It's a Wonderful Video
Holiday Video Rentals

What defines a classic holiday film? For argument's sake let's say it's the same things that define any good movie: some combination of interesting story, great acting, memorable characters and visual appeal. Of course a holiday movie must have a plot line that takes place some time between Thanksgiving and New Year's. It must have a feel-good ending. Most of all, a holiday classic must contain a generous portion of magic.

All these elements come together in the two films that top the list of videos you can rent this season, "It's A Wonderful Life," and "Miracle on 34th Street."

"It's A Wonderful Life," is in many ways a surprisingly complicated film to become so well-loved during the sugar-coated holidays. Jimmy Stewart's character, George, is pretty grumpy, but he sacrifices, does good deeds, and is finally rewarded by an angel -- this confirming our deepest karmic hopes. The charming, "Miracle on 34th Street," is also filled with memorable characters from merry Kris Kringle to the precocious character played by a young Natalie Wood. It was remade a couple of years ago, but if you must choose, rent the original.

Television has produced many animated children's classics starting with Dr. Suess' memorable creation, "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." Then there's, "A Charlie Brown Christmas," which still moves kids to tears with that sad broken tree. And finally the unforgettable, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," with its singing puppets and scary abominable snowman.

Some relatively modern holiday films include, "Santa Claus the Movie," with Dudley Moore as a crazed elf;, "Prancer," the sweet story of a girl who finds and rehabilitates Santa's reindeer; Tim Allen in, "The Santa Clause," about a guy who inadvertently becomes Santa; director Jodie Foster's, "Home for the Holidays," a trifle about family dysfunction and turkey dinner; and Tim Burton's visually stunning, animated, "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

Though most of these new movies don't exactly meet the criteria of classics, perhaps repetition will lend them credibility. Who knows which movies will be revered in fifty years and which actors' and filmmakers' work we'll cherish. I'd guess yes for Tim Burton, and probably no for Dudley Moore.

Appeared in "Santa Fe Reporter, Adobe Holidays" November 1996 © Suzanne Rush 2001

Definitions of Diversity
Santa Fe Gay and Lesbian Film Festival

In Debra Chasnoff's new documentary, "Elementary Speaking," a second grader asks, during a class discussion of gays and lesbians, if being gay is the same thing as what he saw in the movie "Jungle Fever," "where a white woman and a black man, or a black woman and a white man are together?" The teacher smiles and says, "Maybe we need to define our terms first."

After last month's same sex group wedding at the Roundhouse, any Santa Fean who reads the newspaper is clear on the terms - but what about their children? What kinds of judgments, moral or otherwise, do kids have about gays and lesbians?

In one of the best offerings at this year's Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual film festival, March 14, 15 and 16 at the Greer Garson Theater, Chasnoff (Academy Award winning documentarian), takes us inside some of America's most progressive classrooms to see what happens when you open up a discussion of gay life to children. The results are unsurprising: children don't have negative preconceptions. Without much documentation of the opposition, this film is a positive look at what can happen when diversity is introduced at the elementary level.

What happens later in life when prejudice has taken root is broached in the film "Neptune's Rocking Horse." This is the story of five New Yorkers who witness the unwarranted police beating of a drag queen. In the same way that Chasnoff's students are asked to define their terms, so are these bystanders, four of them straight and one a gay man. By far the most interesting and sympathetic characters in this drama are the semi-literate African American doorman and his girlfriend, a neophyte palm reader who has to look up her readings from a book. It's this bigoted doorman, finally, who makes the largest leap of consciousness when he figures out that black and gay oppression are the same ignominy.

African American, lesbian filmmaker Cheryl Dunye brings us another view of being other in the opening night film, "The Watermelon Woman." A noble first effort, this film tells two stories, that of the filmmaker herself, and that of the Watermelon Woman, a black actress from the 30's with whom Cheryl becomes obsessed. What this much-lauded, self-conscious film, filled with good ideas, seems to lack is a competent script. Yet it portrays an aspect of black lesbian existence, often humorous, that draws in the viewer nonetheless. Filmmaker Cheryl Dunye and co-star Guinevere (Go Fish) Turner will be on hand Friday night.

The second opening night film — a well-made offering from England — is "Boyfriends." This film about three couples who go off to a country house for the weekend, illustrates the complicated entanglements of human relationships. It's the kind of story that could have been told, with virtually the same script, about any three couples and still retained its integrity.

Other film offerings include " Top of the World," "Costa Brava," "Rescuing Desire," "Red Ribbon Blues," "Twisted" and, finally in Santa Fe, "Stonewall," the story of the uprising that began the modern gay rights movement. The film festival is also hosting free screenwriting classes, Friday and Saturday night parties at Vanessie and the Drama Club, and a gay coffeehouse upstairs at the Garson.

In this year when gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people seek to gain equality through visibility, the film festival in a small town like Santa Fe remains one of the best ways to spread the word about diversity - and to define its terms.

Appeared in "Santa Fe Reporter" March 12, 1997 © Suzanne Rush 2001

Mighty Ego
Mighty Aphrodite

Woody Allen's latest movie, "Mighty Aphrodite," is the laughably mediocre work of a megalomaniacal, misogynist. When did he become the Bob Packwood of filmmakers? I can hardly tell those two aging Lotharios apart anymore.

With Packwood we get diaries with such amazingly self-deluded entries as this one: "I said S-2 (referring to a staffer he was coercing into sex)... You and I have made love maybe six or seven times, and... I was thinking I was doing my Christian duty by making love to you."

Packwood, with the lack of eloquence of a horny adolescent boy, recounts his exploits, "putting it in" and "inserting" himself into various staffers, for - we can only assume - Christian purposes.

In Allen's latest effort we find him inserting himself into the lives of two women, typically young enough to be his daughters. One is his wife, played by Helena Bonham-Carter, finally making her escape from costume dramas. The other is prostitute and porn actress, Judy Cum, (played by Mira Sorvino) who also happens to be the biological mother of his adopted child.

The plot revolves around Allen, doing his Judeo-Christian duty, as it were - trying to reform Sorvino into something he finds more acceptable, and importantly, less threatening. "I'd rather she was married and hairdresser than the star of the Enchanted Pussy," he remarks. By de-sexualizing her, he can turn her into a sanitary mother for his child. He can also gain the kind of power over her he could never feel as a man past his prime of potency.

While Allen obsesses about the hooker, his wife, Bonham-Carter, who is never given an intelligent line to say in the entire movie, is beginning an affair with Peter Weller, who plays an investor in her art gallery. Like Allen, he is a completely self-involved man years older than her. When she turns away from him during a kiss, unsure about whether to continue the affair, he says, with dripping pomposity, "You'll never be able to forgive yourself if you don't give it a try."

In a move finally to legitimize Sorvino, Allen fixes her up with a moronic, third-rate boxer, played by Michael Rappaport. Again Allen gives himself all the power by only allowing her a partner who is intellectually inferior. The background noise to all of this action is a Greek chorus headed by F. Murray Abraham, which acts as a conscience for Allen. Allen interacts with the chorus at various times in an attempt at humor and illumination of the subtext. But many of the jokes, told repeatedly from one Allen film to the next, fall flat here. And the subtext is the same shopworn story he's been peddling since he perfected his routine of the pathetic, penis-envying, neurotic loser in, "Annie Hall."

Allen is not an artist who appears to be growing as a person or a filmmaker. Maybe if he could stop being threatened by women his own age he could tell a story with fleshed-out adult female characters. As a reviewer, it's difficult to separate his private life from his films, particularly since he doesn't make any attempt to do so. This stagnant self-obsession doesn't necessarily make him a bad man, but it has turned him into a boring movie maker.

At several junctures during "Mighty Aphrodite," Lily Taylor's doom-saying Cassandra predicts disaster for Allen's character. I predict another disaster for Allen, at the box office.

Appeared in "Weekly Alibi" November 15, 1996 © Suzanne Rush 2001

The Gang's All Queer
Santa Fe Gay and Lesbian Film Festival

During the past six months, corporate Hollywood has released three big-budget, star-driven, gay-themed films, "To Wong Foo," "The Bird Cage" and "It's My Party." On the surface this trend seemingly indicates a new tolerance of homosexuality by mainstream filmmakers and audiences. But one has only to watch the awkward embraces between Eric Roberts and Gregory Harrison in "It's My Party," or the stereotypical histrionics of Nathan Lane in "The Bird Cage," to remember that these are seemingly straight actors playing to a straight audience.

Perhaps only lesbians and gays would notice the difference between a real kiss and the careful avoidance of physical contact that passes for sexuality in these films. But then, they weren't made for gay audiences any more than minstrel shows were produced for African Americans.

One positive result of more than 25 years of gay liberation is the emergence of a strong body of literature and film made by gays for gays. In 1996, the gay film festival has become ubiquitous, and no one need rely on Patrick Swayze in drag as a role model.

This May 10, 11 and 12, Santa Feans can enjoy a selection of gay-made films at the Second Annual Santa Fe Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Film Festival, at the Greer Garson theater. The film selection committee has done an admirable job mining the gems from the coal. Virtually all of the over one dozen independent features and short subjects are well-made and entertaining - which is more than can be said for the selections made for the Albuquerque Gay and Lesbian Film Festival last month.

Opening night features the lively, "Man of the Year." This hilarious tale tells the story of Dirk Shafer, 1992 "Playgirl" Man of the Year. An aspiring Hollywood wanna-be, Shafer finally makes the big-time as a nude centerfold - the wet dream of thousands of "Playgirl" readers. The problem is, he's gay. As the poster child for heterosexuality in the national media, Shafer discovers he may have underestimated the effects of this job on his life.

A less commercial offering is "The Toilers and the Wayfarers." Dieter is a sixteen-year-old living with his German immigrant parents in a Minnesota town. When his best friend Phillip comes out of the closet and subsequently flees to Minneappolis, Dieter is forced to confront his own sexuality. Running from the harsh discipline and conformity of home, he begins an odyssey to the twin cities — with his buddy, recently-emigrated German alcoholic, Udo — to discover his own identity.

A beautiful, blonde hunk, he soon begins to earn a living the way most runaway teenagers do - with his body. However, this film is not a look at the wicked underbelly of city life. It's about the adolescent search for a safe emotional nest, to replace the biological home which rejects most gay children sooner or later. A leaden ending does not mar this otherwise refreshing look at growing up gay.

Another interesting offering about gay youth in a small town is "Parallel Sons." Here German culture is traded for Black. This is the story of Seth, a white teenager obsessed with African Americans, though he has never met one. When Knowledge, a black escapee from the local correctional facility, tries to rob Seth, a strange friendship begins. This serious exploration of race and sexuality defies conventional parallels in commercial releases. Never relying on gay or black stereotypes to advance the plot, "Parallel Sons," succeeds, despite slow interludes, because of it's unpredictable storyline.

This year's festival presents a fairly even balance between men's and women's subjects. One lesbian offering is "Thin Ice." A British film, "Thin Ice," follows Steffi, a lesbian photographer and ice skater, who is trying to break into the mainstream press by writing a story about romance on the way to the Gay Olympic Games.

She meets ostensibly straight Natalie, and proceeds to seduce her into becoming her partner on the ice and off. Though produced on a small budget, this film has all the quality of a U.S. made-for-TV-movie, without all of the melodrama. Interestingly, the bi-racial nature of the the relationship between Steffi and Natalie is barely commented on - another sign this is no American product.

Shorts interspersed throughout the festival cover a variety of topics in several genres. Documentaries like "Voices Carry," about the Windy City Gay Men's Chorus, and "Live to Tell," about the first gay prom in America will survive as historical documents of gay life in the '90s.
The rich roster of movies featured in the Santa Fe Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Film Festival offers gay Santa Feans an opportunity to see some reflections of gay life which are neither afraid of sexuality, nor reliant on it to tell a story. It also offers straight flimgoers a chance to meet some gays and lesbians who aren't drag queens or vampires.

Appeared in "Santa Fe Reporter" April 30, 1996 © Suzanne Rush 2001

Fat or Phat?
Angus

Have you ever had that dream? You know, the one where you're entering school on the first day and you belatedly realize that you're only wearing your underwear? You gamely continue to attend classes hoping nobody will notice, but the level of your discomfort is such that each encounter with a peer is a downward spiral into a morass of cringing?

Angus Bethune lives this nightmare on a daily basis. In the first scene of the film, our eponymous protagonist and narrator tells us that being named after a cow was unfortunate since he is, "A big kid." Cut to greasy-haired, fat Angus being harassed at a birthday party by Rick Stanford - the perfect, blonde überkind, and Angus' nemesis - who taunts him with, "Angus is so hungry he eats his boogers."

The plot is predictable. Angus, still fat, but brainy and sensitive endures childhood only to be thrown into high school, which to him is like being thrown into a tank of piranhas. Head piranha and star quarterback, Rick, continues to torment Angus, and his nerdy, flop-eared pal, Troy. He and his gang of jock thugs demean Angus' football playing, goad him into fights and even run his enormous boxer shorts up the flagpole. But their favorite prank is to get Angus voted in as Winter Ball King, consort to Queen Melissa Lefevre.

If Rick and company assume he is too emotionally defeated to attempt to attend the dance, they're wrong. With the support of hormonally impaired Troy, Angus' truck-driving mother, played by Kathy Bates, and his grandfather, a crusty George C. Scott, Angus prepares simultaneously for both the dance and a long-awaited academic interview to escape into a magnate school for science geeks.

Although the film is filled with nice performances, particularly by newcomer Charlie Talbert as misfit Angus, it is ultimately rendered superfluous in the same way as was "Dangerous Minds," the Michelle Pfeiffer re-make of every school-teacher-movie-ever-made. You've already seen it.

Substituting a modern soundtrack (described in the promotional material as "high-profile") featuring Green Day, Weezer and a plethora of grunge popsters, for a decently innovative plot does not a good movie make. There is no shame in retelling old stories, that's the stuff of literature. However, to re-hash without added insight is shoddy filmmaking.

There were many moments in "Angus," that were exaggerated for laughs when humor seemed inappropriate. Being fat and bullied in high school isn't a laugh riot despite what years of numbing TV sitcoms would have one believe. I wanted the film to treat the subject of adolescence either more seriously, like the brutal but sensitive film, "Dogfight," or to veer off in the direction of Brian DePalma's "Carrie," and have Angus kill the entire taunting student body in a bloody climax. As it is, he faces the dance nobly and even gets a kiss on the cheek from his dream girl. He describes the evening in a voice over as one great moment in his life - one that he doesn't yet suspect will lead to a lifetime of serial monogamy in unsatisfying relationships with bulimic, blonde princess types.

British novelist Fay Weldon says, "People are very frightened in the States and, increasingly, here [in England], of being presented with any ideas that they don't already have." So maybe we shouldn't be looking to the producer of "Flashdance," "Footloose" and "Top Gun," for new film ideas, but merely for new soundtrack albums.

Appeared in "Weekly Alibi" September 20, 1995 © Suzanne Rush 2001

To Michelle With Love
Dangerous Minds

Truancy; insubordination; Illiteracy, and a thorough lack of discipline: Those are just some of the difficulties encountered by first-time high school teacher Glen Ford in the 1954 film, "Blackboard Jungle." That violent story about an idealistic instructor who enters a rough school and overcomes near-insurmountable difficulties to succeed finally in reaching the hopeless students (like the young Sidney Poitier), shocked the nation and gave it it's first honest vision of inner-city schools.

By 1967 we got to see a now-thirtyish Poitier back in the classroom - this time as the teacher, in "To Sir With Love," Poitier enters a tough East end London school as a first-time instructor and faces, indifferent, insubordinate, near-illiterate students. They need a thorough disciplining, which he proceeds to give them, winning their hearts and minds in the process.

Now, almost thirty years later, we have "Dangerous Minds." From the first moments of the gritty black and white title sequence, showing kids on their way to school in the 'hood, clearly we're in familiar film territory.

In this mostly charming, latest version of the perpetual saga, we finally have a woman in the role of the embattled educator. LouAnne Johnson, as played by Michelle Pfeiffer, is one of many women used to earning 68 cents to every man's dollar, who make up the majority of teachers in the public education system. A first-time English teacher and ex-marine, LouAnne is hired to instruct a class of bright, but troubled kids. During her first encounter they are unsurprisingly indifferent, insubordinate, and uninterested in the outmoded and irrelevant curriculum she is required to teach.

Discouraged by the hostile, unruly students, a demure LouAnne walks out of the class in frustration. But by the next day she's decided that this school could use a few good teachers, so she dons leather jacket and cowboy boots and launches a tough-love attack on the sensibilities of these abused kids.

In this true story, based on LouAnne Johnson's teaching memoir, the life and death choices faced by the students, make the violence of earlier school movies look like the kooky antics of sitcom Sweathogs. These '90s teens -- played by a talented mix of semi-professional actors -- live in a bleak world where the ridiculous bureaucracy of the high school to which they're bussed can't save them from drugs, gang warfare, teen pregnancy and poverty.

Undaunted, LouAnne, on her paltry salary, buys her own supplies when the school doesn't have a Xerox machine. She drives to her student's houses to talk to their parents, takes them to amusement parks and rewards them with expensive dinners. She vainly fights her way through the rubble left by our last Republican "education president," and tries to get the anal-retentive principal (whom I half hoped would be played by Sidney Poitier) to meet her students' needs. She has the time to do all of this because she is thankfully spared the albatross of the obligatory Hollywood romance.

What is not spared unfortunately, is the kind of superficiality that also flawed earlier versions of this tale. Racial tensions -- between students and between the blonde LouAnne and her all-African American and Latino class - are barely addressed. Drugs, prevalent in today's schools, are referred to but never shown. Even the requisite on-screen violence is confined to a fist-fight.

But the acting is first rate. Michelle Pfeiffer, with her pink-rimmed, blue eyes, always on the verge of spilling over with some emotion, is a joy to watch as the enthusiastic Johnson. Simultaneously strong, sensitive and a full-on Babe, she is easily believable as the teacher who won the hearts of her students.

"Dangerous Minds," Directed by Canadian John N. Smith, best known for the harrowing, "Boys of St. Vincent," handles what could have been a cloying and clichéd plot line with freshness and sensitivity. There is a glow of elegance, around this movie that helps to lend the power of myth to the latest re-telling of this fable.

Let's face it, this isn't the last time this tale will be told. As long as people continue to go to school this story will have its appeal - but not every version of the story will be this appealing.

Appeared in "Weekly Alibi" August 16, 1995 © Suzanne Rush 2001