Movies

• Boys Life 3
• Before Night Falls
• Nico and Dani
• Benjamin Smoke
• Criminal Lovers
• Water Drops on Burning Rocks

by John W. Stiles and Kristian Z. Salinas

Boys Life 3

Boys Life 3 is thus far the most sophisticated and entertaining of the Boys Life series of gay film shorts. Boys Life 1 was a wholly unremarkable compilation of three short films tracking the coming out of two high school boys and the search for companionship of a college freshman. Boys Life 2 extended the pattern by adding a fourth film and telling the stories of gay boys from middle school through adulthood. The quality of the work in Boys Life 2 improved dramatically; one of its mini-films, Peggy Rajski’s Trevor, captured the Academy Award for live action short. • Boys Life 3 breaks from the chronological caste and delivers a rich tapestry of tales from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the absurd to the ironic. • Majorettes in Space, the first of five short films, is an absurd look at Russian cosmonauts, the pope, breeders, and Vincent, "who likes boys." • hITCH, by Bradley Rust Gray, is a surreal and dreamy story of two men on the road. Cinematographer Sarah Levy creates the atmosphere and paints a rich visual landscape while one of the passengers on this trip works out some kinks in his sexuality. • Barbra Streisand and Elliot Gould’s gay son Jason delivers the lightest, longest, and most entertaining of the shorts with Inside Out. Jason plays himself as he wanders through the scary world of Scientology (where he’s told he "... is in dire need of a purification rundown, life repair, and months of intensive clearing therapy"), a 12-step program for "survivors of celebrity parents" run by Joan Crawford’s adopted daughter, Christine (Mommie Dearest), and is chased down the boardwalk by the paparazzi. Inside Out ends oddly but is otherwise fun. • Lane Janger, writer/director/star of Just One Time, gets more than he bargained for when his girlfriend turns the tables on his insistence on a "three-way." This short has been expanded into a full-length film and is scheduled for release this fall. • $30, directed by Gregory Cooke, written by Christopher Landon (another child of celebrity parents), and starring the gifted Sara Gilbert, completes the Pentateuch with a look at a twisted father’s attempt to "make a man" of his son by purchasing the favors of a local hooker. The hooker, powerfully played by Sara Gilbert, sees through the boy’s hetero veneer and helps him past his father’s doomed fantasy. • These five shorts are alternately entertaining, funny, sad, and mysterious glimpses into our own entertaining, funny, sad, and mysterious lives. –John W. Stiles (When John W. Stiles isn’t writing for OutSmart or his website www.johnstiles.com, he serves the capitalist machine as a useful and productive cog facilitating the subjugation of the middle and lower classes.)

Before Night Falls

Twenty years ago last fall, in an RSVP to Castro's invitation to Love It or Leave It, 125,000 Cuban citizens made their way by boat from Mariel Harbor to South Florida. Seems Fidel opened the doors to the prisons and mental institutions at the same time he invited the merely malcontent to leave. Al Pacino played one such immigrant in the movie Scarface. • A real-life escapee was the poet Reinaldo Arenas. Thirty-seven years old, gay, and already an award-winning author, Reinaldo settled in New York. He spent the next 10 years furiously pouring his soul into poems, essays, plays, and novels. His posthumous memoir, Before Night Falls, has become a film at the hands of artist Julian Schnabel. Born in New York, Julian Schnabel spent his formative years in Brownsville and Houston, earning a BFA from the UofH in 1973. His only other work in film, Basquiat, received critical acclaim when it debuted in 1996. • Before Night Falls tells Reinaldo Arenas's story from childhood in Cuba to his death from AIDS in 1990. The Spaniard Javier Bardem is scintillating as Arenas. He won Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival; although he lost to Tom Hanks at the Golden Globes in January, he’s up for Best Actor at the Oscars later this month. The broadly international cast features Sean Penn and a cross-dressing Johnny Depp as well as the French actor Olivier Martinez and the Italian Andrea Di Stefano. • At press time, Before Night Falls was scheduled to have started exclusively at Landmark’s Greenway Theatre on February 23. –JWS

Nico and Dani

Nico and Dani is not the original title of the new Spanish film debuting in Houston this month–it was retitled for U.S. release, for not even the most liberal of American art movie theaters could handle the original title Mutual Masturbation (Krampack) on their marquees. The story of two teenage boys exploring their sexuality along the Mediterranean coast in the summer of 1999, Nico and Dani is a lighthearted coming of age and coming out (for one of the two) party. Keep your expectations down and you might enjoy this very young film. • At press time, Nico and Dani was scheduled to start an exclusive engagement on March 2 at Angelika Film Center. –JWS

Benjamin Smoke

A musical inspiration to the likes of Patti Smith and Michael Stipe, "Benjamin" (a.k.a. Robert Dickerson), with his bands Opal Foxx Quartet and Smoke, was a leading figure in Atlanta's underground music scene. Remembered for his sultry voice, fiery lyrics, and his love of performing on-stage in drag, this poetic ode, shot over a period of 10 years, captures the life of the enigmatic performer who succumbed to AIDS the day after his 39th birthday. Not your typical documentary, co-directors Jem Cohen (Instrument) and Peter Sillen (Speed Racer: Welcome to the World of Vic Chestnut) fashion an aesthetically challenging marvel featuring rehearsal footage and candid conversations with the elusive Benjamin, as well as a poignant reflection by Patti Smith, one of Benjamin's musical heroes. Benjamin Smoke, released last year, also features the still photography of Michael Ackerman. • Saturday & Sunday, March 10 & 11, 7 p.m. & 9 p.m., @ Rice Media Center on the Rice University campus, University Blvd. at Stockton, entrance #8. Tickets$5 ($4 students/seniors). Film info line: 713/348-4853; website: www.ruf.rice.edu/~cinema. –Kristian Z. Salinas

Criminal Lovers (Les Amants Criminels)

Rising star Natacha Regnier is Alice, a beautiful but cruel teenager who one day decides to murder her cocky classmate, the handsome Saïd (Salim Kechiouche). Ever the preying mantis, Alice seduces her boyfriend, the sexually uncertain Luc (Jeremie Renier) into committing the crime by convincing him Saïd raped her. Initially, their plan is successful. However, after disposing of Saïd's body in the woods, they become lost, encountering a lone woodsman (Black Cat White Cat's Miki Manojlovic) who has plans of his own for the murderous duo. A sort of Brothers Grimm on acid, François Ozon's 1999 sinister fairy tale was inspired by the shocking rise in crimes committed by adolescents. • French with English subtitles. Due to explicit content, absolutely no one under 17 will be admitted. • Saturday & Sunday, March 17 & 18, 7 p.m. & 9 p.m., @ Rice Media Center on the Rice University campus, University Blvd. at Stockton, entrance #8. Tickets$5 ($4 students/seniors). Film info line: 713/348-4853; website: www.ruf.rice.edu/~cinema. –KZS

Water Drops on Burning Rocks (Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes)

Sexual betrayal, sexual confusion, and sexual shenanigans collide in François Ozon's third feature film (released last year), an adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Tropfen auf heisse Steine. Bernard Giraudeau is Leopold, an arrogant but sexually exciting 50-year-old businessman found to be irresistible by Franz (Malik Zidi), a 19-year-old neophyte who impulsively moves into Leo's pad. Their domestic bliss soon sours when Leopold becomes cranky and argumentative and Franz's voluptuous ex-girlfriend Anna (Ludivine Sagnier) surfaces determined to win Franz back. That is, until she meets Leopold. But it's the return of Leopold's ex-fiance Vera (Anna Thompson) that stirs up real trouble. • French with English subtitles. • Saturday & Sunday, March 24 & 25, 7 p.m. & 9 p.m., @ Rice Media Center on the Rice University campus, University Blvd. at Stockton, entrance #8. Tickets$5 ($4 students/seniors). Film info line: 713/348-4853; website: www.ruf.rice.edu/~cinema. –KZS