LouHomey From my favorite movies..

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Abegail Noëlle While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

moturn This is a great story about, on the one hand, newly found love and friendship, but on the other hand, it's sadly about betrayal of friendship, damaging secrets and, let's face it, adultery, and the break up of a long-standing and seemingly happy marriage. With all this going on, perhaps it was better for the director to focus on Nathan (Dan Payne), Chase (Charlie David) and the Davidsons, and less on what as a subplot was happening between Chase and his new buddy Jarod (Anthony Joseph). Out-takes that I saw on YouTube, if restored to the film would clarify the "mateship" between Chase & Jarod, which was not wholly chaste. The director Chip Hale has stated that in the end, he chose to make Jarod straight, so a few scenes were taken out. Amongst them, was the scene where Chase & Jarod are tossing a football around at the barbecue. Before the cut, Jarod tackles Chase to the grass where he ends up on top of Chase kissing him, and a girl who went to get a drink for herself and Chase quietly stumbles upon them. Another outdoor scene showed Jarod pawing Chase who was torn now between his feelings for Jarod and Nathan, so Chase backs away from Jarod saying he "needs time" to sort things out.Yet in my mind, Jarod was queer from the beginning. Didn't you believe so? If one listens carefully, watches what happens when Jarod's around and reads between the lines of what's left in Mr. Hale's cut, there are enough hints that Jarod fancies Chase, and when the dust settles, he drives away with him.

showtrmp "Mulligans" is a pleasant enough example of a genre I have a certain weakness for--the gay/rural movie. While the more common urban gay movie tends to be about neurosis, overdramatics, and "witty" banter, the gay rural is generally less pushy and more disarming, with guarantees of pretty scenery and pretty male semi-nudity (often cued by nighttime swimming). The danger, of course, is that the director will get lost in the prettiness and forget to tell a story. "Mulligans" barely avoids this trap, although the story it tells is a lot less daring than the writer/star Charlie David apparently imagines. The movie is never actually painful to sit through, but we're all very familiar with the beats of the coming-out drama by now; the twist here is that the "torment" of the two men in question (Dan Payne as Nathan, a middle-aged, closeted golf enthusiast, and David as his college-age son's best friend Chase) is pushed to the sidelines--which is probably for the best, as the astonishingly beautiful David is a hopeless nonactor. (The only moment we feel sympathy for him comes at the beach scene near the end, when he tries to force tears and is clearly in agony from the effort). The reactions of Payne's wife, Stacey (Thea Gill) and son Tyler (David James) take over, simply because they're more unexpected. Baynham starts out giving a flawless impersonation of a slightly spoiled and entitled frat boy (like the ones in 80s movies and their latter-day imitators, such as "American Pie"). Then David, trying to sound casual, comes out to him, and Baynham--shaken, but trying his best to be broded--brings something unexpected out of the stereotype. It's a well-written scene, which seems to come from observation and probably reflects the experiences of many gays in the audience. The movies have rarely touched upon the relationships between gay men and their straight friends, which can be more solid and enduring than similar friendships with other gay men--the usual method is to pour on the wisecracks or play "is he or isn't he really straight" games.The actual transgressive act between Nathan and Chase (don't those names scream Harlequin romance novel?) is awfully tame, even by gay rural standards. It's not just the brief vanilla sex scenes themselves--it's that there doesn't seem to be any new physical awareness or tension between the two characters afterwards--nothing breaks loose. Payne just carries on acting stoic and sensitive, in a 1950s soap-opera way, and David carries on posing and reflecting light, while we wait for the contrived scene revealing their affair. It comes even more awkwardly than expected, but at least the film's meditative rhythm gets stirred up, largely due to the exquisite Thea Gill's performance as Stacey, the only character who truly "arcs". Gill initially plays Stacey as a determinedly perky helicopter mom, full of nervous energy. Most of the humor and pace of the first half of the movie comes from her. When someone makes a conversational detour she doesn't care for, she says, brightly, "Okay then" and steers the talk firmly away, like a slightly hysterical cruise director determined to keep everyone happy and active. (It becomes a mini-routine). Once her world crashes down, though, it really crashes--she retreats into herself, and it's a little scary to see what that artifice was hiding. Gill brings a poetic intensity to her stunned silence--she'll really never be the same woman again.

Deep Thought I watched the first 50 minutes of this, then I gave up. It was by and large unbearable. I have no problems with the basic premise, i.e. the son of a well-off family returns home for his summer holiday, brings a friend, the friend turns out to be gay, this causes the father of the family to confront his own feelings and his latent homosexuality. I buy it.The biggest problem with this film, as I see it, is that even though (most of the time) I understand what it is that the filmmaker aim for - it's just very poorly executed. There isn't enough flesh on the bones for things to make sense. It's as if whoever wrote the script knows WHAT the characters need to do, but not WHY. For example, in one of the early scenes, the son of the family makes a big song and dance about how his friend should cover up when he's drying off after a swim. A few scenes later (after the friend has come out to him), the son questions why the friend is covering up (after a shower) when he's normally not shy. Rather than saying, "Because you told me to in no uncertain ," it turns into an argument about whether the friend's coming out has changed things between them. And this is exactly my problem with this film: even though I understand why they argue and I think the question of what changes when someone comes out is valid, it's as if the filmmaker had to rush to explicitly make that point rather than allowing the audience to see for itself.In this respect, the film is shallow. I don't see that whoever wrote it actually understands what the characters go through and why they act the way they do.If you're not bothered about what motivates characters, then you might still get some enjoyment out of this film.

Squeats This film is a shining example of how to properly express a point of view in a way that everyone can understand and relate, rather than the traditional sledgehammer approach that we're used to from the big Hollywood films.Mulligans deals with the issue of straight vs. gay, and how it affects the lives it touches. The film deftly shows the stark contrast between the forced bravado of the fast-paced college frat-boy lifestyle against the shameless and unapologetic honesty of the exploration of emotional needs and desires. Set against the stunning backdrop of Vancouver Island, the scenery works well to reflect the depth and tone of the subject matter. The lead character shows, for the most part, a confidence in his own sexuality that throws the seemingly "normal" lives around him into turmoil. It forces others to examine their own beliefs and prejudices and decide for themselves whether a person's sexual orientation is their defining characteristic, or just another facet of a complex and intriguing personality.This film is beautifully scripted to allow the viewer to take the journey with the character, so that when the question of sexuality comes up, it doesn't feel like an issue of orientation so much as an exploration of how best to fulfill the basic emotional need that we all have for intimate human . A truly inspirational musical score that works both to drive the action and stretch the heartstrings as necessary is a welcome enhancement to the story. It's rare to find a soundtrack so well suited to the mood of the film, the composer should be applauded for his work on this beautiful score. With its sensitive screenplay and superb acting, this film is definitely worth watching.