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Showing posts from October, 2011

A Road To Home (Documentary)

A Road to Home  is a documentary that follows six LGBTQ youth over a year and a half as they navigate being homeless. Their lives are a snapshot of what about 500,000 young people in America go through every single night, and it's a huge wake-up call to realize that 40% of those kids are part of the LGBTQ community. The film takes this heavy subject and introduces us to six young adults, showing us how they ended up on the streets and how they eventually found community centers that stepped up to provide housing, food, school, and even help finding jobs. We also get to meet the people running these organizations who are right there backing these kids up every step of the way. And given that the documentary is set in my home city, it makes it all the more relatable for me.  The six people the documentary focuses on are honestly the perfect choice for this story. They all have really sad backstories about how they ended up where they are, but there’s so much warmth and hope in t...

Randy And The Mob

This film was supposed to be a low budget comedy with mob plots. It could have been interesting but there was something that was missing from the film. Maybe I will figure that out by the time i have finished writing this review. I would also like to mention that this is not primarily a gay cinema. There is an important gay couple and an important character but that itself does not make this film qualified for gay cinema but I can still review it here.  A good old boy from the middle-class suburbs of Atlanta becomes indebted to the mob. Randy is about as American as baseball and apple pie. Randy's wife is a clinically depressed baton teacher who also suffers from a painful case of carpal tunnel syndrome, and his identical twin brother, Cecil, is openly homosexual. When Randy runs into financial trouble, he seeks a quick fix by borrowing money from some local mobsters. Unfortunately for Randy, all his businesses are still making very little money. Franco, a loan shark for the mob, w...

Donne-Moi La Main (French/Spanish) [Give Me Your Hand]

This movie was a sort of road-rip movie. Hitchhiking, walking, on road, running etc to their destination, the principal characters take us through their journey. A film of very few words, the film is shot beautifully but it could definitely had been better. The writing of the film left a lot to be desired. The director spends way too much time showing the boys walking down a road, walking through a forest, walking through a field, walking and more walking. A little bit is ok but when it becomes to the extent of self obsession, that harms a film. Antoine and Quentin, twin brothers and both young, stubborn and determined. They want to hitchhike to their mother's funeral in Spain. Antoine finds occasional pleasure in girls but Quentin keeps himself busy in his drawings. The hardships of this trip starts to take a toll on the already strained relationship of the brothers but they both agree to working in a farm the necessary days to pay for a train ticket to Spain. One night, Quentin ...

Le temps qui reste (French) [Time To Leave]

This film very beautifully addresses that earth-shattering moment of being informed that death is imminent and shows us how one character copes with that information and how it changes his remaining days and his history of relating to others. It is touching, empathetic, very loving and at some or the other point, you will be able to connect with this film with some event from your own life, maybe someone whom you know.  Romain is a handsome and successful fashion photographer who lives with his lover Sasha, but is somewhat estranged from his family. For some reason he cannot relate to his pregnant sister Sophie despite his mother's pleading and his father's distance. During a fashion shoot Romain faints, is taken to the doctor who informs him he has metastatic cancer for which there is little hope and that he will live past a few months. Romain opts to go without treatment and begins to face his remaining life with silent gloom. Romain decides to quit his job, tells Sasha to le...