ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[Lynne]

From Wiki:

When estranged elderly couple Eva and David learn she is dying, they decide to take one last trip together. In San Francisco, Eva draws inspiration from their exuberant granddaughter Jeannie, who lives life to the fullest despite any stumbling blocks it may toss in her path. To her she reveals the secrets of her soul and shares with her scrapbook clippings and photos of the literary and philosophical greats - Walt Whitman and Emile Zola among them - who have sustained her in her bleakest moments and offered her promise of a better life. As Eva comes to terms with her past, she and David manage to recapture the love they felt for each other early in their marriage.

[southendmd]

Plot:  It's Sex and the City meets The Wedding Banquet* for young San Franciscan Daniel Chang, living at home with his clueless, traditional mother. Desperate for a grandchild, she's eager to see him married and spends much of her time planning introductions to suitable Chinese girls for Daniel. But when she recruits a new lodger for the downstairs flat, Daniel finds himself falling for Robert, the hot Southern boy who's moved to the big city. Well, Robert's not a suitable Chinese girl - but is he gay? And does he feel the same way about Daniel? Daniel soon gets his chance to find out when the basement floods and his mother insists Daniel share his bedroom with Robert while the plumbers fix the mess downstairs...

(*it's neither, believe me.)

User comment (pretty good):  I liked this film because it comes from a very gay indie perspective. As the director notes in the commentary, all the gay characters are played by gay actors, and that's important to him. You hardly ever get that in a big budget movie because openly gay actors can't draw a big enough audience. The sex and nudity scenes are meant to contrast with typical Hollywood movies that try to hide genitalia and rush through sex and intimacy, which when you think about it is much more distracting and unnatural than including nude scenes in a romantic comedy. It is also refreshing to see gay Asian characters (and actors), especially since they are at the center of the film, and not just revolving around white characters. In fact, there are several relationships shown between two gay Asian men, both sexual/romantic relationships as well as friendships. Sure the acting isn't perfect, partly because it was so rushed, and some of the lines are cheesy. But if you look beyond that, you will be in for a treat.

=aside= Lynne
I read "Tell Me a Riddle" in high school in 1980!  It's a short story collection by Tillie Olsen; the title story won the O Henry award in 1961.  I never knew it was made into a film.  Thanks for that.  Funny that it came out the same year I had read it.

[oilgun]

Plot: An architect builds a new church in San Francisco that ultimately displeases the local vampire community so its leader, Anton Voytek, kills the man's girlfriend to show his displeasure. The architect then teams with a local cop to get even.

[memento]

From IMDB: Flips back and forth between black-n-white to color, as well as from past to present. The grainy film, super-low budget, and terribly exquisite over-acting remind me very much of an old 60's or 70's John Waters movie. Not to mention plethora drag queens and such seing as how this takes place the 1980's San Fransisco underground scene. What I found most interesting about the picture was the "school-house educational filmstrip" approach that the director used in the black and white scenes. Nice touch. I stumbled upon this in a Family Video Store. Glad I rented it.

[southendmd]

Plot:  Alonzo Hawk is a mean-spirited property developer who has bought several blocks of land in the downtown district in order to build a gigantic shopping mall. There is one problem however; an elderly widow named Steinmetz won't sell the one remaining lot that Hawk needs to proceed with his scheme. So he resorts to all manner of chicanery, legal or otherwise, to get it. Fortunately, the widow Steinmetz has an ace up her sleeve in the form of Herbie, the miraculous Volkswagen.

Filmed in San Francisco.  Most of the posters feature the Golden Gate Bridge and/or a cable car.

[southendmd]

Plot:  Bill Hickok in his early pre-gunslinger years as a freight-line agent protecting a gold shipment from villains out to steal gold and land out west while America is diverted by the Civil War back east. With the help of Calamity Jane and her horse-trader uncle, Hickok battles the bad guys while trying to win the love of his life, Louise, in a formulaic B western adventure with songs.

[Fran]

From IMDb:  The story of California's first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, a San Francisco supervisor who was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone by San Francisco Supervisor Dan White.

[Fran]

The "Jolly Old London" Round!

Featuring movies set in or with a connection to London

[memento]

Plot: Two American students are on a walking tour of England and are attacked by a Werewolf. One is killed, the other is mauled. The Werewolf is killed, but reverts to it's human form, and the townspeople are able to deny it's existence. The surviving student begins to have nightmares of hunting on 4 feet at first, but then finds that his friend and other recent victims appear to him, demanding that he find a way to die to release them from their curse, being trapped between worlds because of their unnatural death.

[southendmd]

Plot:  A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he accidentally captures on film the commission of a murder. The fact that he has photographed a murder does not occur to him until he studies and then blows up his negatives, uncovering details, blowing up smaller and smaller elements, and finally putting the puzzle together.