Reverend’s Reviews: Franco the Great and Sexual

James Franco proved himself the King of Hollywood this past weekend.  Despite mixed reviews for his performance in the title role of Oz the Great and Powerful, he helped power the film to an international blockbuster debut.  The 34-year old, Oscar-nominated actor/filmmaker also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on March 7th, further cementing — literally — his industry immortality.

I found Franco’s performance one of the better, more genuine things about Disney’s given-to-excess adaptation of the classic L. Frank Baum books and, more directly, prequel to 1939’s beloved movie musical The Wizard of Oz.  His Oscar Diggs, known to his associates (since he doesn’t have any friends) as “Oz,” starts out as a sideshow magician in 1905 Kansas prior to being whisked away by a tornado to that vibrantly Technicolor world “somewhere over the rainbow.”  Once there, he is proclaimed the fulfillment of a prophecy that a man bearing the same name as the land of Oz would descend from the sky and ascend the long-vacant throne.  Diggs is initially reluctant to be proclaimed wizard but becomes much more amenable once he is shown the massive treasure that awaits whoever proves worthy of the realm.

First, though, he must defeat the Wicked Witch who, with her army of marauding flying baboons, has been terrorizing the countryside.  Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams play the film’s trio of enchantresses.  Williams makes a wonderful Glinda and Weisz is fine as her shadier counterpart, but Kunis struck me as lacking when she has to kick into full sorceress mode (her obvious prosthetic make-up doesn’t help either).  Then again, she is competing against Margaret Hamilton’s turn in the original movie.  This new Oz only serves to reinforce the indelibility of Hamilton and so many other elements of the MGM classic.

Director Sam Raimi makes more than a few nods to The Wizard of Oz, most of them welcome, including the opening transition from full-frame black and white to widescreen color and cameo appearances by the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion.  As visually spectacular as much of the new film is, however, some visual effects sequences go on far too long.  The chief offenders are Diggs’ white-river rafting/waterfall plunging experience when his balloon first touches down in Oz and several characters’ bubble-borne journey to Munchkinland.  Such excesses may look great in 3D (in which I did not view the film) but are seemingly endless and probably add five non-essential minutes to the film’s running time.  Parents of young children should also be cautioned about a scene where the bad witches publicly torture Glinda; I don’t remember that from the original Baum tales!  Still, Oz the Great and Powerful is on the whole engaging and entertaining.

Back to Franco.  He is more understated than the initially-cast Robert Downey, Jr. likely would have been in the role but Franco’s natural sincerity rings true, especially at those moments when Diggs wrestles with his insincere tendencies.  While Franco is good with his female co-stars, his best scenes tend to be with non-human creations: a lovely little girl made of porcelain (dubbed “China Girl”) and a less-vicious, bellhop-dressed winged monkey who serves as his valet.  Franco also wisely avoids jokiness throughout, something Downey, Jr. — good as he might have been — probably wouldn’t have been able to resist.

For full James Franco real-ness though, gay and other, adventurous viewers must check out Interior.Leather Bar., one of his several other current projects.  (He is in Spring Breakers, opening this Friday, and produced the porn documentary Kink, which is currently making festival rounds.)  Franco co-directed the movie with gay filmmaker Travis Mathews, and both appear in it.

Interior. Leather Bar. serves as a fascinating rumination on the current state of GLBT acceptance in society via a graphic re-creation of missing footage from 1980’s controversial Cruising.  William Friedkin’s suspense film starred Al Pacino as a cop who goes undercover in New York City’s leather community to hunt down a murderer. Even before its release, the film was criticized for allegedly stereotyping members of the community.  It was heavily edited as a result, with a rumored 40 minutes of more sexually-explicit content left on the cutting room floor.  Cruising still bombed upon its release and has been little remembered apart from its infamy, until now.

The latest in Franco’s ongoing, apparently deepening interest in gay topics (witness his previous turns in Milk, Howl and The Broken Tower, the latter of which he also directed), Interior. Leather Bar. intersperses sex scenes, interviews with cast members prior to the filming of the sex scenes, and private conversations between Franco, Mathews and/or Val Lauren, their Pacino doppelganger.  Lauren is quite good if, as a straight man who claims to have had no homosexual experiences, he is understandably uncomfortable with the man-on-man action going on around him.  Franco is himself uncomfortably but amusingly wide-eyed at one point while apparently watching an off-camera fisting scene.

The men’s discomfort, though, sparks insightful dialogue about the representation of GLBT life and issues on film.  At one point, Lauren bluntly asks Franco how he can be making such a movie while in production on the much-ballyhooed, family-friendly Oz prequel.  Franco responds inspirationally, speaking about his unhappiness at being raised in a country and culture that taught him to consider gay sex and gay people as unnatural or lesser-than.  He also states or at least implies that if his exploration of such topics limits his options in Hollywood, then so be it.

I didn’t need another reason to admire Franco, even after his admittedly disappointing Oscar-hosting gig in 2011, but his recent output including Interior. Leather Bar. has made me a true Franco-phile.

Reverend’s Ratings:

Oz the Great and Powerful: B-

Interior. Leather Bar.: B+

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest, Rage Monthly Magazine and Echo Magazine.

Reverend's Interview: Alan Turing, Broken But Brilliant

The smartphones, desktop computers and laptops/notebooks upon which most of us have grown dependent in the 21st century likely would not exist if it wasn’t for the little-known Alan Turing.  This brilliant mathematician who was born in London 100 years ago not only laid the foundations for the computer in a 1936 paper, but cracked the Nazis’ secret military codes and helped turn the tide of World War II against them.

Turing was also an openly gay man at a time when the vast majority of us were deep in the closet.  A new documentary, Codebreaker, is currently removing the veil that has obscured Turing and his dramatic contributions to history and modern technology.  In addition, rising star Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the title detective on BBC’s Sherlock and the central villain in this summer’s Star Trek Into Darkness, has been signed to play Turing in an upcoming dramatized biography.

Apple Computers co-founder Steve Jobs is among the experts interviewed in Codebreaker who attest to Turing’s revolutionary genius.  Turing began to develop computers from the theoretical to the actual in 1948, with the intention of “putting something like a human consciousness in an inorganic machine.”  In this regard, Turing is considered to be the father of Artificial Intelligence.

Sadly, though, Turing would not live to see his vision realized.  He was arrested on charges of gross indecency with a younger man whom Turing had accused of burglary.  Homosexuality was still illegal in Great Britain at the time, and Turing was convicted in 1952.  As a condition of his sentencing, he was forced to undergo chemical castration through hormone replacement therapy.  This was, in a cruel irony, the same abuse that the Nazi doctors Turing helped to defeat had subjected many Jewish men to in the concentration camps.  The psychological effects of this combined with his public disgrace drove Turing to take his life in 1954, at the age of 41.

The British government formally apologized for its mistreatment of Turing but not until 2009, 55 years after his death.  Today, Turing is increasingly being praised for his mathematical brilliance and advanced technological vision, his heroism in the fight against Nazi Germany, and his pioneering honesty about his homosexuality.  If he could be “naïve,” as one commentator describes Turing in Codebreaker, he can also be regarded more positively as optimistic, even if to a fault.

Patrick Sammon, creator and executive producer of Codebreaker, had not heard of Turing before he came across a story about him while visiting the Smithsonian Institute in 2004.  “It was a long road,” Sammon said of his film’s development during a recent phone interview.  “I’m on my third career now after being a TV reporter and documentary filmmaker for PBS, then I took a detour into leading the Log Cabin Republicans.”

It was while Sammon was researching ideas for possible future movies after he decided to try filmmaking full time that he discovered Turing.  “At the time, I stuck it in my file folder,” recalls Sammon, who is now 38 years old.  “I came across it again in 2009; it was that September when I said ‘I’m going to get this made’ and started to get the production team together.”  Codebreaker is excellent and engrossing due in large part to the work of director Clare Beavan and editor Leigh Brzeski.  Actor Ed Stoppard (The Pianist) plays Turing in several dramatic vignettes during the course of the film.

Sammon partnered with Channel 4 in the UK and produced an initial, British version of Codebreaker (titled Britain's Greatest Codebreaker) that was broadcast there in 2011.  He and his team have since re-edited the film to make a uniquely American cut.  This is the version currently being shown in US theaters via a new approach to exhibition entitled Theatrical on Demand, or TOD for short.  When Codebreaker gets enough demand from a particular city or region through the website www.todpics.com, a screening or longer run of the film is scheduled.

“We’ve played in nine cities so far,” Sammon reported.  “This builds on the Video on Demand (VOD) model, but it is great to see this film on the big screen and with other people.”  TOD has a relationship with AMC theaters and, according to Sammon, “they really market films well to the LGBT community.”  Codebreaker has also been screened several times to date as a fundraiser for local LGBT community centers in different parts of the country.

“It’s been seen by more than two million people around the world at this point,” Sammon says of his film, the first he has ever produced.  “People’s first response (to Turing’s story) is usually outrage, but they then feel inspired by it. He was someone who thought outside the box and was a really creative, unusual man.”

More personally, Sammon shared about what he has learned as a gay man from Turing and what he hopes audiences will take from his film.  “I was really personally inspired by his outsider’s personality, and I hope it helps people to better appreciate our differences whatever they may be: gender, sexual orientation, race, etc.”

The producer and his team were most intent on “doing Turing justice” with Codebreaker.  I asked Sammon whether he had heard about the announced biopic in which Cumberbatch will star.  He had and stated: “It’s going to be good, it’s all good; the more people that know about Turing, the better.”

It is enormously inspiring to realize that the digital age in which we now live was ushered in by an openly gay man who also played a critical role in vanquishing Hitler and the Nazis, thereby ensuring greater freedom for those persecuted by them including LGBT people.  Despite his achievements, Turing suffered greatly and unnecessarily during his life.  We all owe him a tremendous debt.

For more information about Codebreaker, visit the film's official website.

OTHER NOTABLE LGBT BIOPICS:
More and more movies are being produced that shine a well-deserved spotlight on the LGBT men and women who helped pave the way for our visibility, acceptance and growing equality today.  Here are a few must-sees that have already come out, so to speak:

Milk (2008):  Easily the best such film to date, Sean Penn won his second Oscar as Best Actor for his turn as Harvey Milk, the crusading San Francisco supervisor who was tragically assassinated by a disgruntled colleague.  It was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director (openly gay Gus Van Sant), and out writer Dustin Lance Black won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

De-Lovely (2004):  The life of songwriter Cole Porter had been previously dramatized in 1946’s Night and Day but his bisexuality had been (in)conveniently omitted.  Kevin Kline plays Porter in this all-out musical.  In one memorable scene, he gives out actor John Barrowman of Torchwood fame a very intimate singing lesson.

A Beautiful Mind (2001):  Some accused this Oscar-winning movie about schizophrenic mathematician John Nash of making its bisexual subject straight, à la Night and Day and Cole Porter.  I disagree.  Director Ron Howard and star Russell Crowe take a subtle approach, but there is a definite homoerotic vibe between Nash and the graduate assistant/figment of his imagination played by Paul Bettany.

The Music Lovers (1970):  Gay composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, et al) is given flamboyant big-screen treatment by equally flamboyant director Ken Russell.  Richard Chamberlain, who later came out himself, plays Tchaikovsky.

Henry & June (1990):  An intelligent, sensual exploration of the real-life love triangle between author Henry Miller, his wife June and erotic writer Anaïs Nin. Uma Thurman and Maria de Medeiros heat things up as, respectively, June and Anais, resulting in the first NC-17 movie rating.

Prick Up Your Ears (1987):  Gary Oldman made a big impression on international audiences as playwright Joe Orton in this film focusing on Orton’s 16-year, ill-fated partnership with Kenneth Halliwell (played by Alfred Molina).  Both funny and disturbing, it was one of the first warts-and-all explorations of a gay relationship to hit the silver screen.

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985):  Unusual, highly-stylized examination of the life of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima.  More speculative than factual, Paul Schrader’s film is nonetheless one of the more unique and truly cinematic biopics ever made about anyone, gay or straight.  Handsome Ken Ogata is riveting in the title role.

Interview by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest, Rage Monthly Magazine and Echo Magazine.

Reverend’s Reviews: Teen Tunes & Tales

For those of us who came of age in the late 1970’s-1980’s, the songs of Journey provided much of the soundtrack for our adolescent lives (along with Queen, Eurythmics, Prince, Cyndi Lauper and, of course, Pet Shop Boys).  The popular rock band put out such now-classics as “Open Arms,” “Faithfully,” “Who’s Crying Now” and “Any Way You Want It,” and even provided a couple of tunes for Disney’s groundbreaking Tron in 1982.

Don’t Stop Believin’:Everyman’s Journey opens today in Southern California theaters and will be available on VOD beginning tomorrow. Drawing its title from one of the group’s biggest hits, which has been re-popularized in recent years thanks to covers in Glee and Rock of Ages, it documents the rise to stardom of current Journey front man Arnel Pineda.  Pineda was born and raised in the Philippines and, following decades of singing with local bands, was chosen by longtime Journey members Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain in 2007 after they saw Pineda’s YouTube videos.  They were particularly impressed by how much Pineda sounds like Journey’s original, distinctively-voiced lead singer, Steve Perry.

Pineda had much to overcome beginning at a young age.  His mother, who encouraged Pineda to mimic the vocal stylings of such expert singers as Karen Carpenter and Barbra Streisand, passed away when her son was only 13.  Left with medical debts his father couldn’t pay, Pineda and his siblings were farmed out to other relatives.  Pineda quit school soon after and spent several years working odd jobs and living on the street.  Throughout all his struggles, he maintained his love for music and eventually formed a band in Manila with some of his friends.

As inspiring as much of Pineda’s story is, Filipina director Ramona S. Diaz (Imelda) may be a little too enamored with her subject and, subsequently, comes across at times as less than objective.  Don’t Stop Believin’ is a very by-the-numbers documentary (and overly long at nearly two hours) that keeps things positive and doesn’t delve into any potential current issues/tensions with either Pineda or Journey’s other members.  Although the band is big again thanks in large part to Pineda, they largely recycle former hits and don’t take many musical risks.  If that’s the way Journey wants it then good for them, but it doesn’t make for very compelling cinema.

On the other hand, today’s music-loving teenagers — at least a multi-ethnic group of them living in the South Bronx — are given a frequently invigorating big-screen treatment by experimental French filmmaker Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep).  Gondry’s The We and the I is now playing in New York and is set to open in Los Angeles on March 22^nd before expanding nationally.

Set entirely on a city bus, the film follows several teens and their interactions with one another at the end of their last day of school before summer vacation.  The kingpin among them is Michael (played by Michael Brodie, a promising standout among the mostly amateur cast), who with two devotees commandeers the back of the bus.  His position also affords him a place to try to hide from Teresa (played by Teresa Lynn), a budding artist and Michael’s sometime girlfriend who, it turns out, did a drawing of Michael for which he posed nude.  The complex emotional interplay between them serves as the film’s center.

The We and the I represents a return to successful form for Gondry after 2011’s big-budget but wretched The Green Hornet, Christoph Waltz’s entertaining villain aside.  Though not as experimental or downright odd as some of his prior films, Gondry is still able to work in some of his trademark visual jokes and artistic references. The dialogue is graphic (usually amusingly so) when it comes to discussion of others’ genitals, sex acts, disabilities and/or race, including prodigious use of “the N-word,” but the screenplay (co-written with Jeffrey Grimshaw and Paul Proch) captures the modern teen spirit, lingo and reliance on technology exceptionally well.  It also illustrates a more tolerant, fluid understanding of sexuality among today’s teens than prior generations, with both gay and lesbian couples as well as a trans character on the bus.

As strong as much of The We and the I is, it suffers somewhat due to the cast’s more-often-than-not amateurish performances.  The film was made in collaboration with the Point Community Development Corporation, which is striving to improve the quality of life among South Bronx residents.  This is a noble effort that gives a lot of kids who likely wouldn’t have had a chance the opportunity to appear in a feature film by a world-class filmmaker.  Still, some of their line readings and reaction shots are painful and distract from an otherwise worthy production.  The screenplay also gets heavy-handedly serious toward the end.

Fittingly, The We and the I’s soundtrack boasts a cool mix of old school and contemporary rap and hip-hop.  The times may change but music will clearly always be foundational to the teen experience.

Reverend’s Ratings:

Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey: C+

The We and the I: B

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest, Rage Monthly Magazine and Echo Magazine.

Reverend’s Reviews: Rejoice and Be Mayor

Even non-Jews are familiar with “Hava Nagila,” the joyful song traditionally played at Jewish weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and other occasions.  As Roberta Grossman’s fun and illuminating new documentary Hava Nagila: The Movie makes clear, though, few people — Jewish or otherwise — know exactly what the tune means or of the dramatic history behind it.  The film is now playing in New York City and opens in Los Angeles on March 15^th.

Grossman and writer Sophie Sartain (who previously teamed on 2008’s Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh) went on a “Havaquest” to discover its origins.  Dubbed “a song all scholars of Jewish music love to hate” by one expert interviewed for the film, the melody took root among Hasidic Jews living in Ukraine approximately 150 years ago.  Their chief rabbi believed that joy was a requirement for worshipping God, even under less than joyful circumstances, and felt the tune had “an extra-magical power” that ultimately inspired ordinary Jews.

It wasn’t given lyrics and a title, however, until after World War I.  A.Z. Idelsohn, a cantor living in Jerusalem, drew from the biblical psalms and selected “Hava Nagila” (translation: “Let us rejoice”) as the most fitting refrain.  Idelsohn has come to be regarded as “the father of Hava” despite objections from the descendants of one of his students, Moshe Nathanson, who claim Nathanson wrote the song’s lyrics as a school assignment when he was a mere 12 years old.

The film follows the song’s literal journey from Israel to Nazi-occupied Europe, its endurance through the horrors of the Holocaust, and to the post-World War II United States.  American singers including Harry Belafonte, Connie Francis, Danny Kaye and Glen Campbell made “Hava Nagila” an international recording smash between the 1950’s and 60’s.  All but the deceased Kaye provide new interviews in the movie, as do Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy and numerous rabbis and scholars.  Grossman also references many Hollywood productions that have incorporated the song, notably A Raisin in the Sun, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Private Benjamin and Wedding Crashers.

Grossman and Sartain’s tongue-in-cheek approach further serves to illustrate the film’s primary thesis, that Jews are “a happy people.”  Hava Nagila: The Movie as well as the song serve as fitting, entertaining testaments to the resilience of the Jewish people.

As a Jew, the famed longtime mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, likely sang and/or danced along to “Hava Nagila” countless times during his storied life.  Koch, who just passed away last month at the age of 88, is now himself the subject of a documentary.  Simply but appropriately titled Koch, it is now playing in LA and other US cities.

Former Wall Street Journal reporter and first-time filmmaker Neil Barsky does a generally remarkable job shuttling back and forth between clips from archival footage beginning in 1977 and an intimate 2010 interview he conducted of Koch.  In covering key moments from Koch’s unprecedented 12-year run as mayor, things can get a little confusing and/or frustrating for viewers when certain events or timeframes overlap.  For example, I was keenly interested in the film’s depiction of Koch’s handling of the AIDS crisis that exploded in NYC in the early 1980’s.  Barsky doesn’t address this until he is well into the second half of the 80’s, but my patience was finally rewarded even if Koch is defined as “largely ineffective” at dealing with AIDS.

Koch was dogged by rumors he was gay starting at an early point in his political career, and they became public in a big way when his chief rival, Mario Cuomo, told New Yorkers to “Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo.”  Koch never confirmed these rumors, not even when Barsky asks him directly during his interview.  Throughout the film, though, Koch comes across as sharp, witty and responsive as only a gay man could be.

New Yorkers today and those who have visited the Big Apple have much for which to be thankful to Koch, including housing renewal initiatives in previously blighted areas and the first attempts to clean up Times Square and make it more tourist-friendly.  The late mayor was apparently most proud toward the end of his life of the city’s decision to rename the Queensboro Bridge in his honor.  Barksy uses the debate over this decision as an effective framing device, one that illustrates well the man’s accomplishments and what will surely be enduring arguments over them.

Reverend’s Ratings:

Hava Nagila:The Movie: B+

Koch: A-

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest, Rage Monthly Magazine and Echo Magazine.