Who We Love

 This adaptation of his short by director Graham Cantwell is a well intentioned if rather clumsy drama about Dublin teens negotiating school, parents and budding queer life. At the start Lily seems to be in bed with a woman in flashback, but then heads off to school to give her best bud Simon a badge she tells him is from her visit to San Francisco over the summer. Since we have seen her cutting out the letter S I thought perhaps she made up the story of her visit and indeed the romance and spent most of the rest of the film wondering when she was going to come clean. But No, that sequence was so that we would see the exacto knife she used to cut the letter. The reasons for that will become clear later in the film...

Lily seems to lack confidence and does not seem to have told Simon she likes girls even though he is clearly out and proud. Nor does she tell her parents or anyone at school or even go online to find support. Seeing as Simon and Lily live on the outskirts of Dublin their isolation from a queer community seems most odd. The film really feels like it should have been set in the 1990s, not the present day. I could easily imagine it as a Channel 4 Out on Tuesday production. There are so many on-the-nose moments as characters make histrionic declarations like "Leave me alone!" as if their feelings are so hard to understand. There really is an Only Gay in the Village vibe that feels very off. 

So rather than go find some queer kids their own age, Simon takes baby dyke Lily to a gay pub to meet Oonagh who for some reason has taken on the role of lesbian den mother and gives  Lily a pep talk while constantly insulting Simon in language that feels more like a peer than an older woman chatting to a teen. Again it feels off.

Sadly, Oonagh is one of very few "older" characters who has any kind of compassion, with the parents being hostile or distracted and school authorities completely out of touch with the students. Lily's nemesis is her friend Violet who has violent tendencies and a mother who tells her she is "winning at life" in some of the worst parenting committed to screen. Another "older" character is a sleazy voyeuristic gay man who likes to watch. It gets quite uncomfortable. 

There is some satisfaction in watching Lily turn the tables on her bully but the film is an exercise in frustration at watching a collection of stereotypes and melodramatics in search of a coherent plot or character development. 

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Street Trash

 For my first post of the new year, it's this trashy remake of the 1987 film of the same name, courtesy of director Ryan Kruger. Set in Cape Town, Street Trash presents a familiar tale of underdogs vs The Man, as evil Mayor Mostert plots to do away with the troublesome homeless by vaporising them with a spray called Viper. 

The aesthetics are very much teenaged boy humour (lots of chat re: erections and humping) and B-movie sci-fi (exploding bodies and slime). Sometimes it works, with characters emerging over the piece to show a depth of emotion. Grizzled street dweller Ronald (Sean Cameron Michael) and newcomer Alex (Donna Cormack-Thomson) are particular standouts, growing from grudging allies to good pals. A sub-plot involving the subterranean Rat King is rather confused and adds little. 

What is impressive about this film is its embrace of lo-fi strategies and the energy of the cast. The feel of griminess is palpable. The mayor is little more than a cartoon character but the desperation and anger of the disenfranchised comes through strongly. Quirky exchanges between characters seem a bit reminiscent of Tarantino and the addition of a blue sex-obsessed ghoul only visible to one character is certainly an interesting story choice.

I could have done without the phallic obsession and the cringy post-credits coda is typical of this. Perhaps the director suffers from insecurities in this area. Grow up, Ryan.

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Wilding

 Don't be alarmed. It's not a reflection on the hideous tabloid freakery from the 1980s. No, this is a documentary based on a book by Isabella Tree about revisioning a family farm.

The doc is narrated by an unnamed woman, who I assume is Tree. Odd she is never named, and she repeatedly refers to Charlie, who turns out to be her husband. Some little pointers for the viewer going in cold would not go amiss. The first three minutes are also marred by a poor sound mix as Unnamed Woman fights to be heard above the strains of T-Rex. 

Tree and Charlie had inherited the farm, Knepp, in Sussex and realised they needed to do things differently if they wanted to bring the soil back to life. After hundreds of years of ploughing, fertilising and pesticides, the soil was almost dead. So, they did some research and instituted a version of rewilding, allowing the land to regain its more ancient state.

Interestingly, at least to me, this involved bringing in animals, among them ponies and cattle and letting them roam. This would allow the animals to interact with the landscape, shaping it and revitalising it. At one point Tree refers to the animals being managed but does not elaborate. So, I wondered, how wild were these animals? Were they vaccinated, have their hoofs and teeth checked? Was there any intervention if they became sick or injured? No information was given, although the couple do refer to questions by their neighbours who are not keen, which suggests they thought these questions were beyond the pale. Not really.

Instead there is a lot of footage of pigs rootling, stags wandering, birds nesting and water flowing. Beavers are brought in but this is also not explored. I had to go online to discover the two beavers who were brought in initially did not last long at the farm. I would love to see if the beaver experiment succeeds. 

Charlie concludes he could see the animals making their way to the sea, but how would this happen, what with motorways and other human creation in the way? The film ends on this note, which is rather unsatisfactory. But the ideas are intriguing, even if most of us do not have a spare 3500 acres lying around to pursue them. 

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Things Will Be Different

 This indie drama/sci fi/horror from writer/director Michael Felker is intriguing and well made if a bit confusing. Siblings Joseph and Sid (Adam David Thompson and Riley Dandy) meet in what we assume is the present before he takes her to a remote location to hide out after some kind of robbery that has earned them $7m. Entering a certain closet allows them to go somewhere else in time until they can return safely. Except they can't. 

The time travel plot device plays out rather awkwardly in places as the two kill time in a big house and offer minimal exposition. Why are they estranged? Why did they commit a robbery? Eventually a strange force called The Vise enters their lives in the form of a mysterious safe with tape recorder. (Quite lo fi for a time travel film!) They need to follow instructions to get back safely. 

One oddity is how the two siblings are so well armed. Did they serve in the military? They stalk the property with their guns and then retreat to the kitchen to make use of the automatically restocking fridge. Once I noticed the contents resemble film set craft, I couldn't shake the notion the whole film is a metaphor for DIY film-making: being stuck in a location with a limited supply of food while the world proceeds unbothered. 

Anyway, Sid and Joseph await an unwelcome visitor and the whole thing goes full fight-to-the-death for a bit. And then gets weirder. By the end I had no idea what had happened or why. It seemed improbable certain characters would or would not recognise each other. So, it proved a frustrating watch, albeit with fully committed performances from the actors and some clever film-making to work within what was clearly a limited budget. 

I want an automatically restocking fridge!

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Paddington in Peru

 This third entry in the Paddington series finds our ursine hero and his human family the Browns en route to Peru to visit Aunt Lucy at the Home for Retired Bears. The title suggests an opportunity for the tables to turn as Paddington revisits his birthplace and the Browns are along for the ride as the outsiders. 

And to a point that is true. There are bears galore at the retirement home which is run by nuns led by Olivia Colman in shimmering grinny form. She even sings! 

And much later when the family is lost in the jungles and encounters some wild creatures it does appear as if Paddington is equipped to lead the way. But this is not really how things play out which is a disappointment.

So much time is spent on the hunt for Aunt Lucy and giving screentime to Antonio Banderas's hammy riverboat captain (clearly hoping to repeat the Hugh Grant in overdrive trick of the second film), that very little thought is given to the bears at all. Think about it: this would be the first time Paddington would be in the majority. Surely he would want to revisit his old home, perhaps pay tribute to his Uncle Pastuzo, use his own language? 

Not a bit of it. The climax which finds the family face to face with some unexpected inhabitants affords zero time to Paddington even considering his birth roots. Everything is quickly wrapped up and then it's back to London for a quick cameo from an old face. 

Never thought I would say it but Paddington really needs more bears and fewer human beings. 

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Members Club

 If someone, somewhere has been searching for a horror comedy about middle-aged male strippers encountering an ancient witch, this one's for you. The ahem members of the troupe, Wet Dreams, are booked in for a gig in Essex at a strangely deserted working men's club. Then something stirs.....

The set-up is fine, a sub-plot about stripper Alan's attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter Daisy emerging as all hell breaks loose. There are some laughs and a bit of gore. It's all good fun. Oh, and Peter Andre turns up in a ludicrous wig for no discernible reason. 

The gender politics are harder to determine. Is this meant to be a reversal of the age-old premise of hot young strippers being imperiled? Most of Wet Dreams have seen better days and the lads spend most of the film clad only in tiny glittery shorts. Then there are the witches, in multiple. Is witchcraft inherently bad? Not clear. There is quite an ugly scene toward the end that rather ruined the viewing experience, as Alan suddenly steps up to take action, urged on by his mate Deano. 

Ah, yes, Deano. So, Deano has an interesting anatomical feature only revealed right toward the end. Is this meant to be a joke? Is the whole film a health film in disguise? Not clear. A bit of a dampener, one might say. 

"It's cock-a-clock!" one character announces. If that appeals, this is your film. 

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Studio One Forever

 This documentary almost feels like it should have an exclamation mark at the end of the title. As West Hollywood councillor John Duran stands on stage, he bellows the words to his audience of former revellers and the attendant unseen angels. More on that later. 

There is no exclamation mark but the entertaining film revisits a lost gay club popular in the 1980s with plenty of archive footage and remembrances from staff and visitors. There is quite a large quotient of name-dropping, as well as everyone from Elton to Cary to Sylvester was there. Chita Rivera (RIP) is interviewed about launching her cabaret at the club's back room and admitting how daunting it was crossing the dance floor to get to her show. 

All of this great but so what? Lots of clubs existed in the 1980s. What made this one special? The hook is that the now-shuttered club is about to be demolished in 2018 as a big bad developer has taken over the property. Duran and his pals are keen to stop the demolition, and they put on a reunion to raise the club's profile. It takes until the 70th minute for anyone to mention AIDS and then it turns into a memorial as Duran speaks of all the lost angels looking down on them. This is moving but many people who were mentioned earlier are never given their due. What happened to them?

The editing is bizarre, skipping from a declaration that the club owner ran a racist admission policy to talking about Can't Stop the Music and then on to the DJ playlist. Visits to a local archive are interesting and there is a brief glimpse of some lost and now found photo negatives. But it's a bit of a mishmash. 

If this gives a new generation an idea of how club life functioned in WeHo pre-AIDS, then all to the good. I do wish there had been a bit more reflection on Studio One's cultural context. Spoiler: the party ended very, very badly. 

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