The Miseducation of Cameron Post. (2018)

Desiree Akhavan’s second outing as a feature film director is a movie about ‘struggling with same sex attraction’. Cameron Post (Chloe Grace Moretz) is discovered in the back seat of a car having a sexual liaison with another girl by her stunned small-minded boyfriend, she’s sent off, for her so called sins, to a conversion therapy centre to be ‘cured’. At this Christian Centre she and other gay teenagers are subject to various de-gaying methods but the plus is she finds herself part of a close gay community. It’s an energetic wee film that I enjoyed but I feel it could have done a lot more with the subject matter and unfortunately had a rather dull ending - but still worth a watch.

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get far on Foot. (2018)

John Callahan was best known for two things, a cartoonist that specialised in macabre subjects including disabilities and the fact that he himself was a quadriplegic resulting from a very serious car accident at the age of 21 following a heavy bout of drinking.

Gus Van Sant based his screenplay on the book of the same name written by Callahan. The biopic stars Joaquin Phoenix, an actor I’m not always keen on but in this role he is ideally cast. This dark comedy is not always an easy watch mainly because of Phoenix portrayal of this far from perfect character and his struggle with both his deformity coupled with his fight with alcohol but certainly a man you can’t help admire at times. There’s a grand supporting cast, which includes Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, and a great cameo from Jack Black.  You can catch this movie on Amazon Prime.     

The Post (2017)

It took awhile to get going and work out who’s who and who each of the characters works for, but of course it could be me! But once you get past this rather frustrating obstruction Steven Spielberg's movie turns out to be an entertaining political journey. Its story covers the trials and tribulations of how The Washington Post, and various members of its board and staff, got to publish classified documents with regard to the Vietnam War.

Jackie.

Chilean filmmaker Pablo Lorrain has made some very good movies including Tony Manero in 2008, Post Mortem in 2010 and No in 2012 but his latest movie, his first in the English language, is certainly not up to the standard of these three and to my mind nowhere near as good as the hype would have you believe. Jackie (2016) has been nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Costume Design, Best Original Score and a Best Actress Nomination for Natalie Portman, if this years BAFTA's is anything to go by, will probably manage to win Best Costume Design and certainly not Best Actress for Portman who mumbled her way through the talky role making it very difficult to understand what she was saying.

This biographical drama, originally conceived as a HBO miniseries, basically deals with the week between John F Kennedy assassination on the 22^nd November 1963, his burial and when his wife and two children Caroline and John Jnr, who died in a plane crash in 1999 at the age of 38, leave the White House for the last time. Noah Oppenheim's lack lustre screenplay is partly based on Theodore H White's Life magazine interview with Jackie Kennedy a week after her husband’s death. It was during this interview that inappropriately the delusional ex First Lady compared the Kennedy years with King Arthur's mythical Camelot - the first American president to encompass the celebrity culture and to spend $2 million on the restoration of the White House, not quite the Knights of the Round Table.

 

The fatal last journey.

Larrain's movie is a rather hollow look at the period and at times minds numbingly boring not helped by the Journalist (Billy Crudup) interview that adds nothing to the film and would have been better without it. The drama is non-existent only the scene in Dallas when JFK gets shot during the motorcade shows any pretence of the story coming to life.

 

The infamous blood stained pink suit.

The film also stars Peter Sarsgaard as Robert F Kennedy with whom Jackie seems to have a rather intimate relationship, although who can blame her when her husband spent a minimal amount of time sharing her marital bed and John Hurt as Jackie's father confessor, this was his final film release before his death in January 2017and shows why he will be missed and to be quite honest the only actor in this charade to earn his salary.

Paris is Burning.

On director Jennie Livingston’s web site she describes her controversial 1991 movie Paris is Burning as ‘depicting a New York fashion subculture’. This documentary, she goes on to explain, was shot in the late 1980s, and examines how a community of Black and Latino gay and transgender New Yorkers build sustenance, creativity, and family. The film sets out to explore ballroom culture; re-defines words like house, mother, shade, voguing and Realness and draw’s a series of incisive character portraits about the people involved in what is a vibrant time capsule of New York’s ballroom subculture in the 80s.

 

The "Balls" culture.

Livingston’s documentary was seven years in the making and followed African American and Hispanic gay men, drag queens and transgender women as they compete in “Balls” which are fierce and fun competitions involving fashion runways and vogue dancing battles, while sporting various styles that include Butch Queen, Town and Country and Luscious Body. Many of the contestants taking part represent “Houses” which serve them as surrogate families and social groups for a predominantly youthful community largely ostracized from mainstream society. But what the movie really does is that it explores the complex issues of class, race, identity, and the transformative powers of both dance and performance. 

 

Venus Xtravaganza.

The most interesting parts of the film are the interviews with key members of the community who take part in the Balls, which helps unlock our understanding of this colourful and entertaining culture. The saddest story is that of Venus Xtravaganza who is heavily featured in the documentary and was a transgender performer and an aspiring model who was saving money for her sex reassignment surgery before she was murdered at the age of 23.

This highly regarded documentary won several awards including a Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize and Teddy Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. Last year (2016), the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".