Two little words: David W. Ross and Glenn Gaylord's G&L rom-dram, I DO, hits DVD

I DO, the new GLBT romantic drama that hits the street on DVD this Tuesday is an odd but not uninteresting duck. Its 90 minute running time ensures that, considering how plot-heavy and character driven it is, the movie flies by quickly. Yet that very plot, with all that's going on among the four separate groups whose lives inter-twine, demands much more time to bring all this to fully explored life.

So we have a perfectly OK little gay & lesbian romantic drama that hits its points squarely and well and slides along the surface of things with often consummate skill. The film's writer (David W. Ross) sees to it that the bases are covered in this tale of a Brit in New York City whose immigration/
green card status changes after 9/11, and what he must do to remain in the U.S., where family obligations are primary. Director Glenn Gaylord (shown at left) likewise gets good performances all around from his smart and generally well-chosen cast.

The reason that our hero, Jack (played by the film's writer, Mr. Ross, above), needs to stay in the U.S. involves his deceased brother, the brother's widow (a fine Alicia Witt, below, right) and their young daughter -- still unborn when that brother was killed in an accident but now 7 years old -- for whom Jack has been both uncle and dad.

The best solution seems to be for Jack to marry his best friend Ali (Jamie-Lynn Sigler, below, right), a lesbian with seemingly insoluble love problems of her own, who might as well do her friend this very big favor.

Once ensconced, Jack then meets the love of his life, Mano (Maurice Compte, below, right) while Ali begins developing something more than friendly feelings for Jack. Meanwhile Mano, a Spaniard, has problems of his own taking place back in Spain.

Toss in an aging photographer friend, Sam (Mickey Cotrell) with a novel solution to Jack's immigration problems, plus the cute kid, Craig (Mike C. Manning), to whom Jack turns from time to time for easy sex and who, himself, has a mad crush on our somewhat thoughtless and narcissistic "hero," and you have a whirligig of situations, each one of which might make a movie all its own.

Cram all this into 90 minutes and little wonder I Do seems a tad shallow. Ms Siegler's and Mr. Manning's characters in particular are clearly under-served, while we must take on faith that Mano is Jack's "dream man" for we, as does Jack, know damn little about him. Yet the film does deal with some important topics -- marriage equality and immigration equality among them -- which makes it timely.

Perhaps Mr. Ross might have considered either bringing in someone else to work on the script to provide a more distanced and objec-tive eye, or hiring someone else to portray the lead character. Not that Ross is unattractive or a bad actor. He's fine and he's got quite a body (which he's more than happy to show off). Yet the movie smacks not a little of narcissism and vanity. I couldn't even find a single publicity still from the film in which Ross does not appear.

I Do, from Breaking Glass Pictures, comes available on DVD this Tuesday, September 3, for sale and/or rental from the usual suspects. You can also see it via iTunes, Amazon Video, PlayStation network, and soon on Google play, YouTube, Viewster and CinemaNow. Worldwide streaming will be eventually in the cards, too, via Distrify.

The photos above are either from the film itself or,

in the case of Mr. Gaylord's, taken by Alberto E. Rodriguez, 

courtesy of Getty Images North America.

Camilo Vila's 186 DOLLARS TO FREEDOM, Peruvian prison movie, opens in NY & L.A.

We've had naive, young Americans hauled off to a Turkish prison in 1978's Midnight Express, a Chilean prison (1982's Missing), a prison in Thailand (1999's Brokedown Palace) and now a Peruvian prison in the badly-named 186 DOLLARS TO FREEDOM. There have probably been a number of other Americans-in-foreign-prison films, but these four jump quickly to mind, the last because it just opened this past Friday here in New York City and will open this coming Friday in Los Angeles, the other three because they boasted big-name stars and/or were somewhat-to-very successful.

Formerly (and much more interestingly) titled City of Gardens, the new Dollars/Freedom film, based (and ain't they all) on real-life events, tracks Wayne, a young American surfer/
teacher riding waves and working in Peru, who is arrested one sunny day for little or no reason and then imprisoned on trumped-up drug charges. As co-written (with Monty Fisher) and directed by Camilo Vila (shown at left), the film is part romantic drama (mostly via flashbacks), part political
/cultural treatise, and part torture porn. As you might surmise these parts do not work together well to provide an edifying whole.

The problem is not so much that the parts could not coalesce as that they simply don't. The flashbacks are used in clunky fashion, the expository treatise sections are explained to our imprisoned hero with i's dotted and t's crossed ("I had no idea there was so much suffering here," he then exclaims), and the torture porn (above), when it finally arrives, has our naked hunk trussed up and bled like a pig. And then suddenly -- spoiler just ahead -- he's seen sprinting off to freedom when, by all rights, he ought to be bleeding to death. Filmmakers, please: If you insist on feeding us this sugared crap, would you at least try to make it a tad believable.

On the plus side, the cast assembled for the movie is certainly watchable. In the lead role is one, John Robinson (above). Remem-ber that platinum blond kid from nearly a decade ago in Gus van Sant's Elephant and Lords of Dogtown? He's grown up some and here sports a nice body, on display a lot. Facially, he looks like he could easily play Patrick Wilson's younger brother. His acting? Acceptable, if not inspired. However, his character is way beyond the adjective naive. (In the movie, Wayne calls himself stubborn, yet in these particular circumstances it registers more like stupid.)

In prison Wayne makes both a good friend and a bad enemy -- played respectively by Johnny Lewis (above) and Alex Meraz (below). The former has a secret rooftop garden that makes the movie's former title even more pertinent.

The seen-mostly-in-hot-flashbacks lady in Wayne's life is played by the very beautiful Anahí de Cárdenas (below), who brings a hint of passion -- not something we get much of from Mr. Robinson -- to the proceedings.

Probably the best-known performer, film-wise, would be Deborah Kara Unger (below), as the glacial and exceedingly unhelpful representative from the American consul.

The award for weirdest role/performance goes to Grant Bowler (below), who plays Jesus Christ. Mr Christ, an inmate rather than the original (though the latter might have proven more original) comes onto the scene out of the blue (or the murk) and quite late in the film, and from that point on, things move from hairy to hairier, culminating in a whirlwind of carnage and idiocy, followed by the ususal title cards that advise us what happened -- to Peru and to our hero. If this movie is based on fact, then somebody, as a certain Señor Ricardo used to say, has some further 'splainin' to do.

186 Dollars to Freedom -- from Four Fish Films LLC, and running around 100 minutes -- opened this past Friday in New York City at the Quad Cinema and will open on Friday, September 28, in Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Monica 4-Plex.

Sci-fi/romance/meditation: The brilliant PERFECT SENSE is a best-yet for Mackenzie

The most thrilling thing about this job (other than it pays no money) involves sitting down one evening in front of your widescreen monitor and placing a screener of a new film, which you know almost nothing about, into your Blu-ray player, pressing "play" and... omigod, finding yourself fucking blown away. Excuse the French, fans, but that was my experience this past Sunday evening as we watched PERFECT SENSE, the latest from Brit filmmaker David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Asylum, Mister Foe and, yes, Spread). Written by Kim Fupz Aakeson -- the Danish screenwriter whose best-known films over here are probably last year's A Somewhat Gentle Man and Soap (from 2006) -- the movie works brilliantly as science fiction, love story, and meditation/
philosophy on how resilient we human beings can be in the face of one devastating loss after another.

This movie surprised me, scared me, moved me, entertained me and made me think, feel and (very occasionally) smile. How much better does it get? (There is not a lot of humor here; look elsewhere if you must have that.) I don't want to say too much about the film's plot, as part of the joy of this experience is discovery. Ewan McGregor (above, right) plays a chef who can fuck -- quite well, it would seem -- any number of ladies but must always sleep solo, while Eva Green (above, left) is an epidemiologist with problems of her own. When an outbreak of heavy-duty sorrow, followed by the loss of the ability to smell, infects people around the globe, these two meet and slowly bond, as the world (as they've known it) begins to change rather hugely.

We see this change mirrored in the lives of our twosome, as well as in clips from various spots around the globe, and perhaps the smartest move of the filmmakers was to shoot short segments on various continents -- Asia, Africa and the like -- and then to place these carefully, cleverly into their film. Using old (or even new) newsreel footage would not have worked nearly as well, because that non-specific footage of course would not include what is happening to the world under this particular scenario -- which is nothing like anything that has happened before.

MacKenzie -- pictured above, looking out the window of what, I believe, is the apart-ment of our hero in the film -- has managed some truly adroit genre-jumping in this movie. He, together with Mr. Aakeson, makes the mystery of what is happening both exciting and suspenseful -- better yet, believable, in a way that many bigger-budget films do not manage -- building ever more quickly and sadly toward the inevitable. Yet because he has cast the film so well, using some of his regulars like McGregor and Ewen Bremner (at right, in the photo above), the characters easily pull us into their lives, so that the romance of the movie demands as much caring and attention from us as does the sci-fi plot. This is a balancing act your rarely see accomplished this well.

Casting McGregor and Ms Green was particularly fortuitous because these two are such beautiful people, with gorgeous bodies and warm, open faces, as comfortable unclothed as clothed (McGregor's package is on display again, though not nearly as fully as in Young Adam or The Pillow Book). As the troubled lovers who center the film, these two are also good enough in the acting department to make us care about their relationship -- which finally stands for whatever love is left alive in this dying world.

I'm not going to say more about the film -- except see it, and deal with it. It may remind you, on one hand, of a movie such as the delicate and lovely The Five Senses or maybe that still-the-best-end-of-the-world work, Last Night (both via Canada) and on the other something like Blindness but raised to the nth power. I hesitate to compare it to Never Let Me Go, since so many people I know loathed that movie for its darkness and despair (I loved it for its overpowering humanity). Perfect Sense is not as political as Never Let Me Go, in which the "haves" demand everything, including the final sacrifice, from the "have-nots." But because Perfect Sense exists to make us think about and care for civilization, it is also a most humane and wonderful film.

From IFC Films, Perfect Sense opens this Friday, February 3, in New York City at IFC Center, and elsewhere I hope. It can also currently be seen on IFC's In Theaters & On-Demand program. Click here to learn how to view the movie via VOD.

DVD Pick--ADAM: Hugh Dancy & cast light up Max Mayer's Asperger syndrome movie

Much, much better than any disease-of-the-
month TV or movie offering, ADAM -- which made its DVDebut this past week -- is a re-
markable film in a num-
ber of ways, primarily via the memorable performance from Hugh Dancy in the title role.

Adam, the character, suffers from Asperger's syndrome, one of the disorders on a rather wide autism spectrum. Having known over the years a couple of people whom I believe to be victims of this odd disability, it seems to me that Asperger's itself involves a fairly wide spectrum of behavior, from that which is mild, though noticeable, to the more severe variety that can make social adjustment and independent living difficult.

Written with clarity and specificity and then directed for spontaneity by relative newcomer Max Mayer (shown at right), the movie concentrates on Adam, his trouble with what we might term normal interaction and his growing need to master this, as a relationship begins to develop between him and Beth, a young woman who has just moved into the same New York City apartment building. As the film opens, Adam has lost his father/caregiver & so the road ahead seems particularly fraught.

Because Adam is played by Mr. Dancy (shown ar right, above and below, and at bottom) and Beth by Rose Byrne (at left, above and below) -- two relatively young and highly photogenic actors -- viewers will immediately know they are in "narrative movie" territory rather than the documentary format. Both performers are highly capable, however, and here play down their looks to stress instead honest and varied behavior. Dancy, a slight actor with a particularly beatific face and expressive wide eyes, is so on-target in his moment-to-moment moves from repetitive behavior to the sudden awareness of same, followed by the inability of knowing how to combat this that watching him is a revelation and a treat. His beauty of countenance makes the task easier, and it is quite obvious why Beth is attracted to his visage, as well as to his vulnerability and need. I have not heard much talk of Dancy garnering a best actor nomination, but his work here certainly deserves a nod.

For her part, Ms Byrne is as good as I have ever seen her: always quick and smart but with those in-between moments in which you can see how undecided, even afraid, she is. In the very fine sup-
porting cast are Peter Gallagher (shown below) as Beth's protec-
tive father and Amy Irving as her mom. It's wonderful to see both of these actors working, even in small roles, at their peak -- and in a good film, to boot. Frankie Faison, too, brings great strength and decency to his role as the building super and Adam's friend.

Viewers may find themselves buffeted by the events, hoping against hope for an outcome perhaps "happier" than it is real. How Mr. Mayer, his cast and crew, wrap the story up is splendid indeed, like a taste of chocolate you've been craving that turns out to be dark, rich -- and quite bittersweet. Adam, released via Fox Searchlight, received a very wide release (for an independent film), and so should be available for sale or rent at most walk-in video outlets and, of course, from those online.