Reel Thoughts: Absolute Beginners

Parents are mysterious creatures to their kids, and sometimes it takes a lifetime to figure them out. Mike Mills’ engrossing and uplifting film, Beginners, seeks to document his own experiences with his parents, in a fictionalized way. It is such a specific, personal journey, full of details that you know came straight from Mills’ life, yet Beginners feels relatable to anyone who has turned around a strained relationship with a parent or anyone who has embarked on a romantic relationship not knowing if they have what it takes to make it work. The film has whimsical elements, like the way Arthur the Jack Russell Terrier has ongoing subtitles to reveal his feelings, but overall, the film is a leisurely-paced love story paired with a late-in-life coming out tale.

Oliver, played by Ewan McGregor, is packing up his late father Hal’s (Christopher Plummer) belongings as the film begins, and in flashback, you are introduced to the man who, after being widowed at age 75, decides to come out of the closet. The film is both a tribute to a man who, being a product of the 50’s, denied his true sexual orientation his whole life, only to embrace it in the end, and an intelligent examination of the effect parents have on their children and the way they interact with others. Oliver is closed off emotionally, and doesn’t stick with relationships very long. He watched his mother Georgia (Mary Page Keller), who made Oliver her confidant and surrogate best friend, suffer from the loneliness of being in a marriage with a closeted gay man. At the same time, Hal was a distant and absentee father.

Oliver meets French actress Anna (Mélanie Laurent from Inglourious Basterds) at a costume party where she is playing mute to save her voice. Their courtship is sweet and tentative, since both come with a lot of baggage. Hal, on the other hand, embraces every aspect of gay life, trying out bars where youth rules supreme and then settling in with a great group of “Prime Timers” who host movie nights and dinners out in West Hollywood. He even gets a wild and crazy boyfriend named Andy (ER’s Goran Visnjic, in a horrible bowl cut). But Hal’s days are numbered, it turns out, and Oliver becomes much closer with his father than he ever was growing up. Mills keeps the tone even and mostly light-hearted, but the reality of losing a parent is explored in a way everyone can relate to; don’t be afraid if tears flow... it’s good for you.

Beginners has many moments of emotional truth, and the performances could not be better. Plummer is sure to be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, and he does a great service to a group in the gay community that tends to be ignored, namely older gay men. McGregor has a much quieter role to play, but he does it with his usual intelligence and intensity. Laurent is quirky and beautiful and Cosmo the dog makes the perfect cinematic companion for Oliver. If you can handle a summer movie that isn’t full of shape-shifting robots or Caribbean pirates, Beginners is a nice, quiet beginning to the season.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reel Thoughts: The X Factor

The new X-Men film is first class all the way. But what did you expect? Starring James McAvoy and the sizzling Michael Fassbender, and directed by Matthew Vaughn (the man who brought us the hugely entertaining Kick-Ass), X-Men: First Class reinvigorates the series by going back to its groovy, swinging roots. Part adventure, part history lesson and all-exciting, Vaughn’s film delves movingly into what made young Holocaust survivor Erik Lehnsherr into the villainous Magneto, played by Sir Ian McKellen previously. McAvoy is a perfect, compassionate counterpoint, as the telepath who would be Patrick Stewart, a.k.a. Professor X.

The story of these friends and future enemies begins in the 40’s, when Erik reveals his mutant power over metal in an attempt to save his parents, and at the same time, young Charles Xavier finds a familiar blue shape-shifter stealing food in the kitchen of his family’s palatial Westchester mansion. Raven, a.k.a. Mystique, played by Jennifer Lawrence of Winter’s Bone fame, who cements her reputation as a strong, committed actress who is ready to assume any role that would have earlier been given to Leelee Sobieski. But if Young Magneto and Junior Professor X are friends, who is their super-villain nemesis? That would be the utterly evil Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a former Nazi scientist and current mutant collector. The action moves to 1962, where it turns out the Shaw is primed to bring about nuclear war via the Cuban Missile Crisis.

X-Men: First Class echoes J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek prequel in that we are introduced to many characters who will be very important in the X-Men’s future, with enough nodding cameos to tickle fans of the film series. The rest of the cast is impressive, including Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man) as Beast, January Jones as Emma Frost, and Rose Byrne and Oliver Platt as the only good guys in the US Military Complex that will eventually demonize all mutants.

The awesome sixties production design is a character unto itself, even if I doubt miniskirts were all the rage that early. X-Men: First Class truly succeeds in creating human stories amongst the action sequences. Fassbender’s quest for vengeance is a powerful plot, and the mutants’ quest to be accepted for who they are and not be hated and feared for it continues to strike a deep chord with LGBT audiences.

The best thing about X-Men: First Class is that you don’t have to have seen anything that came before to appreciate and follow the plot. In a summer that will be jam-packed with monsters, wizards and superheroes. X-Men: First Class graduates with top honors!

UPDATE: X-Men: First Class is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.com.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reverend's Reviews: Sing Out, Louise!

"If we really heard the voice of God, we would be reduced to juice. The vibration of His voice would reduce us to liquid... so He has to use other people to speak His word."

So says singer-turned-pastor Andrae Crouch at the start of Rejoice and Shout, a wonderful new documentary about the evolution of Gospel music from Magnolia Pictures that opens today in New York and June 24 in Los Angeles. I likely would have loved the movie solely for incorporating footage of the late, great Mahalia Jackson, but when you throw Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Clara and Willa Ward, the original Five Blind Boys of Alabama and the Edwin Hawkins Singers ("Oh Happy Day") into the mix, it constitutes a near-instant classic.

As this sweeping film (made by the longtime team of director Don McGlynn and producer Joe Lauro) points out, Gospel music has long represented freedom in times of slavery and oppression. The first known or recognized Gospel record was recorded in 1902 by the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet. The film's press notes point out that this was nearly 20 years before any African-American blues or jazz recordings were made. Influenced by their relatives' experience of having worked on Southern plantations for white masters, these black musicians struck a multi-cultural nerve.

Other Gospel musicians honed their craft through the Great Depression and two World Wars. These included the "controversial" Thomas A. Dorsey, who wrote both spiritual and secular songs that often seemed at odds with one another. And then there's Mahalia, who started out as a hairdresser aspiring to sound like her idol, Bessie Smith, and ultimately "crossed all barriers" performing Gospel songs on The Ed Sullivan Show. As Smokey Robinson says in the film, "Just as many white people had Mahalia Jackson in their homes, listening to her, as black people did." Heck, I have several Mahalia compilations I listen to on a semi-regular basis today.

Interviews with scholars, authors and contemporary musicians are incorporated throughout Rejoice and Shout and provide essential, generally objective perspectives. The movie also utilizes restored archival footage of the most significant figures in Gospel music. There were a couple of premature edits or reel changes in the print I viewed, but these were hopefully unique and won't be observed elsewhere.

"Faith is the thing that keeps you going," according to on-screen commentator Bill Carpenter (no relation). He won't find an argument from me, nor will the numerous musicians recounted over 150 years of often-painful American history in Rejoice and Shout.

In a natural progression, six backup singers of various ethnicities yearn for headliner status in the new DVD release This Time, available now from Village Art Pictures. Having once sung with the likes of Elvis Presley, Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin, these talented individuals have more recently battled homelessness and the brutality of the music industry in an effort to become stars themselves.

This similarly-exceptional documentary features three queer subjects in addition to its openly gay director-photographer-editor, Victor Mignatti (who directed chapters 13-22 of R. Kelly's infamous "Trapped in the Closet" music video). The GLBT folks shown are cabaret singer Bobby Belfry, music producer Peitor Angell, and Estelle Brown, now a lesbian minister who co-founded the Unity Fellowship Church in Los Angeles. The talents of all concerned are on full display here, and their music is both inspiring and entertaining.

Feel free to sing along to both of these films, whether you'll be watching in a theatre, at home or at your local worship center.

Reverend's Ratings:
Rejoice and Shout: A-
This Time: B+

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

Reverend's Reviews: Two Spirits, One Brief Life

Traditional Navajo culture used the word nadleehi, or "two-spirit," to refer to male-bodied persons who possessed a feminine nature. Some today may call them "effeminate" or "transgender," often in a disparaging sense. There was a time, however, when such people enjoyed an honored position in North America.

Sadly, Fred Martinez, Jr. was not one of them. The 16-year old from the border town of Cortez, Colorado became one of the youngest hate crime victims in modern history when he was brutally murdered in 2001. Martinez's only "offense" was to put on make-up and dress in female attire, which led his assailant, Shaun Murphy, to abduct him from a local rodeo one night. Murphy would later brag to friends about having killed "a fag." Martinez's body laid in the desert for five days before it was discovered by two boys at play.

An insightful new documentary about the Martinez case will make its premiere in June. Appropriately titled Two Spirits, it will air as part of the PBS series Independent Lens. The film will also have several special theatrical screenings in California and elsewhere. Please visit the PBS website for more information.

Two Spirits, directed by Lydia Nibley, utilizes gorgeous location photography (by David A. Armstrong) and an effective mix of interviews with those who knew Martinez, archival footage, and recreations of moments from the young nadleehi's life and death. It doesn't take viewers long to agree with one commentator who remarks, "The place where two discriminations (in this case, against Native Americans and transgender people) meet is a dangerous place to live."

Efforts by some to eradicate two-spirit people began long before 2001. The Spanish conquistadores were horrified to discover nadleehi in America, and fed them to wild dogs as a form of entertainment. Later, the post-Civil War schooling system established by the US government for Native Americans "sought to rub their culture out of them," according to the film.

Martinez's mother, Pauline Mitchell, is interviewed extensively in Two Spirits. Sad but dignified, she recounts her experience raising her unique child and trying to protect him from a prejudiced society beyond their community. Martinez didn't have to travel far from home (just a few miles) to discover how vicious the outside world could be. Mitchell continues to mourn her son-daughter's loss nearly ten years later, despite several mystical experiences she says she has had wherein Fred has appeared to her.

As illustrated in the film and by Martinez's life, ours is "a many-gendered world." Navajos have traditionally believed that there are four genders among human beings: males who identify as males, women who identify as females, men who identify as females and women who identify as males. The term "two-spirit" is often applied to the latter two, but it ultimately describes the entire spectrum of gender and sexual expression among Native Americans.

Two Spirits has been recognized by the American Library Association (ALA) as one of 15 Notable Videos for Adults released in the past two years. The documentary and the educational outreach efforts of the Fred Martinez Project have also been awarded the Monette-Horwitz Distinguished Achievement Award "for outstanding activism, research, and scholarship to combat homophobia." With or without such kudos, the film should not be missed.

Reverend's Rating: B+

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.