for, I kind of enjoyed this one. The acting is fair, though Levy often comes off as smarmy rather than seductive, and director Bille Woodruff at least knows his audience, meaning Leal’s body is decoratively covered while her male co-stars’ are frequently exposed (no full frontal, but a fair amount of man-ass). It was also fun to see familiar Atlanta locations on screen (I loved that the now-shuttered Radial Café, very much a casual dining spot, is presented as a restaurant so exclusive it requires strict punctuality for reservations). What stops the movie from being satisfying trash is its uneven Lifetime-y script. Sometimes it’s the fun type of Lifetime movie, but too often it’s just bland, and its portrayal of sex addiction way too sanitized. There’s sex addiction, where otherwise respectable people pull trains with hobos on their lunch hour and sneak off after putting the kids to bed to go writhe naked in urinal troughs, and then there’s “sex addiction,” an affliction (primarily male) celebrities diagnose themselves with when they’ve been caught cheating. Zoe’s problem falls squarely in the second category, and no amount of last-minute daytime TV psychodrivel can convince the audience otherwise. 

(Not-So-)Short Takes: ‘Mea Culpa’ (2024) ★ 1/2

It’s as bad as you thought it would be.

With his latest Netflix venture, Mea Culpa, Tyler Perry tries his hand at writing and directing an erotic thriller with predictable results.

Kelly Rowland stars as Mea (oh, for fuck’s sake...), a very successful Chicago attorney with a very stressful homelife. Her husband Kal (Sean Sagar), a recovering addict, lost his job and doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to find a new one—a fact he’s keeping secret from his overbearing mother Azalia (Kerry O’Malley, who might as well be wearing a mustache so she can twirl it) and his smug older brother Ray (Sean’s real-life brother, Nick Sagar), neither of whom approve of Kal’s marriage to Mea. Mea grudgingly keeps her mouth shut about Kal’s past drug problem and current unemployment because Mom’s got cancer and only has so much time left, but playing nice is increasingly hard to do. “Don’t worry, son, your second wife will be on time,” Azalia says when Mea shows up late to her birthday dinner (Perry’s writing is as subtle as ever). Mea shoots her a look that makes it clear she just wishes the bitch would die already. The topper of this shit sundae is Kal might also be cheating on her.

Enter Zayair Malloy (Travante Rhodes, a long way down from Moonlight), a famous painter charged with murdering his girlfriend. He wants Mea to represent him, but she’s hesitant. Her punchable brother-in-law, who also happens to be the assistant D.A., is prosecuting the case. But when Kal, Azalia and Ray forbid her to accept the accused murderer as a client, Mea all but volunteers to represent Zayair pro bono. BTW, if you think there’s a potential conflict of interest in her taking the case, Perry is ahead of you, including a scene in which Mea and Ray consult a judge who acknowledges the conflict exists before deciding he’ll just sit back and see what happens.

The newly plot-armored Mea then gets down to the business of building a defense for her client, but it’s an uphill battle. Zayair not only appears guilty as hell, but he also appears more interested in boning his attorney than staying out of prison. Their meetings go thusly: Zayair mumbles some sexually suggestive lines, Mea swoons temporarily before coming to her senses and repeating lawyer-ish lines familiar to anyone who’s watched an episode or two of a TV legal drama (“It’s important you tell me everything you know.”) This goes on for almost a full hour.

Eventually, Mea caves and fucks her client, and from there Mea Culpa goes from boring to stupid, then fucking ridiculous. 

I’ve only seen one other Tyler Perry movie, Temptation (or Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor), which was bad, but in a fun way. However, it was fucking Oppenheimer next to Mea Culpa, the plot of which suggests Perry tried to retrofit one of his past soapy dramas with a thriller plotline. That might have worked if Perry prioritized quality at least half as much as he does quantity.

Mea Culpa isn’t without its enjoyably silly moments, such as when a conversation between Zayair and Mea is interrupted by a naked woman with a speech impediment/accent (I couldn’t tell which), with Zayair then leading the naked woman a few steps away so she can blow him in full view of his attorney (it makes no more sense in context). There's also a scene where Mea follows Zayair to a sex party that's happening in the back of the parking garage of his building. Is that always going on? Do tenants pay extra for that? To his credit, Perry doesn’t shy away from including a few hard-R sex scenes, but they do little to offset the movie’s leaden pacing. The batshit ending might jolt audiences awake, however, forcing them to rewind to figure out how any of it makes sense. That is if they cared, which they likely won’t.

Rowland and RonRaceo Lee, as a smartass P.I., give competent performances, while O’Malley, Nick Sagar and Angela Robinson, as a gallery owner and Zayair’s former lover, act like they’re in a Tyler Perry movie. Worst actor award goes to Rhodes, who mumbles all his lines in a bored monotone (nice body, though). However, even if this thing starred Kerry Washington and Michael B. Jordan it’s doubtful that they could overcome Perry’s indifference to pacing, character, composition, lighting (in Mea Culpa it’s either too bright or too dark, but seldom just right), editing, and believability, not to mention his problematic messaging (i.e., married career women are selfish bitches). The real mystery at the heart of Mea Culpa is how a filmmaker who has written and directed over sixty films and TV series has only gotten worse at his craft.

Short Takes: ‘Nuovo Olimpo’ (2023) ★★★

Strength of acting and direction keeps Nuovo
Olimpo from devolving into a soap opera.

Spanning from 1978 to 2015, director Ferzan Özpetek’s Nuovo Olimpo is epic in scope, but its story is simple. When aspiring filmmaker Enea (Damiano Gavino) locks eyes with med student Pietro (Andrea di Luigi) at the opening of the film, the attraction is as immediate as the moment is fleeting. The two men encounter each other later at the titular Nuovo Olimpo, a revival movie theater and gay cruising spot. This moment is less fleeting, and they eventually share a romantic night in a vacant (but conveniently, fully furnished) penthouse apartment owned by a friend’s grandmother. In this one night they forge a connection that promises more of such nights, and they immediately make plans to see each other again.

Of course, that’s not going to happen. The pair are separated during the ensuing chaos of a police crackdown on a student protest happening near the Nuovo Olimpo and never find their way back to each other. When their paths cross decades later—after several near-misses—there’s anticipation that they can rekindle what they had so long ego, but they may have to settle for closure instead.

Though enjoyable as a whole, Nuovo Olimpo’s first act is its best, making one wish writers Özpetek and Gianni Romoli gave Enea and Pietro at least one more night together, and give the audience a little more time to enjoy Gavino and di Luigi’s chemistry. The movie becomes slightly less interesting once it leaves 1978, with the intervening years providing little beyond updates on the characters’ careers, love lives and graying hair. Enea becomes a renowned director, partnered with the hunky Antonio (Tony Danza lookalike Alvise Rigo), while Pietro becomes a respected surgeon, married to Giulia (Greta Scarano). Interestingly, during all this time, AIDS is never mentioned. Not that it had to be, but it was very much on the minds of gay men in the 1980s so it’s not unreasonable to expect the issue to be acknowledged when Nuovo Olimpo checks in with its characters in 1988.

But Nuovo Olimpo isn’t about social commentary. It’s a romantic drama, and a pretty good one at that, never becoming sappy and/or histrionic, the pitfalls of many a romantic drama, though there are several instances where it comes dangerously close (the circumstances facilitating Enea and Pietro’s reunion could’ve been lifted from any soap opera.). Özpetek’s direction is largely responsible for the movie’s relative restraint, but it’s the performances of his leads that sell it. Gavino gives the “bigger” performance, by virtue of the fact that Enea is a more emotional character, yet he never goes over the top. Di Luigi is more subtle, communicating Pietro’s inner turmoil without having to say a word. Finally, it should be noted that both men look good naked.

Short Takes: ‘Alpha Delta Zatan’ (2017) 1/2 ★

Gay porn without the gay or the porn.

Alpha Delta Zatan, features a cast of hot men delivering performances that can charitably be described as amateurish (absolute shit if just being honest), so naturally I checked their filmographies to see if any of them had done porn. None had—at least according to IMDb—but many of them should. I didn’t have to bother checking the filmographies of director Art Arutyunyan or writer Armand Petri for porn credits, however. Alpha Delta Zatan makes it clear that they wouldn’t know how eroticism works if it slapped them in the face with its dick.

But Alpha Delta Zatan is supposed to be a horror film, and Arutyunyan and Petri don’t have much of a grasp of how that works, either. Or basic storytelling, for that matter. This is Alpha Delta Zatan in a nutshell: A hunky member of the ADZ house strips down to his skivvies, unaware of a knife-wielding guy wearing a black Zentai body suit and harlequin mask (not “Harley Quinn,” as one actor insists on calling it) doing poses in the hall. Hunky guy then steps out of his underwear and into the shower, whereupon he’s attacked by the harlequin-masked killer. Rinse, repeat. 

That’s it. That’s Alpha Delta Zatan’s story, man-ass and murder, played on a loop, with only the color of the lighting (Artyunyan fucking loves his gels) to differentiate them from each other. There’s some business about Frat Dad Brad (Jared Fleming) mandating these killings for possible “Zatanic” reasons, and a lot of the frat brothers are shown drinking blood, but none of it is fully developed, let alone explained.

As one would expect, Alpha Delta Zatan is about as scary as David DeCoteau film. Yet, DeCoteau—early 2000s DeCoteau, specifically—would at least play up the homoeroticism, even if the guys in his casts seldom take off their boxer briefs. The guys of Alpha Delta Zatan, however, are decidedly asexual, or possibly just autosexual. They are always admiring their own bodies yet show zero interest in sex with any gender. Admittedly, several of the ADZ’s cast’s bodies are quite admirable, and certainly more to my taste than the twinks DeCoteau favors, but I started getting bored by the third shower scene; by the fourth I was hoping at least one of the guys would go full frontal, just to break the monotony (spoiler: no penises are ever shown). You’ll derive more enjoyment from watching 30-minutes' worth of “fitness inspiration” videos on YouTube than watching Alpha Delta Zatan. Or you could just watch the hard stuff [NSFW, but you knew that].

Short Takes: ‘A Closer Walk with Thee’ (2017) ★

David Gordon Green’s The Exorcist: Believer was released earlier this month to reviews ranging from meh to just don’t. I just didn’t and instead watched the 2017 gay-themed possession story, A Closer Walk with Thee, a movie The Exorcist: Believer is most definitely better than.

A group of missionaries belonging to a Christian denomination with very strict edicts against set decoration have set up shop in an East Los Angeles house with the hopes of bringing area residents to the Lord. They have their work cut out for them. Their first convert, Ascencion (Deborah Venegas), comes staggering back possessed by a demon within minutes of being baptized. (This is a horror film, after all, though it’s easy to forget that given the film is as moodily lit as the interior of a CVS.) Fortunately for Ascencion, Brother Eli (Gregory Shelby) is a crack exorcist and casts that demon out of her in time for her to be home for lunch.

But there’s a more insidious possession taking hold in one of the mission’s own members, sweet-faced organist Jordan (Aj Knight), who is not only cursed with Shane Dawson’s hairstyle but is also overcome with impure thoughts of Brother Eli (and, in one scene, the body of Christ). Jordan does his best to keep these feelings under control, but he’s powerless to resist his urges when he spies on Eli in the shower—urges that are so strong (because Brother Eli’s ass is that fine!) that he never once considers consequences of jacking off outside the bathroom door. He’s just asking to be caught by Lindsey (Kelsey Boze), the most judgmental of his fellow missionaries. But it’s going to take more than Brother Eli shouting, “Reveal yourself, you fag demon!” to turn Jordan straight.

It’s the treatment of Jordan’s possession where A Closer Walk with Thee goes from bad to patently offensive, and when my rating dropped from a star and a half to a single star. Had the writing-directing team of John C. Clark and Brie Williams chose to fully commit to satirizing the hysteria of religious fanaticism, as they do periodically in the movie’s first half, or base the horror in that same fanaticism, which, as we’ve seen again and again, is pretty damned terrifying, I might have been able to simply blame the movie’s shortcomings on a low budget and limited filmmaking experience. Unfortunately, Clark and Williams chose to literally equate being gay with demon possession, with Jordan becoming a rape-y, homicidal homo, making A Closer Walk with Thee more closely aligned with the shit peddled in an evangelical Christian “hell house” (albeit better acted) than a movie purportedly aimed at LGBTQ audiences.

And yet it’s distributed by Altered Innocence, a company “dedicated to releasing LGBTQ and Coming-of-Age [sic] films with an artistic edge.” I’d argue that A Closer Walk with Thee belongs with a different company, but faith-based outlets generally shun content with f-bombs and butt stuff. A shame, because A Closer Walk with Thee has the potential to be the best thing in PureFlix’s catalog instead of one of the worst in Altered Innocence’s. #PureFlixAfterDark.

Short Takes: ‘The Shadowed Mind’ (1988) ★★

Peter Greenaway at half price? An early work of an especially horny—and bi-curious— Richard Stanley? South African director Cedric (American Ninja 3 & 4) Sundstrom, comes really close to earning either distinction with his artsy horror/thriller The Shadowed Mind. If only he had succeeded.

Set in a private mental health hospital operating out of what appears to be an abandoned factory, Dr. Hildesheimer (Towje Kleiner), with the help of his worshipful assistant Helen (Trish Downing), treats patients with all manner of ailments, mostly of the sexual variety. Patients include childlike Matthew (Simon Poland), wrestling with body dysphoria and sexual identity; Julia (Hayley Dorskey), a victim of child sexual abuse who shows signs of multiple personality disorder; and General (Simon Sabela), who marches around in full military dress, randomly barking orders. Tellingly, General is the hospital’s most “normal” resident.

The newest arrival is Stephanie (Adrienne Pearce), a compulsive exhibitionist. She, of course, attracts the attention of others at the hospital, especially Paul (Rufus Swart, who also co-wrote the script), a patient who heretofore has been struggling to ignite a long-dormant libido, and, conversely, orderly Kurt (Evan J. Klisser, showing some serious camel toe whenever he’s clothed), who’s always hunting for partners to satisfy his hyperactive libido. Though Stephanie is quick to flash her tits, she doesn’t give in to either man’s advances as readily. Kurt, knowing he has willing partners in nurse Alice (Jennifer Steyn) and fellow orderly Nick (Nicholas Ashley Nortier), takes Stephanie’s rejection in stride. Paul, not so much.

Then people start getting murdered, and the timing couldn’t be more inconvenient, as the clinic is about to receive a $1 million grant.

Though The Shadowed Mind falls short of being good, many of its flaws are also what make it such a curious viewing experience. The script is often silly and nonsensical, but it’s also enjoyably weird. Sundstrom, helped by Ruth Strimling’s art direction and George Bartels’ cinematography, makes the most of the film’s location, yet you can’t quite suspend disbelief that a private hospital would operate in a warehouse with crumbling walls and busted out windows, no matter how artful the lighting. The performances are uneven, with several actors—Pearce and Dorskey especially—speaking as if they learned their lines phonetically, and yet these off-kilter line readings kind of work with the film’s overall vibe. The Shadowed Mind also pushes the envelope a little further than most American movies, at least as far as the sex and nudity goes, to say nothing of the queer content (the violence is tame compared to your average U.S.-made slasher), yet somehow remains in limbo between arthouse and grindhouse sensibilities.

I didn’t regret watching The Shadowed Mind, but wishing it lived up to all it could’ve been prevented me from enjoying it as much as I hoped I would.

Short Takes: ‘Gold’ (2022) ★★ 1/2

Zac Efron tries to convince us he’s more
than a pretty face the same way hot celebs
wear glasses to convince us they’re smart.

If he wanted to, Zac Efron could quit acting and live just as comfortably making a series of Playgirl-style videos, available exclusively on his website. The series could be called Efrotica—or possibly Zefrotica. The first episode could open with Zac, face down on a king size bed, the top sheet kicked off, revealing his tight, muscular butt encased in a pair of white briefs, a tease at what’s to come. Zac could then lazily roll out of bed, looking adorably disheveled, walk over to a window and open his drapes with a flourish, his godlike body shimmering as it’s bathed in the sun’s golden rays. The camera could then slowly glide down the length of his body, studying its rigid, perfectly sculpted contours, pausing at the bulge in his tighty-whities just long enough for us to wonder if we’ll see the full Zac. Maybe, but not in episode one, and certainly not at the standard subscription tier. That’s fine. We’ll pay the V.I.P. price, Zac, so long as you hold up your end of the bargain.

But Efron seems pretty committed to this acting thing, and lately he’s been trying to stretch, or at least prove he’s more than just a pretty face. And what better way to do that than fuck that face up in a bleak post-apocalyptic semi-western?  

Efron’s pretty face gets fucked up real good in writer-director-co-star Anthony Hayes’ Gold. When we first meet his nameless character—listed in the credits as Man One—his face is merely dirty, with a jagged scar cutting down one side of it, rendering him ruggedly handsome rather than simply beautiful. He’s hired Hayes, the cantankerous Man Two, to give him a ride to “the Compound,” their trip stalling in the middle of a desert hellscape, a.k.a. the Australian Outback, when their truck breaks down (Hayes told Efron this would happen if he turned up the A/C). It’s while Hayes is fixing the truck that Efron discovers a huge, bolder-sized chunk of gold buried in the sand, so big it will take an excavator to get it unearthed.

The bulk of the movie is devoted to Efron guarding the rock while Hayes is off to get said excavator. In Hayes’ absence, Efron must contend with scorpions, snakes, wild dogs, relentless heat, sandstorms, a dwindling food and water supply, and a smart-ass nomad (Susie Porter) who just won’t fuck off.

Though hardly the best movie of 2022, Gold is the best of the three movies Efron starred in that year. His performance is commendable, but not transformative. The raunchy comedies he’s appeared in (Neighbors, That Awkward Moment) may have successfully put his High School Musical days behind him, but Gold can’t make us see past his pretty face, no matter how blistered, cracked and bloody it gets. It does, however, succeed—frustratingly so—in hiding his highly fuckable body. 

Short Takes: ‘From Zero to I Love You’ (2019) ★★

Jack (Scott Bailey), one of the main characters of writer-director Doug Spearman’s From Zero to I Love You, has a nice life: a loving wife, two young daughters and a successful career of sitting in front of a computer screen (he’s a book editor, it turns out). It’s the life he’s chosen for himself, but it’s not authentic. Jack is gay, a fact the movie would have you believe he’s suppressed for a decade, until he gives in to cruisy cater-waiter at a friend’s birthday party, hooking up with him while his wife Karla (Keili Lefkowitz) is in the next room. And yet Jack bristles at his therapist’s suggestion that he’s gay or bisexual. Jack is adamant he doesn’t want to be either, so he goes on pretending he’s not.

Until he meets Pete (Darryl Stephens of Noah’s Ark: Jumping the Broom), a sexy magazine copywriter who we’ll just assume inherited the chic Philadelphia townhouse he calls home. It’s meant to be a one-night stand, until Jack comes back for a second night, and then a third. Pete’s been down this road before, Jack being the fourth “straight” married man he’s gotten involved with. “Stop fuckin’ around with these down-low motherfuckers!” bellows his bullying/supportive father (Richard Lawson). But no matter how loudly his father yells, Pete can’t say no to Jack, allowing the relationship to become a full-fledged affair, one the audience knows is doomed unless the two men deal with some shit.

This one has gotten a lot of favorable reviews, and I really wanted to love it, or at least like it a lot. Yet while the movie does have some worthwhile things to say—about being true to yourself, about how the best choice isn’t always an easy one, and, all-too-fleetingly, about race—I just never quite fell for it (hey, we can’t always choose what we love). Spearman doesn’t spend much time developing the central romance, instead focusing on the complications that arise from it. That’s fine, but I still wanted something established between zero and the first “I love you.” Instead, Jack and Pete are in love simply because the screenplay says they are. The movie isn’t helped by a script that liberally uses tropes from rom-coms and soap operas yet refuses to fully commit to them, resulting in numerous scenes ending without any comedic or dramatic payoff.

From Zero to I Love You is well made on a technical level, with Spearman getting the most out of a small budget. The movie also benefits from some good performances, especially from Stephens and Lefkowitz. The weakest link is Bailey, who goes through the entire movie looking surprised he’s in it. When Pete dumps Jack in the second act (this movie at least subverts the third act breakup trope) for a trust funded, tattooed muscle bear (Adam Klesh, who, sadly, hasn’t done porn but has modeled for some artistic nudes), I became more invested in the movie simply because there was so much more chemistry between Stephens and the charismatic Klesh. Alas, the movie isn’t titled From Zero to ’Bye, Bitch, so this more compelling relationship isn’t the one that lasts.

Short Takes: ‘Jobriath A.D.’ (2012) ★★★ 1/2

I first learned about Jobriath in the 1980s, when I checked out the book Kitsch from my local library. One of the chapters featured the cover to Jobriath’s failed self-titled debut album, which depicted the singer in profile, face down on the ground, nude, with his legs crumbling away like he was a classic sculpture being chipped away by the ravages of time. The book presented the album cover as an example of bad taste, but I thought it was cool. From what I recall, author Gillo Dorfles’ accompanying text about Jobriath was kind of dismissive: he was an openly gay David Bowie wannabe who never lived up to his hype.

However, Jobriath was more than a glam rock no hit wonder, as director Kieran Turner’s 2012 documentary Jobriath A.D. proves, with interviews from people who knew him as Bruce Wayne Campbell, a child prodigy growing up in Pennsylvania; as Jobriath Salisbury, the wildly talented (and just plain wild) cast member of the Los Angeles production of Hair; and, of course, as his most famous incarnation, Jobriath Boone—or simply Jobriath—“the true fairy of rock and roll.”

One thing that becomes clear as Jobriath A.D. goes along is that as badly as the musician wanted to be famous, he did not want to be known, making an intimate portrait a bit of a challenge. Most of the people interviewed are people who worked with him, or who are fans, like Ann Magnuson, who released a Jobriath tribute EP the same year as this doc, and Scissor Sisters’ lead singer Jake Shears. The recollections shared by Jobriath’s younger brother, Willie Fogle, give us a sense of what life with their emotionally distant mother was like, but he hardly knew his brother any better than anyone else. 

Much of the documentary is dedicated to exploring how this musician who, per Rolling Stone, had “talent to burn,” failed to make a spark on the 1970s music scene. Homophobia is brought up, but fingers are also pointed at the gay community, which at the time, according to Jayne County, “was very, very negative against the whole androgynous, gender-glitter movement of the ’70s.” Most of the blame for fucking up Jobriath’s career is directed toward his manager, promoter and club owner Jerry Brandt, who once upon a time also managed Carly Simon. Brandt has a lot to say on the subject of Jobriath in the documentary, which isn't surprising. One of the criticisms lobbed at Brandt is that he often commandeered interviews with Jobriath, with the singer barely given a chance to answer a question, and Turner provides the receipts. (Brandt argues that Jobriath wasn't comfortable giving answers, and some of the clips showing a somewhat stiff Jobriath responding to an interviewer’s questions suggest there’s some truth to that, as well.) What comes out is that Brandt seemed more enthusiastic about promoting the persona Jobriath had created than building an audience for his music, so by the time his debut album dropped people were more familiar with its cover than the music contained therein. It was like Jobriath was a vanity project, only it was Brandt’s vanity being served.

For all the finger pointing, I think timing might have been Jobriath’s biggest enemy. I don’t think he’d have fared much better if he had beat Bowie to the punch, but maybe, with some tweaking of his sound, he could’ve made a bigger splash in the New Wave era. Instead, Jobriath found success in the Manhattan cabaret scene, performing as Cole Berlin or Bryce Campbell, though he did sex work on the side when money was tight. But his second act was short-lived: Jobriath died from AIDS complications August 3, 1983. Singer Will Sheff summarizes Jobriath's career—and the arc of this documentary—thusly: “He got to be the mega star, then he got to be the joke, and then he got to be forgotten. And now he gets to be the beacon for so many great artists out there who didn’t get their due.” 

Short Takes: ‘The Leather Boys’ (1964) ★★★ 1/2

A gay-themed movie entitled The Leather Boys suggests it’s a porno about twinks being initiated into the world of BDSM. Except, remarkably, there isn’t a gay adult feature by that name, at least not one I could find (the closest I got was a video series of suspect quality called Little Tattoo Leather Boy, Parts 1-3). No, The Leather Boys is a 1964 British drama about a young married couple and the man who tries to come between them.

Dot (Rita Tushingham, who most recently appeared in 2021’s Last Night in Soho) is a teenager in love with Reggie (Colin Campbell), a cute biker who wants to make her his bride. Their parents’ reaction to their engagement speaks volumes about their home lives: Reggie’s parents, who at best share a grudging tolerance for each other, savor a bit of schadenfreude at the thought of the teens’ doomed marriage, while Dot’s mother looks forward to her 16-year-old daughter getting hitched so she can rent out Dot’s room. The teen couple may be too young to get married, but who can blame them for wanting to get out from under their respective parents’ roofs ASAP?

We see the first sign of trouble during the couple’s honeymoon at Butlin’s Camp. Dot wants to experience all the resort has to offer; Reggie just wants to stay in their room and bone (“If you must know, I’ve had enough,” Dot says). Things only go downhill from there. Dot wants Reggie to take care of her, funding her shopping sprees and trips to the hair salon, but Reggie wants Dot to take care of him, keeping their one-room flat clean and having dinner—preferably something other than canned beans—waiting when he gets home from work. And forget sex. They argue more than fuck.

Reggie starts spending more time down at the Ace Cafe, the diner where all his biker buddies hang out. (I call them bikers, but they have more in common with middle-aged motorcycle enthusiasts than Hell's Angels.) This is where he meets Pete (Dudley Sutton), a slightly older guy who leads a seemingly carefree, itinerant life of a merchant marine. Reggie and Pete become fast friends, spending more and more time together—practically living together when Pete rents a room from Reggie’s grandmother. Dot is coached by her mother to lie about being pregnant to force Reggie’s return to their marriage. The ploy fails, with Reggie preferring Pete’s company. It’s only when Dot snarls that he and Pete “look like a couple of queers,” that Reggie begins to worry about the optics of their friendship. He’s quickly talked out of those fears—by Pete, who clearly wants to be more than just friends. Still, Reggie starts to rekindle his relationship with Dot, but don’t expect a happy ending for any of the three main characters.

I knew nothing of this “classic [of] ’60s British cinema” before putting it in my Tubi queue, so I went into The Leather Boys expecting a campy good time. But instead of something kitschy like The Set, you get a kitchen sink drama akin to Tushingham’s film debut, A Taste of Honey. 

Though Dot’s blond helmet rivals some of
the ’dos in John Waters’ Hairspray.

Screenwriter Gillian Freeman adapted The Leather Boys from her novel of the same title, and though she was credited under her own name for the movie, her book was published under the pseudonym Eliot George. According to Wikipedia (I haven’t read the book, though I might now that I’ve found an affordable reprint), the relationship between Reggie and Pete is more explicitly gay than in the movie, though still quite restrained (i.e., don’t expect graphic descriptions of cock sucking and butt fucking, though do expect Dick, as that’s Pete’s name in the book). Fortunately, not much is lost in the story’s sanitation for the screen, thanks largely to the quality of the production. Tushingham, Campbell and Sutton are all excellent. Even though the story is kind of straight-washed, the character of Pete is sensitively handled. He’s not a villain, he’s just fallen for a guy who doesn't like him in “that way.” Director Sidney J. Furie treats the material with respect, delivering a film that’s far more thoughtful and stylish than what I’d expected. (There are a lot of acclaimed titles in Furie’s filmography, but he also directed Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, so The Leather Boys really could’ve gone either way.) While I’m disappointed that I can’t make fun of this one, I can’t complain when my exploration of cinematic trash unearths a genuine treasure.

Short Takes: ‘Someone is Bleeding’ (1974) ★★

Someone is Bleeding is alternately known
as Les seins de glace, which translates
into this movie’s other unfortunate/awesome
English a.k.a., Icy Breasts.

Georges Lautner directed the 1970 film The Road to Salina, which is one of my favorite movies. A few years later he directed Someone is Bleeding, which isn’t.

In fairness to Lautner, though the movies share some themes—a beautiful woman with a deadly secret; mind-fucking the protagonist—Someone is Bleeding (a.k.a. Les seins de glace, or Icy Breasts) is a different sort of thriller. Whereas Salina is what happens when an art film gets stoned and makes wild monkey love to a ’70s drive-in movie (or vice versa), Someone is Bleeding is all sideways glances and stony silences broken up with cryptic conversations and minimal bouts of violence. In short, Someone is Bleeding is kinda boring.

But boring isn’t the movie’s biggest problem; the character of François Rollin is. François (Claude Brasseur) is a hack TV writer working on his latest script when he decides to take a walk on the beach to clear his head. This is when he encounters beautiful blonde Peggy (Mireille Darc). François, undaunted by the fact that she’s out of his league and clearly not interested, makes it his mission to get his hands on her icy breasts by harassing his way into her heart, including getting into her parked car while she’s out shopping, then refusing to get out when she returns. Remarkably, Peggy is charmed by this. Me, less so.

Just because Peggy hasn’t filed a restraining order doesn’t mean she’s an easy catch, as François soon learns. Cockblocking him at every turn is Peggy’s overly protective attorney, Marc (a haggard looking Alain Delon), who not only has set up Peggy in a house staffed with a gruff—and kind of rapey—manservant, Albert (Michel Peyrelon), but also has his hulking chauffeur/henchman Steig (Emilio Messina) keeping tabs on her, violently intervening when necessary. Marc explains to François that Peggy is not stable, that she is a former drug addict and that she murdered her husband—a crime for which Marc defended her, getting her off with an insanity defense. She is so repelled by men that she kills them should one touch her. Of course, Marc is in love with her, too (never mind that he’s married, and y’know, the whole killing-any-man-who-touches-her thing), so his motives aren’t exactly pure. Yet, as the movie progresses, we begin to suspect that Peggy might be as unbalanced as Marc says she is.

Though Someone is Bleeding picks up steam as it goes along, it seldom heats up to a proper boil. Lautner’s script, adapted from a novel by Richard Matheson, has made Peggy so mysterious that she almost has no characterization beyond looking pretty and smiling nervously while François and Marc fight over her. Consequently, Darc, Delon’s girlfriend at the time, is a rather passive femme fatale. Nicoletta Machiavelli, who plays Marc’s steely wife, makes a stronger impression, making me wish her part had been bigger. Delon’s performance is solid but nothing special. As for Brasseur, besides being saddled with an irritating character, his buffoonish performance is tonally at odds with the film surrounding it. Not helping is his character’s brand of humor translates as assholery in any language. And since François is the lead (not Delon, as the poster would have you believe), you must endure his company for the entire movie, meaning that by extension you’re enduring Someone is Bleeding when you should be enjoying it.

Short Takes: 'Cola de Mono' (2018) ★★★

A rare instance when the movie
delivers what its poster promises.

Spending Christmas at home does not always mean saving the family business, finding love and exploring the erotic possibilities of candy canes. While the characters of Chilean writer-director Alberto Fuguet’s Cola de Mono are also into sexual exploration—though not with holiday candy—their Christmas is primarily spent dealing with feelings of loneliness, alienation, and getting hammered on the movie’s titular cocktail.

It’s Christmas Eve, 1986, and Santiago teenager Borja (a very effective Cristóbal Rodríguez Costabal) is whiling away his time reading Stephen King, pestering his older brother Vincente (Cristóbal’s real-life brother Santiago Rodríguez Costabal) and irritating his embittered mother (Carmina Riego). “Pay respect to the occasion,” he tells her during dinner. “God was born today.” “And he was killed 33 years later,” his mother sniffs.

After Mama puts herself to bed with pills and booze, the brothers embark on separate sexual journeys. Vincente goes cruising in a city park, while Borja breaks into his brother’s locked room and riffles through his things, discovering Vincente’s poorly hidden collection of gay skin magazines. It’s all sexy fun until a sexual assault/bashing sends Vincente running home, only to discover his privacy violated and that he and his brother have a shared secret, a secret that Borja shows little interest keeping. “We’re alike,” Borja taunts. “We’re brothers. And we like cock.” Then Mama comes to and overhears her sons, at which point the movie suddenly becomes a thriller.

Cola de Mono, its title referencing both an eggnog-like drink and a gay slur in Chile, gets a lot of attention for featuring copious amounts of male nudity and explicit sex (including a brief unsimulated blowjob), but for me its appeal is largely nostalgic. The 1980s pop culture references, from Borja liking books by King and Robin Cook to the boys decorating their rooms with movie posters for Desperately Seeking Susan and the more obscure Willie & Phil, were a treat, as was Fuguet’s resurrecting adolescent memories of hoarding gay porn mags and ogling guys wearing tight polyester gym shorts, with the added bonus that this time I could do so openly if not guilt-free. (I’m sure Cristóbal Rodríguez Costabal is of age, but I felt a little pervy admiring the ass of what is supposed to be a 15- or 16-year-old, though clearly the movie’s marketing team weren’t as conflicted).

As much as I enjoyed Cola de Mono for artistic and prurient reasons, the movie veers off course in its final third when it jumps to 1999, following an adult Borja (now played by Santiago Rodríguez Costabal, sporting a full beard) in what’s essentially an extended epilogue. This part of the movie, which includes a long sequence set inside a gay bathhouse, is titillating, but it serves little purpose beyond adding some bonus sex and nudity. Fuguet hurts his movie further by giving it a shocking ending, then muddying the waters by suggesting it was a film within a film. As much as I appreciated the extra skin, Fuguet would’ve done better to confine Cola de Mono's narrative to 1986. 

Short Takes: ‘Gloria’ (1999) ★★

 Sharon Stone tries to downplay her
involvement in the1999 bomb Gloria by
appearing as Jodie Foster on the poster.

I remember my first reaction upon seeing trailers for the remake of Gloria in 1999 and hearing the few clips of its star Sharon Stone speaking in a Noo Yawk accent: Oh, no! Is she going to talk like that for the whole movie?

She does, but really, it’s not that bad, and neither is this Sidney Lumet-directed remake. That said, its falls well short of John Cassavetes’ 1980 original.

This time out Gloria isn’t a tough-as-nails broad but, as portrayed by Stone, a foul-mouthed, smartass floozie. Upon release from a Florida prison—one that generously provides hair and makeup services for its prisoners—she heads back to New York to break up with her gangster boyfriend Kevin (an underwhelming Jeremy Northam) and collect the money she was promised when she took the fall for him. To Gloria’s apparent surprise, her criminal boyfriend is less than accommodating. Worse, Kevin’s goons have kidnapped the 7-year-old son of the gang’s double-crossing (and recently murdered) accountant, and they have plans to make him join the rest of his slaughtered family. Not if Gloria can help it! She overtakes one of Kevin’s henchmen with a sharp knee to his nuts, grabs his gun and then forces the roomful of gangsters to empty their pockets and strip (“Unduh-weah too!”). She takes off with all their money, jewelry and the boy, Nicky (Jean-Luke Figueroa, who isn’t too irritating).

Gloria spends the rest of the movie clomping across NYC in four-inch heels, trying to protect Nicky while simultaneously looking for someone to take the kid off her hands. Along the way she dispenses such words of wisdom as: “You got a small pee-pee, men got big pee-pees. Well, some of ’em. And hopefully, one day you will too.” (Between Stone’s performance and Steve Antin’s script, I half suspect that this movie was originally intended to be a comedy.)

Though it received mostly negative reviews upon its release in January 1999, going on to earn just over $4 million against a $30 million budget, Gloria isn’t anywhere close to being the fiasco I’d anticipated. Stone has certainly done worse (take your pick). What’s surprising is that for all the name brand talent involved (in addition to Lumet and Stone, you get Cathy Moriarity, Bonnie Bedelia and George C. Scott in his final film role), Gloria feels like a B-movie, the type of thing in which Stone would’ve appeared pre-Basic Instinct, albeit as a supporting character. Stone even wears the same hairstyle from that period of her career. Maybe if the movie had been made as a belated rip-off of Gloria rather than a full-fledged remake (Sharon Stone is, uh ...Gina!) people could appreciate it as matinee trash with delusions of grandeur rather than dismissing it as failed Oscar® bait from a star trying to maintain her leading lady status into the next decade. 

Short Takes: ‘Aaron Loves Angela’ (1975) ★★ 1/2

With the recent passing of Irene Cara, I thought I’d check out one of her earliest film roles, director Gordon Parks, Jr.’s 1975 movie Aaron Loves Angela, made when she was just 15 years old.

Aaron (Kevin Hooks, age 17 at the time) is a Harlem teenager being pressured by his father Ike (Moses Gunn) to become a basketball phenom (Ike measures his son daily to see if he’s grown any taller), while his pimp neighbor Beau (Kevin’s real-life dad, Robert Hooks) taunts Aaron for even dreaming of earning any money legally. Aaron’s more concerned about his present, however; specifically, making Angela (Cara), the cute Puerto Rican girl at his school, part of it. He expresses his infatuation through graffiti, tagging walls with “Aaron likes Angela.” Angela knows her mother wouldn’t approve of her dating a Black boy, but she can’t resist Aaron’s charms, or his graffiti. It’s not long before Aaron’s spray painting “Aaron loves Angela” (title drop) on tenement walls.

What drives a wedge between the two teen lovers isn’t racism, however, but Aaron absconding with a briefcase full of cash that he gets through a series of thoroughly contrived events.

This one’s a mixed bag. Parks makes good use of his setting, showcasing the griminess of 1970s NYC without making it seem totally bleak, and there are some effective slice-of-life moments between Aaron and his father and between Aaron and his best friend Willie (Leon Pinkney). Helping the movie immeasurably is its soundtrack, supplied by José Feliciano. But the movie fails as a blaxploitation retelling of Romeo and Juliet, with neither the Super Fly director nor screenwriter Gerald Sanford having much interest in the central teen romance. There’s a bit more attention paid to the animosity between the African American and Hispanic communities—standing in for the Montagues and the Capulets—but even that is fleeting. Parks and Sanford seem more invested in shoehorning a subplot involving a scheming pimp, his good-hearted ’ho and ruthless mobsters. You know, the usual blaxploitation shit.

The acting is decent, at least. I’d like to say Cara makes an impressive film debut (we won’t count her bit part as a dancer in the comedy Apple Pie), but she and Kevin Hooks are merely adequate, with the adult performers—especially Gunn—making bigger impressions. The only truly awful bit of “acting” is from Walt Frazier as himself. In his brief cameo the “NY Knicks basketball legend” (per his Cameo page; I know nothing about sports and care even less) delivers his lines like he’s taping a PSA encouraging kids to stay in school. Though in Frazier’s defense, his dialog is written as such.

Overall, Aaron Loves Angela is enjoyable despite its unfocused storytelling and uneven tone, but it’s no must-see like Gordon Parks, Jr.’s classic Super Fly—or the camp classic (and beginning of Cara’s rapid descent) Certain Fury.

Short Takes: ‘Someone Behind the Door’ (1971) ★★ 1/2

Somehow, I managed to live half my life without checking out the works of Charles Bronson. I remember seeing promos for TV matinee showings his 1970s classics—Mr. Majestyk, The Mechanic, Telefon—when I was in junior high, but those movies aired while I was in school, and I likely wouldn’t have watched them had I been home. I could’ve easily watched his movies in the 1980s, when Cannon Films could be counted on to dump a Bronson movie in multiplexes every year, but at that time I had no interest in watching an old man with a gun take out younger guys with guns. I was more excited about the release of Yentl. It was a lonely time.

But tastes and times change, and over the past few years I’ve been steadily working my way through Bronson’s filmography. I like his action shit, but I’m particularly fond of some of the European thrillers he made in the early 1970s, including Someone Behind the Door (or Quelqu’un derrière la porte if you’re fancy), directed by Nicolas Gessner.

Bronson plays an amnesiac, brought into a British hospital by a good Samaritan who found him wandering a nearby beach road. A neurosurgeon, Dr. Jeffries (Anthony Perkins), takes an interest in Bronson’s case and, after a brief examination, offers to take Bronson back to his home where he says he can observe Bronson more closely. “You know what hospitals are like,” Jeffries says. “They’ll just put you in a ward and forget about you.”

But the doctor has ulterior motives, but we already knew that as he’s played by Anthony Perkins. Jeffries has no interest in curing Bronson. He wants to manipulate him into murdering his cheating wife Frances (Bronson’s then real-life wife Jill Ireland) and her lover, played by Henri Garcin.

Someone Behind the Door isn’t the best of Bronson’s European films that I’ve seen (for my money, that would be Rider on the Rain, with Violent City a close second), but it’s an intriguing psychological thriller, nonetheless. Gessner, who directed 1976’s The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, doesn’t inject much style into his film and his screenplay, co-written by Marc Behm, is at times a bit too dry, yet the two leads make it an interesting watch. Bronson didn’t have the most expansive range as an actor, but he’s up to the challenge in this role that casts him against type. Perkins is better, even though his casting immediately tips the character’s hand. Garcin is merely serviceable, in a part that’s little more than a cameo. As for Ireland, she’s OK, though her performance does little to dissuade me from thinking most of Bronson’s movies from the 1970s would’ve been at least ten percent better had he been married to someone else.

Short Takes: ‘Crazy Desires of a Murderer’ (1977) ★★

When Netflix did away with its star rating system in favor of the thumbs up/thumbs down buttons, they did away with nuance. You either like a movie or you don’t, no in-between. Other streaming services followed suit: Hulu has like/dislike buttons, and now Tubi viewers have a chance to give a movie an up or down vote. The problem with this system is that most movies—or any entertainment media—don't fall within such a neat binary. Netflix recently added a two thumbs-up button, which helps a little, I guess, if you want to let Netflix know that you really, really like The Gray Man (I’m sure a couple people do), but if Netflix and other platforms really want an idea of what audiences think of their content, they need to add a shrug button.

All that to say director Filippo Walter Ratti’s Crazy Desires of a Murderer (a.k.a. I vizi morbosi di una governante), merits a 🤷. It’s not terrible, but it’s not particularly worth watching, either.

Illeana (Isabelle Marchall, who kind of looks like Emilia Clarke if she were a ’70s porn star) returns from vacationing with her friends, bringing them—plus a couple of guys she met while in Asia—back to the family castle for the weekend, much to the consternation of her wheelchair-bound, slightly-senile father Baron De Chablais (Stuart Brisbain Colin), a collector of Asian art and artifacts (none of this Asia stuff is pertinent to the plot, BTW). Dad is quickly wheeled off to his room by the housekeeper Berta (Annie Carol Edel), leaving Illeana and her friends free to guzzle champagne, play sexy charades and fuck. But the fun quickly ends when Illeana’s friend and doppelganger Ilsa (Patrizia Gori) gets stabbed to death and her eyes dug out of her head.

Crazy Desires of a Murderer, released in 1977 but reportedly (or perhaps I should say obviously) made much earlier, employs plenty of familiar tropes—mentally unbalanced siblings, secret entrances, secret agendas, grave robbing and red herrings galore—without doing anything particularly clever with them. Its pacing is slow, and its body count meager, though the murders are fairly bloody, if not particularly well executed (the grue effects in this movie are only slightly more convincing than what you’d find in a Herschell Gordon Lewis splatter flick). Perhaps more shocking than the graphic eye-gouging is a sex scene in which a poofy-haired drug smuggler (Roberto Zattini) molds a candle into a make-shift dildo to use on Gori, giving new meaning to the term “candling.” It’s also the most memorable scene in this shrug of a giallo.

Short Takes: ‘Lisztomania’ (1975) ★★★

While the films of the late Ken Russell can usually be found at the intersection of OMG! and WTF!, Russell sometimes drove the OMG head-on into WTF, resulting in a fiery collision of Jesus fucking Christ! And so Lisztomania came to be.

There are many things I could say about Lisztomania, like it’s exactly what you’d expect from the director of Tommy… if he’d injected mescaline directly into his eyeballs then listened to the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Liszt: Les Preludes/Orpheus/Tasso while simultaneously watching Behind the Green Door and The Benny Hill Show; that it’s Amadeus by way of Zardoz, but not so restrained; that it’s a period piece that makes 1836 look like 1976 and vice versa; that while the movie is set in the world of music and has some musical numbers, it is not really a musical, it just looks like one; that it features a cameo by Ringo Starr as the motherfuckin’ Pope; that its humor is alternately crass and juvenile (gas-spewing ass sculptures) or just silly (one of Liszt’s lovers urges the composer to join a monastery, saying: “You can become a Franz-ciscan!”); that while it’s ostensibly about an imagined rivalry between Franz Liszt and Richard Mahler (Roger Daltry and Paul Nicholas, respectively, and both appearing to be having a great time), Lisztomania’s story is more about set pieces than plot, and that’s OK because one of those set pieces is this:

 And really, that’s all you need to know to decide whether this one’s for you.

Short Takes: ‘Bathroom Stalls & Parking Lots’ (2019) ★★

A former roommate once quipped that you’re not going to find the love of your life in a bar. And then he threw a party that resulted in us getting evicted. Still, he was not wrong—about not finding love in bars, at least. Ditto for Grindr. It’s a lesson the main character of Bathroom Stalls & Parking Lots, Leo (the movie’s co-writer and director Thales Corrêa), has yet to learn as he visits San Francisco to search the city’s bars for the Grindr trick he wants to make his boyfriend.

Leo’s S.F. guide is fellow Brazilian Donnie (the other screenwriter, Izzy Palazzini). Donnie, who looks like the estranged cousin Alvin doesn’t want the other chipmunks to know about, may be an expert on the Castro’s nightlife, but he’s also hot mess. He’s more about scoring drugs n’ dick than helping his friend, a fact that Leo is surprisingly slow to pick up on. Except, no, Leo already knows this. He says as much.

“I should’ve known this was gonna happen because every time I go out with Donnie some crazy, stupid shit happens,” Leo moans after Donnie gets them kicked out of a bar when caught blowing his “straight” friend Hunter (Oscar Mansky, the answer to the unasked question: What if Jon Heder was fuckable?) in one of the titular bathroom stalls. And this is a mere 15-minutes into the movie.

Clearly, it’s going to be a long night, and I began to fear Bathroom Stalls & Parking Lots was going to make me feel every goddamn minute of it. I don’t have a lot of patience for people like Donnie in real life, yet the movie was presenting him as just a comic foil, mistaking his obnoxiousness for hilariousness. I was seriously considering giving up on the movie before it hit the 30-minute mark.

But the movie is barely 80 minutes long, so I stuck with it, and though Bathroom Stalls & Parking Lots didn’t become a great film, it did become a more meaningful one. After what has got to be the saddest underwear party ever, Leo realizes that he is looking for love in all the wrong places, and those are the only places on Donnie’s itinerary. He decides to focus more on quality than quantity, though not before one more sleazy (mis)adventure.

Given its minuscule budget, Bathroom Stalls & Parking Lots is better made than one would expect, with passable acting and production values (the cinematography is a bit spotty, however). Its main drawback is its script. Though billed as a comedy, it’s only intermittently amusing at best, fucking irritating at worst. It’s only when it stops trying to so hard to make Donnie the life of the party that the movie starts to rise above viewers’ lowest expectations, though by that time many of them may have already decided, as Leo ultimately does, to cut ties.

Short Takes: ‘Sunburn’ (2018) ★★ 1/2

Put some sexy Europeans with complicated love lives around a swimming pool and I’m there: La piscine (a.k.a. The Swimming Pool), Swimming Pool (which is not a remake of La piscine), A Bigger Splash (which is) — I enjoyed them all. So, it was damn-near inevitable that I’d watch Vicente Alves do Ó’s 2018 film Sunburn (a.k.a. Golpe de Sol), which ups the ante by making its characters queer. Yes, please.

Four friends—Simão (Ricardo Barbosa, wearing Speedos for the majority of the film’s runtime), Vasco (Ricardo Pereira), Joana (Oceana Basílio) and Francisco (Nuno Pardal)—are spending a long weekend at Francisco’s secluded villa when they each receive a phone call from David, whom they haven’t seen in 10 years and whom a few hoped never to see again. When David invites himself over, his impending arrival turns what was supposed to be a relaxing weekend into a tense confrontation with their past decisions and encroaching middle age.

Though it would seem that it’s poised to rage out of control like the distant brush fires that surround Francisco’s villa, Sunburn spends much of its runtime merely smoldering, gradually revealing details about its characters and their history with David. Except, the movie never reveals as much as it holds back. In fact, for the first 20 minutes I wasn’t entirely clear on the characters’ relationship to each other. This is made more frustrating by intermittent voice overs from David himself that suggest the movie might take a much darker turn, but it’s just one more tease without a payoff.

Sunburn looks gorgeous, and writer-director do Ó manages to slip in a few pointed insights about aging and regret. That the characters’ sexuality (Simão and Vasco are gay; Francisco is bi, in a relationship with Joana) is treated matter-of-factly is also appreciated. But the movie is never as profound as it thinks it is and I never liked it as much as I hoped I would. It may be titled Sunburn, but this Portuguese drama is wearing SPF-50.

Short Takes: ‘Operation Hyacinth’ (2021) ★★★★

A heterosexual police officer goes undercover in the gay community to solve a string of murders targeting homosexuals, and soon finds himself pushing himself further and further to not blow his cover (so to speak). No, they didn’t remake William Friedkin’s 1980 film Cruising; this is the set-up for the much more recent, and much more dour Operation Hyacinth (a.k.a. Hiacynt), director Piotr Domalewski’s 2021film currently streaming on Netflix.

Though I flippantly compared it to Cruising, Operation Hyacinth has more in common with the paranoid political thrillers of the 1970s—like a homoerotic version of The Parallax View, or Three Days of the Condor if Jan Michael-Vincent were cast in the Faye Dunaway role (you’re welcome.)

Robert (Tomasz Zietek) is a young officer on Warsaw’s police force in 1985, when Poland was still a communist country and being an out homosexual meant having a target on your back (not that it’s much better today). At the beginning of the film Robert and his boorish partner Wojtek (Tomasz Schuchardt) are investigating the murders of two gay men. The murders are quickly pinned on a pimp who crossed paths with both victims. Robert, however, isn’t convinced they got the right guy. He appeals to the captain (Marek Kalita) to leave the case open for further investigation. The captain—also Robert’s father—tells him to take the win and move on. Robert instead elects to conduct a more thorough investigation on his own.

It’s during a raid of a notorious Warsaw tearoom—part of the real “Operation Hyacinth”—that Robert meets Arek, one of the fleeing “suspects.” When young art student mistakenly assumes Robert is also running from the police and not chasing him, Robert lets the assumption stand and begins cultivating Arek as an informant. That Arek quickly develops feelings for Robert is no surprise (Zietek does rock that mustache), and Robert exploits that attraction. But as the movie progresses, Robert—who’s engaged and regularly hooks up with his fiancée Helinka (Adrianna Chlebicka)—begins to regard Arek as more than just an informant.

Though Operation Hyacinth is primarily a police procedural, the movie’s setting makes the gay romance just as tense. Robert not only runs the risk of his identity being found out by Arek, but the risk of being outed to his colleagues and family is even greater. A scene of Robert and Arek narrowly avoiding discovery by Robert’s father are just as suspenseful as when Robert is almost discovered by the suspected killer he’s investigating.

Operation Hyacinth reassured me that not everything on Netflix sucks, as well as reminded me that 365 Days is not representative of Polish cinema. It also provides me an opportunity to show readers that I can give a movie more than three stars. Thriller fans, be they LGBTQ or straights who don’t shudder at the sight of two dudes doing it, should consider giving this one a watch. Just be warned that it gets pretty grim. As much as I liked it, I couldn’t help wishing it, too, had a WTF interrogation scene like Cruising, just to lighten the mood.