Chad Allen, Colin Ferrell, Nick Cazale, Judith Light

I see on your FaceBook page you've become a Fan of Film Movement. Nice.

No time to do the movie reviews you asked for but I can tell you what I’ve been watching. Did the Jean Reno thing over the holidays. A couple more to go and I’ll be caught up Netflixwise. And I’m doing the Robert Duvall thing now. But there’re so many Duvals that one has to take a break from time to time. I don’t own many movies but I do own Geronimo: An American Legend and I fired it up last week, mostly for Duvall, fired it up even though Matt Damon is in it and I didn’t feel like watching an idiot even if his work in a particular piece is good enough. More about Geronimo later, mostly because I watch it regularly and like it.

Anyway, I’ve been doing a Chad Allen thing recently. Mostly knew him from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman when he was just a kid and which I watched some early in its television run. In film I first happened on Allen in Save Me, which I thought would be pretty stupid since it’s about curing homos from their homo-ness and all I knew of it came from the Netflix description and of course Netflix annotations are pretty densly written so you never know what to get -- or what you're actually going to get -- if you go by their inept come-ons. (Yet they won’t hire me to guide their writers and clean up their silly style. Go figure.) Save Me started out pretty good with a drugged up Chad Allen having some torrid, anonymous, man-on-man ess-ee-ex in a cheap motel. One thing leading to another, he ended up detoxing in a hospital and then in a group home for “recovering” homos.

I'm a generous film viewer and hardly critical; I'm thick skinned, don't seek offense, yet cautious with my time. Live and let live. Why not? That said, two things about this Hollywood movie: 1) The Christians who led the recovery stuff were presented with their flaws, you bet, but were not ridiculed by the film makers. Refreshing and surprising for Christians to be given a fairly neutral presentation by film makers who you know disagree with the particular Christian stance. And 2) they were not presented as necessarily theologically, doctrinally ridiculous for their belief that homo-ness is bad, needs to be cured, can be cured. Refreshing again.

Rottentomatoes gave this one a 68% fresh on the Tomatometer though my score might be higher. Rottentomatoes described the group home thing thusly: "Genesis House is the life mission of Gayle (Judith Light) and her husband, Ted (Stephen Lang). Haunted by her past, Gayle is determined to save young homosexual men from their personal demons."

Lofty goal, that. Would that we could all be saved from our personal demons.

I had no idea who Judith Light is but it turns out she’s a stage actor and she's a tv actor – soaps and sitcoms – and since I don't watch sitcoms and to my knowledge she's never been on All My Children, I didn't know her. Judith Light was stunning in this movie. If the movie had a villain she played it. Yet you wanted her to be right, that’s how good she was. Even while you wanted Chad Allen to be happy, whomever he turns out to be and to love.

Chad Allen? I knew little about him either. Turns out he is homosexual. And out about it. Don’t know if that makes it braver of him to play gay than if he weren’t gay and out. What did L. Tomlin used to say when she’d play a straight part? You don’t have to be one to play one. But I digress. I know Save Me is playing on Showtime this month, but get it from Netflix so you can watch the bonus features on the DVD, the interviews and the making of and the commentary. Nice stuff from these professionals who have an opinion, a point of view, yet see no need to demonize those with whom they disagree. Sweet.

I’m doing the Chad Allen (gay) private eye movies too, but have nothing much to say about them now other than another one is to be released on DVD this month and that makes three in my Netflix queue.

However, Allen plays a Christian missionary in the jungle of Ecuador in End of the Spear. I've loved jungle movies since Johnny Weissmuller; this one's not simple like old Tarzan movies (yeah, yeah, I know; they are what they are), or fun like Emerald Forest nor lush and uber-violent like Apocalypto and there’s no perfect Nick Cazale (in an Apocalypto haircut) like in that unwatchabe, dubbed-into-English, French version of (jungle/desert isle) Robinson Crusoe (fast forward through the first half of the movie until Cazale shows up in a thong/loin-cloth to play Friday to the old white guy and then watch as long as you're enjoying Cazale in his g-string. I'm just saying), but stick with End of the Spear through to the end and you’ll be glad of it. It's a true missionary story. With your background, you'll relate intimately. We all know I was conceived, birthed and bred solely to be a missionary, so I related too.

I read somewhere that some “Christian” folk were upset that the main character in Spear was played by a gay actor and it makes one think: Shut the heck up. Get lives you losers. Perhaps homos can be devout and maybe the Good Lord don't care and either way your holiness ain't tainted and neither is the story tainted by Allen's good work here.

Like Save Me, End Of The Spear is about redemption. Couldn't we all use some'o'that too.



One more thing. Last night I watched In Bruges. Colin Ferrell. I’ve seen 10 or 12 of his movies.
Including Alexander. Ugh. I keep watching him because I’m sure he’s good. More than an interesting face. Thought so since I first saw him in Tigerland. Finally, in In Bruges, playing a hit man, uh huh, he’s as good as he was in Tigerland eight years ago. Worth the wait and glad I wasn’t wrongo. Ferrell's Irish too, that's always a plus.





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Bonus Pics: Ferrell in Tigerland and Cazale in The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.