John G. Young's BWOY: very nearly good enough to give gay movies a bad name

Well acted but beyond dreadful in most other aspects -- with characters and situations so stupid and unbelievable as to boggle the brain -- BWOY, the new film from John G. Young, tracks a middle-aged married man whose young son has recently died and who is now spending most of his time online, trying to find a gay relationship. We can buy this online love story, of course (and have been at least since the time of Craig Lucas's fine play and the excellent movie based upon it, The Dying Gaul). But aside from its central, obsessive relationship, everything in this tired film falls utterly flat.

As both writer and director, Mr. Young, shown at left, has a lot to answer for. His primary failure is to make the marriage/ relationship of his leading man, Brad (Rent's Anthony Rapp,below), and wife, played by De'Adre Aziza (shown at bottom, with Ashton Randle, who plays the couple's dead son) into something remotely believable.

Instead, we get two people who appear to have almost no relationship at all.

The couple barely seems to know each other, let alone live together in any kind of marriage. Over and over again, their behavior beggars belief -- from their near-complete lack of communication skills (could the filmmaker's have bothered to show us even one scene that might make this marriage real?) to the manner in which she, way too belatedly and coincidentally, discovers her hubby's online relationship.

If what we see here is the extent of the couple's bonding, then this marriage is hardly worth saving. And this is just fine, since most of the movie is devoted to our "hero's" budding romance with his online cutie, Yenny, a Jamaican boy played with sweetness and enthusiasm by Jimmy Brooks, shown at right. But is Yenny for real? Ah, we shall see...

Throughout the entire movie, we view Brad almost always at work (in boringly repetitive scenes) or online with Yenny. In both locales, all we can surmise about Brad is that is he is one-note and either shockingly stupid or amazingly naive.

As it rolls along, the movie goes from silly and implausible to -- as the foolish climax approaches -- big time melodrama. (Yes, that is indeed a gun you see above.) By the finale, the moral here would seem to be: You'd sure as hell better pay your credit card bill. (And that goes for our boy, Brad, as well.)

If you enjoy rolling your eyes and guffawing at nonsense, by all means take a chance on BWOY. Otherwise, I'd recommend just about any other gay film available (Netflix streaming has oodles from which to choose).

Meanwhile, the movie -- from Breaking Glass Pictures and running a thankfully short 86 minutes -- opens this coming Friday, March 31, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall 3. A home video release will follow fairly closely on the heels of theatrical exposure: Look for both DVD and VOD to arrive on Tuesday, April 4.

Addicted! In WEB JUNKIE, Hilla Medalia & Shosh Shlam explore China's solution to the problem....

China, bless its hypocritical little heart, is the first country to classify Internet addiction as a clinical disorder. (Next they'll list governmental corruption!) To learn the what, how and why of all this, a couple of Israeli filmmakers -- Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia -- trekked off to that highly populated country to learn more. Their new documentary is titled WEB JUNKIE, and it is indeed fascinating, since no one who uses the web to any large extent can for long remain unaware of its addictive power.

And yet the documentary that Ms Shlam (above, left) and Ms Medalia (at right) have made comes as close to a non-starter as any I've seen in some time. I rather expect the reason for this has more to do with China and its strict regulations than it does with the filmmaking skills of these documentarians. Wisely, perhaps, the two women simply shot whatever footage they were allowed and left it at that. Not asking too many (or maybe any) questions of authorities is the safest bet to get your film finished, I suspect.

The addicts here are, from what I could see, all teenage boys, most of whom are addicted to those video games, playing them for hours, sometimes days, at a throw -- and finding them more real and important than their actual life. Given the parents we see here and what life in China may offer (and given my own addiction to movies and cable entertainment), it is not difficult to understand the kids' viewpoint.

We're told that China has opened some 400 of these rehabilitation camps (we tour only one of them), to which the boys are taken, either by force (I'd include their being put to sleep with drugs in this category) or trickery. Few, if any, have enrolled on their own. The rules are strict, but we see no physical punishment or harm occurring to the boys.

We observe these kids mostly in groups (above and further above). As individuals, only two are allowed to stand out (and then, barely): one boy named Hope and another called Hacker. We see them alone, together, chatting, and later in group therapy, as well as in sessions with their parents and the staff. But nothing here goes anywhere near what you might call "deep."

Clearly, many of the boys have problems with their parents (dads in particular), and we see how a couple of these sessions work out: tears, hugs, and the lot. Chinese sentiment would seem not to be that much different from what we get via Oprah and Dr. Phil. Almost no questions are asked. The filmmakers -- and we -- simply observe. We also get no statistics on recidivism (or anything else), but perhaps these centers are simply too new to have such statistics, as yet.

As I say, the film fascinates -- for awhile, at least -- because of its timely subject matter. But I do wish it could have probed more deeply, and that some of the 79 minutes we spend observing might have been put to better use. Web Junkie -- from Kino Lorber, open this Wednesday, August 6, for a two-week run at Film Forum in New York City. Right now, New York City seems the only venue scheduled, but you can click here and scroll down in the weeks to come to learn if any further screenings appear on the horizon.

In DISCONNECT Andrew Stern/Henry Alex Rubin connect with the way we live now

The kind of movie that the Oscar-winning Crash might have been (had it been a good film and not so bang-your-head obvious), DISCONNECT is one of those people-are-connected movies in which the connections are made relatively intelligently and believably, while the behavior of the people involved stays centered and on-course, even as events escalate enormously and precipitously. Writer Andrew Stern and director Henry Alex Rubin get a lot of things right in their telling of these interconnected tales -- both the little details (mistakes in typing while texting) and the larger picture (how a TV news story blossoms into a career-changing thing for the reporter/newscaster, even as it threatens the life of its subject).

The filmmakers (that's director Rubin, shown at right) also manage to hit dead center three major problems society is having to deal with currently, due to the rise in the use and importance of the internet -- online porn and sex for sale, bullying in school via photos and information that can reach a huge audience almost instantly, and identity theft and credit-card/bank-account heists via emails and surreptitiously embedded malware -- together with other problems that have been around for a good long time: parent-child lack of communication and how ambition can color and upend our sense of right and wrong.

The four stories that intertwine barely or forcefully include those of a family of four played by Jason Bateman (above, center) and Hope Davis (above, left--who's a brunette!) as the parents and Jonah Bobo and Haley Ramm (above, right) as their kids; ex-Marine (Alexander Skarsgård, below, left), his wife (Paula Patton, below, right) and her internet pal (Michael Nyqvist);

and ex-policeman dad (a particularly good performance from Frank Grillo) and his technically-savvy but initially empathy-challenged son (Colin Ford); and that TV reporter and the very young man she connects with online who is selling sex. In the role of the newscas-ter/journalist, British actress Andrea Riseborough (below, left, and just seen a week or so back in Welcome to the Punch) does a terrific job, not just of convincing us that she works on American TV but also that she would cut corners morally and journalistically to get this particular story that involves the gorgeous and hunky young man played by Max Thieriot (below, right).

Make no mistake, Disconnnect is a melodrama. But melodrama done well is no mean feat, and Stern and Rubin manage to avoid excess, even though they do go right up to that point but always stop short of toppling into the abyss. Their fine ensemble cast is a big help here. These actors make you feel their pain (and there'a a lot of that -- psychically, emotionally and finally physically) but they're also smart enough to let you feel their humor and enjoyment of the moment, as well. (Intuitive actors always know it can't always be sturm und drang.)

In a sweet touch during the end credits, we see that the film has a dedication to the late Andrew Sarris, a fine and sorely missed film lover and critic, who I would like to think would have appreciated the very good things about this new film. Disconnect -- from LD Entertainment and running 115 minutes -- opens Friday, April 12, in New York City at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square and the Regal Union Square Stadium 14, and in the L.A. area at the AMC Century City 15. And maybe elsewhere, too -- now or eventually -- thought I cannot find any listing of nationwide playdates on any web site....

Jeff Phillips' @urFRENZ takes a timely look at internet use by children -- and parents

Beginning with the shot of an anorexic-looking young woman (she cuts herself, too) taking pills, getting dressed and then being quizzed by her BFF about the possibility of having sex with a new squeeze, @urFRENZ, the new beware-the-internet movie from writer/director Jeff Phillips, might set you to thinking you were (already) watching a dour remake of the delightful and smart Easy A. Sure enough, Phillips' movie is taking a page from the playbook of other internet films -- from Chatroom to Trust to the grand-daddy of spurious-web-identity tales, Craig Lucas' The Dying Gaul.

The good news is that Mr. Phillips (shown at right) has staked out his own claim to the area, by showing us what can happen when parents (even with what might pass for good intentions) start using the web with an assumed identity. At the end of the film, we are told that it was based on real events, and if you've been combing the newspaper over the past year or so, you'll perhaps have read about just such things. (The New York Times did a very long and fascinating article about this some weeks, maybe even months, back.)

Despite its initially seeming pretty teenage-typical, @urFRENZ, due to quite decent writing, directing and acting, pulls you into its tale of unhappy high school girls (they look like post-college grads, but this is fairly standard casting for R-rated teen films) and the parents who ostensibly love them -- but have some very odd ways of showing that love.

The saddest of the girls is outsider Catharine (Lilly Holleman, above) who used to be friend with the more popular Madison (Najarra Townsend, below), and a certain young man named Brandon who "friends" them both, eventually, on the movie's titular internet site. Who Brandon is fairly quickly becomes apparent, and provides the movie with its moral quandary, as well as its warning about the dangers of fighting fire with fire.

The filmmaker has done a particularly good job with his various family scenes; they have the ring of truth (and the boredom of inter-generational mealtime down pat). I wish he had not opted for two too many coincidences -- one of which places a character in exactly the right place at the right time to overhear a certain conversation. This is convenient, all right, but it also deadens the reality. Other than that, the movie, despite its having a couple of heavy-duty dramatic scenes, generally manages to avoid melodrama and keep us believably on course.

While all the performacnes are good, the movie belongs to the actress who play's Madison' mom: Gayla Goehl (above, left, with Michael Robert Kelly, who plays her intern and internet guide).  Ms Goehl is feisty, funny, caring, and finally frighteningly stupid as the fake web identity from hell. Truth and trust, gossip and reputation are all given a going-over by the film. And while nothing we learn should surprise us, the movie makes it looks all too easy to render terribly destructive results via simple texting. Or photo sharing. (Interestingly, Madison's Mom -- the movie's most dishonest character -- has a day job as real estate broker.)

@urFRENZ, from Brookwell MacNamara Entertainment, began its theatrical one-week run yesterday in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt.  A DVD and maybe streaming cannot be far behind, so if you can't get to L.A. to view it in a theater, stick this one on your see-it-later list.