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deramin2 · 16 days ago

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If you're loving the moral complexity of Critical Role Campaign 3, and enjoy Bell's Hells making agonized interesting character-driven choices that may not "right," here's a list of films I saw within the last few months to get more of that. (All of these ended up being at least a bit queer because queer people just make better films.)

Queer (2024)

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Wicked: Part 1 (2024)

How To Blow Up A Pipeline (2022)

Hundreds of Beavers (2022)

I Saw The TV Glow (2024)

National Anthem (2023)

The Green Knight (2021)

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Carol (2015)

Elevator pitches under the cut.

Queer (2024)

Based on a 1985 novella by Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs, it's a portrait of a middle-aged American gay writer named William Lee (played by Daniel Craig) living in Mexico City in the 1950s who becomes infatuated with a younger man named Eugene Allerton. He struggles with alcohol and heroin addiction, and is obsessed with telepathy. Eventually he invites Allerton with him to Ecuador seeking an experience with the hallucinogen yagé (ayahuasca), which little is known about outside local Indigenous medicine.

It's also about both of their very complex and painful experiences of queerness at a time when it was highly stigmatized and illegal. Including saying they reject the label as more of a political identity. The novella is loosely based on Burroughs own life and experiences. He's often excluded from the "queer canon" precisely because his relationship with homosexuality was too messy politically, despite being so open about it he's one of the Beat writers sued for obscenity that helped overturn those laws and allow every queer story after him to be published. (An astute viewer may note the symbolism of main characters refusing the label of queer in a work that explicitly labels them as queer as told by a "queer but it's complicated" author known for his semi-autobiographical work with unreliable narrators.)

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

A loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV from the perspective of Ned Poins. It moves the action to early 1990s Portland, Oregon where Ned becomes Mike Waters, a gay survival sex worker with narcolepsy trying to get by in a cruel and ableist world with a little help from his fellow hustler and degenerate friends. They live in an abandoned building with the newly returned king of the nest Bob Pigeon. With a little drug use and mugging to pass the time.

His best friend and crush is Scott Favor, a rebellious mayor's son who aims to disappoint so that his "miraculous" change into a redeemed son upon his father's death will finally earn his family's admiration. They travel together to Idaho and then Italy on a quest for Mike's estranged mother.

Genuinely some of the best bits of gay, sex worker, and disability in the 1990s. A really great look at how marginalization can be intersectional and the people ground under the heels of the powerful in the class war. When the Shakespeare really shines through it hits with the forceful immortality of the human condition as he saw it long ago.

Wicked: Part 1 (2024)

Based on both the book and musical Wicked. It tells the story of how the much-ostracized and green-skinned Elphaba came to be the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. The film is in deep dialogue with how people are marginalized and made scapegoats in our current world in order to maintain the power of its rulers.

As told by Glinda The Good, her former roommate homoerotic frenemy who she was in a nebulous polyamorous triad or love triangle with (even they don't know which).

Also if Paul Tazewel doesn't win every award possible for his costume designs it will be biggest robbery since the British Museum. Look at this fucking spiral quilted vest that was worn in one scene near the beginning in low light while close-up dancing and seen basically only from the back to avoid identifying the wearer. Look at Elphaba's gorgeous goddamn dress on a green dress form so the could get the colors through the sheer gathered chiffon just right! These are some of the most gorgeous pieces of clothing ever made and required the technical precision of rocket scientists to make. 140 costumers worked on this film in the same building so they could build off each other's creativity. Even if it wasn't the best musical to be made in decades with technicolor enthusiasm and masterful film-making matching The Wizard of Oz (1939), it would be worth it just to see all the costumes. The Met Gala wishes it had costumes as good as the background actors.

How To Blow Up A Pipeline (2022)

A group of young environmental activists deeply harmed by the oil and gas industry (through land theft, climate change, and environmental poisoning) decide to take direct action by blowing up a pipeline in West Texas to drive up prices. Brought together by anger, love, righteousness, and chance, they set out to teach themselves to build a bomb to save the world from powerful capitalist overlords.

It's got the framework of a heist action film going between the main events and flashbacks showing what radicalized them. Incredibly powerful story about what's right and wrong in the face of a dire climate crisis driven by class war, racism, and greed.

Hundreds of Beavers (2022)

A no-dialogue black and white slapstick comedy about a 19th century Canadian applejack (alcohol) salesman who becomes a fur trapper for survival after beavers ruin his business. After many Wile E. Coyote like attempts to hunt rabbits for food, he befriends an expert trapper. Like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, he slowly learns to string all his bad ideas into Rube Goldberg type contraptions to succeed in his hunts and goes to war with the beavers for the love of a girl. All the animals are wearing literal mascot costumes. Mix of live action, 2-D animation, practical effects, and light CGI. It's the Who Framed Rodger Rabbit (1988) of our time.

One of the funniest movies I've ever seen. If you've ever wondered what would happen if you combined Charlie Chaplin, silly Japanese game shows, Loony Toons, and Mario Kart, look no further! It wears a hundred media influences proudly on its sleeve while also being one of the most original films of all time.

I Saw The TV Glow (2024)

Alienated and isolated teenage Owen is introduced to the cheesy 1990s late-night kids show The Pink Opaque by his classmate Maddy, and he becomes obsessed with it. He especially connects to the female main character in ways he can't express.

When Maddy tells him she's running away to escape her abusive stepfather, Owen refuses the call to go with her. The film checked in on him at two other points into adulthood as he's locked into the gravity well of denying his inner self.

This is a tragic psychedelic horror film about how psychologically deep the closet can go for trans people, even to themselves. (The clear subtext is that Owen is trans woman, but I use he/him pronouns because his inability to face that fact, let alone rethink his pronouns, is the fundamental dread of the film.) A perfect example of why horror can be such a deep cathartic scream for marginalized creators. Nothing's ever come close to describing how soul-crushing it is to commit to pretending you're cis.

National Anthem (2023)

21-year-old Dylan is adrift in life working construction jobs in rural New Mexico. In this way he comes to work at a queer rodeo ranch. He didn't know such a thing existed and has never really had contact with any queer community. There he meets Sky, the most beautiful women he's ever seen in his life, who's a trans barrel racer.

She draws him into the commune polycule and introduces him to parts of his heart, gender, and sexuality that he never knew existed. Their love is tested against the fierce storms of family (natal + found), nature, and identity.

Absolutely breathtaking film about a queer subculture many people are unaware even exists. Wonderful to see films about confident trans women played by trans women. If you're a fan of Anthony Hurd's paintings, you must see this film.

The Green Knight (2021)

A masterful modern psychedelic adaptation of the famous Medieval poem. On Christmas Day the Green Knight visits King Arthur's court and proposes a game: a contestant may use his great axe to land one blow on him. However light or powerful, it will be returned onto that person in one year's time. King Arthur's headstrong nephew, and aspiring knight, Gawain takes up the challenge and cuts off his head. When it's done, the slain Green knight picks up his head and tells Gawain that for his honor must seek the Green Knight out for the return blow in one year.

We follow Sir Gawain's journey the next year to confront his duty, his honor, and his fate as various trials beset him. What awaits Gawain in his heart is heavier than any weapon. All using strong metaphor and red-green colors to get at the emotional and philosophical heart of this timeless tale of man's dominion vs. nature's. A literary symbolism bonanza.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Zero Moustafa is a lobby boy in a famed European hotel in 1932. He's an illegal refugee fleeing a violent government. The hotel's flamboyant concierge, Monsieur Gustave H.. is known far and wide for impeccable service and among the hotel staff for his affairs with wealthy old clients. Gustave ends up taking Zero under his wing making him his protégé.

One of of Gustave's affairs spanned nearly two decades with the dowager Madame Céline Villeneuve Desgoffe-und-Taxis. When she mysteriously dies, it sends Zero and Gustave on a caper for a stolen painting, a family fortune, and Zero's affections for a clever girl, as fascism closes in around them.

Carol (2015)

This is the "Harold, they're lesbians" film. In the Christmas season of 1952, a young clerk and aspiring photographer named Therese Belivet is noticed by a gorgeous older women named Carol Aird who is looking for a gift for her beloved little girl. Carol is trying to divorce her abusive husband (who's only grown more possessive and controlling after discovering her homosexuality). Meanwhile Therese's boyfriend Richard is trying to convince her to come away with him to France and get married.

Carol slowly draws Therese into her first lesbian love affair, and helps her develop and thrive. But as the stakes of the divorce are raised and their relationship gets increasingly complicated, they must choose between the risks of their truth or the gilded cage of straightness.

#Queer media #queer films #critical role #critical role campaign 3 #Queer (2024)#My Own Private Idaho (1991)#Wicked: Part 1 (2024)#How To Blow Up A Pipeline (2022)#Hundreds of Beavers (2022)#I Saw The TV Glow (2024)#National Anthem (2023)#The Green Knight (2021)#The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)#Carol (2015)#long post

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