Jim Hansen's YOU'RE KILLING ME combines the slasher movie with a gay rom-com

That's right: slasher film and gay romantic comedy. And if the resulting combo -- YOU'RE KILLING ME -- seems a tad uneasily joined, well, don't be too surprised. This sometimes quite clever satire of today's online gay culture and behavior also wants to rub our noses in blood and guts, which rather runs counter to the rom-com genre. While this could work, in theory, as practiced by director and co-writer, Jim Hansen (with the helped of his co-writer and co-starring actor, Jeffrey Self, who plays and very well, the lovelorn hero), the finished film is a too-uneasy mix of gore and goofy charm.

Occasionally (very occasionally), Mr. Hansen, shown at left, takes the subtle, let's-not-show-everything approach, and the payoff comes closer to stylish satire than to in-your-face grotesquerie. More often, though, he prefers to let that blood spurt and those entrails ooze. And while TrustMovies has indeed found occasion to appreciate a film's gore content, this is not one of those times. Instead, the ooze keeps spoiling the mood. Or creating an adverse one from which it's not easy to disengage.

So we move back and forth, back and forth, between grizzly murders -- that take away much, maybe most, of the cast -- and a silly-but-charming look at gay life, in love and online. (Our hero George, played by Mr. Self, above, right, has a partner, Cameron, essayed with some sass by Dru Droege, with whom he makes popular lifestyle video satires.) That penchant so many of us -- straight or gay -- seem to have for choosing the wrong romantic partner is given a satirical view here.

The movie begins with a group of gay men and one woman playing a game of Charades, and we meet our serial killer, Joe (the darkly good-looking, if relatively single-note Matthew McKelligon, above), who -- via rather heavy-handedly inserted visuals (as below) -- we discover is, ah, um, drawn to the dark side. We also meet Joe's shrink and learn that our guy has recently been let out of the looney bin.

When his current would-be partner (Joe isn't really into sex, it seems), Andy (Matthew Wilkas, below, left, who was so very good in Gayby) tells Joe to do anything he wants with him, Joe does exactly that, and we're off to the races, slasher-wise.

Many of George's friends meet similar fates until, pretty much out of friends and cast members, our hero must make a decision. How you will respond to this decision will probably depend on how you've responded to the movie so far -- which I found it bearable and sometimes funny, but finally neither fish nor fowl.

After making a splash on the GLBT festival circuit, You're Killing Me, from Wolfe Video and running 88 minutes, hits home video (available via all digital platforms, as well as on DVD) this coming Tuesday, March 8 -- for sale and/or rental.

Boys to men in Jennifer Siebel Newsom's latest documentary, THE MASK YOU LIVE IN

Having found Jennifer Siebel Newsom's earlier documentary, Miss Representation, so edifying in the way it handled how women are represented via the media, you could not have kept me from viewing her latest work, THE MASK YOU LIVE IN, which tackles the American male and how he is groomed for the kind of success that is actually much closer to failure -- so far as women and society are concerned. Both docs are important and worth seeing.

In her latest, Ms Newsom, shown at right, begins by having one of her interviewees, former NFL player and coach Joe Ehrmann (below. left), explain why the command, "Be a man!" is one of the most destructive in our culture. Trust-Movies certainly remembers being told that by his own father, along with various concerned male adults (generally at the worst possible times). You may remember having had this phrase said to you, too.

The problem, of course, is that, rather than being told to stand up for what it right, or to help others, or to treat women with respect and caring, the Be a Man phrase most often means being violent -- putting on that pair of boxing gloves and beating the shit out of the other guy (that was the way yours truly had it fed to him).

Via a series of interviews with men, women and boys, along with the use of some often startling statistics and situations, Ms Newsom weaves together a tapestry of a society way out of control so far as anything healthy is concerned.

We learn here that boys have a much greater suicide rate than do girls, probably due most to the fact that they are taught from the earliest age to repress their emotions -- to wear that mask of the title in which they cannot be seen and eventually cannot feel, either. We also learn how "being a man" adds to the current culture of rape. We see various sets of men -- in sports, in prison, in situations offering help -- and learn how some of them have found ways around this culture that would imprison and destroy.

A problem with this documentary, as with her earlier one, is that it sometimes comes too close to finger-wagging and nattering, well-intentioned as this might be (not that there isn't much to wag and natter at). Fortunately, when this occurs, it is never long before Newsom gets back on track with more statistics, information and good ideas. She is also not content to simply point out the problem; she insists on finding ways around and through it.

Consequently, you don't leave her docs depressed and feeling that nothing can be done. There is plenty, in fact. So next time you're about to exhort a boy to "Be a Man!" stop and instead take the time and trouble to explain to him what being that man ought -- and ought not -- entail.

The Mask You Live In -- from Virgil Films and running 90 minutes -- is part of The Representation Project and arrives on Digital HD, VOD and DVD this coming Tuesday, March 8 -- for sale or rental.

GODS OF EGYPT: The joyous spirit of Michael Powell's The Thief of Bagdad lives on!

What a cacophony of critical nonsense greeted the debut of the would-be blockbuster, GODS OF EGYPT, which you will be lucky to still find in theaters one week later. And what a shame the majority of today's critical establishment is so untutored in film history -- not to mention the joy that comes from watching a well-made and exciting kids' adventure film -- that they stupidly gave this very enjoyable visual knockout such a drubbing.

A number of our "cultural guardians" even claim that the movie is difficult to follow, which must say something pretty dismal about their own IQ. This is one of the easiest-to-follow films, not to mention the most delightful of roller-coaster rides, to hit screens in a long while. Directed by Alex Proyas (shown at right and no slouch in the "great visuals" department: The Crow; Dark City; I, Robot) and written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (who also gave us the underrated Dracula Untold), the movie reminded me most of the rightly famous and now-classic 1940 film The Thief of Baghdad. Granted, it is nowhere near as special as that movie, but it does indeed adhere to many of the tropes, themes and fine style of the Michael Powell/Ludwig Berger/Tim Whelan film.

How can anyone who's seen both films not almost immediately recognize young Brenton Thwaites (above, center, right) as the film's delightful Sabu-like hero, Bek? The flying carpets and genie of the early film may have been replaced by today's special effects (the effects here really are quite special), but their use remains in the service of telling a fine story about the importance of love, quests, gods, mortals, life, death and, of course, doing the right thing. (That's the willowy and gorgeous Courtney Eaton -- center, left, above -- who plays Thwaites' love interest.)

In the gods department you'll find a whole raft of fine performers in both the good and the evil sections -- from Gerard Butler (above, left) and Elodie Yung (above, right) to Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (below, right)

to none other than Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush, who plays Ra, the Sun God who must spend his days fighting off a very naughty, cloud-with-teeth-like monster from who-knows-where. (Mr. Rush handles this with his usual exemplary aplomb.)

If the movie seems to take awhile to find its footing and get into gear, I am not sure if this is actually the fault of the film itself, as much as it is our own for being simply so unused to seeing a good, old-fashioned fantasy/adventure like this one.

The movie may be all-green-screen all the time, but so far as eye-popping backdrops go, it looks like a billion bucks. You won't have seen this much imagination, color, and creativity going into fantasy-movie production values in a long time.

Compare what you see here, in fact, to the high-tech-but-pretty-ordinary crap dished out by so many of those Marvel franchises -- Iron Man, Avengers, Spiderman -- or much worse, that ridiculous abs-and-attitude movie, 300, in which all the backdrops looks almost the same. (One of the more special of the effects has to do with how much larger the gods register on-screen than do the humans -- even if, occasionally, the scale does seem a bit "off.")

Acting is on-target throughout, and the writing is just fine: The dialog and screenplay move everything along at a very fast clip, even as those themes of love, loss and redemption are given their due. There is a sweetness to this movie that escapes most fantasy blockbusters these days, and it is to be treasured, I think.

The monsters? They're quite fab, as well: fun and scary and created with extra flair and oomph. The movie may not be a classic, but it is so much better-than-expected in every way that to miss it on the big screen seems a shame.

It was hoped by the film's distributor, Lionsgate, that this would turn into another HungerGames/Divergent franchise. I guess not. But maybe there will be an after-life on home video, once cult world-of-mouth takes hold.  Click here to find out where these Gods are playing near you.

Hèctor Hernández Vicens' THE CORPSE OF ANNA FRITZ: winner (so far) of this year's "Transgressive Award"

Things do seem to come in pairs -- if not trios. Just yesterday, we covered one of the most transgressive films to be seen in some time: Emelie. Now, but one day later, we've got an even more transgressive movie to bask in (or avoid): THE CORPSE OF ANNA FRITZ. It begins very cleverly and economically (we're talking quite a low budget here) with the body of a young woman being wheeled into the morgue of a Spanish hospital, accompanied by a soundtrack that quickly lets us know, via the voices of newscasters and celebrity TV hosts, to whom this body belonged.

Yes, it's that titular Anna Fritz, the most popular, glamorous and "accomplished" movie and TV star of the day who earlier this evening has "been found dead in a bathroom at a private party." This set-up by Hèctor Hernández Vicens, shown at left, who is the film's director and co-writer (along with newcomer Issac P. Creus) has been so quickly and effectively accom-plished that we know literally everything we need to proceed. Cut to a young morgue attendant named Pau (Albert Carbó, below), alone and eager to explore, who takes the corpse's picture on his cell phone and of course texts it to his two friends, who immediately show up for a dead-celebrity look-see.

That the location of the hospital to which the corpse has been taken is being kept secret from the press proves quite a boon to the soon-to-be-hatched plans of these three young men (not to mention the entire plot of the film), and the fact that these three seem initially like super-sleazy, narcissistic assholes means that, whatever might happen to them, we won't give a fig. Pau's mates are played with nasty entitlement by Cristian Valencia (below, center) and with an interesting mix of would-be machismo and late-breaking humanity by Bernat Saumell (below, right).

That corpse is played by a young woman named Alba Ribas, whom I hope we'll be seeing more of in better circumstances. The plot, which I will not go into further, takes some very clever turns -- if you can accept the initial surprise, which, though very unlikely, is, I suppose, remotely possible in the grand scheme of things. There is also, maybe midway along, a single unbelievable action (non-action, actually) that might be a deal-breaker for some.

Yet the movie is, for its genre, so well-written, directed and acted by its quartet of performers that it is pretty damned easy to just "forgive and get on with it." It is also -- especially its pivotal scene -- so very transgressive that it may take your breath away. One could compare this movie to a Canadian film of 20 years back starring Molly Parker and Peter Outerbridge that dealt with a similar topic but in a serious, heartfelt manner (I will not give away of the title of that film for fear of spoiling the surprises in store).

Yes, there are the usual unbelievable touches here, as just about always happens in films like this. (Where in hell is the hospital staff during the prime time of the evening?) But these are rather expected, no? What Senor Vicens does with his tale is what counts, and he manages to keep us alert and holding our breath for most of the movie's 74 minutes.

His ending, by the way, seems terrifically appropriate and darkly just: by turns surprising, ugly, and fearlessly feminist in a manner to which only the most stupid of males will be able to object. That ending, in fact, leads us right into tomorrow's post -- whoops, make that the day after tomorrow, as I had to make room for a quick post on Gods of Egypt -- which will cover a documentary, The Mask You Live In, all about what is so very wrong with today's men in western society. See you then....

Meanwhile, The Corpse of Anna Fritz, distributed via FlixFling, will hit the streaming venue this coming Tuesday, March 8. You can view it exclusively on FlixFling.

EMELIE: Michael Thelin/Rich Herbeck's transgressive naughty-babysitter movie opens

The first scene of EMELIE, the new naughty-babysitter film, is exemplary: so initially everyday, then suddenly creepy and frightening, that it takes your breath away. If only the remainder of this movie followed suit. We learn the result of this opening scene during the fraught finale, and it brings us back again to that fine beginning. Most of what lies in between, how-ever, offers a second-rate, occasionally ridiculous, children-in-peril scenario in which a highly unhinged young woman and her barely-seen accomplice spend an evening increasingly terrorizing three kids.

Who this title character, Emelie, actually is we learn in rather poorly executed dribs and drabs midway that show us the usual she-herself-had-a-bad-childhood routine, which does little to assuage the unpleasantness abounding here. As written by Rich Herbeck and directed by Michael Thelin (shown at right), the movie is most enjoyable as an exercise in the transgressive. What our babysitter forces her charges to endure involves things that no children their ages should have to undergo.

Intelligent audiences (most of which will probably not get near this kind of movie) can only wonder what problems will pop up in the later lives of these kids from not just the physical abuse on hand but the emotional/psychological trauma here.

How will elder brother, as a young man, react the first time he's aware of his girlfriend's getting her period? Will his little sister be forever trauma-tized sexually by being forced to watch a rather special kind of porn?

The movie uses all this for cheap thrills, and initially at least, this keeps us glued. But Emelie truly falls apart midway when help arrives but the kids fail to make proper use of it. (Given what our hero manages to do by the time of the film's finale, his refusal to act at this earlier stage smacks more of the necessity to keep the movie's plot unfurling than it does of anything remotely believable.)

We get murder and more, clueless parents and unhelpful neighbors, and mostly the old kids-in-peril syndrome. The performances are very good from those kids -- Joshua Rush as the eldest, Carly Adams as his sister, and especially Thomas Bair as the youngest (shown below, left) -- to Sarah Bolger (shown above and below, right) as the title character, who proves properly sweet-then-scary in what is, truth-be-told, by now a fairly standard characterization.

Buffalo, New York, stands in for Anytown USA, and technical credits are perfectly presentable. Emelie -- from Ultramedia and Dark Sky Films and running a thankfully short 77 minutes plus credits -- opens this Friday, March 4, in New York City at the Cinema Village and in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinema. If you're not near either big city but have a hankering for the transgressive, don't worry: Emelie's simultaneously available via VOD.

The stories of Israel & Palestine converge in Dorman & Rudavsky's exceptional doc, COLLIDING DREAMS

One of the most memorable documentaries TrustMovies has seen during this new century was Joseph Dorman's wonderful Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness from 2011, so of course his interest was immediately piqued upon learning Dorman had a new doc arriving soon. It opens this week, in fact, and if it is not the triumphal, spirited blend of history, joy, sorrow and surprise that marked the earlier film, considering the subject matter of Dorman's new work, which he co-directed with Oren Rudavsky, this should come as no surprise.

COLLIDING DREAMS tackles nothing less than one of, if not the thorniest situations in the world today: the state of the State of Israel and the (as yet) non-State of Palestine. Dorman (shown at left) and Rudavsky (below, right) very wisely approach their subject via history rather than mere opinion or some godawful, religious-nut idea that "the Bible says we belong here," and this, more than anything else, I think, is the reason for their surprising success. The filmmakers do not ignore religion, nor its place in Jewish history, but neither do they give it undue credulity. Instead they weave their generally well-

chosen history with interviews (43 of them!) with both Arabs and Jews, including artists, educators, policy-makers and a number of men-(or women)-on-the-street. What this approach accomplishes best is to allow the audience the take in a large number of important ideas along the way, mull them over, and judge for themselves how they fit into Israel and Palestine's history then and now. (This is a film you may very well want and need to see more than once.) Colliding Dreams also places Zionism -- and what it has meant along the way from its creation until today -- front and center, allowing us to learn more about the various incarnations the idea has incorporated.

The play of history, Zionism, culture, religion, land and ownership is expressed better in this film that I have elsewhere seen, and if this sounds like I am calling the movie "fair and balanced," then so be it. Yet it is more than that. Whatever our "feelings" regarding Israel and Palestine, Colliding Dreams forces us to confront ideas that run counter to our own and then deal with them.

I hope that some audiences, at least, will be willing to do this. When one interviewee, a Palestinian, notes that Zionism did indeed unite the Jews, he adds that Zionism also must be judged by its effect on the local community.

Another speaker notes, later in the doc, how most "conquered" people behave after their conquest, and how this has not held true for the Palestinians. We learn of The Balfour Decclaration, the "peaceful violence" that led to more organized Arab resistance to the Jews, Jabotinsky and early nationalism, the rise of Hitler and the consequential increase in the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine.

By the time we get to the Six-Day War (quite a different look at this subject than we got from the recent Censored Voices), we're tightly wrapped in the usual straight-jacket dilemma: The Jews have got to have a place they can call home. But what if that home already belonged to someone else?

What Dorman and Rudavsky want most, I suspect, is for us to be able to look at things from both sides. So often here people speak of their dreams as meaning their dearest wishes. When, at the end of the film, one of the speakers -- a man who has fought and killed Arabs over the course of his life -- introduces us to his Palestinian son-n-law, he explains that it is the passage of time that is most responsible for this turn of events.

That's why history turns out to be the best guide. Look at America and its black population. Look at the growing legitimacy of the GLBT community throughout much of the western world. Look at Catholic and Protestant Ireland a half century ago and today. Time is the great healer. But will most of us -- not to mention the world itself, what with climate change upon us -- be alive to witness the evolution of Israel and Palestine? Whatever: Dorman and Rudavsky's documentary is a fine and necessary step in this process.

Colliding Dreams -- from International Film Circuit and running a lengthy but invaluable two hours and fifteen minutes -- opens this Friday, March 4, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Royal and Town Center and at the Edwards' Westpark 8 in Irvine. The following Friday, March 11, it opens here in South Florida at the AMC Aventura; the Living Room Theaters, and Regal Shadowood in Boca Raton; the Movies of Delray and Movies of Lake Worth;  To view all currently scheduled playdates and theatres/cities, simply click here.