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Disappointing LGBT Movies

Discussion in 'Entertainment and Technology' started by Starwind78, Jan 27, 2019.

  1. Starwind78

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    Ever watch a movie and feel like you’ve been cheated? Like you bit into a chocolate bar thinking it was a Snickers but got a stale 3 Musksteers instead?

    That’s how I felt after I scratched a Rachel Weisz itch and watched The Favourite (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5083738/?ref=m_nv_sr_1)and Disobedience (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6108178/).

    Even though I actually enjoyed watching The Favourite, I felt like neither had me invested in the relationships between the female leads. In short, the relationships felt shallow, like they were window dresssing to the plot at best or awards pandering at worst.

    What’s funny is that both movies took completely different approaches to how they displayed the romance/sex scenes. In Disobedience, you’re treated to a rather, erm, unique sex act I’ve never heard of and a long reel of camera closeups of the women enjoying themselves. In contrast, the Favourite, perhaps deliberately, only puts hetero sex out in the open. The lesbian scenes everybody (except the old folks in my theater, poor dears) signed up for happen in the dark and are only implied by noise and before/after shots in bed. I guess it just goes to show that the sex scenes are a minor part of building intimacy in a romance. Idk.

    I wasn’t the hugest fan of Carol, but at least the relationship there felt genuine. IMO, the best movie I’ve seen handling lesbian relationships is still The Hours, which came out in the Ye Olden Days of 2002. Maybe I just need a huge helping of angst and mental illness in a movie to make it work, but the characters in that movie seemed like living, breathing women who also happened to like women.

    What do you think? You also have issues with these 2 movies? Any other “LGBT” movies where you just thought “meh”?
     
  2. tystnad

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    This is interesting, because I think I felt exactly the opposite of what you're describing here - I thought the relationship in Carol felt awfully shallow (but I understand it is a melodrama and it fit within that context - it just didn't do anything for me) whereas I thought the romance in Disobedience felt so much more genuine and true, in a way. I may be biased, though, because I read the book before (which I can greatly recommend, by the way, because the book goes into its cultural setting so much more, and being written by a bisexual woman who actually was a part of the jewish community in the book when she wrote it, it's written with a great care that you can feel when you're reading it), so I obviously went in differently than a viewer who hasn't read the book. So maybe it's because I read the book before, but to me the relationship very much felt like very appropriate for a film of its kind which balances a very restrictive setting with its lesbian romance.
    As for the Favourite, I actually was positively surprised by it, considering Yorgos Lanthimos' name has been building up a lot in recent years and this film would've been up for oscar nominations no matter what it had been about because the Academy loves him now, so I actually was expecting the lesbian relationships to be reduced more to subtext like is usually the case? I'd have to see it again to properly judge it, though, because my first watch was too "wait they are ACTUALLY gay? it's not subtext?! REAL LESBIANS IN A PERIOD DRAMA? BLESS" to have any kind of objectivity attached to it. I didn't necessarily thing the balance between the lesbian/hetero sex was so off though... I mean, in a perfect world, possibly, but by no means extreme, but considering the state of the film industry? I also didn't feel like the hetero sex was necessarily that much more in the open. They were still very much focused on the female characters and the actual sex act was reduced to the background a lot, whereas the lesbian scenes were more about the actual relationship of the women, even if the intimacy shown was very limited. Considering the shallowness that the film establishes and requires to be able to tell its story in the style it adopted, I would actually have felt like more emphasis on the sex scenes would have felt out of place? The film purposely never makes you want you to like the characters, you're not supposed to feel for them, and emphasising the sex scenes more would have sort of broken that, I think. Either they would've required you to symphatize more with the characters than the film wants you to, or they'd have been too much there just for the sake of having naked women to look at which rarely works out. (And while I hated looking at it, the scene in which Emma Stone's character jerks off her husband while monologuing about Rachel Weisz? Iconic.)

    As for lgbt movies that really disappointed me... Boy Erased was a big one because before it came out there was a bit of an award buzz surrounding it, and I saw it at a festival before it had had a wide release anywhere so there was no one yet to warn me about it, but that film just felt like betrayal. It very much poses as an LGBT movie but there's so much about it that's just blatantly homophobic (like the only kind of gay interaction in the entire movie!! being a very graphic rape scene) that it kind of left me feeling sick to the stomach... I'm really glad all the hype about the film died down fairly quickly after its release because the last thing this world needs is films about conversion therapy that make homosexuality look like a bad thing...
    I also wasn't a huge fan of the Miseducation of Cameron Post despite the huge buzz around that film but that was more because I already found the character of Cameron Post wildly unrelatable in the book and Chloe Moretz did nothing to fix that for me. It was alright, I definitely didn't feel betrayed by it like with Boy Erased, but I also failed to get the hype, I guess.
     
  3. Loves books

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    Most movies I ended up being disappointed with. I hated blue is the warmest color, the sex scenes grossed me out. The miseducation of Cameron Post want as good as the book and the book wasn’t that good anyway. The Handmaiden which was an Asian version of Fingersmith was quite frankly disturbing at points and ended happily with some odd sex act involving bells. On the other hand the English version of fingersmith was great. Lost and delirious was horrible from start to finish. Along came Lola was pointless. Loving Annabelle was just weird. I haven’t watched Carol or Disobedience or the Favorite because none of them seemed happy. I have better luck watching the tv relationship videos on you tube than watching a movie. Wayhaught and Avalance are better than most movies,
     
  4. Arriety

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    I was really disappointed with "You, Me and Him" the writing was so awful and it was the the opposite of comedic. "Blue is the Warmest Colour" and "Below her Mouth" made me really uncomfortable. I really liked the romantic ones like "Imagine Me & You" and "Desert Hearts" and "I can't think straight" and I love Wayhaught! TV shows often leave me feeling betrayed or ick when they repeatedly kill off LGBTQ characters but I think that "Wynonna Earp" gets it right.
     
  5. 18breanna

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    In & Out was sooo close to being good but it fell just shy. It was funny and was so close to having a gay Tom Selleck haha. If it just had better writing and explored what it means to actually love men instead of rapid firing stereotypes, it would have been great.
    Same for BoRhap. Everything but characters and writing were pretty good, but those two elements brought down from a 9 to 7 for me :^(
     
  6. medamaude

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    To Each Her Own. that movie is so awful, i couldn't even finish it. my biggest gripe with it aside from the plot being a convoluted mess was that it pulled the whole "you're only a lesbian because you haven't found the right man yet." the lesbian protag cheats on her fiancee with a man and apparently they all end up in a polyamorous relationship. it really sucks that badly lol
     
  7. Canterpiece

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    Macho (2016). English Dub.

    I didn't have any good expectations for this film, the description wasn't promising but I was curious so I gave it a watch. The film was as terrible as I thought it would be. There are a few things wrong with this movie. One of the actors was murdered not long after the debut of this film. Unrelated but...yeah. :fearful:

    So, this guy is essentially in the closet about being straight because he thinks that pretending to be gay will benefit him more. In a way it does, he receives positive feedback and partakes in faked photo shoots. The media loves him. Apparently it's a well known secret among women in the area that he's not actually gay, so he hooks up with a bunch of women and the movie implies that this is a fairly common occurrence for him.

    The main character is...bizarre, and at times abusive. He ends up dating this gay guy at his work, in order to keep up the ruse. On their dates he switches from trying to be romantic, to physically attacking this guy. Are we supposed to be routing for the main character? It's unclear, because at some points in the movie it seems to be framed as such, but then he has moments where he goes off the rails and hurts people. He doesn't care about the women he sleeps with, he just wants sex. Nor does he care about this gay guy, he just wants to use him as a muse and also to keep up appearances.

    So, then the movie goes from strange to even more bizarre. He ends up sleeping with the gay guy, and suddenly they are in love? What? How? I don't...? What? :confused: I kept wanting to yell at the screen LEAVE. There are so many red flags with the main character, and currently their messed up relationship is definitely abusive. The main character knocked him down and yelled gay slurs at one point. You don't want to date this guy. He left the windows and doors open at one point, please just run. Leg it. But the gay guy stays, and I get a bad feeling about all of this.

    He's outed as straight, because the press take a picture of him having sex with a woman. Which could just mean that he's bisexual (or people might just think that the photo was photo shopped, who knows these days?), but apparently no one in the media realises this? :confused: Anyway, a tape of him having sex with the gay guy is shown at one of his fashion shows and everyone celebrates because "oh hey, he's actually gay!" um, no, you've lost me. Why is everyone applauding? I mean, if this actually happened, wouldn't people be like "Uh, who put on this sex tape?" Also, yet again, bisexuality.

    Then at the end he marries that guy, and also this woman at the same time who says "Oh don't worry, I'm very open minded". Uh, what? I feel kind of cheated. This ending feels incredibly rushed, the plot line with this woman seems to come out of nowhere, and I don't think the main character is good for this guy. Or the woman really. He has some major issues that he should addressed before dating anyone, never mind marrying them! What on Earth was this film? I felt so confused throughout the entire run time. He didn't even ask the gay guy how he felt about a random woman joining their marriage I don't think...it's been a long time since I've seen this film though.
    .
     
    #7 Canterpiece, Feb 24, 2019
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2019
  8. Rupert30

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    Bohemian rhapsody
     
  9. Cas girl

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    I didn’t really like The Favourite.
     
  10. Chip

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    Couldn't agree more with this. While I did think it was a pretty good representation of the problems with reparative therapy, it was unnecessarily focused on the horror of the treatment program.
     
  11. Chierro

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    I haven't gotten to see it yet, but isn't it based on a memoir? Haven't had the chance to read it yet but if the memoir focuses primarily on the horror of the treatment program, then it would make sense for that to be the focus of the movie.
     
  12. Chip

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    Yes, it's based on a memoir of a real person. It's just unfortunate that pretty much the entire focus of the movie was almost like a documentary of being at a reparative therapy "camp" and the awful stuff that happens there.
     
  13. EleanorHunter

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    Not going to lie, I am so uncultured when it comes to LGBT movies. I've hardly seen any lesbian movies, just because the tropes are so prevalent and I'm tired of watching women who seem to only be happy when they're having sex. Like I just want cute, happy romances!! Is that too much to ask??

    On that note, Lost and Delirious was the movie I remember watching and being actively frustrated with. It wasn't an issue with the writing, acting, or directing, it was just with the story itself. And yes, there are some really weird plot points (like how the couple has some nasty time in the room, with the roommate asleep in the nearby bed, and the roommate wakes up and just... isn't uncomfortable??? she just accepts it??? weird but okay). But as soon as Victoria got outed, I just had a really bad vibe that it wasn't going to end well, so I looked up the ending. My suspicions were correct! And as a young lesbian who had just recently started coming out (as bisexual, mind you), who had severe anxiety/depression, I just couldn't bring myself to finish it. I saw too much of myself in Pauline and I didn't like it. I've since watched the remainder of the movie, and my opinion is the same that the message of the movie really really sucks. I hate watching the psychotic lesbian's downfall in media. Being a lesbian doesn't make you a crazed super villain.

    People wonder why I like shows with worse writing like Wynonna Earp, and it's because at least I don't have to watch the lesbians CONSTANTLY DIE or have one character go "I'm going to be straight now since I can't handle this relationship". I just want HAPPY. GAYS. PLEASE.
     
  14. Devil Dave

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    Behind the Candelabra. Didn't quite live up to my gay Matt Damon fantasy.
     
  15. JESS2825

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    I haven't watch The Favorite but I watch disobedience I thought it was okay not as bad as lost and delirious or Jenny's Wedding . However it was really awkward at times it felt like it need some more background on their stories and probably a more clarification on their relationship to begin with. I personally loved The Miseduaction of Cameron Post the book tho, I felt like the movie lacked a lot from what the book they didn't really even show the impact that dead of her parents had on Cameron it was just like touch upon and then brushed off. Blue is the warmest color was so awkward and weird, the development was way to slow I only was able to watch like half of it and then I gave up it.
     
  16. 18breanna

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    This seems to be the main problem with the movie. I'm not saying they should split up the movies YA adaptation style or something, but ay least include vital character details,about Cameron in the film. Without those, the character just felt so much more hollow and uninteresting.
     
  17. BlueMonday

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    I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, fucking awful.

    But then again, it's an Adam Sandler film.
     
  18. Biblia05

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    I just watched it and second your motion.

    Carol for me was a disappointment since I expected more development of the story and relationship. It felt like they tiptoe around the subject until 60 minutes into the story when they finally gave a sex scene making possible for it to make the lgtbq category
     
  19. Biblia05

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    Agree with all of the above. " Happy Gay Please"
     
  20. Loves books

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    It seems to me like lesbian movies that I’ve seen are generally crap. It’s either bad storytelling or in some cases no storytelling. Most Haley Kiyoko videos have more of a plot than full length movies. I watched First Girl I Loved recently and it was another sad ending. No one died which was it’s only redeeming point. The Itty Bitty Titty Committee has a weird name but it’s not bad. I can’t think Straight and Imagine me and you are really the only lesbian movies I enjoyed. I haven’t seen every lesbian movie but I’ve seen a lot and I’d love a great story and a happy ending. I’ve read a lot of lesbian fiction and wonder why some of those aren’t being turned in to movies. I know it probably costs a lot to make movies and there’s not a huge market for lesbian stuff. I Can’t Think Straight was a book first and the movie was directed by the author so it didn’t lose much on screen. To be fair it’s not the most amazing movie ever and it’s predictable but it ends with no one dead, and apart from some parents, everyone’s happy. It’s nice to have a movie where the boyfriend isn’t pissed his girlfriend fell for his best friend.