"Bottoms" Review

 What's in a name? Entertainment right now is in a state of near-irreparable decline due to woke Hollyweird's decision to declare open warfare on their audience with subpar content marketed with confrontational and abusive tactics like "fanbaiting" where the paying customers are told before the movie opens that everything they go to the movies for (storytelling, entertainment) has been replaced with agenda-driven agitprop which is meant to offend "those people" (i.e. who vote incorrectly for the wrong team) and when the movies flop because people took Hollyweird up on their "don't see our movie if you're not down to be lectured" promotion, they're slammed for being -ists and -phobes who hate [insert supposedly "marginalized" group here].

A prime example was was the 2022 gay romcom Bros, which blew it's own horn as "the first gay romcom by a major studio" (a tenuous claim because Jeffrey - a very funny gay romcom worth seeing - came out in 1995, albeit as an indie release) and received rapturous reviews from critics (because who is going to earn a rep as a -phobe by dissing the gay romcom?) and completely crashed and burned at the box office, prompting co-writer and star Billy Eichner to savagely attack the general public as brutal homophobes who failed to be allies to the wealthy homosexual filmmaking community, you bigots! Nevermind that, judging by their percentage of the population, gay people didn't see it either, it's the horrible deplorable straights who are the problem.

And let's not even go into what Disney has become.

So, into this contentious environment comes the absolutely horribly-named Bottoms (itself a gay term) which has been marketed as a "raunchy queer movie for Gen Z" and the press has been working the "Will straight people be able to handle it?" so the narrative is set that this is just another salvo in the Culture Wars which have divided the public into in and out groups of oppressors and oppressed. It sounds like a sequel to Bros which is further toxicity. But the missus overcame it to watch the trailer and suggested we give it a look. So how is Bottoms?

It's a total hoot which has had its wacky charms buried under a terrible title, propagandistic off-putting marketing, and does so in an environment where people are sick of being bullied and preached to by dominant subgroups.

It opens with our meeting besties PJ (Rachel Sennott, last seen in HBO's smutty trashfest - and I mean that as a complement - The Idol, where she played Lily Rose Depp's put upon assistant, and also co-wrote the script with director Emma Seligman) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri, The Bear), teenage lesbians who are also virgins and are fretting about getting laid before going to college. PJ is a loud, obnoxious, foulmouthed cretin and Josie is a shy introvert who is crushing on Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), a cheerleader who is dating the school's quarterback, Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine). PJ has the hots for cheerleader Brittany (Kaia Gerber, Cindy Crawford's daughter who got mom's looks). If you're getting Superbad vibes off this setup with PJ as the Jonah Hill character and Josie as Michael Cera, you are correct.

After an incident at a school fair involving the girls, Isabel and Jeff, buzz around the school is that PJ and Josie beat Jeff up and that they'd done time in juvie over the summer. Facing expulsion, PJ convinces the principal that they were actually practicing for a feminists self-defense club which would be handy considering a female student was assaulted by students at a rival school ahead of the Big Game. Using woke buzzwords ("ally") to corner the principal, they're given the go-ahead to run their club in the gym and they recruit a teacher, Mr. G (Marshawn "Beast Mode" Lynch, the former Seattle Seahawks running back), to be the adviser.

Their friend Hazel (Ruby Cruz) promotes the fight club and a small assortment of girls show up representing all the diversity checkboxes of appearance, color, etc. They're there for feminist empowerment and how to protect themselves unaware that the club is just a scam to bang cheerleaders, who do show up and participate. As the members go through the school with scrapes and black eyes, their popularity grows. Naturally, this offends Jeff and his body man Tim (Miles Fowler), who are offended that the girls are distracting from the football team's natural apex position and they set out to blow up PJ and Josie's club.

 I'm giving the synopsis short shrift because I don't want to spoil the insanity of what Bottoms achieves because it is truly bonkers for what it is, but more importantly, what it is not. As noted, the promotion for this movie (and that gawdawful title) have pigeonholed it and pretty much told 95% of the public "this ain't for you" when a whole lot of people who simply like to be entertained and have a taste for the off-center would probably enjoy it.

For starters, it's shockingly NOT woke in the sense that it's not played as "poor queer victims of the homophobic patriarchy of straight white men" (like Barbie skirted) because PJ and Josie aren't picked on for being lesbians, but for being "ugly, untalented gays" as they're paged to the office. We see a gay guy getting warmly greeted by skater boys at the festival while the girls mope about how good he is. (While their lockers are initially vandalized with the F-word, as the story goes on the graffiti becomes more complimentary.) The core of the story has little to do with their being gay and a lot to do with being lying a-holes.

Sidebar: The problem with most gay storytelling is that the sexuality is made the ONLY important detail. Characters are GAY and then everything flows from that in the way straight character stories have the sexuality either unmentioned or inconsequential. Think about it: What words come to mind when thinking of Batman? Rich guy, orphan, detective, superhero, tortured, crime fighter, etc. Does anyone really think "hetereosexual"? Now think of gay protagonists in gay movies - it starts with "gay" and pretty much calls it a day, doesn't it. Velvet Goldmine thought the most important thing about glam rock was being gay, not that gender-bending was more a "shock the squares" pose than anything. Gay movies sabotage themselves because they make the least important thing the most important thing. There's a difference between a characters who is gay and a gay character.

 Back to the review - while the story follows the typical teen movie beats including the scam being exposed and everyone hating them for their duplicity, it's not played any differently than "straight movies" (which isn't a genre for some reason) would play it. How many movies have done the She's All That plot where the handsome guy bets he can transform the geek girl into the prom queen only for him to fall in love with her then she discovers it was all a prank and yadda-yadda-yadda? Exactly.

It's the little throwaway details which set Bottoms apart like how the girls never put down pads on the gym floor to soften the impacts yet no teacher or parent seems to notice their students/daughters looking roughed up and how the football team roams the school in full uniforms and pads every day (not just wearing their jerseys on game day like happens in the real world). The final Big Game scene results in such mayhem that it's clearly not meant to be taken seriously.

 But under the bizarre and outrageous details is a warm sweet heart that's not divisive or exclusionary to the 95-97% of the world who isn't queer. It may be too raunchy or weird for some audiences, but so was Superbad. If you could handle that, you can handle Bottoms. The title is still the worst.

Score: 8/10. Catch it on cable.

"Bound" Review

 The Wachowskis - formerly brothers Andy and Larry, now sisters Lily and Lana - will forever be known as "the visionary creators of The Matrix" upon which they have coasted on for two decades through the overstuffed and undercooked sequels and ever-declining levels of commercial and critical success with movies that either exist as bloated spectacles (e.g. Matrix sequels, Jupiter Ascending, Speed Racer) or oddball experiments (e.g. Cloud Atlas) or genderqueer wanks (Netflix's Sense8, whose second season I skipped). 

But mostly forgotten for some reason is their directorial debut (and only second produced screenplay, after Assassins), the 1996 lesbian-Mafia crime thriller Bound. Nothing about it other than one cast member remotely resembles anything they've done since and, frankly, considering how outlandishly overblown their post-Matrix movies have been, perhaps they should get back to basics. Bound is as stripped down a noirish chamber drama can get, yet has one of the most audacious bait-and-switch moves a movie has done while in progress. (Not as drastic as From Dusk Til Dawn where the first half was a crime drama and the back end was a bonkers vampire movie, but still...) 

 It opens with ex-con Corky (Gina Gershon, following up her breakthrough in Showgirls the previous year) arriving at her new job renovating a condo in an old Chicago building. Riding the elevator are Violet (Jennifer Tilly) and her Mafia soldier boyfriend Caesar (Joe Pantoliano) who live in the adjoining unit, whose thin walls allow the sounds of sex (and eventually violence) to penetrate. 

Violet comes over to introduce herself and flirt with Corky, but the latter has heard her and Caesar having sex, so is leery of what may be a tourist. Violet pursues Corky - hard - and it's not long before they're going at it in rather steamy scenes considering it was a quarter century ago. For a movie that was sold as a sexually explicit lesbian movie, it really delivers the goods right up front and doesn't bother teasing the audience.

 But after the "good stuff" in the first 20 minutes comes the rest of the movie: A tight caper story where the girls conspire to steal $2 million in literally laundered money. After beating and torturing a Mob guy suspected of skimming from the Mob in his apartment, Caesar comes home later covered in blood with a large bag filled with blood-soaked money. After retrieving the skimmed cash, the Mob boss's son, Johnny (Christopher Meloni), whacked the guy and it's up to Caesar to clean the currency in preparation of the father, Gino (Richard C. Sarafian), to fly in and pick up the case. Corky and Violet plot a way to get the cash and flee together and hijinks ensue.

While there are a few convenient plot lapses and people being a bit too dumb in order to keep the plot's wheels turning, the Wachowski's script overall is lean and mean, setting things up and paying them off smartly. Their direction is also stylish without being self-indulgent or distracting. 

With her pneumatic figure and baby doll voice, Tilly has generally been thought of as a less than serious actress despite garnering a previous Oscar nomination for Bullets Over Broadway, but she's a seductive gun moll who clearly has the boys (and girl) under her spell. Gershon is sizzling with her butch sneer who both wants to get laid, but also not be some dame's patsy. While a straight actress (not that there's anything wrong with that), she garnered a large lesbian fan base here, many of whom turned up at her promo concerts for 2003's Prey For Rock & Roll as documented in the series Rocked with Gina Gershon. 

Lost in the glare of their Matrix fame, Bound is almost a trivia question at this point and it shouldn't be. There was a time when compact dramas were viable before everything became $200M VFX extravaganzas - especially in the 1990s when Sundance darlings like Clerks, Reservoir Dogs, Sex, Lies and Videotape were hitting - and Bound is a very good movie on its terms. Come for the cheap thrills, stay for the thriller.

There apparently isn't a very well-mastered Blu-ray of it yet (paging Criterion Collection...) and I didn't want to watch my DVD (gag), so I went with Amazon Prime's version and it looked OK, though had some bad compression artifacts in dark areas in spots, which considering the noirish cinematography by Bill Pope happened several times.

Score: 8.5/10. Catch it on cable. (Currently on Amazon Prime and Hulu.)

"The Perfection" Review

My girlfriend tipped me to check out The Perfection, one of Netflix's seemingly endless string of original releases. As she'd done a few years ago with Knock Knock, she'd warned me to not watch the trailer - she's not kidding; I usually put trailers at the bottom of these reviews, but this gives away so much and it's the thing that autoplays while you're scrolling in Netflix! - or any reviews, but to just watch it because it was short (90 mins) and entertaining.

OK, but same as with Knock Knock how do you review a movie where the surprises are the whole point especially when even warning that there are surprises ruins the surprise because you're always trying to figure out what the [heck] is going on? (see: watching any M. Night Shyamalan movie) Here goes nothing...

Allison Williams (Marnie from Girls; she'll always be Marnie) stars as Marnie Charlotte, a young woman whose mother has just died. After she leaves her mother's deathbed, she travels to Shanghai where we're somewhat clumsily told she used to be a cello prodigy, but had to leave her uber-elite music academy as a young teenager when her mother had a stroke a decade before and in caring for her, sacrificed her musical career. (No other family? No father?) She's been allowed by the school's headmaster, Anton (Steven Weber channeling Ron Rifkin) to come and help select a student for a scholarship to the school in Boston.

Literally looming (on billboards) over her is Lizzie (Logan Browning from Netflix's Dear White People), a cellist five years younger than Marnie who was coming into the academy as she was leaving and went on to a celebrated career and is the lead judge in the scholarship hunt. Marnie is tentative around her, but put at ease when Lizzie confesses to being a huge fangirl of hers and an inspiration to her playing. This rapidly sets them on a path of drinking, dancing and, of course, lesbian sex, because of course it does.

The morning after, a very hungover Lizzie prepares for a roughing-it trip into the interior of China as an adventure and invites Marnie along. However, it isn't long before her hangover seems to be taking a severe turn and her ill-feelings of intense thirst and nausea lead to the pair being tossed off the bus in the middle of nowhere where Lizzie begins exhibiting serious body horror symptoms. What is happening to her and what can she do about it?

And here is where the synopsis has to end about a third of the way into The Perfection's run time because this is where the twists and reveals begin. As mentioned above, I hate even knowing something is going to happen in a story because my mind goes into overdrive trying to guess what's coming, so I hate having to spoil the reader's ability to go in blindly, but as a critic one has to criticize as best as possible. (Again, I'm not kidding about not watching the trailer. They blow it all 50 seconds in.)

While I was genuinely intrigued as to which path the story was going to take in the build-up, after the Big Moment (which I called just ahead of confirmation) and subsequent revelation as to what really happened, I was able to anticipate pretty much most of the twists and turns, albeit not until right before they occurred as the drift became clear. The problem with this structure is that after repetition, it makes it even easier to spot the twists. Also, the last act, which is meant to be truly bonkers, gets so ludicrous that it got annoying and I say this as an avid Riverdale viewer.

Browning is the MVP here with some really heavy lifting done making what could've been a shrill or hysterical caricature grounded. Williams is doing that slightly chilly, overly-engaged-yet-aloof thing that was her stock in trade as Marnie and the temptress in Get Out, but it works.

Director/co-writer Richard Shepard's IMDB stretches back 30 years with a couple of "I've heard of, but not seen that" titles, a dozen episodes of Girls (thus Marnie), and his feature debut was The Linguini Incident, a 1991 trivia answer starring Rosanna Arquette and David Bowie. (I'm not sure how he keeps getting work considering his movies make squat, but someone likes him.) Assisted by some snappy editing by David Dean, Shepard's storytelling is initial engaging, but somehow manages to end up simultaneously going too far and nowhere near far enough. (As crazy as it gets, it should've both gone crazier AND reigned it in a bit.)

Score: 5/10. Worth watching on Netflix.

Trailer omitted because it really is a spoilerific thing, but if you just gotta see it, go here.

"Embrace of the Vampire (2013)" Review

1995's cheese horror "classic" (quotes indicate mild sarcasm) Embrace of the Vampire is remembered for precisely two things: Alyssa Milano's glorious boobs. I never understood why she and her mother were suing sites that posted fake nude photos of her when the real goodies were captured for spank bank posterity by this movie about a college girl and...uh....a vampire and ummmmm, mostly boobs. I honestly don't remember what the movie was about other than the scene were Charlotte Lewis (playing some photographer who doesn't know how to hold her camera) attempts to seduce Alyssa. It is among the three best minutes ever filmed for any movie. Yes, I'm 12-years-old.

So why are they remaking Embrace of the Vampire? Beats me, but here we are with a dreadfully dull thing that manages to make college "lesbianism" (quotes indicate this is a horny boy's idea of what college girls do) boring and doesn't really have much to do with embracing or vampires.

Sharon Hinnendael (me neither) is an orphan who has come from an all-girl Catholic school to some college located in the mountains of Vancouver. (To be fair, the scenery is gorgeous.) She's there on a fencing scholarship and she'd be doing better if she wasn't constantly having nightmares and hallucinations of blood and demons and Nickleback (OK, the last one I added) and getting hazed by the mean girls on the team. She rapidly unravels, though not before she's the recipient of some supposed hot Sapphic attention from the bimbo next door and frankly I'm bored writing about this; that's how anemic this movie is.

It's over 2/3rds of the way through before the titular vampire is introduced/revealed and by then who cares? There's a prologue set in the 1700's which is meant to set up the connection between our poor girl and the vampire stalking her, but it doesn't make sense and we're left with just tedium to separate the gratuitous boobs scenes. I don't even care to spend much time beating this up, so let's just save all our time and call it a night.

Score: 2/10. Skip it. (Go look at the Charlotte Lewis/Alyssa Milano scene online instead.)

"Kissing Jessica Stein" Review

This 2001 film gets lumped in with other lesbian indie films like Go Fish when it's more about finding mutual companionship and sexual intimacy between two people, regardless of what's filling their underwear.

Jennifer Westfeldt (last seen playing the reporter dubbed "Blonde Ambition" in my 24 S8 recaps) stars as the titular Ms. Stein, a stereotypical hyper neurotic New York City Jewess. In a rapid montage we see her having a half-dozen of the worst dates with guys and we get it: maybe it's time to try chicks.

On the side is Helen (Heather Juergensen), a over-sexed straight art gallery manager who has different men to satisfy her different moods, but decides that it's time to broaden her horizons. With the help of a pair of gay friends, she writes up a personal ad that catches Jessica's attention, though she's clearly too skittish at first.

Once you get past the overly wordy script by the stars that betrays its off-Broadway origins and need to allow the writers to show how they'd act the heck out of it, there's a surprisingly chaste tale that's hardly about gay soapboxing as one might expect. Both women start off straight and by the end, one still is and the other isn't, but could probably revert. The conflicts and "Oh, no! No one can see us together!" moments on Jessica's part could happen if the pair were rich/poor, black/white, conservative/liberal, whatever/whatever. There's no sex or nudity shown - unlike the happy skin bomb in the middle of Saving Face - though that leads to one of the biggest laughs as a hard-up Helen grouses, "Who do I have to blow to get some p*ssy?"

Since both writer-actresses are straight - Westfeldt has been partnered with Jon Hamm since 1997 and Juergensen is married - that may explain the slight remove the story is viewed from as well as the appreciated lack of "gay experience" sledgehammering that so option grinds these movies to a halt. (The problem is that many gay filmmakers frequently think the most important part of gay characters is their sexuality, not what they do outside of bed. Tip: No one watches straight characters and wishes that the story stop so we can watch them muse on their hetero-ness.) I also wasn't too crazy about the sub-plot about Jessica's editor which is really amped up in the trailer, but feels crammed in during the movie itself.

Score: 6/10. Rent the DVD.

"Saving Face" Review

For once, I'm smart enough to look at the trailer before before spending the time to synopsize a movie's plot, so watch this:



Joan Chen is a 48-year-old divorcee who comes up pregnant and is thrown out of her father's home in Flushing (which is apparently a big Chinese enclave in NYC), showing up on her surgeon daughter's doorstep. Meanwhile, super-cute lesbian Michelle Krusiec is being pursued by Lynn Chen (no relation AFAIK), a ballet dancer whose father is Michelle's boss at the hospital. (Much is made of the tight-knit community, but come on.) Culture clash hijinks ensue.

Saving Face is a pleasant-enough, slight, light sorta romantic comedy/culture clash movie with a distinct Asian flavor, down to being almost half in subtitled Chinese which makes the presence of Will Smith (yeah, THAT Will Smith) as a producer a surprise. What's odd and earns the film its R-rating is one rather explicit - and totally awesome! - scene of the young, nubile, beautiful lovers canoodling topless. It's not that explicit - we're not talking Bound or Chloe-grade hands-on action - but it comes from nowhere to transform an overall innocuous movie into THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE!!! (If Prop 8 opponents were smart, they would've run a clip of this scene and asked, "Do you really want to prevent this?") Not that I'm complaining - believe me, I'M NOT COMPLAINING!!! - but it does come from left field. Beware watching with children.

Score: 6/10. Rent the DVD.

"The Gymnast" Review

Take a look at this DVD cover:



I'd picked this up while looting a closing video store because it looked tawdry and likely to appeal to my prurient interests and it was like 83 cents. Hot Asian chick + promises of girl-girl action = sale! (Yes, I'm a pig, but I know it and that makes it OK.) Anyhoo, I popped it in expecting Skinemax-grade dreck, but instead found an uneven and occasionally cliched little film redeemed by solid performances and a soft touch by writer/director Ned Farr when it matters most. (Oh, grow up!)

Dreya Weber (never heard of her either) plays a middle-aged woman who was once a champion gymnast before an injury dashed her career and hopes of Olympic glory two decades ago. Her husband is an uncommunicative jerk whose idea of foreplay is to turn on the erotic movies cable channel before bed. She works as a masseur and hoping to have a baby though the odds are long and the mister not much of a help.

While working out at a gymnastics gym, a woman spots her and recruits her for a project to create a Cirque de Soleil-type aerial act to take to Vegas. There she meets Addie Yungmee, a dancer and aerial neophyte. They quickly get their skills together and an attraction begins to develop, though as you'd expect when one person is a 40-something married gringa and the other a 20-something closeted lesbian Korean adopted by elderly Jewish folks, there's going to be some problems.

As giggle-inducing as the premise may be to some, the execution is handled much more sensitively than you'd expect. There is not much nudity and very little gauzy - hate to use the word again - Skinemax slap-and-tickling, but the looks and hesitations pop some dimensions into the scenario that ring true. The aerial training and performance scenes are impressive as well, showing the incredible strength is necessary to make gravity-defying acts appear effortless. I know a couple of women who do this sort of stuff and never really thought about all it entails. (The extras reveal the actresses met during a Cher tour they performed and choreographed in 2002.)

Not as good - in fact it's downright terrible - is the portrayal of Dreya's husband. The guy is an ass for the first 2/3rds and when his come-around moment happens, it rings false and plastic and it then veers into another direction. Also, the disappearance of the choreographer who puts this pair together from the story early on is odd. A weird set of convoluted plot twists happen at the end and this has got to one of the stranger end credits sequences I've seen, only seeming to be included to show off Dreya's gymnastics skills by her real-life director husband. However, there are some neat bits of staging and even a scene where they traipse about Dreya's divorcee pal's mansion dressed in corset outfits that appear to have escaped from the "Lady Marmalade" video holds together.

A failing a lot of gay-themed films have is the filmmakers - usually gay themselves - frequently wander away from the general themes of the story into overemphasis on the strictly gay angles. (The Opposite of Sex was particularly egregious.) But Farr gets the points across without pandering or preaching and the duo's relationship is more textured than the surface "girl meets girl; life totally changes" packaging would suggest, like the cover Amazon's page sells:



Alrightee then!

Score: 6/10. Rent it.