With IT'S A SIN, Russell T. Davies scores another all-round smash via his moving and joyous AIDS-hits-the-Brits series

 

Of course you'll expect to be greatly moved and saddened by any film or series exploring the effects of AIDS on the characters with whom you've come to be involved. What you may not initially expect from IT'S A SIN -- the latest first-rate entertainment and thought-provoker created and written by Russell T. Davies (Years and Years, A Very English Scandal, Banana, Torchwood, Doctor Who, and Queer as Folk, among so many others) -- is the out-and-out joy and delight you'll experience from being in the company of these lovely, funny, full-bodied folk.

Mr. Davies -- pictured center left, with his leading cast members, left to right, Lydia West, Olly Alexander, Nathaniel Curtis, Omari Douglas and series standout Callum Scott-Howells as Colin, whose character is the quietest, saddest (because he only just beginning to form) and whose halting, hopeful performance is very close to perfection --  has again done what he does so well: come up with a concept and characters who grab us from the outset and, for all their change, growth and bad decisions, never let us go and, in the process, give us not merely entertainment (in spades yet!) but the glorious and profound sense of life as it was and is.

No secret nor surprise that Davies' interests lie with the LGBT crowd, yet how he captures parents, straight friends, doctors, hospital workers, police and society at large is as filled with caring, anger and understanding -- as are his assessments of the gay community.  (That's Keeley Hawes, above, right, playing Alexander's character's mom, in a fraught scene toward the series' finale.)

Davies sees his people as never fully formed but still growing, learning and changing, even as they stumble, fall and rise again. Or sometimes not. In the large and splendid cast are luminaries such as Neil Patrick Harris (above, playing a mentor to young Colin) and the great Stephen Fry (below, left) as one in the country's subservient, bent-but-closeted, right-wing political class.

TrustMovies never imagined he would care to return to those awful years of AIDS deaths, yet films like the recent French César winner, Beats Per Minute, and now this British series, have thoroughly disabused him of that notion. God damn, but these characters can sure have a grand old time! And Davies, with the help of his sterling cast, makes sure that we -- despite all our caring and crying and recalling -- have a grand and memorable one, too. 

Now streaming via HBO Max in five episodes that you can view one after another, no waiting period between them, It's a Sin will certainly end up on a lot of Best-of-Year lists, I should think. 

HOUSE OF BOYS: An odd and very moving -- if soapy -- saga about early AIDS in Amsterdam

Even after seeing recent and worthwhile documentaries about the AIDS crisis and its history -- We Were Here and How to Survive a Plague -- a movie like HOUSE OF BOYS still proves what a wallop can be delivered by a narrative film with a good grasp of character and event and a vital theme that you might call (pace A Chorus Line) "What I Did for Love."

Directed and co-written by a fellow of whom I'd never heard, Jean-Claude Schlim (shown at right), the movie certainly covers all the bases: The first few minutes are a riot of color (pinks and blue, of course), complete with some Disney-like Cinderella animation, a beautiful blond boy running through a gorgeous golden field of corn, disco dancing and more. Before the opening credits, in fact, we've had what looks like some sort of choreographed musical number, too. Finally though, the movie settles down to become a three-part saga, set in the 1980s, of a runaway teen named Frank (Layke Anderson, below), his finding a home at a rather special gay night club/bordello (that titular House of Boys) and finally discovering real, till-death-do-us-part love -- unfortunately just at the time of the burgeoning AIDS crisis.

The movie grows deeper and sadder as it progresses but because the first half has been so full of life, charm, color and sexy, loving characters, when the sadness starts, we're so wrapped up in these people that we would follow them just about anywhere. Which we do.

The boys that Frank moves in with include one kid who's abused by his father; another who looks like a muscular, macho punk; the very femme boy saving up for transgender surgery (Stephen Webb, above) and a calls-himself-straight kid, Jake, with a girlfriend who crawls in through his window at night. Jake is played by the very hot-because-he-withholds young actor, Benn Northover, shown below, left, with Stephen Fry, who plays the kindly doctor flummoxed by this new disease.

The man in charge of the kids is that terrifically fun and often funny actor Udo Keir (below, in drag) who serves as head entertainer, father confessor, and madam of this gay brothel in which the kids dance for the entertainment of the guests and then give them something extra in the back room. (Considering what goes on here, the movie is relatively restrained, going for the heartstrings rather than the penile muscles in most cases. For the record, there's no full-frontal on display.)

At times the writing is only so-so (fortunately never less than that); at other moments it rises to the beautiful and moving, as do the performances and the direction. The real helper and mother figure to the teenagers here (Madam, you see, never comes through in a pinch), is Emma, played by that wonderful actress Eleanor David (shown below, left, with Mr; Anderson), who brings great warmth and affection to every scene in which she appears. Emma loves these boys so much, for a reason we later learn, that this deep love helps bring us along with her.

Though divided into three sections and sporting a running time of almost two hours, the movie is never boring. Mr. Anderson's performance carries us from joy and freedom on to love and sorrow. So if you're gay-friendly and haven't had a good cry in awhile, here's your ticket. You can view House of Boys -- a Luxembourg/German co-production from Breaking Glass Pictures and spoken in English, though with some odd accents throughout, consider-ing we're supposed to be in Amsterdam -- via Netflix streaming or on DVD.

A brilliant AIDS memorial: David France's compassionate, comprehensive document HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE

Look, We've Come Through was the lovely title of a Hugh Wheeler play from the early 1960s which TrustMovies couldn't help but think of (the title, not the play itself), after viewing the new documentary HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE -- which shows the world just how its GLBT population, particularly here on the east coast of the U.S., banded together, mostly under the auspices of Act-Up, and forced our country to confront and do something about the, yes,  plague of AIDS (listen to Larry Kramer's passionate impromptu speech about just this, which is one of the highlights of the film) that suddenly began decimating the gay population at the start of the 1980s.

We've seen other documentaries and narrative films about this awful time -- most recently, United in Anger: A History of Act-Up -- but nothing I have seen comes close to giving us the comprehension and compassion managed by this new film, which was directed and co-written by David France (shown at left). How did Mr. France achieve this? For one thing, his doc seems more immediate, more energized than others. France's choice of footage, most of it quite old and often grainy, is nonetheless so redolent of those awful-yet-amazing years. And the editing, by Todd Woody Richman and Tyler H. Walk, is so on point, carrying us swiftly and intelligently from person to place to event, as the past creeps up on the present.

There are heroes aplenty in this film, especially the Act-Up demonstrators who lay down -- everywhere from St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC to various government offices -- and were arrested for their trouble. Specific heroes would have to include Peter Staley (above), a young and very closeted bond trader when the plague began, who went on to become an activist and driving force behind Act-Up; Iris Long (at left, two photos below) who was not gay but who could not stand to see the discrimination continue; Bob Rafsky, a bisexual with children; Ray Navarro, artist and activist; Mark Harrington (shown at bottom, right), who managed to finally give up smoking; and of course, Mr. Kramer (shown bottom, left).

Some of these people are gone now; others remain, and one of the amazements of the film is to finally see them as they are. To hear these people speak now sounds like some of our ancient war veterans speaking about the most horrible, but yes, the greatest and most challenging time of their lives.

The historic footage here is often marvelous (Mr. Staley vs. Pat Buchanan on TV's Crossfire). I learned a lot watching this movie, especially about Act-Up's very real work toward putting together the National AIDS Treatment Research Agenda and other science-based work. The organization was not, as some of us imagined at the time, only concerned with high-decibel activism.

For GLBT's who lived through these times, this movie will bring you back in a manner that makes you grieve, grow angry all over again, and finally hopeful, too. (For the younger GLBT set, I'm not sure what the response will be, but you'd damn well better see this film and consider it carefully because the fight is far from over: that of AIDS, and the bigotry and hate that continue to haunt us. But that's a further story for another documentary, perhaps made by one of our current young.)

How to Survive a Plague (from Sundance Selects, 110 minutes) opens today, Friday, September 21, in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago (click the city link to see the theater), and will expand across America to other major cities in the weeks to come. Click here and then scroll down to see all the currently scheduled playdates.

WE WERE HERE on PPV & VOD: Weissman-Weber doc explores the AIDS years in S.F.

The LGBT community, not to mention U.S. social history buffs, are lucky indeed to have a second first-rate documentary appear in a single year. After Making the Boys, which offered up the gay experience in America through the lens of Mart Crowley's seminal play, we now have WE WERE HERE, directed by David Weissman and co-directed by Bill Weber, which tracks the appearance of and then the destruction ravaged upon the gay community in San Francisco by AIDS. Even for those of us old enough to remember this whole experience, who lived through it, the statistics given in the film regarding AIDS deaths in the San Francisco area are still shocking.

Co-directors Weissman (shown at right) and Weber are content to give us a combination of talking heads and archival footage. But when the talk is as genuine, intelligent, moving and real as it is here, it is soon clear that we're in for something special. Those heads belong to some wonderful Bay Area people who prove a pleasure -- more like an honor -- to meet and hear, particularly a woman (young then, now nearing senior years) named Eileen Glutzer, shown below, then and now, who found herself losing so many friends during the onslaught that she became first a nurse and then a researcher. Ms Glutzer is so full of the milk of human kindness, you'll want to drink her dry.

We also hear from Ed Wolf (below -- then and now), a gay man who could never embrace the all-out sex-and-drugs lifestyle he saw around him daily. This may have saved his life; at the least it enabled him to work with the dying and to make their remaining time better. At one point all seven co-workers in his office proved infected. All are dead now, save one.

Another voice heard from belong to Daniel Goldstein, shown below, a long-time HIV-positive artist, who talks of losing not one lover but two, and almost every friend he had -- all the while trying to keep himself alive.

We relive the time of the AIDS quilt and Act Up, among other landmarks. We hear of how lesbians rallied to help the dying men, even though relations had seldom been (are they now?) all that friendly between the two groups. And because these reminiscences are so beautifully, movingly recounted, and also, I think, because they come from not the usual suspects -- those people we've seen in almost all the GLBT documentaries -- they take on a reality and strength that seem quite special. Some of what we hear is shocking, some is moving, funny, profound -- even now, after all that we've been through.

It's Guy Clark, above, the long-time owner of a San Francisco flower stand, who sums things up. "This tragedy taught us to be humble, to be honest, to love in spite of death -- and how to be considerate of another person."

We Were Here, inspiring and memorable, is also a kind of purgative -- one that all but the youngest or perhaps least other-oriented gays will find unmissable. It made its Pay-Per-View/On-Demand debut this past Friday, December 9 -- a move which will bring this treasure of a movie to a much wider audience that it could possibly find during its very limited theatrical run earlier this year.

Oliver Schmitz's LIFE, ABOVE ALL: a mix of South African reality and sentimentality

Strong, memorable, central performances ground the festival favorite from South Africa, LIFE, ABOVE ALL, which has already played Cannes' Un Certain Regard, 2010; Toronto, 2010; and this year's San Francisco, Roger Ebert and the Human Rights Watch film fests. Ostensibly taking place in present-day South Africa, the movie will remind many of us, in terms of the attitudes of the citizens on view, of the early 1980s in America's big cities, as AIDS, as yet unnamed, was harvesting lives and scaring the wits out of communities, gay and straight.

If homosexuality was for decades "the love that dare not speak its name," AIDS was (in many ways still is) the disease that had better shut up -- never more so, if Life, Above All has it right -- than in South Africa. Interestingly enough, homosexuality is nowhere to be seen in this movie, while AIDS is all over the place, taking its toll even as the citizens refuse to recognize it -- denying, lying and pretending, but ostracizing anyone suspected of suffering from the plague.

Written by Dennis Foon, from a novel by Allan Stratton, and directed with a combination of skill and schmaltz by Oliver Schmitz (shown at right, who has directed mostly for television -- and one of the fine episodes from Paris je  t'aime), the movie is never less than involving as it tells the story of the young girl Chandra, played by first-time actress, Khomotso Manyaka, shown above, who gives a commanding performance. At the film's beginning, Chandra's younger sister is dying, and her mom, we soon discover, is also sick. The townspeople are suspicious about the causes.

The most venerated woman in the village (Harriet Lenabe, above), also clearly the wealthiest (she's got a phone!), is a friend to Chandra and advises the girl as to what to say and how to phrase the reasons for the death and sickness. Chandra would be happy to simply tell the truth, but this is not allowed, and the movie soon becomes a push-and-pull tale of Chandra on one side and her relatives, the villagers and ever her own mother -- shamed into silence and secrecy -- on the other.

Whether by design of the filmmakers or the reality of the situation in Black South Africa today, the movie is very pro-woman. Whether they be right or wrong, it's the women who are strong, while the men -- with the exception of the village schoolteacher, above -- are low-life expendables or seem pussy-whipped hubbies unable to think for themselves.

And yet, because almost all of the women shown here, with the exception of Chandra and her friend Esther (a sad, angry and very impressive first performance by Keaobaka Makanyane, below, left) are on the wrong side, including the woman witch doctor sent to "explain" the situation (above, right), one might have some trouble calling the movie "feminist."

As Life, Above All, moves toward the point of showdown, coincidences pile up and, I'm afraid, the movie takes the easier path to a feel-good, lessons-leaned-thank-you, finale. Oh, it's moving enough, all right, but it isn't particularly believable, given all we've seen prior to it. Worth viewing for the performances, the beauty of the faces and the landscapes, the film leaves us with the sense that we've just witnessed a big-screen, art-house, foreign-language version of an after-school special.

Life Above All, from Sony Pictures Classics, opens Friday, July 15, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and Film Forum, and at the Royal in West Los Angeles. Further playdates all around the country can be found by clicking here.

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On a related note, if you have not yet seen the excellent and quite provocative documentary, House of Numbers by Brent Leung  (my earlier review is here), which deals with AIDS in South Africa and how the incidence of poverty impacts on its diagnosis, you might want to give this worthwhile film a look.

HOUSE OF NUMBERS is now on DVD: check it out for some alternative ideas about AIDS

Brent Leung's HOUSE OF NUMBERS, one of the more important documentaries of the last couple of years, is at last available on DVD. This means that audiences now have the opportunity to sit down with the film and really study it: Watch, listen, repeat any portions for clarity or disagreement -- and then decide for themselves whether or not there is something here. Trust Movies thinks there definitely is. His original review, after he'd having had a number of conversations with both Leung (shown below, left, in South Africa) and science writer Anthony Liversidge, appeared on this site last January.

For anyone who has questioned the very erratic and often uninformed history of AIDS -- what it is, whether and how co-factors are involved, why its "diagnosis" can change so drastically from country to country, and the do's and don'ts of drug-taking to alleviate symptoms -- the film is a must-see, if only to better understand how the our medical establishment, drug companies and government, together with the gay establishment (understandably frightened of backlash against its reputation for promiscuity and drug use) have united to block further understanding and honest research.

The DVD is available in two different versions. One offers only the 89-minute film itself. The other includes two extras discs with enormous amounts of footage that did not make the film itself but that throw light on many of the issues raised, while giving updated information and further interviews with those most concerned with the plague, such as Nobel Prize-winner Luc Montagnier (below).

Both versions are available for sale but not yet (unfortunately) for rental, where -- in an economy in which many people cannot afford proper food, housing or health care -- they would surely reach a wider audience and do the most good.

Late breaking news:! Director Brent Leung has just informed me that his movie is indeed available for rental: via Amazon or iTunes.  So get to it, readers!  (You can also save it to your Netflix queue, but so far, no rental is available.)

See Brent Leung's HOUSE OF NUMBERS; ignore the fundamentalist backlash

When HOUSE OF NUMBERS -- Brent Leung's excellent documentary about AIDS and HIV -- opened for a week's run last year, it was savaged in a particu-
larly nasty review in The New York Times.  When, last September, Trust
Movies read that review, he immedi-
ately concluded that the film was not worth his time.  Big mistake.  He should have read between the lines.  Because Mr. Leung (shown below) questions the "received wisdom" and the medical/political establishment party-line on AIDS and HIV, the Times reviewer (as well as another in the British medical journal Lancet only this month), suggests that Mr. Leung will next turn his attention to questioning the existence of gravity.

To begin with, any scientist (or even a well-informed layman) who imagines that the law of gravity and what is known about AIDS are remotely comparable in quality or quantity should turn in his degree or give up his day job (and perhaps become a Times reviewer!).  Both reviews also claim that House of Numbers is a forum for AIDS "denialists."  I do not think so.  The documentary never denies the existence of AIDS or HIV. But it questions -- and question hard -- various held-as-gospel concepts about HIV and AIDS.

What is the diagnosis for having AIDS, and what symptoms does this diagnosis include?  Don't ask.  Or if you do, be sure to note what country you're visiting at the time. (Funny that neither of the above nasty reviews tackle this question -- or cogently address any of Leung's primary points.) Diagnoses have changed so over time and over country that this becomes one of Leung's major problems with how AIDS and HIV are perceived.  AIDS testing is another.  The filmmaker goes to South Africa, takes an AIDS test from a sweet young woman who should probably not be giving the test, or at least should be offering better information, and while in that ex-Apartheid place, looks into the major poverty there and wonders, as do many South Africans, some of whom we hear from (see below), that perhaps there is some mixing-up going on between AIDS diagnoses and immune systems racked by malnutrition and disease.

Leung does not insist that one condition equals the other -- something that both the Lancet and Times reviews above say he does; the Lancet review also says that House of Numbers claims that there is no connection between HIV and AIDS. It does not.  Instead it offers up the possibility of co-factors -- a damaged immune system due to poverty or drug use (doctor-prescribed or recreational). Yet neither review mentions the co-factor theory (which has been around for some time now.)

Approaching 70, TrustMovies predates the AIDS epidemic.  He saw it happen here in New York City and has seen numerous friends, acquain-
tances, sexual encounters and one full-time lover fall to the disease.  He's followed the ins-and-out of the official story and has from time to time questioned it -- as have many others who some-
times have had problems accepting what the medical establishment and drug companies are telling us.  This does not make us AIDS denialists, but we do believe that there is much more to the story that is being told. And we wonder, as does Mr. Leung and some of his interviewees (one of  which is shown above), why so little funding is given over to any theories other than those of the toe-the-line establishment?  Instead, money and research goes to prop up what seems like a faulty-from-the-start theory, full of holes, and to the drug companies, which keep pumping out a lifetime of drug therapies to those infected.

However, TrustMovies is no scientist.  So he asked an acquaintance and occasional web reviewer who is a science writer for some corroboration. Anthony Liversidge, above, founder and managing editor of Science Guardian, was happy to give it  Liversidge has also been following the AIDS/HIV story for decades and says that House of Numbers get its facts right and is, in his opinion, a trustworthy documentary.  (In fact, Liversidge covered the film
long before I did.)

I have now seen the documentary twice -- and could easily sit through it another time or two, so dense is it with information and statistics, not to mention interviews with a number of establishment and anti-establishment figures, all of whom answer Leung's questions and often dig themselves deeper and deeper into the muck. (Little wonder a number of these people are up in arms about the film; it does not make them look good.)  Leung paces his film well, and threads along his main story the smaller stories of several individuals worth hearing.  There are man-in-the-street interviews, as well those with the big boys (and girls).  It all adds up to 90 thought-provoking minutes.

My biggest question after viewing House of Numbers is why there is such an enormous backlash against it.  Were it as "wrong" as its opponents claim, they could easily contest it on a point by point basis; instead they simply keep trying to stop it wholesale -- as though it has no right to be seen and heard.  I have spoken with director Leung several times now and learned that, at screenings, groups and individuals are often lined up shouting against the movie.  Journalists originally disposed favorably toward the film post-viewing, suddenly come out against it after "a good talking to." This strikes me as censorship, which has no place in real science -- although throughout history, it is always present.

House of Numbers hints at a conspiracy between medical establishment and drug companies.  God knows there has been enough conflict-of-interest scandals in that department over the years -- from doctors hawking cigarettes in ads and TV commercials way-back-when to the more recent examples.  Celia Farber did some fine investigative reporting for Harpers some time back on the subject of AIDS drugs, and more recently in New York magazine, David France reports on what the AIDS cocktail concoction is doing to AIDS sufferers now.  AIDS drugs have always been dangerous:  AZT was toxic-unto-death; the latest batch remains toxic enough to noticeably shorten the life span and productivity of its users.

Regarding the possibility of mistaking (deliberately or otherwise) African (South and otherwise) poverty symptoms for AIDS -- as Leung and others continue to suggest --  this seems quite a legiti-
mate question.  So far as the gay community and a suppressed immune system are concerned, this connection has been on our minds since AIDS made its nasty debut in the early 1980s. Its appearance came at a time when many gay men were doing drugs that we now know suppress the immune system.  But rather than owning up and then investigating this at the time, the connection was played down so that gays' "lifestyle" could not be blamed for acquiring AIDS.  Yes, of course, there was and is enough homopho-
bia out there already, so one can understand gay leaders' reluct-
ance to admit to possible lifestyle consequences.   But, hello -- what if?  Suppressing the truth eventually comes back to bite you in the ass; by now it's little wonder so many gay posteriors are a bit raw.

From the very start AIDS research smacked of trouble.  American claims to have discovered the HIV virus were almost immediately countered by those in France (that's Luc Montagnier, above).  While the prize eventually went to both scientists/countries, suspicions were never really put to rest.  Since then so many questions have arisen regarding the virus and the disease -- its source, diagnosis, even the very existence of the virus, that -- instead of truly answering questions and looking further for missing information, the establishment instead decided to stonewall, and has continued this stance ever since -- calling the questioners everything from crazy to murderous because "denialism kills" (that's the Lancet).  I think it's time to call out the real denialists: doctors, researchers, drug companies and politicians who are unable and/or unwilling to allow dissent and questioning -- and the shrieking banshees at screenings who want to keep this film from being seen and discussed.  These are the kind of tactics indulged in by our former political administration, are they not?  Power closing rank and discrediting all disagreement.  I'm not even saying that House of Numbers is right about everything.  But it absolutely needs to be seen and argued about.  It's not the best documentary of the year by a long shot -- but it may be the most important.  

Your next chance to see the film begins this Friday, January 22, when it be screened in Portland, Oregon, at the Regal Fox Tower Stadium Ten.  Take that chance, if you're in the area. Check the film's web site for further screenings, and look for a DVD to be released later in the year.