peru1-595-630106

A fun look at quotidian life in India. The writers carry it though--I was afraid after the plot is revealed in the first 15 minutes that the remaining hour would be tiresome. I mean the whole plot is a romantic comedy that fortunately becomes serious. The weak part of the plot are when the Fernandes covers for his incompetent new assistant Shaeik--it rang very false. Also Ila's mother didn't work either...but the rest was good very good. RECOMMEND

I don't care for dystopic gay movies nor violence nor s&m so am sort of in a bind on how to rate this horror movie. Obviously it deserves about a 7 for the refreshing and fun camera angles and close ups... However the story turns the images into things that you try and forget mostly...Sorry sadism is not my bag a depressing couple hours. This is all a pity as Dolan (director main actor Tom) is clearly very intelligent. This is a director capable of a 9 rated movie (I grade tough)

The director stuck in a couple queeny parts that didn't fit...the tango scene in the barn. He needs to control that. Another negative is after the funeral the thing moves too slowly...

Bisexual characters are usually an anthema for gays...and the plot reveals that the dead lover was bisexual and a cheater...yes I will stick with the 1 rating. Not a gay friendly movie except the hero escapes.

Again the camera angles and close ups were fun...in this entirely local scene(Quebec) filmed movie. Some of the "helicopter views of a car" were probably digital wizardry but the rest was completely authentic.

I don't like movies where there is any possibility they may have killed an animal for the film. There were a couple scenes in this thing of dead looking cows...however I have to believe that Canada would not allow this.

If I had been Tom the first facial slap from the Francis would have had me out of there fast. But the story is believable. Was it entertaining? Not really was glad when it was over.

Overall this director is clearly talented and has what it takes to turn out interesting movies...is he a genius?...some of the camera stuff really impressed me. I hope he latches onto better stories.

Oh one final comment... was the anti-American slap at the very end needed? We are a large potential audience. He has Francis take off his coat and wear a levi-jacket with an American flag and USA on it as he closes in for the kill. Numerous closeups of this. Although not fatal it helps nothing: Je parle français j'habite en Colorado et j'adore les Québécois.

DO NOT RECOMMEND this movie but Dolan has great potential.. Will look for other films he has done.

A nauseating politically correct sci-fi shoot em up thriller. I enjoyed the first hour or so for the special effects.

I just ignored the stupid story it wasn't worth thinking about. My blood pressure is too high as it is.

I watched in on Amazon prime do not pay $15 to see this Hollywood sci-fi socially correct thing.

A pile of you know what.

AVOID

There are a lot of these gay author tells all/life story made into a movie films. They are popular at film festivals and win all kinds of awards there. I have yet to see a good one. I stopped watching this movie after about a half hour... so the film failed with me. I didn't care for either actor but especially not Ryan Corr (playing Tim Coragrave). 30 year olds playing teenagers usually doesn't work..and especially the way this thing was directed and acted. Tim Coragrave looks like some sort of mean queen (not that bad but almost) -- John Caleo (actor Craig Scott) is basically boring.

Look there are certain parts of middle class growing up gay that I don't want to relive over and over or even see them in film except maybe briefly to set the stage... For one thing most of it was boring and the gay stuff humiliating. These are painful or embarrassing memories you want to mostly forget.

This film should have been heavily edited. Also a more honest story would have helped ...Caleo as captain of the football team?--gay fantasy time here.

The supporting actors especially Corgrave's parents were almost comically bad. So ho hum...

Popular cliché ideas of glamorous lives (authors models etc..) make for mostly silly dull movies...Full of predictable icons heros and melodrama. Tim Corgrave becomes a writer(pseudointellectual fodder)...unfortunately a bad one I might add.

I googled and this film unbelievably won all kinds of awards. Gay parts have become mainline any more so hopefully this sort of PC false accolade will stop.

AVOID

Standard Bond with all the bells and whistles. This movie is a trifle long and I was looking at my watch the last hour or so. Sort of thing you will forget an hour after watching it.

Car chases boat chases gizmos....double entendres in every other line delivered. ??? Fun stereotypes and evil people this has them all I suppose. If you have nothing else to do it is tolerable as all these bells and whistles are kind of low brow and not that exciting. Maybe I am too jaded at 64 for these things.

An atom bomb that is set to go off (actually a nuclear reactor)....

This Bond movie doesn't have Spectre as the foe but a sadistic nut and a crazed Stokholm syndrome female protagonist anti- heroine.

Recommend?? Only if you are bored.

The movie is a downer...the first scene with the older man doing the exaggerated stereotypical movements of a gay fluttering his hands and so forth (what straight audiences from the 50s think gay men do with their hands etc...) disabused me of much hope for an enjoyable experience in watching the movie. Then when Rideau strangles him I thought oh no this is another depressing movie about gays.

Rideau at 35 is a looker named Vasselli (the only reason I continued to watch this thing)--he is a hustler hooker and hooks up with an anorexic 25? year old Durdaine (Angelo) and they proceed to travel around beating up and killing mostly pot bellied naked some what kinky middle/older aged men. These men usually hire them for 3 ways (one of them put a gas mask on Rideau while having Durdaine use a dildo on him). This last unfortunate gets his head smashed with a rock after putting a live rat on a naked Durdaine's buttocks. Rideau as Vasselli does all the killing Durdaine as Angelo his anorexic side kick merely looks on admonishing not to do it again. About this time it occurred to me that Vasselli's name might be a play on Vaseline--surely not! I also kept thinking where are the flics (cops)? Angelo steals money out of a (presumably camera equipped) ATM..they are spotted in a gay bar.

Then we cut to a seamy heterosexual part of the movie. For the vast majority of gay men it is a complete downer to have the gay "heros" be bisexual. But by this time after a couple smashed skulls and strangled clients I cared nothing for the main characters in this film. This new sex angle female character is strange looking and works in a bar doing a magicians act she has a biracial 10 year old boy. Here the story explores the smothering mother angle as real cause of gay life (so insulting to gays). The boys name is Vasselli so we have to assume this is a quasi flashback telling us what warped Rideau as a child---things like having his mother give him too affectionate baths and so forth. Another typical negative stereotype.

The movie ends when the little boy watches his mother having Rideau and Durdaine plug her from both sides at the same time with lots of moans--(there is a soft porn side to this film lots of male nudity and sex scenes.) The kid saw Rideau kill the 2 men in the house they are staying in and he thinks they are killing his mother. He runs outside and tells a passing motorist about it leading to the gendarmes putting these serial killers out of business.

I was going to give the thing a 3 then thought of the bisexual sandwich scene and gave it a 2. Then I thought of the walk away message of gays as serial killers all caused by a smothering mother and gave it a 1.

Again there is nothing redeeming about the movie if you are gay it is particularly distasteful. Avoid Evitez.

DO NOT RECOMMEND

Where do you start with this amateur boring disjointed thing? It looked like it was filmed with an early Nokia phone. Half the camera shots are close ups of Ari (the protagonist). The screen play was the worst part though. It is one of those movies that are so bad they could be humorous. And I am gay! Back to the screen play trite comes to mind-- Australia must be 50 years behind the US (I have heard this by the way) in terms of melting pot stuff. Or some pseudo-intellectual lefty queen thought this the perfect movie script (much more likely).

No one in US thinks Italian or Greek or even Latino any more it has all become pretty much main stream. Thank God. That then axes the whole PC gist of the movie...ethnic isolation/discrimination/fitting in--in an "angl#" world. Ari is as another reviewer stated gorgeous...why does he have furtive alley sex with an over weight oriental a scrungy old biker type etc...he could have anyone...this just doesn't fit. This unintelligent screen play attempts to be lefty (shots of protests against Greek colonels) and deep. "I am on the edge of a sewer and smell the shi@" "I am a sailor and a whor$"... I actually laughed at this last line. Written by an unintelligent queen trying to be deep. The writer is also trying to show the edgy dystopia of the gay world...drug driven desperate shadowy degrading back alley sex full of drag queens etc... The real gay world even I imagine in Melbourne is much more mundane and thankfully boringly wholesome. How this thing won any awards etc...?? Again Australia must be 50 years behind the US. Sorry if I insult anybody.

DO NOT RECOMMEND

Over all a slick production about things almost no one has any knowledge about any more. I knew about the Archduke being assassinated in Sarajevo but no details... did not know the invasion of Serbia was the casus belli of WWI. The film was a tad heavy on the digital enhancement side but not too bad.

I have several pet peeves with the story. The hero is Jew turned Christian DA type who is charged with investigating the Archduke's assassination. There was the dose of ugly anti-semitism.... is there nothing that can be produced with out this particular moral lesson? It dilutes the story line...which is a tad melodramatic and unbelievable anyway. To wit=The real cause for the Austro-Hungarian interest in Serbia was a cabal of greedy capitalists who wanted a railroad from Berlin to Baghdad that had to go through Serbia...sort of like the Keystone Pipeline idea. This lefty fodder is simply not likely as Baghdad in 1914 would have had all the economic interest of dry camel dung. Oil was not discovered until 1927. Also Serbia had been involved in numerous Balkan wars trying to enlarge its territory and was anti Austro-Hungarian pro Russian from 1903 on... it was anything but an innocent bystander. So it is a historical ignorant plot.

Then there is the yuppie love angle...beautiful Serbian suffragette heiress (married no less) is the romantic interest of the Jewish DA.

Wash out the PC stuff and get a more historically accurate motive and it would have been dramatically better.

Star enhanced boiler plate love tragedy 1 extra star for location (Hong Kong-1955)

The music is too overpowering like in Spanish telenovelas or silent pictures---the theme was still playing in my head a week later.

However the music at least took some talent and effort to write, I cannot confer equal compliments on the screen play--Not because it was bad there just wasn't any thing to it. Middle aged news correspondent Holden (38) meets middle aged (Eurasian eeek!!!) woman doctor Jones 37. They take in a few touristic sites together and over the period of ? a week apparently fall deeply in love (there is no development of this). But he is called to Korea (takes place 1949) and is blown up by a bomb!

There is a subplot of racism--Jones loses her job because of her hanky panky with Holden--- a PC element it needed for Oscar nomination. Oscars generally require 3 things = good old boy's doing PC gimmicks--in various quantities of each. This one had all 3 Holden aging star---Racism---Filmed in Hong Kong for an added gimmick Jones is a Eurasian with tons of eye makeup.

It barely deserves a 5 ... the site shooting is all that kept it clinging and and the song isn't bad just too much with O story.

DO NOT RECOMMEND... unless your only alternative is a Jacquiline Suzanne novel.

I almost never award a 9 but I also rate the movies relative to their peers--- in this case what was available in 1950. So a 9. Zero corny junk an all out down and out backstage look at acting.

In the story, an ambitious wanna be young actress tries to get into an aging actress's Betty Davis's(40) life and sabotage her by stealing her career and even her boyfriend.

The acting is excellent....Davis does a fine job makes the thing really. I did not find Anne Baxter as riveting as other reviewers. This theme is a classical one and I have seen it before---the secret aims of a new member of a household etc...

RECOMMEND HIGHLY

A sort of Being There movie where an Irishman who comes to a small Balearic Island town helps everyone without understanding a word they are saying...like a psychiatrist who only nods and people are cured.

The feel good cloying hallmark quality of the natives was the only thing that takes this thing down a notch or two. The PC elements... a probable lesbian who wants to join the military and repair tanks and a low confidence boy with a hearing aide (symbolic) while cooked are rather pleasantly and tastefully done. Also there is a middle aged daffy woman who wants to get pregnant (sub plot) and never figures out the Irishman (Meaney) doesn't understand her conversations with him. But people aren't this cloyingly simple. In fact what I have read at least of Corsica foreigners are regularly bombed and killed.

The Irishman was trying to find where his girlfriend died when she ran from him on a vacation years before and died falling into a cave "sink hole" that dot the area. He only has a photograph to go by and he is trying to make some closure on the tragedy.

It works best as a comedy but with a bittersweet underpinning.... It gets a solid 7....suspending disbelief for the comedy. Again the main flaw is the over done too feel good stuff.

RECOMMEND

This is a flawlessly filmed and directed look at 1948 Chicago. The acting is good....James Stewart playing his usual straight shooter down to earth corny blustery stammering when indignantly angry character.

What it lacks is suspense and as another reviewer stated it missed a wonderful scene where the perjuring witness Wanda would be exposed.

The denouement involves state of art technology of the time....wired photographs and enlarging techniques.

What was needed was a more talented writer to come up with some suspense.

It gets a solid 7.

RECOMMEND

I don't know why but when Hollywood tries to portray a psychiatrist they make them look like unintelligent non serious idiots....obviously the director is doing it--it is like a version of the spineless femlib male but with an idiotic expression on their face.

Jude Law falls perfectly into this. Law plays odd parts he has charisma and looks but best as a bad guy--this part was a disaster.

I was a psychiatrist for 30 years and we look and act like everyone else. They have it wrong...and you grow to dislike the character. Most people want their psychiatrist to be intelligent and serious looking not a goof ball. Think Freud not Monty Python.

In addition this is supposed to be a suspense thriller murder movie but somehow lacks suspense.

It is too bad as the story is the kind I like...for me Law's caricature ruins it...but it is not suspenseful either--as other reviewers note a bad director. I did find the camera work competent and pleasing.

Don't recommend.

This movie simplifies the book down to a plot of a troubled "teen" (James Dean a bit too old at 24) trying to win approval from an overly puritanical father.

This boiled down story from Steinbeck's book is not particularly lame by Hollywood standards and stands on its own. Dean is decent in the role...Kate is simply a hard hooker not the demonic character in the book who burns her parents alive.

However it disappoints because the book has such interesting characters like Kate and Lee. All the movie offers is some sort of dull coming of age thing.

But how can a movie possibly cover a long novel?---it can't in fact when movies try to cover books too fully the result is always bad---with rapid untethered jarring snippets of dialogue and action from the book which if covered fully would take 50 hours of screen time.

The German who is barely covered in the book gets much too big a role in this movie in some sort of Hollywood PC moral lesson...other than that I guess the biggest complaint is it is all rather boring.

In the end Caleb wins his Dad's love when his Dad asks him to take the place of the nurse. Yawn...

Do Not Recommend

What surprised me in this movie is how much things have changed since 1958. It is hard to believe I was alive at the time. However, I remember well how a divorced person was something hushed like having cancer---or being dear God! an alcoholic---so yes this movie is believable. What an uptight nightmare. My second surprise is that 2 of the actors won Oscars--David Niven and Wendy Hiller--Niven best leading actor and Hiller supporting. But Niven's role was tiny! Just proves my feeling that Oscars mean absolutely nothing except who has connections or what new PC theme is being covered. (in this case frigidity)

That said I found this talky movie a provenance of later talky boring adult themed intense about nothing movies with famous stars. It reminded me of Who is afraid of Virginia Wolf.

This is an actors movies where the actors think they are finally being used for serious topics.

The story is about a dozen guests in a hotel over a period of a couple days as various sub plots circle around a center plot of a man who inappropriately elbows women in movie theaters and what to do about such a guest. Topics include frigid wives--vicious gossips--losers who make up their pasts and an alcoholic writer. It is filmed in about 2 rooms.

I would avoid it unless nothing else is available. It is not terrible in the way other movies are terrible it is just dull.

Last night I watched MI ghost protocol (the one after this one) on the recommendation of my brother---this one seemed much worse but maybe it is partially just that I have had my fill of this stuff? This movie seemed to drag on and on and on. The night stuff is particularly tedious because you can't even enjoy the cinematography. In fact the whole Chinese part was a drag.

The story a crazy bad man wants to start a war using "the Rabbit's foot" probably a deadly virus that will be dropped on the middle east oil countries. But IMF has been infiltrated! Ethan Hunt must find and deliver the "rabbits foot" to the bad guy within 48 hours or his new wife will be killed.

Let me pause here. These movies are what they are (action and tech gimmicks and some well done black humor) trying to tack on melodrama (Cruise's new wife) and the twists of double crossing by infiltration effectively ruins them by slowing things way down. In fact melodrama is the exact thing you don't want in these nor confusing infiltration issues. They are essentially like action video games with great cinematography and tech tricks adding other things ruins them. Black humor (however) can enhance them a lot (but only if done well.)

There is an attempt at humor in this movie during the Vatican sequence that falls completely flat. With a caricature of Italians arguing. It just wasn't well acted neither Cruise nor the other actor made convincing Italians.

The part at the Vatican was fun (daylight) but it runs out of steam when the double crosses start etc...and from the bridge scene on it is tedious. It was boring enough that you begin to wonder about Cruise's height (5'6) and sexuality and wish it would just end.

It sort of combines Melodrama Yuppie stuff (Cruise's new bride is a Pediatric Resident) with Bond and Kung Fu stuff---do I see a little Chinese provenance in the back ground??

The one last night MI Ghost was significantly better but maybe also my quota of this stuff is limited since I am no longer 14?

DO NOT RECOMMEND if over 14

Stats: The film cost $150 million and grossed $400 million world wide. Being number 1 in many countries for many weeks so what do I know about business? There must be a lot of 14 year olds at heart out there.

My fourteen year old mind is still alive somewhere (am 60) as I overall enjoyed the movie.

I don't have any problem with Cruise as some reviewers do...all stars are egoists. The one thing I noticed is he is short 5ft 7. Not as short as Robert Redford 5ft 5...(had to put that in).

I agree with another reviewer the most frightening villain by far was the woman assassin Lea Seydoux as Sabine Moreau.

They could have chopped all the chicification parts...especially the last 3 minutes where Cruise's exwife appears. Melodrama doesn't mix with killer thrillers in fact it ruins them.

The story: A crazy Swede wants to start WWIII and IMF wants to stop him...I thought the initial prison scenes were the best and most funny. These movies are supposed to activate your black humor---also I found the guy killed by being distracted by his iphone funny--although it was not supposed to be. As always I want the villain to succeed but that never happens--I bet I am not the only one!

The technical stuff was fun and inventive---I wonder how long it will take for these to look old anachronistic?? When I was 14 high tech was shown as a room full spinning reels on refrigerator sized computers. Think how antiquated CRT (tube) monitors look already. But then cars haven't changed that much recently in fact the late fifties cars are far more interesting looking everything now looks like a combination of a wedge and jelly bean. Maybe fins etc...will make a come back that would be fun.

It would have been an 8 but I took off 2 stars for the chicification and PC stuff--it is a losing battle I know.

RECOMMEND

I was not as enthralled with this movie as other reviewers.

Technically beautifully filmed---the use of constant flashbacks through out the movie makes for constant abrupt changes--not my favorite style of story line.

The positives = the acting is good/Lanvin in the lead as Momon Vidal a gangster whose "mate" from their heyday in the 70s is being hunted by a mobster.

Momon helps him out because of "mate" gangster honor. According to the story De Gaulle used thugs to rob money for his political needs--one I had never heard. ?? Possible I suppose. The use of ethnic gypsy (Roman) material is not syrupy PC and over done a plus.

Has the requisite number of quick shot em up scenes that would require the marksmanship of an Olympic gold medalist. You know the angry good gangster enters a restaurant and picks off half a dozen bad gangsters in as many shots.

Also a few twists including the denouement to keep you interested.

It is good quality crafted entertainment maybe even a 7.5

RECOMMEND

Tunisian feminist graphic / Baby Jane type movie. 3 generations of women live in the servant's quarters of a deserted mansion. The owners pay a visit for a few days throwing a party. The woman visitor the owner? is captured when she gets too nosy and held captive. Where are the police her boyfriend??

The youngest girl turns out as the story develops to be the daughter of her sister by the sister's father so that is the secret these women are hiding.

You get to witness all the gratuitous twists and turns of feminist graphic realism of this young girls sexual interests as well as her sister masturbating with a sink...shaving her legs...voyeurism of the young couple...her grandmother checking her crotch for virginity all those meaningful liberated women topics that kind of turn your stomach to be honest.

When will they learn that realism doesn't equal art nor good story telling (usually the opposite) nor good movies? However it is probably guaranteed a prize at a film festival.

The mansion (digital creation) looks like a Russian orthodox church welded on top a house---with some South Pacific palm trees... I think the computer artist was trying to create something out of 1001 Arabian Nights. It resembled nothing remotely Tunisian I ever saw the and I lived there 5 years. The palm trees look like coconut not the date palms of N. Africa. The interior looks like a 20s Hollywood horror mansion. Why didn't they hire a Tunisian to do these computer graphics? All they got right were the olive groves.

These 3 women imprison the female who visits the mansion with her boyfriend...eventually killing her and burying her at the end. The young girl then smoothers her grandmother?/sister's mother and carves up her half sister/mother with a razor blade. Then walks down the streets of Tunis in a blood soaked nightgown with a prominent menstrual blood spot along with her sisters blood.

Being brutally honest this is why I avoid movies written or directed by women. They often seem to get carried away with gratuitous graphic sexuality and corporeal realism issues that are totally unnecessary.

The story had potential but not the way this was done plus it is kind of old hat...hidden incest etc... I watched it because I lived in Tunis but you get about 2 minutes of real street scenes and an hour and half of inaccurate fantasy digital backdrops in this femlib realism tour de force.

DO NOT RECOMMEND

I went into this movie completely open minded in the mood for a comedy. If you find unbelievable things like a fat woman needing a rope to get out of bed funny this movie may be for you. Although I suppose that could have been for her MS too not at all clear /neither is funny.

Also early on it became obvious that they were using doubles for the nude scenes and ridiculous stuffing under the main actress's dress for the face scenes (seeing an implausible lumpy looking fat person in every other frame was supposed to be hilarious?)

Anyway about half way through I realized it was a complete dud about the time the multicultural feel good stuff started to spin. The old man at the nursing home masturbating didn't help things along either---how riotously humorous eh?

This thing is as boring and colorless as the winter sky in Northern Europe--at least as depicted in this movie. Germany is one my favorite countries this movie makes Berlin look like some sort of future dystopia.

The scenery was so drab and dreary I can't even give it my usual extra star for a foreign venue.

Even if you look at this thing as a character study movie rather than a comedy what character do we have? A woman who thinks a positive attitude changes every bad thing that can happen? It flops. Dull and boring like the character's life. The staged fake feel good PC multicultural stuff is like adding a root canal to this thing.

Achtung! Avoid!!!!

I must have watched a different movie than the reviewers who call this "the top movie of all time" a 10 plus and so forth.

First of all dubbing robs 90% of an actor's abilities and the two main characters are dubbed De Neuve and Fernando Rey..it sounds like a spaghetti western. Also the many times used theme of a Gigi like uncle who falls in love with his niece (charge in this case) is not shocking or particularly interesting. Zola used it in Dr. Pascal.

As another reviewer states this is a novel turned into a movie so all the changes that occur in DeNeuve seem too abrupt as they try to pack 300 pages into an hour and half. Suddenly Tristana is a bitter woman....from an innocent girl. Also please if this is a world quality movie why did the director use that tired old technique of showing the hands only when Tristana is playing the piano.

Also although very minor there were slip ups in the time editing...a modern car can be seen in the back ground of one of the scenes and the train lines were electrified.

I am sure the movie can be micro-analyzed for symbolism and visual cues..on the door of the apartment they live in is the faint white scrawl of a man's face and so forth (death?).I am sure it is flawless in this way...but as far a convincing as to why DeNeuve turns jaded it just doesn't work well---the dubbing and the abruptness mainly...

I did find the main character's hypocrisy good a socialist ordering glazed maroons and living the high life....although in a leftie directors eyes this may not have been intended to be hypocrisy but rather showing his sophistication. God knows that is quite possible.

I did not quite understand the deaf young men's symbolism. Didn't find it worth speculating on.

DO NOT RECOMMEND

I can spot a bad movie within the first 5 minutes. Fortunately IMDb is here to confirm these suspicions. Even "good" reviews can tell you the movie is one you don't want to watch when you glimpse the concerns and logic of the people writing them.

I pulled the plug on this ersatz beautiful gay people "deep" relationship flic. A bunch of mundane queens trying to make a Bergman film. It just doesn't work it comes off as trite. The acting is bad the directing bad...the lines delivered one step above a wooden porno movie. Endless pregnant silences over how much sugar to put in your Latte.

I am not a great Bergman fan but at least the acting and movement rivet you to his movies....this movie reminded me of a bunch of routine LA queens thinking they are hot (they are not) world class yuppie somethings. Living in Barcelona (how classic!--the gay version of Florence) a yuppie gay tour de force.

PS I am gay so this is not a gay bashing critique quite the contrary. Maybe pseudo intellectual yuppie bashing.

Avoid avoid avoid.

A pudgy older Yossi (Ohad Knoller 37) is now a 34 yo doctor-- cardiologist no less. He wouldn't look half bad if he would lose 30 pounds... one kind of likes the gay heroes to look appealing in these movies. I kept thinking well the romantic interest will be fun to look at. WRONG First of all it takes an hour and half to get to the romantic interest and what a disappointment= Four queens posing as Israeli soldiers are picked up by Yossi on his way to a Red Sea resort. The only thing they do is make him look decent in comparison. You know the type burned out too much instant tan makeup plucked eyebrows etc... queens.

They may have been younger and thinner but zero in the sexy department. Too much makeup all those distortions that take away and don't add. All their forced masculine antics looked like that forced and didn't disguise for a second their basic essence.

At first I thought it might be the 4 soldiers in drag doing the singing in the first night club scene (joking). But in any case what were enlisted recruits doing staying at a $500 a night resort hotel?

Some queen must have had a hand in the casting-- a disaster!

Recast this thing and develop the relationship with the gay soldier for more than 5 minutes and it could be a 10. Put Yossi on an extreme make over weight and chin implant.... and get some masculine normal actors for the soldiers. Get the actor who played in Eyes Wide Open.

I give it a three for the basic story which although bit maudlin rings basically true. The undressing should have been done in the dark. No one finds hairy beer guts sexy.

There are lots of good Israeli movies this is not one. Try Eyes Wide Open for gay themed one.

DO NOT RECOMMEND

I liked this movie a lot.

I like to say European movies often add 15 IQ points to American formulas--but this one adds about 20. There is just so much more depth to the good ones.

The main character plays a Sad Sack Jack Lemon loser type who there is really nothing wrong with except he is boring and doesn't know how to play office politics. He is going to be laid off. Drowning in the failure of his marriage (and an estranged son among many other things) and now this happens! His attempt to jump from a building is thwarted by a neighbor who shows him how to turn the tables at work. Use of the kittens was great and a zillion other refinements Hollywood usually misses. It all comes to good writing and at a minimum competent directing. All else can be undone by bad scripts just tried to watch Meryl Streep! and Jack Nicholson in Heartburn---don't! What a waste of acting talent.

This is good solid entertainment. How do you take PC office politics and especially the whole Gay thing and make a solid comedy that feels good---This one does it very very well.

Depardieu looks good in this film he needs to limit the booze a little. Poor man. He is at his best here. Love him.

RECOMMEND

First this movie (with its ending) is a formula comedy romance but well done. European movies often take a standard American fare (Doris Day Phone Game or Emails) and add 15 IQ points and stretch it out in a way that leaves you guessing a little---which over all is a much more satisfying experience. Europeans are also a little more cynical and the Hollywood moral nanny= never can a bad guy get away is not a wall they won't cross.

The ending seals this as stock kitsch/comedy but getting there had a lot of twists and good writer(s). I didn't find the main actor so great as the other reviewers did---he is too clownish rather repelling looking. One of my great puzzlements is why the French for less than handsome actors?? If you speak French the shocking bad language of the female actor makes it especially funny.

It so much the luck of the draw--I have Netflix streaming and they don't have most of the famous or popular titles...it is always a gamble. This one paid off.

If you want another good comedy try Mid August Lunch. It is totally unique and much better---or The Big Picture (in US) by this same director which is much better than this film. Well much higher production values and thriller story I like.

RECOMMEND