This dark gritty Japanese BL is something I was not expecting. The story focuses on a Yakuza bodyguard assigned to kill his young boss. The premise sounds interesting but the execution was just weird. There were lot of problems with the show like violence, abuse, coercion and even forcing themselves sexually. Eventually it somewhere becomes. BL with some nonsense stuff. Thankfully the series was only 6 episodes of about 26-30 minutes each. Kataoka is a respected yakuza leader. His boss has grown old and frail, unable to manage the organization anymore. Leadership now falls to the boss's son, Keito. He assigns Odajima as Kataoka's new handler to keep him in check. Kataoka is impulsive and treats Odajima aslmost as a servant even forcing sex on him. But beneath the rough exterior, Kataoka occasionally reveals a gentler side. Odajima, on the other hand, is stoic and distant, keeping his emotions under tight control. What Kataoka doesn't know is that Odajima has a hidden agen...
Just Out Of Reach (USA)
A young man wakes up alongside an older gentleman. As he tries to sneak out, he is caught in the act. An ultra-short film that captures a brief moment in time, this is about that feeling of uncertainty upon remembering the night before.
Toto Forever (USA)
Through flashbacks we work out that a young delivery boy gets involved with a gangster who owes money, with a violent outcome. It owes a lot to the manga tradition, and indeed slips in and out of graphic depiction. Its a complicated story more than it meets the eye.
Men Don't Cry (Greece)
Petros is surprised to receive a visitor Ilias, a younger man whom he met several years before on a night out. Petros wants his uninvited guest to leave, but Ilias is refusing to go. A film about confronting uncomfortable truths, the tense narrative is interspersed with grainy black and white footage of the night they met.
Alger La Blanche (France)
Its about relationship between Farid, of Algerian heritage, and his illustrator boyfriend Jean. Set in the suburbs of Paris, it tells us that Farid wants to return to Algeria and take his secret partner with him. But when Farid becomes embroiled in a police matter, both his passionate private life and conservative family life hurtle towards one another with explosive results.
Unconfessions (Brazil)
Luiz Galizia died young, one of the victims of the early days of the AIDS Crisis. He left behind a large personal archive of materials from his life, which his niece, Ana, has lovingly assembled into this documentary biopic thirty years later.
Same Difference (UK)
Twin brothers spend all their time with each other and we are also made to believe they are pursuing the same girl, till one of them makes a declaration of his own by kissing another boy from the team whom he likes. Sometimes twins may not know everything about each other.
Boychick (USA)
In the American suburbs, a decidedly ordinary boy is mollycoddled by his overbearing Jewish mother, who calls him Boychick. As he tries to build up enough courage to speak to his crush at school, he is suddenly visited with spectral assistance from pop sensation Ashley Hart, with whom he is obsessed.
Although this collection was historic and brings you blast from the past, I sadly hav etc say that none of the stories really held my attention. It was the shorter ones about twin brothers or the first one that I really cared about. (4/10)
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