Bros (Nicholas Stoller, 2022); Fire Island (Andrew Ahn, 2022)

Bros may be "the first romantic comedy from a major studio about two gay men maybe, possibly, probably stumbling towards love," to quote Universal Pictures' proud press release. But Universal never seemed to wonder who in 2022 cares about gay content coming from a major studio. TikTok and Onlyfans and the Big Streamers shove more gay content down our throats than we can swallow. So while I always want the best for the talented, screamingly camp co-writer and star of Bros Billy Eichner, I wasn't sad when his project failed to set the box office on fire. 

A bigger problem is the "possibly, probably stumbling towards love" part of the equation, i.e., wedging gay characters into the quintessentially heterosexual rom-com formula. As a child growing up in the 1970s and 1980s with a relative paucity of gay representation, I always wanted a genre film with characters who just happen to be gay, say, a Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, 1990) where Arnold Schwarzenegger has the hots for Michael Ironside instead of Sharon Stone, no big whoop. Then I saw D.E.B.S. (Angels Robinson, 2004), a sort of lesbian Charlie's Angels, and realized that you cannot make a gay film with the master's tools. For the most part, you wind up with what Kristen Warner calls "plastic representation." To this end, the most perceptive critique of Bros I've encountered is SNL's trailer for Megan 2.0 in which they announce that "It's like Bros, but for gays." So while Bros is cute and funny and as gay as can be within the rom-com formula, the formula itself deadens the film's import.

Fire Island comes off as a critique of Bros avant la lettre, having been released a few months prior. It corrects for Bros' concentration on white characters with a gay/Asian director and a gay/Asian screenwriter and star, Joel Kim Booster. But structurally, the two films are de facto clones of one another. Fire Island even has a further structural burden in that it's inspired by Pride and Prejudice. Cute and funny too but so damn well-behaved in its adherence to formulae that it forestalls any obsessive reception.

Bros: B+

Fire Island: B+

Two trauma-horror films

Trauma appears to be the operative mode in an increasing amount of horror films, the genre that gives me no peace. Sometimes this leads to swill like Malignant or The Empty Man. But here are two good ones.

In Saint Maud (Rose Glass, 2019), Morfydd Clark plays Katie, a palliative care nurse who has recently lost a patient although Glass never makes it clear if the death is Katie's fault or not. Now under the name Maud, Katie tends to Amanda Köhl (Jennifer Ehle, still convincing me she's Meryl Streep's sister), a famous dancer terminally ill with lymphoma. Maud has grown devoutly religious since her patient's death and takes it upon herself to save Amanda's soul, especially when she learns Amanda's paying a companion, Carol (Lily Frazer), to have sex with her. Amanda is amenable to Maud's crusade depending on her level of desperation in the face of death. But Maud becomes violent at one of Amanda's urbane parties and she is promptly fired sending her deeper into her religious fervor. 

As I always say in relation to so many horror films, Saint Maud is over when it's over. I'm not sure what to do with it. But as a portrait of a woman spiraling out of control (or taking extreme measures to gain control of her life), it's plenty pungent. And 84 minutes is a humane-enough running time so I don't rue the expenditure unlike Malignant or The Empty Man which top out at 111 minutes and 137 minutes (!) respectively. 

Censor (Prano Bailey-Bond, 2021) is far more my speed. At the height of the Video Nasties era in 1985, Enid Baines (Niamh Algar) works as a censor for the British Board of Film Classification. She reviews a film with the redolent psychotronic title of Don't Go in the Church directed by sleaze merchant Frederick North (Adrian Schiller). The scenario resembles the circumstances of her sister's disappearance when she was a child which gives Enid hope that she may still be alive. When she tracks down a copy of one of North's banned films, Enid believes that the lead is indeed her sister grown up. She confronts North and more tragedy ensues.

Like Saint Maude, Censor devolves into the requisite gore beats for the finale. But it's plenty chewy. Enid matches Maud's intensity. But her arc allows the viewer to ponder not just the role of censorship but the function of horror films. Are horror films cathartic enough to redirect our basest instincts in socially responsible ways? Or do they augment our basest instincts and thus require censorship? Or do the horror of the Thatcher years and its venal bootstraps philosophy render such questions moot? In any event, Censor has the exact same running time as Saint Maud! Watch them both instead of The Empty Man!

Saint Maud: B+

Censor: A-minus

The Hitcher (Robert Harmon, 1986)

Even seeing this first run as a teen, it was obvious that Rutger Hauer as John Ryder was a gorgeous Teutonic manifestation of cutie pie Jim's (C. Thomas Howell) gay panic. That helps justify both Ryder's Jason-Voorhees-like supernatural abilities and his perpetual coming on to Jim. A sexy-ass film when it isn't ripping women in half. But like so many horror films, it's over when it's over. Once you crack the not-so-difficult code, there's not much left to chew on. Ryder awakens feelings in Jim, Jim wants to eliminate them (especially when it's clear to even the cop trying to save him that there's something going on between the two of them), and then he succeeds in doing so. Not sure what it all says about gay panic. But as a de facto form of gay porn, I can swallow two hotties angsting against one another for 97 minutes. Love the tagline too. "The terror starts the moment he stops." Stop...mmmm...no, don't stop...just don't tell...

Grade: B+

Luther Price 1962 - 2020

How to respond to Luther Price's death? After all, according to his own bio (reproduced on Dennis Cooper's blog post on Price, a typically thorough orgy of links), he died already in 1985 after being shot in Nicaragua. A titan of avant-garde cinema (who also worked in sculpture, slides, performance art, etc), he deserves a most reverent obituary. But is it ignorant to wonder if we should mourn his loss?

The first time I saw Luther Price in person was at a Cinematexas screening in 2006. I no longer recall the titles.* But they were violent, spasmodic things that rattled through the projector. Inevitably, one film broke, a more extreme, more final finish than even, say, a Warhol film that doesn't end but stops. A Price film simply cannot go on and may never be revived again. Like Price himself now.

Towards the end of the Q&A after, someone wistfully said, "Sorry about your film." Price just shrugged. Someone else asked if he would ever make his films available on DVD. He paused for a long time before saying, "No." He wasn't smug or contemptuous. It really did appear as if he was pondering the impossibility of his work having any sense of permanence. Not since my first encounter with Walter Benjamin's "Unpacking My Library" did I, an inveterate media hoarder, get such a pungent reminder that wrestling with art means above all to wrestle with your mortality. 

So how to honor Luther Price? Would a catalogue raisonné betray his legacy? A Criterion Blu-ray? Is it possible to preserve his textual disturbances - the chancres, the sores, the noise, the crud after being exhumed from the earth, the do-not-resuscitate endings? How to convey that this was one of the most visceral filmmakers in the history of the medium? Perhaps only Michael Sicinski's deathless praise from 2007 will do:

“In the near future, perhaps 'a Luther Price film' will consist of getting a speck of dust in your eye in some dark alley. Late at night. Far from home. That’s a compliment.”

* Underground Film Journal reports that a "Retrospective" took place on September 21st. Price appeared a few weeks later at Anthology Film Archives where, according to a post on the Frameworks listserv, "[t]his special screening may include a sneak preview of work in progress SILK and SINGING BISCOTTS. Films from the URF series and the Biscotts series will be included along with FANCY and INSIDE THE VELVET K , DEAF FOR CHICKEN LIP and others." So some of those titles might have been shown at the Cinematexas screening. Or not.

Feel That New Hollywood Train Comin'!

A double feature that I call Feel That New Hollywood Train Comin'! Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966) is a Twilight Zone episode stretched to feature length. But a damn gripping one every frame of the way. More shocking than the shots of peen in the grape-stomping Bacchanal scene (since it was apparently cut from the American first run) was the mention of a microwave oven. I had no clue they were around that early even as a status symbol. Then, oh boy, Reflections in a Golden Eye (John Huston, 1967) in the version slathered with golden caterpillar guts. I found the secondary coupling of the de facto spinster Alison (Julie Harris, incredible as always) and screaming Filipino queen Anacleto (Zorro David*) far more intriguing than Liz/Brando's gothic S/M. Not a terribly likeable film but a fascinating example of how haywire things can get (so everyone was okay with that preposterous final shot, huh?) when "dealing with" homosexuality. As for Robert Forster, dat ass! 

*IMDb lists this as his only film. He died on my birthday in 2008 in one city over from where I was raised!
Grades for both: B-plus

The Killing of Sister George (Robert Aldrich, 1968)

Lawd, this was difficult to get through! It reminded me of the most overrated film of all time - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966). Why do the characters in both films act as if they've been stricken with hebephrenia? I know Susannah York's Childie is supposed to be an adult baby (of sorts) but what's the excuse for the other characters? As with Woolf, why do they sound like Martians trying out English for the first time? Was it a function of transferring plays to film? Was this considered great acting then (and now?)? As with Prêt-à-Porter and Gosford Park, I see no huge qualitative differences between the two films. I also can't see Aldrich, the fine stylist of Kiss Me Deadly and Ulzana's Raid, in this at all. Help?
Grade: a tentative B-minus