Archive for the Live Action Category


Rafiki, directed by Wanuri Kahiu

August 16th, 2020

Rafiki directed by Wanuri Kahiu, is a beautiful film about two Kenyan women in love in a county where homosexuality is illegal, and Church, State and Society are violently opposed to queer people living happily. Nominated at Cannes, Kahiu’s award-winning vision is timeless, with overnotes of Romeo and Juliet. “Two houses alike in dignity…” and all that, but with some deeper messaging.

Kena Mwaura is one of the guys but she, like most tomboys, is not at all one of the guys. Ziki Okemi is a very pretty girl, whose father just happens to be running against Kena’s father for the local County Assembly position. Kena and Ziki fall in love. It’s charming and sweet. You watch them wanting to cocoon them away from the derision and harm that you just know is waiting for them out in the real world. When it lands, all we can do it watch and wait…and hope.

As we watch, it becomes clear that there are several layers of storytelling unfolding. There is the clear message that the demons are in the haters, not the hated. The anger, the intolerance, the disdain, the rejection, the violence, that is where the demonic influence is. Love is…love.  Love brings joy and wholeness, but hate makes us bilious,and causes us to hurt others…which one is the one that is holy, really. It’s not subtle. Church, State and Society all look like the jerks that they are.

And there is the equally unsubtle story about two fathers, for whom wives and daughters are symbolic tools, not actual humans. Thankfully, here, the families are given room to grow, and both fathers and mothers change, at least a little. 

But there’s one more layer and this one really struck me hard – the mean smallness of society’s vision for what women should want and how men and women become enraged when younger generations just refuse to see that mean, small, barely human existence as “enough.” Blacksta, Kena’s friend, is honestly confused when Kena doesn’t seem interested in becoming his wife. “Isn’t that what everyone wants?” (At which point, I thought, in story after story after story, the villagers remain gormless. Why would Cinderella ever want something different, or Mu Lan?) The fact is, that the smallest and meanest of visions for what we “should” want is still prevalent. In the movie press kit, Kahiu says,

“While filming,we challenged deep-rooted cynicism about same-sex relations among the actors, crew and continue to do so with friends, relatives and larger society. RAFIKI brings to the forefront conversations about love, choice and freedom. Not only freedom to love but also the freedom to create stories.”

It was that theme of freedom I loved best about Rafiki. These themes were addressed at a price. In a 2019 interview with the Guardian, Kahiu speaks of the harassment she has faced, sometimes from people she loves.

The censors were not at all happy with Kahiu’s vision, either. “They felt it was too hopeful. They said if I changed the ending to show her [the main character Kena] looking remorseful, they would give me an 18 rating.” Kahiu declined and so, as the final framed play, Kena and Ziki do not end up dead, or some other more traditionally depressing ending. I will rejoice when “death or marriage” is so completely confusing an idea to young queer folks, since not having a happily-ever-after ended would be unthinkable. ^_^

Samantha Mugatsia’s Kena is fantastic. You just want to invite her over to kick back and let her relax a bit, and while it took me longer than Kena to trust Sheila Munyiva’s Ziki, I think she did a fantastic job of acting.

Overall a very solid movie. A few weeks ago, I reported that this movie had been put on Youtube officially, but I find that that link is no longer active. The movie is available to rent for a mere $1.99 on Amazon Video, which is where I watched it.  Ultimately, it’s a story of hope and for that alone, it’s absolutely worth watching. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 8

From a western perspective, there was nothing censorship-worthy, but Kahiu had to sue her own country’s government to get the film shown in Kenya…she was successful and it did play for a week. With luck we’ll be seeing more of her work in the near future for Amazon and a movie called The Thing About Jellyfish.





Wynnona Earp on Netflix

July 26th, 2020

Wynonna Earp is ridiculous, it’s gross and violent (the very first scene involves someone’s tongue being cut out), it frequently makes no sense, it piles one plot complication on top of another, without resolving it, or the three previous plot complications before it. Worse, when 99% of the characters are undead, undying or unreal, no bad guy ever just…goes away.  It’s a modern paranormal western with absurd shootouts and some of the most godawful fight choreography I’ve ever seen.

But I kinda like it anyway. ^_^

It helps that several of the characters are openly queer and others are probably queer given the right circumstances. Queerable, if you will.

It also helps that this series, developed by Syfy, now also on Netflix, is so stupendously absurd that I can comfortably watch it with almost no real concern, since by the end of Season 3, at least, pretty much all of the main characters have died at least once and are still with us. It’ll get harder and harder to believe anyone is actually dead and out of the show until Twitter tells me so. ^_^

Descendant of Wyatt Earp, Wynnona, has her whole life struggled under a family curse that, (among other things,) ended up with her killing her father and, later, being sent away to an asylum. The curse is real, and so are all the hellish demons plaguing her family and Wynnona’s only real problem, it turns out, is that she’s perfectly sane and is the Heir of Wyatt’s curse. Wynnona and her sister, Waverly, are joined in their fight by the immortal Doc Holliday, and eventually by a host of adorable misfits and weirdos.

Waverly, a bubbly young woman who taught herself ancient languages in order to be worthy of being the Heir, falls in love with new cop in town, redheaded Nicole Haught. In Season 3, the team gets gay researchers/scientist/whatever they need him to be/generic lab guy Jeremy and then he gets a boyfriend who is also a total whatever they need him to be for that arc, forest ranger, lost boy, twink, Robin.

Ultimately what’s keeping me watching is the vulgarity and the fact that the all the characters, female characters especially, are written with depth, with variety and with skill. Even the bad characters have depth and not just tragic “evil person sad story” depth…although every character does indeed have a tragic backstory.

I was not blown away by this show at first, but I find that it has seriously grown on me and not just because it hasn’t given in to Bury Your Gays. That is to say, it has killed most of the gay characters at least once, but all of the characters have been killed at least once, so that’s not an issue.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 6  CGI effects, batman angles, too close on kisses, horrible fights
Story – Goes from ridiculous to laughable
Character – 8 Inconsistent, but fun
LGBTQ – 9
Service – 3 Some, but fairly sprinkled about

Overall – 8

I’m always on the lookout for a series to half-assedly pay attention to as I work and Wynnona Earp is perfectly suited to mostly ignore. ^_^ But when I do look up, the people are pretty, the gays get to have sex, too, and everyone is permanently not-dead. So, that’s good. The actress playing Waverly, Dominique Provost-Chalkley, has recently come out, which is sweet.

It’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer the western, in 2020.





The Half of It on Netflix

May 8th, 2020

Do you remember when a while ago when there was a spate of classic literature as updated movies? Jane Austen’s Emma became Clueless, Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew became Ten Things I Hate About You. It’s not a new idea, but it’s always fun when a director you like takes a look at a stodgy old classic and manages to do it one better.

In the Half of It, Alice Wu takes on Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and does it more than one better. 

You may remember Alice Wu – she was the driving force behind Saving Face, which I found to be utterly delightful when I attended the premier in 2005. Folks were pretty happy to hear that she’d be behind this teen lesbian drama. Having watched it, I can recommend it highly.

As you may remember from Cyrano de Bergerac, the plot revolves around a beautiful girl, Aster, the big incoherent galumph who loves her, Paul, who hires Cyrano to write wooing words for him. In this case, Cyrano is played by Ellie Chu, a world-weary high school girl who makes money by writing other student’s papers and who avoids other people…but is also attracted to Aster.

In this version of the story, Aster is smart and sensitive and so is Ellie, while Paul really tries and it becomes almost impossible to dislike him.  The core of the story is the nature of love and, while I think they all get it completely wrong, it did remind me of something. In Volume 2 of Bloom Into You Regarding Saeki Sayaka, Sayaka spends a lot of time thinking about the components of attraction. Why does someone confess feelings to another, what are those feeling composed of? There is a similar train of thought here – what makes us “fall in love” or even be attracted to another person? Sayaka comes to an obvious conclusion – that for most people, looks are the way they judge other people’s worth. When we’re young, this is especially sensible as we don’t have a lot of other factors we can use. We don’t know who we are, how can we really understand someone else. When Sayaka is thinking about how sempai liked her because she was pretty, it was a clue to her superficiality that Sayaka ultimately understood.

For Ellie, the story is not a romance, but it is a journey of self-discovery. There is a key scene where she and Paul are practicing his conversational skills. Ellie says, “I don’t need speaking practice,” but as we watch them converse it is apparent that yes, yes she did. Maybe not so she had words, which is Paul’s need, but so that she learns how to be a better human by caring about other humans. She does learn.  By the end of the story, all of the principals have changed for the better and while no one ends up with anyone else, we can hope they will all live happily ever after in lives that are richer for having known and cared about each other.

Racism is mentioned but never becomes a specific issue, but there are enough cues that its not truly subtext, either. The systemic oppression of religious community is also constant background refrain. These are the ever-present cosmic microwave background of this story, an ever-present relic of societal pressure.

The acting was superlative. The story was tight. This was a decent watch and I’ll look forward to more from Alice Wu.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 8 Very good until the end where it soared into sublime
Acting – 9
Story – 9 Great reworking of a brilliant, but deeply annoying classic
Lesbian – 6 Ellie’s journey is painful, but not excruciating.
Service – None

Overall – 9

Like I Am Not Okay With This, the story plumbs the depths of the torture of high school, with less blood.





Black Lightning on CW

April 22nd, 2020

DC’s very first African-American lead superhero, Black Lightning only got 11 issues from 1977 -1978 before DC cut many new titles. Black Lightning got another reboot in the 2000s and has been and out of several continuities since. In 2018, as part of it’s television franchise on the CW network, Black Lightning once again received a new starring role. And, frankly, I think this is a truly excellent television series.

I started watching the series on the CW, but life and a wonky DVR left me playing catch up all the time. Now that Black Lightning is on Netflix, I’ve finally had a chance to become current…and it’s still a really excellent series.

The DCU on CW is embedded in the gritty hyperrealism that I’ve never much loved about modern American comics but, in the way that it feels very like the long shadows of Tim Burton and Frank Miller in Batwoman, it works for Black Lightning.

High school Principal Jefferson Pierce has retired as the superhero Black Lightning as the story begins. What starts as a drug war, becomes a war against an oppressive government. Along the way, we’re introduced to enemies and allies, of course. Among the allies are Pierce’s daughters, Anissa and Jennifer, who also develop super powers.  It is Anissa, Thunder, I want to focus on here.

Anissa Pierce is a lesbian when the series begins, She has a girlfriend. She’s out to her family. That’s it. She’s out and as the story goes on, her sexuality is never once a point of contention (except for in on an alternate Earth, but this is DC and they can’t help themselves.) When Anissa is no longer with her girlfriend, she meets other women, sometimes sleeps with one. Eventually she ends up with another woman, Grace. And please understand that to write this paragraph I had to avoid about a dozen spoilers absolutely NONE of which had to do with Anissa’s sexuality. It’s simply a non-issue.

So, what is an issue? Nothing. It’s a great series that touches on all the buttons that make white people uncomfortable that it can possibly touch in a way that I really appreciate. It’s like a pokefest of “did THIS make you uncomfortable? NO? How about THIS?” and it’s fairly constant which is the fucking point of this particular form of addressing issues, isn’t it. The less this series is “for me,” the more I like it. The cast is almost wholly black, with a few folks who are Asian. There is one white ally guy is always in a support role.  The white people who show up are, with that one exception, cringe-making. Good. We can be all the stereotypes, from confederate flag-waving racists, to Parking Lot Peggy calling the cops on a black woman standing near her vehicle.

Cress Williams and Christine Adams do a bang-up job of playing Pierce and his scientist wife, Lynne, but for me the joy of watching is Nafessa Williams as Anissa/Thunder and my hero, China Anne McClain as Jennifer Pierce/ Lightning. It’s kind of a pun to say she’s incandescent, but seriously, she’s breathtaking. The relationship between the sisters is entirely realistic, as well. Overall superlative writing. I found this interview of Nafessa Williams by Cortney Williams for The Grio, about her role, in which she discusses being able to play an out black women in a loving family. It’s worth the read.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 9
LGBTQ – 10

Overall – 9

The things that hurt are supposed to hurt. The things that work best are supposed to work just like that. When there’s love, it’s lovely.

I grew up with Marvel and as I’ve admitted openly, DC has never been my boom, but I have to tell ya, with Batwoman, Thunder and Lightning on their television roster (and yes, I know about Supergirl, just haven’t watched any of it ,) I’m almost tempted to say I like the DCU on CW. ^_^; At least I can say, I like Black Lightning.

 





I Am Not Okay With This

April 12th, 2020

Netflix’s series I am Not Okay With This, an adaptation of Charles Forsman’s graphic novel of the same name, is…interesting. Good interesting, but interesting rather than entertaining, for me.

It begins with a young woman in a white shift, covered in blood, running from what sounds like police sirens. The voice over starts, “Dear Diary….Go…Fuck Yourself.” And from that point on, I did, indeed, binge-watch this story of Sydney, a young woman whose entire already crappy life is turned upside down by even more circumstances beyond her control than usual. At fifteen, Sydney is angry and frustrated by life, and as a result she’s an asshole to people who are probably only actually a little annoying.

Sydney’s got problems, as most people do. She’s hauling around a lot of anger at a father who killed himself, and she’s secretly in love with her best friend, something she comes to understand as the story plays out. But her friend is not in love with her. Instead her best friend is going out with a star of the football team who kind of tries to not be a jerk, honestly.

Unfortunately for Sydney, she’s also beginning to manifest powers of manipulation….powers driven by her anger, mostly. Explosively violent powers. And so, as the season ends, we come full circle to the beginning, with Sydney, running away from sirens in the background.

Sydney’s sexuality is part of the story and it takes her a longer while than it takes us to figure out where her interest lies. But whether it will ultimately be a good thing is still way up in the air as the season ends.

The biggest hurdle in the story is not the horror of it all, or even the tedium of school life, which is thoroughly explored, but that Sydney herself is just not a particularly nice or interesting person. Her “good” column is mostly filled up with Sydney’s genuine affection for her little brother. That said, Sydney is fantastically acted by Sophia Lillis, who captures every single annoying, awkward, self-absorbed quality of queer adolescence competently. The rest of the cast is likewise excellent, with special shout out to Wyeth Oleff as Stanley Barber, Sydney’s confidant and would-be boyfriend.

Ratings:

Acting – 10
Story – 9
Characters – 8 Exceptionally well portrayed
LGBTQ – 4 Sydney figuring it out is a thing
Service – 2 a little dress up

Overall – 8

If you’re looking for a happy teen drama-comedy, this is not the teen drama you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a queer lead paranormal/horror story, a lesbian Stranger Things or had a fondness for the teen drama of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, I Am Not Okay With This will probably scratch your itch. Whether a Season 2 will happen we don’t know, but it does appear that it’s being considered, if not actively made yet. The comic ends with finality, so if there is a S2, it will be going in a different direction.