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Reviews
BearCity (2010)
Bears Came Before Razor Blades!
This lovely movie explores bear and gay culture marbled with both reality and surreality, and sentimentality with catty jokes, all on a non-political island of sexy bearish joy.
The appeal of this independent movie was evident as it circled the globe in LGBT film festivals, getting awards, and sending huge theaters full of bears into knowing smiles, giggles, and LOLs -- I heard even more jokes watching the DVD because laughter from live audiences drowned many of them out! BearCity's charm comes from Doug Langway's cobbling together of strong professional talent with very real and yummy non-professional bears.
Gay bears are a new subject for romantic comedy feature films. In many ways fictional stories can be more realistic than documentaries; BearCity was inspired by real events and people.
"The Bear Movement" is to me more a "re-emergence" against social pressure to shave, look civilized, and young -- a re-emergence driven by the just plain hotness of masculine hairy men -- that attraction just can't be kept under control for more than a few decades in a row. Judging from how similar California bears are to Brazilian bears are to Turkish bears are to English bears, it has enormous and wide-spread gay appeal and genetic talent that many ladies seem to enjoy too.
Bear appreciation is, as are most things, based on personal taste. If you see a table full of bears in a restaurant and need to ask what a bear is, you'll never understand. Weight, masculinity, body hair, whiskers, muscle, shaved heads, flattops, etc. are all part of the list of bear features each bear and chaser puts in their own order of "woofiness". Why do bears woof? Because they like to, and they also like to growl. Grouch Marx woofs wolfishly at a woman in one of his movies. Again, can't be explained. Why do bears make so many bear puns? A bear is a visual pun at its core, and human bears have a spiritual parallel to ursine bears as well.
And if you watch the trailer on YouTube with a cold heart and loins, no worries, bears just aren't your sexual taste. Most entertainment is aimed at non-fans -- this is only the first feature-length fiction about bears. If BearCity touches you in one or more places, no amount of ursine puns or situational silliness will spoil your enjoyment of it. Bears like a good laugh, drink, meal, cruise, seduction, romance, dance, drive, swim, nap, etc., and have given up trying to make non-fans comfortable with them!
The DVD's commentary, documentary, and photo gallery add to your appreciation of what went into making BearCity.
I can't wait for the sequel!
Tea and Sympathy (1956)
I would have loved to see Perkins and Fontaine do this instead!
Miss Kerr's cold archness, as always, makes grace Kelly or Maureen O'Hara look like Marlene Dietrich in comparison, and the young Kerr lad is unwatchable. I found the merest hints at the coach's homosexuality incredibly hot and would have loved to see the play's original version here. woof! and I don't think the son's father gets away with a fully str8 Kinsey rating either. do his father and the coach have history? :)
And to Matthew's comment above: "His avoidance of close-ups reveals him to be, in this case at least, what feels to me like a very selfish director. "
Quite simply, Cinemascope is "not kind" to closeups.
Islands in the Stream (1977)
OK If you are a Hemingway or Scott fan
OK If you are a Hemingway or Scott fan but only if you want to see everything they have on film.
The dramatic actions are not staged very dramatically, CSI Miami does this sort of thing better nowadays. I was shocked the director did Patton. Shocked! I found this movie sexy however because Scott is a very attractive polar bear in the Hemingway mold, but he's sort of phoning it in. the looping keeps the quality down, and perhaps the editing hurts as much as anything.
I appreciated other reviewers' scholarly history on this film and the Wiki segment on the novel, which sounds more disjointed with a more ambiguous ending than the film.
The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969)
Ham-fisted dated camp!
previous reviewers have hinted at the charm that the play must have offered in its limited setting. the director fails to avoid tacky music: brass, harpsichord, and vocals going "oooh oooh oooh", choppy cutting, overacting, bad looping, faded color, freeze-frames/guitar strums to highlight irony, strings and flute for tenderness, awkward movement, and a lot of flesh tone lipstick. it makes you appreciate Hollywood black and white films and quality camera lenses, and also true naturalism rather than this fake naturalism. doesn't age well at all. fascinating only as an example of what stars in a lame vehicle can look like -- sort of like having a hideous room in the house that you keep to look at once in a while to remind you what well-done looks like. these stars aren't that old but are getting past their prime which is perhaps the most interesting aspect of this whole thing. worth a second viewing drunk so it can be laughed at to enrich my own life.