Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse:
The name will mean nothing to most, not even to Portland, Oregon residents with short memory spans. But the message behind the name, behind the man, should mean everything to anyone who lives on this planet, and to anyone who has even the most glancing understanding of how we, as humans, understand and deal with mental illness, especially here in America. Screen this quietly powerful documentary if you think it's time to change the conversation back to helping - rather than punishing - our fellow humans.

The title Alien Boy comes from a song written by Greg Sage of The Wipers. It's a take on James Chasse's view of his own life as a young man gradually succumbing to mental illness while not really understanding what was going on. Chasse, known in the early '80s Portland punk/new-wave scene as Jim Jim, was by all accounts a capricious, cre...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

Is the son who follows in his father's footsteps doomed to make the same mistakes, or on the other hand, find the same successes? Director Bernard Rose ("Immortal Beloved") sets out to address that very question in "Two Jacks" his fifth film based (how accurately, I can't say for certain), on the story "Two Hussars" by Leo Tolstoy. Reuniting for the third time with Danny Huston, Rose sets out to craft a tale of a brash Hollywood director, Jack Hussar returning to the seat of all power, cinematic for a night on the town to secure financing for his latest film. While simultaneously leeching off the naïve desperation of low-budget producer Brad and rubbing palms with the industry's more elite, Lorenzo, Jack lays on a thick swath of charm, while deftly, but often obviously, dodging questions related to his next film's plot, budget, and ultimate purpose. It's obvious Hussar is ...Read the entire review

Making a thriller is a tricky balancing act. The natural impulse is to keep the picture moving at a fast pace, whittling away any beats the audience doesn't need to understand the story until all that's left are a lean 90 or even 80 minutes that leap into action quickly and don't let up. On the other hand, these kinds of thrillers often end up sacrificing story and character development in the process, essentially gambling, as they barrel forward, that excitement is all the viewer is looking for. 7 Boxes is a thriller from Paraguay which takes the road less traveled (at least these days), offering more character development at the expense of the tension. The results are not entirely unsuccessful, but the film struggles to find its footing, burdened with too many subplots and padding.

Victor (Celso Franco) is in love with the movies. Most of the time, he stands outside the video shops watchin...Read the entire review

In the last couple years there have been few larger social issues than bullying and equal rights. Campaigns have been waged in many schools across America to curb an epidemic of poor treatment towards students who just don't fit in, who stick out and are rewarded by being bullied. The culture of high school, especially, is shifting toward one of acceptance and tolerance for a diverse population. This includes homosexual teens, who are supported by a nationwide attempt to secure equal rights & opportunities for gay couples, especially as it pertains to marriage. Geography Club is a film that takes these two hot button issues and c...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

If you've ever felt like social media platforms are turning your friends into zombies, then Antisocial might just be the movie to make those fears as literal as possible. It takes a host of genre standards and presents them in a novel context with just enough polish to make the well-worn feel a little fresh.

The film takes place in what looks and feels like the present (with certain elements cranked to 11). A significant part of anyone's ‘human' interaction takes place online and privacy is non-existent with everybody being perversely aware of everybody else's business. Sam (Michelle Mylett) experiences this first hand when she gets dumped over a video chat while her boyfriend is texting another woman and simultaneously updating his relationship status for their entire social circle to see. She drowns her sorrows by going to a party hosted by Mark (Cody Thompson)...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Low to mid budget horror movies are thick on the ground these days. They're an easy entry into the film industry, having been used to get a foot in the door by such luminaries as Joe Dante and Sam Raimi. They tend to be mediocre at best, though there are a number of them that are inventive, crazy and enjoyable. Joe Davison's As Night Falls certainly isn't perfect, but it's fast paced, funny, and a bit disturbing, which is a good mix for horror. And it features Debbie Rochon, which hasn't hurt a film yet.

Lizzie (Deneen Melody) is a slightly tomboyish young lady who wants nothing more to do than put her little sister Holly (Lily Cardone) to bed, and relax in her isolated country home with her boyfriend Otto (Dwight Cenac, who also produced) who's just returned from a tour with his rock band. Lizzie's mother works out of town a lot, and her father recently passed away, a f...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Porn stars can make for fascinating documentary subjects, and certainly there has been an uptick in the number of "mainstream" documentaries about porn in the last 15 years, such as Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, Inside Deep Throat, Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy, The Girl Next Door, and 9 to 5: Days in Porn.Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Does size matter?

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Documentaries
Likes: Fringe subjects
Dislikes: A lack of confidence
Hates: Size queens

The Movie
So here we've got Patrick Moote, a comedian and actor with a few minor roles. His biggest fame came thanks to the Internet though, as a video of him proposing to his girlfriend at a UCLA basketball game, and being swiftly and embarrassingly rejected went viral. The reason for the shut-down led to this documentary, as it was allegedly due to him being underendowed in his genitals. Besides the awful things that says about her decision-making processes, it stung Moote, who then teamed with director Brian Spitz to explore the importance of ...Read the entire review

Thanks to his prominent partnership with director Alfred Hitchcock, the work of artist Saul Bass quickly became as prominent and popular as the movies themselves. Bass gained such steam, he even got a chance to direct his own feature film (the cult killer ant movie Phase IV). Of course, Bass is far from the only title designer in the world, and one of his most influential competitors was Pablo Ferro, an artist whose name may not be as well-known as Bass', but whose work is no less iconic. Ferro is behind the title sequences for films such as Bullitt, The Russians Are Coming, To Live and Die in L.A., and many more, as well as enjoying equally fruitful partnerships of his own, with Stanley Kubrick, Jonathan Demme, and with Hal Ashby, one of his closest friends.

On the surface, Pablo pitches itself as a film about Ferro's work and influence, chatting with the...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Does size matter?

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Documentaries
Likes: Fringe subjects
Dislikes: A lack of confidence
Hates: Size queens

The Movie
So here we've got Patrick Moote, a comedian and actor with a few minor roles. His biggest fame came thanks to the Internet though, as a video of him proposing to his girlfriend at a UCLA basketball game, and being swiftly and embarrassingly rejected went viral. The reason for the shut-down led to this documentary, as it was allegedly due to him being underendowed in his genitals. Besides the awful things that says about her decision-making processes, it stung Moote, who then teamed with director Brian Spitz to explore the importance of the size of the penis.

Sort of Elijah Wood-like, Smoote is charming and self-deprecating as he searches for answers to his crotch concer...Read the entire review

The Movie:

An accomplished first feature from Israeli director-screenwriter Michael Mayer, 2012's Out in the Dark finds a novel way of dealing with the ages-old conflict in the Middle East, with a tumultuous love story between two young men on opposite sides - one Palestine, the other Israeli. Breaking Glass Pictures' nice DVD edition of the film will hopefully bring it to the attentions of a wider, appreciative audience.

Even though it has a contemporary setting, there's a pronounced Brokeback Mountain feel to Out in the Dark. The two actors playing the leads share an understated sweetness and genuine chemistry between them, and the tense story is treated with a neutrality that nevertheless winds up being gritty and absorbi...Read the entire review

The first Xavier Dolan film I watched was the first he ever made, I Killed My Mother. It is a French language film out of Canada that has a decidedly European feel. Dolan starred in it himself and also wrote the script; it is basically autobiographical and tells the story of his coming out and the strain that put on his relationship with his mother. It's a solid film, especially for a kid making his first movie. It was personal, honest, short, fairly straightforward, and came across the screen boldly. All the same can't be said about Dolan's third film, Laurence Anyways. It doesn't feel incredibly real and isn't presented with the ease th...Read the entire review

The Movie:
It was clear that there were going to be problems with 4 Dead Girls when, in the first few minutes, we see the putative villain, a "Nalusa Chito" or soul taker, in full light, and he's not that scary. It's a rookie mistake. If you don't have the money to make the evil entity look really, really cool, then leave as much to the viewers' imaginations as possible, for as long as possible. While the film generally looks slick, it really never recovers from this initial blunder.

Four college friends are renting a house from Devlin (Mike Campbell), who we know right off is a soul taker. The friends are Lily (Katherine Browning), her sister Lori (Ashley Love), Lori's girlfriend Pam (Leah Verrill) and the slutty fourth wheel Bianca (Tiffany S. Walker). The four can't believe their good fortune in finding such an affordable home, so close to campus. Of course, the rates are kept a...Read the entire review

There's a significant moment about a third of the way into Laurence Anyways, the latest movie from young Quebecois writer-director Xavier Dolan (who, at 24, is on his third feature) that exemplifies both how powerful and engaging the film can be and how it undermines itself, how far Dolan has come and how far he has yet to go: After a slow, complicated, and tumultuous coming to terms with the fact that he is transgendered, a woman with the misfortune to have been born into a body of the wrong sex, 35-year-old Laurence Alia (Melvil Poupaud), a celebrated Montreal writer and high-school teacher, has finally summoned the confidence to present herself, as a woman, to his classroom full of la...Read the entire review

Yeah, yeah, one of the weakest techniques to describe a movie is to compare it to a different movie, but I dare anyone to watch director / writer / actor George Griffith's micro-budget feature From the Head and not think of Kevin Smith's debut feature Clerks. Both also take place in a single location, focusing on a man who rarely ventures outside of the single environment in which the film is set. Both are driven by the crowd of unusual characters that pass through. Both are heavily autobiographical. Both are even set in the mid-'90s, if one figures Clerks. is set when it was shot. The only things missing are the goofy one-word "chapter" titles and black-and-white cinematography.

"Shoes" (Griffith) is a bathroom attendant in a low-rent strip club. He's good at his job, which ranges from cracking jokes and making conversation to selling candy to patrons and providing "valuab...Read the entire review

Even though it's her birthday, Amelia (Electra Avellan) is not having a good day. She kicked things off by having a fight with her boyfriend Aaron, who can't understand her existential angst at having passed a potential "sell-by" date in Hollywood. Her next-door neighbor will not stop playing his drums, day or night, despite her apartment's paper-thin walls, and her next-to-next-door roommate is a jerky porn actor desperately trying to get Amelia to star with him in his next movie. Her father can't even be bothered to pay attention to her on a serious level for the length of a Skype phone call. Plus, on top of everything else, her rent is due tomorrow and her only hope is a series of crummy auditions she's fairly confident she can't get.

Amelia's 25th is a rare (but not enviable) combination: excessively charming on the surface, but pretty much a mess on every other level. Director Martin Ye...Read the entire review

The Movie:

There may be a clear delineation line for those who are familiar with Rick Springfield. You may remember him from his time when he was on one of the country's most popular shows at the time in General Hospital while he was releasing Top 10 singles consistently for a period. Others may know his work after that period in the early ‘80s in various short tributes or even in Boogie Nights when Mark Wahlberg is unknowingly filmed with a haunting thousand yard stare on his face while the song plays. And near the height of his musical popularity, Springfield abandoned his music career, releasing one album in a sixteen year period before returning to perform and release albums in 2004. His various fans through the years never lost faith in his decision to return, and in An Affair of the Heart, this fandom is examined.

The film is directed by Sylvia Caminer an...Read the entire review

As a filmmaker, if you're going to create a spoof you had better make it near perfect. First, you have got to know the genre that you're poking fun at inside and out. Second, you've got to make it funny but not stupid. And third, you better not bore us with the details. Audiences have a certain responsibility when watching spoofs as well. We had better know the genre at least fairly well, we ought to be prepared for a little farce humor, and we should try to accept certain flaws as inevitable. Dead in France is advertised as a film noir spoof, filled with cold killers, sexy broads, dumb criminals, exotic locales, vindictive hit-men...Read the entire review

I first saw Maria Valverde in Cracks, a film in which she played the new girl at a boarding school, a Spanish beauty who caused irreparable damage with her mere presence. She is definitely stunning, and she has a quality that is both desirable and enviable. When I saw that she was in Madrid, 1987 and that it was a Breaking Glass picture, I took the opportunity to see her again. Not just because she's attractive, which of course she is, but also because she's captivating. I was interested to see if she was up to the challenge of an artistic film of this kind, or whether she'd fall flat and come off as just another pretty face. As it turns ou...Read the entire review

The more Hollywood turns to comic books, board games, and Disneyland rides for story material, the more we need filmmakers like Henry Jaglom. Beginning with A Safe Place (1971), Jaglom carved a niche making smallish independent movies uniquely his. He's probably best known for his ensemble, female-dominated films revolving around a particular subject: women's relationship with food in Eating (1990), biological clock-ticking in Babyfever (1995), being single in Someone to Love (1987), recognizing a turning point and moving on with New Year's Day (1989). His movies famously allow actors the freedom to improvise, drawing from their own lives and emotions, sometimes intensely personal raw material buried deep. Yes, they're still working from scripts that define character arcs and move their fictional characters from one place to another, but most of Jaglom's actors find w...Read the entire review

When Raymond Saxx (Goran Visnjic) awakens in a Los Angeles County holding cell, he's disoriented, suffering from serious withdrawals, and nursing a massive hangover. In fact, Raymond is such a wreck that he doesn't even know why he's in prison, but before he can ask his cellmate Butterfly (Portia Doubleday) to help him get his bearings, Lt. Deputy Johnson (D.B. Sweeney) shows up and hauls him off to K-11, a unit in the prison system reserved for gay and transgender inmates. Raymond doesn't belong in K-11, both because he's not gay and because he didn't commit the murder he discovers he's been framed for, but his frustrated insistence that he's innocent fails to soften K-11 queen bee Mousey (Kate del Castillo), a feisty Latina trans woman who refuses to let anyone but herself stir up trouble.

It's hard reviewing a film like K-11: a film lacking in focus paves the road for a review lacking in ...Read the entire review

If you want to see a documentary about a relevant and intriguing topic, you would be hard pressed to find one more fitting than Out in the Open. The issues of gay rights and marriage equality are on the table right now in our country, and in ten years laws, cultures, and mindsets may be completely different than they are today. It's exciting to be alive in a time of change, whichever side you may be on, and that fervor comes through very clearly in this film. But putting equal rights aside, there are other issues confronting homosexual culture, and they may be the most important of all; AIDS, suicide, acceptance, bullying. A documenta...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
The history of burlesque via a pair of twirling tassels

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Documentaries
Likes: adult-themed documentaries
Dislikes: The general concept of burlesque
Hates: People who make good money and blow it

The Movie
Documentaries with adult themes are often quite interesting, because the world of adult-entertainment is inaccessible to most of us, its citizens live by a very different set of rules and mores and, of course, where they live, there's often a good deal of nudity nearby. That's certainly the case with the story of Satan's Angel, a well-known burlesque performer who got her start in the '60s, and who continues to perform today in her 60s. It's a story of bad c...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Nate & Margaret is a small movie. In a good way. It's focused and intimate, and follows the oddball friendship of 19-year-old film student Nate (Tyler Ross) and 52-year-old spinster Margaret (Natalie West). The pair lives in the same apartment building, and is practically inseparable until Nate meets his first boyfriend and distances himself from Margaret. Director Nathan Adloff's film is sweet and believable, with a positive attitude in a cynical world. The similarities to Harold and Maude are cursory, and Nate & Margaret is its own exploration of ageless friendship.

Eyes quickly turn to the semi-old lady in the room when Margaret accomp...Read the entire review

Our Paradise is a French thriller packed with its fair share of nudity and violence, with a sensitively depicted love story between two men at its core. In contrast to its grisly subject matter (sort of a European gender-reversed version of 2003's Monster), director Gaël Morel guides the film with a wonderful atmosphere and tremendous amount of respect for its characters.

Foremost among the array of complexe, troubled characters in Our Paradise is Vassili (Stéphane Rideau), an aging Parisian hustler who continues to solicit tricks despite his somewhat doughy midsection. Vassili is also plagued with the deepening resentment he harbors towards both his clientele (older, wealthy, often times closeted men) and the ever-youn...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Twisted Romance, a 2008 indie drama from Argentinian writer-director José Campusano, deserves some kudos for going into the kind of uncomfortable-to-watch territory that many films of its ilk won't touch.

Seemingly made on a budget of three (maybe four, max) pesos, this modest production follows an earnest young man who engages in a flirtation with a "dangerous" older man; their sexual dalliance progresses with lightning speed into a casual cohabitation, but the older man's abusiveness ultimately ends in tragedy. It's an idea that deserves an "A" for effort, but sloppy mechanics, inexplicable character motivations, and abrupt shifts in tone renders it a solid "F" in execution.

Not that they didn't try, however - young actor Nehuén Zapata h...Read the entire review

The original Sex Stories was a mess, offering numerous, endless unsimulated sex scenes to get viewers' attention, and with a laundry list of deeply sexist ideas about men and women serving as an attempt at "plot." Still, any film that dares to straddle that line between pornography and "regular" cinema can probably count on financial success, so four years later, we have Infidelity: Sex Stories 2. I'm pleased to say that this sequel is a noticeable improvement over the first film, offering an actual thematic thread that ties all of its characters together. Sadly, the differences stop there: the writing is still deeply sexist, and the sex scenes are still a bore.

Once again, the film tells the story of three couples, and once again, the men are all cheating pigs who think of nothin...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The poster tagline for 2011's documentary Hollywood To Dollywood - "Twin brothers with a dream in an RV named Jolene..." - accurately captures the feel of this lightweight but thoroughly enjoyable little film. The project follows a pair of gay twin brothers - major fans of Country music icon Dolly Parton - as they embark on a 2,100 mile trip to give their idol a copy of the film script they've written especially for her.

The film's main subjects, 35 year-olds Gary and Larry Lane, are a pair of sweet, unpretentious North Carolina boys-turned-Hollywood scenesters. They've been situated in Los Angeles for most of their adult lives, sure, but there's still a whole lot of country in them. In the introductory scenes, the boyishly hands...Read the entire review

6 Degrees of Hell is a rather confusing horror film, so much so that I had to watch it a second time with the subtitles turned on and reading them to get a better idea of what was going on. The story is primarily about an attraction called the Hotel of Horror, a haunted-house type of deal where people go in and see weird goings-on, actors pretending to be psychopaths carrying fake weapons and stuff like that. (The interesting thing is the Hotel of Horror in this movie is actually a real attraction in Saylorsburg, PA, although the events in the movie itself are fictional.) In the movie, the attraction is run by Jack (Brian Gallagher), who is always looking for ways to make the place even scarier. He finds an old psychic who has a large collection of "haunted objects" collected over her years of experience which she rents out for use at the hotel, but warns him that they really are possessed an...Read the entire review

The Movie:
A lot of men in their thirties and forties (and plenty of others) have fond memories of youthful hours misspent watching cheesy B horror movies, and an awful lot of those movies starred one of the three original scream queens: Brinke Stevens, Michelle Bauer and Linnea Quigley. Screaming in High Heels: The Rise and Fall of the Scream Queen Era is an adoring documentary about those three, how they got into movies, and the environment in which they worked, and is also lots of fun.

The film is made up of archival footage of their films and interviews, both with the three scream queens, and people who worked with them: actors such as Jay Richardson and directors like Fred Olen Ray and David Decoteau, and others. The film explores the childhoods of the trio, and one would guess that even fans will discover a new tidbit or two about their idols that they didn't know before. For...Read the entire review

The Movie

Going by its garish torso-on-pink cover design, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the DVD for the 2009 feature film House of Boys was a gay skin flick. Sure, it does have moments of brazen sexuality. Mostly, however, this '80s-set drama serves as an understated coming-of-age tale. It's a little bit of everything, actually - surrogate family comedy, New Wave musical, unflinching chronicle of the early years of AIDS. In all honesty, it fails to score on any of those counts, but at least the film has more ambition than the average "go-go boy makes good" fare.

The film's title comes from the tawdry Amsterdam nightclub where the main character - an outgoing teen named Frank (charmingly played by Layke Anderson) - has escaped a stifling life in suburbia to work as a dancer. The club is run by the imperious Madame (Udo Kier), who occasionally performs elaborate drag numbers set t...Read the entire review

15 years after her son Jakob (Adam Scarimbolo) became brain damaged huffing chemicals in a school locker room, Janice (Margo Martindale) continues to devote most of her life to him. Jakob has impaired motor functions and can no longer speak, so Janice rushes from her job at a local grocery store to come home and care for Jakob, which leaves her lonely and frustrated. She puts flyers up around town looking for someone to help watch him a few times a week, and she gets Paige (Hanna Hall), a bright young college student who hopes to assist the elderly at a home or a hospital in the future. She agrees to care for Jakob, but one day, when Janice is not home, an incident threatens to destroy the lives of all three people.

Scalene is one of those films: the kind where the gimmick and the film's delivery of heavy-handed material gets in the way of whether the filmmakers actually have something ...Read the entire review

As the quality, length, and even inclusion of DVD bonus features rolls steadily downhill, fans have begun to take matters into their own hands. Productions like Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy and More Brains!: A Return to the Living Dead easily trump the depth and detail a studio-produced extra would ever go into, because nobody knows what a fan wants to know about better than other fans. Although the limited format of a TV special hampers it a little, Screaming in High Heels: The Rise and Fall of the Scream Queen Era is a respectable and entertaining (if not indispensable) addition to the trend.

Written and directed by Jason Paul Collum (and adver...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Gone: The Disappearance of Aeryn Gillern is an intriguing documentary, focusing on the 2007 disappearance of American UN worker Aeryn Gillern in Vienna, and his mother's quest to discover the truth of what happened. The film is a powerful and emotional investigation without being overbearing or preachy, and the filmmakers have a light yet deft touch, letting the material speak for itself.

In the interests of full disclosure, let me say that, while I never knew Aeryn Gillern or his family, I do know friends of his, and it was their discussion of the film that sparked my interest in seeing it. The thoughts below are entirely my own, however.

While the putative subject of this film is obviously Aeryn Gillern, the real focus is on his mother, retired police officer Kathy Gillern. Perhaps this is inevitable, since she is alive and able to talk, while the viewer can only kno...Read the entire review