Alwood

Bill Oliver's OUR SON is a fine drama, telling the story of a gay couple whose marriage comes to an end, and their subsequent custody battle over the young son whom they fathered via IVF.

In a time when homosexuality is still illegal in some areas of the world, and there is still a large percentage of those in the West who oppose gay marriage and view the LBGTQ community as "other," what Oliver (and his co-writer, Peter Nickowitz) present to the audience is that gay people are simply regular folks, who go through the same day-to-day trials and tribulations as the hetero world does. If anything, OUR SON has far more in common with films like KRAMER VS. KRAMER than something like BOYS IN THE BAND. And it is that population who refuse to see the gay community as human beings just as they are who will benefit most from seeing this film.

Luke Evans is excellent in the lead, managing to paint a complex portrait of a man who is a driven professional, but who also loves his husband and son deeply, but who perhaps comes to that realization too late. Billy Porter gives an equally fine turn as the estranged spouse, who has found that fatherhood awakened something inside of him that he wasn't aware of previously. The rest of the supporting cast is excellent, with nary a false note among them.

There are no heroes or villains in this film, just regular people trying to cope with the same roadblocks that life seems to throw in our path randomly. Highly recommended.

Had the pleasure of seeing Christina Kallas' latest film, PARIS IN HARLEM yesterday, and it's stunning. It's an Altman-like tableau of stories set in NYC during 2017 and uses the archaic "No Dancing/Cabaret" law, passed by the city in 1926, as its connective tissue. Like TAR, it masterfully addresses the issues that current ail our upside-down world, but from a neutral, very adult POV, allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions. The entire cast, from the leads to the smallest supporting role, knocks it out of the park. Kallas directs with a fly-on-the-wall immediacy that makes the viewer feel like they're eavesdropping on real life. Not to be missed.

It's currently screening at The Cinelounge on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles.

I had read about this notorious, X-rated grindhouse classic for years, and finally watched it over the holidays. It's shockingly brutal, nihilistic and sexual, even by today's standards. The debut feature of Jose Larraz, a Spanish director known for high-end sleaze, a la Jess Franco, it's quite well-shot, but has a script that's nearly non-existent and shamelessly rips-off better, iconic films such as PSYCHO, PEEPING TOM and REBECCA. Lead actress Vivien Neves was a stunning supermodel in her day, but couldn't act wet in a rainstorm. The actress who really made an impression is a Danish woman (it was a co-production between Denmark and Spain, but shot in the UK) named Pia Andersson, as the evil "Aunt Sarah." She has several exquisite moments, mostly without dialogue, where her remarkable face displays a host of emotions, mostly pain and loneliness. And the odd thing is, she seems to have vanished after this film. I can find nothing about her on the 'net. Very strange. The ending, which I'm sure influenced Wes Craven's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT several years later (even more so than Bergman's VIRGIN SPRING, which it shamelessly ripped off) is truly sickening and disturbing, and has stayed with me for the past week, not in a good way. Ultimately, this is one of those films made right after the rating system was established where the sole purpose was "Anything goes!" and boy, does it. Interesting as a time capsule artifact, but ultimately, it's pretty pointless, not to mention very, very nasty.