Ah! Doily TV! I thought that was a Eastern European phenomenon.

I guess this movie is set before Grindr.

But I jest! I’m all in here. I love the cinematography, and the pacing seems perfect, and it seems just kinda quite riveting.

I guess it’s something I picked up from watching Chantal Akerman’s movies: There’s something magical about hallways and doors in movies. Whenever there’s a hallway in a movie, I just pay more attention.

This is so lovely! And gorgeous.

I’m dreading a third act where everything is going to become all complicated and at least one of the codgers are gonna die, because that’s what always happens in the third act.

I can’t stop smiling while watching this movie. I mean, even in the heart-breaking parts of this movie.

I’ve been kinda disappointed by this Queerty movie series… I mean, I hate choosing moving to watch — left to my own devices, I’d only watch sci-fi movies, Nouvelle Vague movies and screwball comedies, so I come up with these “projects” to make myself watch other stuff. And the Queerty selections haven’t been bad, by any means, but they’ve been very normie.

But this is a great movie. And I wouldn’t have watched it left to my own devices.

What… the fuck? Is this gonna have a christian ending? NOOOO

People from Hong Kong are weird.

Yeah, I suspected the ending was going to suck, and it did. But the rest of the movie was great.

Pro top: Just stop watching seven minutes before the movie ends.

Twilight’s Kiss. Ray Yeung. 2019. ⚄

This post is part of the Queer Cinema blog series.

I watched The Birdcage the other day. I mean, I knew that it was a remake, but I didn’t realise that it was a straight up (so to speak) scene by scene remake.

That’s the Hank Azaria character. Such whitewash.

Wow! They have actors that are age-appropriate for the roles! Well, that’s very different from the remake. It was really confusing with the actors in their 30s playing teenagers in the American version.

OK, the American version has dropped some of the lines, but they’ve kept, like, half of them, and they’ve kept at least 90% of the scenes.

But The Birdcage was a movie with a huge budget, and this looks like it was made on a shoe and a string. It’s charming, but it basically looks like a made-for-TV movie: It’s basic.

“Budget FRF 7,000,000 (estimated)”… well, that’s more than I expected. It’s basically $1M. But in 1978. It looks way cheaper than that. I mean, it looks like it was filmed on hi-def video. Surely that can’t be true?

I seriously thought that Robin Williams had improvised a lot of the lines, but they’re totally here in this version, too.

It’s fascinating seeing such a faithful remake. I mean, the original of a remake like this. It’s like watching Gus Van Sant’s Psycho first, and then Hitchcock’s. Only… this time the remake is better than the original? That just doesn’t happen a lot?

I mean, I like this version, but every single scene is better in the remake. I mean, the remake probably had a budget that’s 100x more, but…

Now the movie finally got moving!

And then it’s over!

Well, I have to say… Nichols did everything right when he remade this movie. He kept basically everything, but emphasised the funny bits and made them a lot funnier. So his version is longer, but the extended parts are all fun.

La Cage Aux Folles. Édouard Molinaro. 1978. ⚃

This post is part of the Queer Cinema blog series.

This movie is gimmick after gimmick. It’s got a gay, dying father, a protagonist who’s an artist, and a girlfriend who looks like she’s of the not-so-manic pixie kind (so presumably she’s also dying at the end)… There’s even a fucking cute little dog! So cute!

It’s not that individual scenes are horrible… but it feels very manipulative and schematic. It’s like they wrote the script based on a checklist.

There’s even a bookstore! They’re really going for it here. Was this script auto-generated?

Oh, now I feel bad:

Much of the film is autobiographical, and is based on director Mike Mills’ experiences after his own father came out of the closet following his mother’s death.

Sorry! If only there was a way to edit what I’ve already written…

OH MY GEE! Mills is Miranda July’s husband!

OK, resetting, resetting… if July likes the guy, there has to be more to this than meets the eye.

So the not-so-manic pixie dream girl is July? Then I guess she’s not gonna die after all. That’s a relief.

It’s… cute?

I realise now that it’s a heartfelt movie, but it’s just not… good?

Beginners. Mike Mills. 2010. ⚂

This post is part of the Queer Cinema blog series.