Lyle (2014)

directed by Stewart Thorndike
USA
65 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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I thought this would be a good fit for pride month because there aren't a whole lot of movies about LGBT people who are parents. Unfortunately, though, while this does feature a lesbian couple with children, it's not great to watch specifically for that because the relationship doesn't end well. Were a film like this centered around a straight couple, the dissolution of the relationship wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary, but since the characters in this are lesbians, there's a disheartening sense of inevitability. There's nothing inherently wrong with a narrative about a non-straight couple having issues, but the overwhelming amount of movies about that premise means that any film that doesn't deliberately attempt to break that mold contributes to a stereotype. At least this wasn't written by a man, though.

But anyway. The other reason I watched this was because it sounded like a decent psychological horror movie; specifically, a reworking of Rosemary's Baby. I heavily support the concept of taking films made by awful people and remaking them with lesbians. It's not a direct remake or anything, it only riffs on the theme, and also I've never seen Rosemary's Baby so I can't speak to its status as an homage, but one of the things that I was uncertain about on a more technical level was that there isn't any point where we as the audience genuinely doubt the main character's sanity. I don't know if we were supposed to do that, but it seems pretty obvious from the beginning that she's being set up for something horrible, she isn't just paranoid. Which personally I liked- I enjoy how this subverts the "is she or isn't she crazy" trope. I just wasn't sure it was meant to be doing that.

The cinematography in this is also gorgeous, very interesting, and a far cry from the moody, shadowy interiors of a typical psychological horror. It's the opposite, really- every space is open and filled up with bright whiteness, sun streaming through windows, pure white walls, white clothing, etc. While the color white might commonly be used to signify purity, I really didn't see any place for such symbolism in this particular narrative. To me, such an outwardly bright and cheery atmosphere seemed to imply that the things the main character was afraid of weren't in her head. It doesn't seem like the main character's environment is filtered through a lens of delusion, nothing is more gloomy or sinister than it would be in real life. The plainness of her apartment and the world around it left nothing to hide. The people who were the real villains the whole time were out in plain sight.

Gaby Hoffmann is really the centerpiece of this whole thing and her performance ties it all together. The role of the paranoid, protective mother is one that gives actors a lot to work with and if done well can have a powerful resonance with an audience that would almost universally find something to relate to in such a role. This was actually quite a good film, patient and unsettling for only being a little over an hour long.

La León (2007)

directed by Santiago Otheguy

Argentina

85 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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This is one of the closest things I've seen so far to the ideal of films with gay characters that I mentioned in my previous review. It really doesn't feel preoccupied with the main character's gayness, but at the same time it's definitely a facet of him that does come into play. It almost feels reductive to even be watching and talking about this movie specifically for pride month because it deals with so much more than the immediate identity of its main character as contained within himself- it's more about him as he belongs to the world around him, and about the world around him as a whole, than him as one person.

But nevertheless, I did watch this because I want to cover films that show LGBT content in places other than white, Western society. The main character in this film lives in a small fishing village in the forest of Argentina, in the Paraná delta, and he is gay. Although there's no one else in his village like him, the other villagers seem to either not care or not know (the ending of the film heavily suggests the former rather than the latter), and so the only time he gets to actually interact romantically with other men is when they come by on (often illegal) logging boats. Logging is kind of the second most prominent subject in this film, or possibly the third, depending on how you want to order it. I discourage such linear thinking about the composition and subjects of such a free-form, narrative-is-optional sort of film, though.

What was interesting about this to me, and what elevated it beyond what it could have been otherwise, is the creative cinematography. It's in a particularly harsh black and white, which as others have said almost looks like an old tintype photograph, and this is an unusual choice considering that it's set in what, in color, would be an extraordinarily vibrant and verdant place. Had it been in color I think a lot of what I would have to say about it would be reduced to the typical admirations of a green jungle landscape, so by having it be in black and white, I'm forced to think about more than the image I see immediately in front of me while I watch this. But at the same time, the cinematography also enhances things about this environment- it's turned from something that could be separated from the characters and story into an essential part of both of those things; the world as another character, an observer included in the list of figures exerting influence on the events of the film.

Nothing feels certain in La León. I seldom see films that so successfully capture the non-linear nature of everyday life, the feeling that you don't know what could happen from minute to minute. This is established not through tension and foreboding but through a total focus on the present moment, no matter what that moment is. When the camera is trained on a boat going down a river, boys playing soccer, the main character watching someone bathe in the river, etc... you aren't thinking about what's coming next. It's like witnessing the events play out firsthand. Despite being overwhelmingly slow and uneventful this is a very good movie.

Lan Yu (2001)

directed by Stanley Kwan
China
86 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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It's hard for me personally to find films to review for pride month because, as I've mentioned many times, I'm not into romance. It doesn't matter what gender the people doing the romancing are. But it's difficult to find horror/sci-fi movies where LGBT people are just there. It's hard for me to find a balance between poor representation (like one gay couple in the far background of a dance club scene) and mushy romances that I have no interest in.

But anyway. Lan Yu is set during the time leading up to and immediately after the Tiananmen Square incident, so considering that it covers both that (although indirectly, with nothing but implications and secondhand news) and a gay relationship, it's not too well-known, nor is it the easiest film to find. But it is an important one since there's an overwhelming lack of LGBT films coming from China, both in the past and now. The main characters are a wealthy businessman and a poor college student from the countryside, who meet through the type of fleeting, one-night-stand relationship that seems to be one of the only ways to conduct a same-gender affair in a country that's openly against anything of the sort, but eventually their relationship becomes much more than an incidental thing.

Even though the climate is unsupportive, there's no hate crimes or openly homophobic speech in this, which I think is a sign of really good filmmaking. A lot of the time, people seem to think that movies set in homophobic environments need to depict outward homophobia to get their point across, but really all that does is take the spotlight away from the people the film is ostensibly supposed to be focused on. You still get a definite feeling that the characters in Lan Yu are conducting something clandestine because they totally lack the openness and carefree nature of a straight couple; the ability to do anything as simple as being honest instead of pretending to be brothers. But there's no room in this for anxiety and hatred. Just love, and some of the turmoil that comes with it.

I would argue that the biggest wedge driven between the couple is a result of en/forced heteronormativity. The elder half finds it necessary to go off and marry a woman, not really because he's in love with her, but because she seemed attracted to him and he seemed like he thought taking the opportunity would establish him as an upstanding member of society. The marriage is honestly not a huge part of the film as a whole, though, because the storyline skips through time pretty quickly, being told mostly in chunks that are a few months separated from each other.

There is something very "lived-in" about this film that allowed me to find it comforting even though it deals with heavy emotional issues and repression. The indoors sets, when the characters would come together as a family to have a big meal and laugh, all felt like somewhere I had personally been. They almost have the feeling of sitcom sets; something that's familiar and a little careworn, intentionally as realistic to an everyday person's home as possible. The only thing I didn't enjoy about this movie is the ending, and I really wish I could talk about it but anything I could say would be a spoiler. But even though it goes in a direction I didn't care for, it remains an intensely moving and deep experience all the way throughout.

Closet Monster (2015)

directed by Stephen Dunn
Canada
90 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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This Pride Month, I'm making an effort to watch and review more films with LGBT content, but I'm also trying to avoid films that focus on making being LGBT seem like a harrowing experience, or ones that are solely about something negative, like a hate crime. Those things exist and are horrible, but they aren't representative of who we are. Closet Monster is an exploration of the coming-out process after one has been stifled by one's homophobic environment/society and how difficult it can be, and as such it leans towards the angsty side of things, but in the end it's optimistic, which counts for most everything when you're showing an LGBT narrative.

I appreciate that this acknowledges a spectrum of homophobia, from physical violence to smaller reinforcements of heteronormativity. It moves from actual assault to the main character's father joking that he's gotta cut his hair short or else people will think he's gay (shock horror!). All of these things work in tandem to keep somebody from being comfortable about who they truly are- in terms of expressing it to the wider world, in seeking companions, and in admitting it to themselves, as the main character in Closet Monster has a difficult time doing. Although this is a bit darker than the films I'm trying to review and highlight, it's good because it reiterates that the only problem with being gay is people who have a problem with you being gay.

This is probably one of the only movies I can say this about: the talking hamster was one of my favorite characters. The main character's childhood pet is present throughout the film as his closest confidant, and although viewers may decry a talking hamster as either impossible or a clear sign of instability in the protagonist's mental state, the film itself is concerned with neither of those things. As far as the context of the film goes, this is the main character's talking hamster and it doesn't matter whether or not that's physically possible because it's happening and that's how it is. This and a few other places where magical realism breaks though were really what made this a great film to me- without these touches, it could have still been a good story, but with them, it feels somehow more personal. I think I could relate to this more with the fantastical things than without them.

I guess the only thing I didn't like about this was that it's not representative of marginalized people within the LGBT community. Everyone in it is white, and even though I loved the hamster, her portrayal is weird and tone-deaf in that she's called the protagonist's "spirit animal", which is totally unnecessary, and they also shoehorn in some allusions to her being trans, which... as somebody who is trans, honestly kind of offended me. I know that it's easy to respond to this with "then just watch a different movie if you don't want to see a story about white gay men!" but the thing is that it's hard to do that because nothing else makes the mainstream. This is an important film and I'm glad that it exists, and it's good and watchable and everything, but I would love to see more diversity in more popular movies.

The Silenced (2015)

directed by Lee Hae-Young
South Korea
99 minutes
3 stars out of 5
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Personally I wasn't looking forward to seeing this, to be honest. I didn't have anything against the content of the movie itself, but it's a bit long (for me) and it looked like it was going to be one of those films that are very lush and spacious, yet very boring. I was kind of right in that it moves slowly and it's beautiful, but it is honestly more engaging than I gave it credit for, and I wasn't too bothered about having to sit through 99 minutes of period-piece girl's boarding school drama.

The general consensus from letterboxd viewers seems to be the same as mine: pretty, but a bit dull. It's got "watchability", but it's not that great in other areas. It has all the typical furnishings of any drama set in a girl's school: vague lesbian undertones, bullying, random acts of violence from girls who Just Can't Take It Anymore, scandalously strict teachers, rigid schedules, the whole lot. Things I don't even really need to explain because they're such common tropes. The difference in The Silenced is that there's also some sci-fi elements that really don't come out until the second half of the film, but their emergence onto the scene makes for something a whole lot more interesting.

Aesthetically it's perfect, not a hair or a stitch of clothing out of place. The cinematography is as tightly-controlled as the schoolhouse environment it depicts. It's also kind of nice to see an obvious lesbian relationship not be sexualized to the moon and back. It feels a little soft and uncommitted, however, and it would have been nice to see the two main girls be undoubtedly, vocally in love, but this is nice too. I just hope that the restraint on their relationship wasn't because the director/writer decided that making a gay romance set during this particular time period was too unrealistic. Gay people didn't just spring into existence in the latter half of the 20th century.

I think this is a good example of a film that bridges the gap between frivolous, fun, alone-in-your-bedroom viewing and the kind of cinematography that gets praised at festivals. The plot and the random foray into sci-fi/fantasy makes this feel mostly like something that would get relegated to Netflix (which it did), but visually it's arguably better than a lot of things that win prestigious awards. I like this because it defies genre labels, defies the dichotomy of high art vs. low art. It's a movie that can basically only be watched and enjoyed because you personally want to watch and enjoy it, if that makes sense.

The Blue Hour (2015)

directed by Anucha Boonyawatana
Thailand
97 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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There's something about the very first scene of this movie that's really affecting and does an excellent job of setting the tone without using words- the main character coming to after a fight with some bullies, cleaning himself up, and immediately putting his earring back in. That willingness to continue expressing yourself even after you've been physically hurt is such a strong image.

This movie drew me in on the promise of two things: A gay love story rendered in the style of Thai contemplative cinema, and something about a haunted swimming pool. I was really fascinated with the swimming pool because it's such a textbook example of a liminal space, which makes it a perfect setting for the romance and also a powerful statement about the experience of being gay in an intolerant environment. That the liminal space of the swimming pool is where the two characters are forced to meet up, that they have to remain sequestered in this unsettling, dark place where no one else wants to go instead of being able to be open in each other's houses or outside. Some of the film takes place in a garbage dump that serves as a similar liminal space, except the garbage dump represents a negative force where- I feel- the swimming pool was mostly neutral.

As with many Thai films, watching The Blue Hour is an immersive experience that makes you forget about time and your own environment and draws you into the scenery and setting onscreen. I'm sure that there are Thai films out there that bear no resemblance to the country's most famous director of slow cinema, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, but either his legacy spawned basically a new standard for the country's cinema, or there's something ingrained within the process of shooting a film in Thailand itself that makes gives them this hazy, summery, almost underwater quality of serenity to them. Not even necessarily "serenity", since that word feels reductive, but a stillness, a patience. The ability to let a story tell itself through gestures and acts rather than dialogue.

The thing about The Blue Hour that could be off-putting to some people is that about halfway through, it very abruptly becomes a horror film. The swimming pool was creepy from the start, but past a certain point it's impossible to see it as having been a metaphor or a little urban legend to flesh out the background of the story. This swimming pool is deeply, deeply haunted, and it permeates the characters' lives to such an extent that the whole atmosphere of the film takes on a sinister undertone that I absolutely loved. The first half, with the love story, is beautiful and gorgeous and a thing to heal the soul if you're like me and are unsatisfied with how many gay romances on film end in tragedy. But the second half takes this into becoming something existentially terrifying, a reflection of the uncertainty of loving someone and your own feelings about the people around you.

I can't say I understood every minute of this but I was happy to go along with the ride and admire the scenery. There's so much in this that we don't get to see in movies about gay teens. Specifically, resilience and triumph over self-doubt, absolute knowledge that being true to yourself is the way to prevail over those who seek to harm you. And the world's most ominous swimming pool, and possibly supernatural algae. It's just so good. This might be one of my favorites I've seen this year thus far.

The Strangeness (1985)

directed by Melanie Anne Phillips
USA
93 minutes
3 stars out of 5
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I watched this because it was directed by a trans woman and the amount of relatively mainstream horror movies directed by trans women is way too small. I probably would have watched it otherwise, though, to be honest- I love that title, The Strangeness! It lets you know that you're not just in for a regular movie, you're in for Strangeness.

Unfortunately this is a regular movie. It's a bog-standard mid-80s monster flick about a group of people who go down into a mine and encounter something that should have stayed down there, peppered with your usual allusions to Native American legends and off-color jokes about a white-people-hating monster that the native population supposedly made up as an excuse to kill whites with impunity. The cultural insensitivity is awkward and inexcusable, but fortunately it is not a large part of the film. Maybe one day we'll get a horror movie with a majority Native American cast wherein they come across abandoned ruins rumored to be the site of some mysterious urban legend involving white people.

Still, I think I might be biased in favor of this because I'm just so fond of horror movies involving archaeology. True, very little technical archaeology is done in this- mostly the characters just mention being archaeologists offhand- and it seems to have been made by someone with only very generic, surface-level knowledge of mining, spelunking, caving, et cetera. But I guess I myself want to go down into a cave so bad that even a crappy 80s movie where a lot of the sets look suspiciously like crinkled-up cardboard (a $25,000 budget effectively explains any and all roughness) is enough to stimulate my imagination.

If you stick through all the boring stuff that generally always arises in films with a group of people in a confined space, you'll be rewarded with a wonderfully low-tech claymation/stop-motion tentacle monster who I unironically love. I don't think movies in the 80s went for realism all the time, and I'm so fond of that. This monster looks nothing like a flesh and blood creature, but it looks like the kind of thing I want to see in a monster movie anyway; I'll take earnest DIY over somebody trying and failing to squeeze a decent creature out of a lacking CGI budget any day. This whole movie could have been condensed into a Twilight Zone episode, but then we wouldn't get the experience of waiting so long to see the monster reveal. Which could be a bad thing depending on your patience.

Feral (2017)

directed by Mark Young
USA
90 minutes
3 stars out of 5
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I watched this because Olivia Luccardi was in it and I loved her in Channel Zero. Other than that, this film's exceedingly generic title and synopsis didn't reveal much about its plot. I'm going to talk about its creatures a bit in this review, and I'm not sure if that constitutes a spoiler because there's nothing special about them and they aren't kept a secret, but they are plot-relevant so you might want to skip details about them anyway.

This has an extremely formulaic set-up that differs from every other "people get killed in the woods" movie only in that one pair of its cast of characters is a lesbian couple. I really enjoyed seeing this and even though the other characters did seem to gossip needlessly about them, it was super cool to finally have some representation in a genre film. It may have still been a cliche, but seeing the soppy I-don't-want-you-to-die drawn-out kiss scene they usually have at least one of in slashers happen between two girls instead of a straight couple made me really happy. I like the part where Olivia Luccardi's character shoves a guy so hard he falls into a bear trap because he said her girlfriend was going through some kind of "d*ke phase".

Anyway, the creatures in this aren't bad as far as zombies go, and it's interesting that one of the characters outright says "what, like zombies?" when it's explained to her what the creatures are, so this film is set in a world where people have seen zombie films and understand what they are and that they're not supposed to be real. I think the characters believe what's happening is more along the lines of an epidemic of some rare disease than a typical Zombie Virus™. This is an unpopular opinion, but I think zombie movies are much scarier when they establish that they're happening in a world where everybody already knows that zombies are a fictional trope, because it means that whatever viral outbreak occurs is basically something out of everyone's worst nightmares.

This is actually a really boring film though and I wish it had done more to break the mold. This director also made a film called Tooth & Nail which I saw a very long time ago and I think I remember feeling the same way about it, that it didn't do enough to make itself distinct from other, similar films. The characters spend too much time on questions of "what's going on?" and "what could be attacking us?" to the point where it hinders the progression of the plot. The leader of them also has such an aversion to killing that it becomes unrealistic, especially so when none of the others just take the matter into their own hands and kill the infected themselves. Although I guess you don't really have much choice when somebody with a gun tells you what not to do. This is a textbook three-star, not-bad-but-not-good horror movie and I don't have a lot of feelings about it overall.

The Ghost Snatchers (1986)

directed by Lam Ngai-Choi
Hong Kong
88 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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I appreciate that this movie delivers on its title in the very first scene, which features a woman definitely being snatched by ghosts. I'm not sure if the title refers to ghosts who snatch people, or people who snatch ghosts, though. It could really go either way.

It's essentially about some people who end up for one reason or another in a really, really cursed building. There are a lot of different spirits inhabiting it but the most destructive of them is a platoon of angry Japanese soldiers circa WWII who just want to kill a lot of people. There's also a mahjong demon, a ghost coming out of a TV, and some disembodied grabby hands that come out of walls and hallways, as well as a full-fledged portal to hell that opens through a bathroom mirror at some point. If it is ghosts you desire, you won't be disappointed in this.

It's also hilarious in a slapstick, Three Stooges type of way. The more I watch movies from Lam Nai-Choi that are not Riki-oh: Story of Ricky, the more I appreciate him as a director, because while Riki-oh is undoubtedly an amazing film, it's a film that you have to be in a particular mood to watch. But as funny as Ghost Snatchers is, there's a lot of jokes that are annoying- the misogyny is extremely grating, as pretty much every woman in the film is present only so men can ogle her, and there's also a lot of casual body shaming too, but to me the funniest thing about people constantly calling the main character "Fatty" like it was his name was just the fact that so many people were willing to insult this random guy they didn't know.

The best thing about this movie is how dreamlike it becomes due to all the random ghosts popping up out of nowhere and the fluidity of its logic. I think it feels like a dream because even though the characters are surprised by a lot of the stuff that's happening, nothing is ever treated as impossible and everybody just kind of goes with it. I liked Joyce Godenzi's character a lot because even though she deals in spells and other supernatural things, the characters walk into her office and consult her as if she's a mundane businesswoman. I love how she casts spells and bridges the gap between this world and the underworld as casually as somebody making a business transaction. More career sorceresses on film, please.

Hong Kong horror movies like this one are always a treat visually and I'm not usually the type to say that things were better back in the day (especially since "the day" in this case was over a decade before I was born), but they really don't make these like they used to. I would love to see somebody try a remake of this or The Imp or even maybe one of the Mr Vampire movies, but an authentic remake with puppets and rubber prosthetics, not CGI. The spirit of weirdness for weirdness' sake and barrages of handmade ghosts are timeless.