The 1962 Robert Aldrich-directed Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? is one of those spot-on perfect films, a dark, campy and sad story built around the blackhole of fame. It's the saga of the slowly rotting lives of former child star Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis), her wheel-chair bound/one-time film star sister Blanche (Joan Crawford) and the mad web of jealousy and spotlights that has ruined their lives. If you haven't seen this beautifully weird film, you need to do so immediately, and considering that it rejuvenated the careers of Davis and Crawford, both of whom deliver broad ham-tastic caricatures that straddle that high camp fence without falling off the wrong way into the bramblebushes of shrill parody.

That brings us to this Billy Clift-directed remake/homage/parody/comedy entitled Baby Jane!, which has the unique qualifier of featuring male actors in drag in all the key rol...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Will the Eating Out films ever stop? Largely unknown to mainstream audiences, these gay comedies serve up a full menu of snarky humor, shirtless hunky guys, and quasi-softcore situations, all scripted and/or directed by one Q. Allan Brocka. Think of them as the Madea flicks with rock hard abs. Eating Out: Drama Camp arrives as the (gulp) fourth movie in the series, following Eating Out (2004), Eating Out: Sloppy Seconds (2006), and Eating Out: All You Can Eat (2009). And there's more: a fifth entry, Eating Out: The Opening Weekend, will be unleashed in 2012.

I have to confess that I haven't seen the previous Eating Out sequels, and my dim memory of the first installment was that of a threadb...Read the entire review

The Movie
With a title like this, it has to be a hoot, right? Sorority babes have had their fun in the slasher world, from classics like Black Christmas, Hell Night and The House on Sorority Row to still-amusing pretenders like Sorority House Massacre and Blood Sisters ("Their hazing was a night to dismember!" remains one of my all-time favorite horror movie taglines). I've witnessed countless stalk scenes of buxom beauties in distress, and while I'm not complaining, it's high time someone had the balls to put a gay fraternity twist on the age-o...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Person of Interest is a sincere effort to combine a straightforward crime drama with a meditation on the struggles of lesbians in law enforcement. Alas, sincerity is not enough to overcome the numerous and deadly flaws obvious throughout the film.

In an unnamed small community in the northeast United States, a number of young women have gone missing, as well as one school aged girl. With no leads to speak of, in desperation, Sheriff Nickie Wells (Elise Rovinsky) turns to James Hart (Cuyle Carvin), a purported psychic, for help. James agrees to aid the sheriff, with ambiguous results. Sometimes he can dazzle with his abilities, and sometimes he seems to grasp at nothing. Nickie's on again, off again girlfriend Sandra (Julie Bell), a local police detective, is aggressively suspicious of James, and goes to significant lengths to investigate him and his past, even though ...Read the entire review

The Movie
If The Office moved to Germany and chose women's clothes in favor of paper, Michael Scott would morph into Wolfgang Zenker. The selfish middle-aged salesman has an inflated sense of his ability--and a childlike temper that frequently leads to public displays of embarrassment. There's a jealous rage that lies just beneath his deceiving exterior, but unlike Fargo's Jerry Lundegaard--the dramatic counterpart to the harmless Michael and Wolfgang--his unfortunate outbursts result in mischief, not murder.

Sometimes silly, sometimes hilariously uncomfortable and sometimes heartwarming, Fashion Victims (Reine Geschmacksache) is the 2007 German comedy from writer/director Ingo Rasper. Short on sense but high on hi...Read the entire review

The Movie
In the DVD audio commentary for Friday the 13th, fan/historian Peter M. Bracke touched upon the relationship gay men have with horror films, particularly slashers. What is it about such demented material that appeals to so may gay men? Is the pain of childhood teasing relieved by seeing similar tormenters brought to justice at the hands of psychotic killers? I'm not sure there's any truth to that (my guess is that tastes don't discriminate), but it's an intriguing idea.

Regardless of the connection, writer/director Jason Paul Collum is clearly in love with the genre. Witness November Son, the direct-to-video sequel to 2005's October Moon, featur...Read the entire review

The Movie
Last month at the D.C. Improv, I saw a show with three comedians--and each had a section devoted to gay-themed jokes. All were harmless, but not all were funny. A month earlier when I saw my boyfriend (who doesn't know it yet) Joel McHale at the Warner Theatre, his opening act also used some homo quips, although the tone made much of the audience slightly uncomfortable (he was fine with gays, just not the flag-waving, flamboyant, parade float ones!). It's good that gays have become a goldmine for comedians, and a sign of progress--people on both sides of the stage are more...Read the entire review

The Movie
The tagline to this Canadian indie proclaims that two halves don't always make a whole. For once there's truth in advertising: Despite some intriguing characters and solid performances, this 64-minute flick--too long to be a short, too short to be a feature--is only half a movie.

It's a shame, because first-time writer/director Adam Santangelo reeled me into this world of two best friends--but fell short of closing the deal. With about 25 more minutes, the film could have explored some plotlines only hinted at and developed its two protagonists a little more. As it stands, Half a Person is a respectable slice-of-life story about an odd couple of s...Read the entire review

The Product:
Comedy is completely subjective. Quick - if someone farts, do you laugh like a donkey or faint like a fop. How about a quip centering on Maslow's philosophical theory on self-actualization? Are you giggling or gagging? You see, it's hard to judge humor. One man's Lord Buckley is another's Larry the Cable Guy. So when direct to DVD jokefest Spaced Out came careening over this critic's transom, a certain amount of skepticism was natural. After all, like the myriad of mediocre horror films one must struggle through on an annual basis, lame laughfests are a dime per ten dozen. They turn up as frequently as zombies, overly romantic vampires, and high strung spree killers. Unfortunately, this sci-fi slop doesn't buck the trend. Instead, to use the popular pre-tween vernacular, it sucks the root.

The Plot:
After spending two years on an alien spaceship, getting an...Read the entire review

The Movie
I have a few healthy fears in life: heights, drowning and drag queens, an extension of my discomfort around clowns. Years ago, a friend forced me to go to a restaurant in the Adams Morgan area of D.C. for a "drag brunch"--a term that both confused and frightened me. The buffet breakfast was frequently interrupted by jarring musical numbers where divas strutted the "stage" (i.e., the narrow walkway from the bathroom to the hostess table) and shoved microphones into the faces of quiet types (namely me) desperately trying to avoid their attention. I focused my gaze on my eggs, but it didn't work, much to the delight of my straight friends--w...Read the entire review

Author's note: This review is based on a preliminary screener disc, not the final shelf product that you might buy or rent. Therefore, all evaluations concerning video and audio specifications are subject to change. This disc arrived without any packaging, as well, so any possible supplements were not included.

I wasn't looking for a "gay getaway." I just wanted a look at the new Liberace museum in Las Vegas. And I sort of got that in Gay Getaways: A Tribute to Liberace, a 58-minute episode of Gay Getaways, which I assume is some sort of gay-themed cable travel series (I went to the website, but it doesn't list any networks that actually air the show). It's a pretty rocky, homemade-feeling doc shot on shaky Hi-Def that's really...Read the entire review

The Movie
It's been nearly two years since this low-budget indie debuted at the 2006 Out Takes Dallas Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, but the timing may be just right for this release after a highly anticipated summer film renews the public's interest in dirty talk. Just imagine a gay Sex and the City with three Samanthas, and you get the idea.

Daddy Day Care

Sex is thrilling. Sex is empty. Welcome to R U Invited?, an exploration of how sex affects the lives of five gay friends during one night of revelations. This is true amateur filmmaking--you ...Read the entire review

Surge of Power: The Stuff of Heroes has been marketed as "the first gay superhero movie" and as "a new high in low-budget camp," both of which will probably limit its mainstream appeal, which is a shame. First, the film is not really gay-themed, and more a comedy featuring some gay characters, similar to, say, Will & Grace vs. being like Queer As Folk where the plot is much more specific to gay life. Secondly, while the film is decidedly campy and effects are very low-budget, the cast and crew really step up and work with what they have to create an incredibly funny and appealing story.

The movie tells the tale of Gavin, a hapless corporate attorney who happens to also be a major comic book fan, debating the finer intricacies of the specific powers of his favorite superheros with his geeky friends. While visiting a "mad" scientist's lab, the inevitable explosion occurs which ...Read the entire review

This direct to video comedy does far better than its regional-theater pedigree would indicate, thanks to a clever script and some good performances. Viewers need to be told that this is not a melding of the Indian film craze with a Hollywood story, but a camp farce with plot similarities to Sunset Blvd. in a gay context.

Despite some low-budget concerns there's a lot to be appreciated here, mainly in the talent department. It fares far better than the average garage indie - I'd call it a nicely expanded version of a funny stage play, and it gets a good range of laughs - a rarity these days.

The film takes an optimistic view of the issue of gay marriage but throws its net a little wider than a gay-only audience. Savant appreciated Bollywood and Vine's clever references to the already campy "battle of the Divas" horror subgenr...Read the entire review