Shelter - Gay Boys Do Surf

It is always a delight to find a gay themed film with a fresh look on romantic relationships between young gay men. In Jonas Markowitz's third directorial Shelter , we find love in the surf, sand and beach front homes of southern California.

Meet Zach, played by a convincing Trevor Wright, a budding artist, dutiful uncle, reliable best friend, with a working class foundation whose homosexuality is awakened when his best friend Gabe's (Ross Thomas) older brother, Shaun (Brad Rowe), a writer now living in Los Angeles returns home to recover from a recent breakup.

Zach's art and world is driven by his home life -- the perfect picture of the American dysfunctional family with his sister practically giving 20 year-old Zach custody of her 5 year-old son Cody. Nevertheless, Zach and Cody are the new American family completed with Shaun's arrival and confidence.

Shaun and Zach form one of the best unions in the history of gay cinema. They are honest, vulnerable, considerate and open to explore just as they do with the waves of the ocean. The camera loves these guys and they give their characters depth and humanity that no script could ever spell out so brilliantly as they portray them.

Shelter is such a refreshing film. Shelter is that film people will question its homosexuality because it does not act gay. People need to know and realize that all gay men are not the stereotype most Hollywood types plant in your mind and their movies. Shelter is easily one of the best gay themed films ever.

Seek shelter immediately.

Inception - Time to Wake-up

Besides the soaring temperatures of summer, the other thing I am eager to usher away are those horrible loud insipid summer blockbuster movies.

To that end, it is only appropriate that I present Inception. Inception was billed as the smart, plot driven, guilty pleasure of summer 2010’s star riddled, studio tentpoles, blockbuster $200 million productions. Last week I caught Inception in New York City. $13.00? When did the tickets go up? Thirteen dollars does not even guarantee you a great sit, especially during the heated summer months.

Back to Inception, I always enjoy the acting of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. British and buffed, Tom Hardy is great. As usual, Leonardo DiCaprio is fine acting his way through every Hollywood film he stars in. And Leo is the star - front and center of nearly every frame of Inception. Marion Cotillard, well she is the new “go-to” international actress for a multi-layered favored wife role. Director Christopher Nolan has definitely solidified his cinematic style – which excludes Blacks (people in Africa are not Black they are Africans - in America, Mr. Nolan, where you make movies those black people are Black).

While there are so many angles to dialogue on Inception, I will just focus on – show it, don’t say it. This is a film. It is a film about dreams and reality. This is the very foundation of cinema. From the very first scene until the very last scene the characters are constantly acknowledging, analyzing, discussing, dissecting dreams and telling the audience that this is a dream within a dream and the characters are having and involved with dreams within their own dreams and others’ dreams.

In the end, Inception falls fast like one of those dreams where you awake just before the crash. It is a let down because we understand early on to follow the various dreams and reality. The film is not very clever nor smart and the special effects are suburban – a truck full of sleeping celebrity actors going over a bridge in slow motion? Really? $150 million to dream? Wake up!

All I can say is bring on the Fall art-house, film festival pick-ups, international cinema gems, urban sleepers, cine-bio-pics and random Oscar worthy sifted studio “indy” flicks.

Goodbye summer and riddance mindless flicks of summer 2010!

Ajami

Ajami is an amazing film. The range of emotions I felt truly ran the gamut. When will America make films that have matter and make you feel? Films, movies, cinema is not just about substance, it is about creating dynamic and broad cinematic images and storytelling that inform and entertain all at once.

Nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film 2009, Ajami, is the story of families, clans, gangsters, policemen and friendships on the West Bank's Jaffa neighborhood. After their uncle shoots an important clan member, 13-year-old Nasri (Fouad Habash) and his older brother, Omar (Shahir Kabaha), finds their entire family and lives in danger. While members of the community struggle to negotiate a peace agreement Omar employs the assistance of his friend Malek (Ibrahim Frege) and takes things into his own hands.

Ajami is an important film from the region, as it is modern. It unfolds and tells of the social issues, family bonds and day to day struggle in a world which seems to only know the international turmoils when at the end of the day there are real people living on the West Bank. The West Back is a mixture of cultures and diverse views from Muslins, Jews and Christians.

Afterall Ajami is a neighborhood - a vibrant international community you can visit thanks to filmmakers Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti.

The Kids Are All Right

"The Kids Are All Right" is a Lisa Cholodenko film. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore are Nic and Jules, are a lesbian couple with two kids. The teens share a biological father via an anonymous sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo). Their family life is unexotic, unglamorous and totally routine like most American families until daughter Joni (Mia Wasikowska), having turned 18, gets in touch with their biological father. And there begins a hollywood film with smart dialogue and great acting.

It's a movie about basic things, about the meaning of family and the vulnerability of families. I wish it was about the complexity of relationships. The evolution of family not basic things. I wanted to be taken for a ride. I wanted to see something other than a movie. It is a good movie. But in the end it was like any other accept some people were acting gay.

35 Shots or Rum

Silent waters run deep in Claire Denis' serene drama 35 Shots of Rum. 35 Shots focuses on four inhabitants of a French apartment building centering most on Lionel (Alex Descas). The stoic Lionel, a train engineer, shares his apartment with his daughter Jo (Mati Diop). The two other characters and potential mates are their neighbors Gabrielle (Nicole Dogué), a taxi, and mysterious and sexy Noé (Grégoire Colin).

The characters build boxes around themselves, mistaking their private shelter for safety. Breaking out relies on finding a balance between old and new, and in having the guts to knock down the walls and really change.

See just how many shots it takes to get out on your own or coupled. Great film.

The Watermelon Woman

Cheryl Dunye's debut feature film The Watermelon Woman is so entertaining. It is so original, so smart, so funny and so indie.

The Watermelon Woman is the story of a budding young Black lesbian filmmaker, Cheryl, in Philadelphia struggling to make a documentary about Fae Richards, a beautiful and elusive 1930s black film actress known as "The Watermelon Woman."

While uncovering the untold history of the fictional Fae Richards, Cheryl's personal life is subject to the comic yet biting criticism of her best friend, Tamara, when Cheryl meets and engages in a relationship with a white lesbian.

Get yourself a slice and cool out with The Watermelon Woman.

Brother Outsider - The Life of Bayard Rustin

If you know Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr or Malcolm X then you should know who Bayard Rustin is. Bayard Rustin was an advisor to Dr. King. Rustin was not only an organizer of the historic Civil Rights March on Washington, DC, Rustin was the architect of the legendary march and the place where Dr.King delivered one of the most celebrated speeches in the history of spoken language.

Brother Outsider - The Life of Bayard Rustin is an amazing documentary of another invisible man - an openly Black gay American man who championed the civil rights movement for all of us. This documentary outlines and unfolds the life of a man who truly was ahead of his time and a real visionary. Long before Dr. King and Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin sat down on a bus and refused to abandon his principles and morals in order to allow a white person to sit.

Bayard Rustin's invisible presence is what continues to set us all back as a nation by selecting not to recognized the truth. The truth is Bayard Rustin is an unsung American hero we have selected to forget, chose not to remember or honor mostly because he was not heterosexual. Times are changing. Today we can examine outsiders' input to shaping a better nation and world.

Bayard Rustin is definitely someone to know and Brother Outsider - The Life of Bayard Rustin is the perfect introduction.