Friday Night Movies

On Friday night I went to the “Out Film Festival” and as usual there were some great movies and some that left you going “Hun?” They had three shorts and one feature film.

The first film was only 13 minutes long and it was about a trans-woman who was stealth to her lesbian friends. When she gets a phone call from a relative about her father dying and her friends over hear the call, they tell her to go home and they will never know that she is lesbian. She says, “I can’t they are expecting a son!” The rest of the movie deals with how her friends deal with her admission. It  was a very good movie dealing with a very touchy topic, should we come out to our friends? Do you have to tell everyone your medical history? Do you tell everyone when you meet them… “Oh by the way, I’m trans.”? Do you wait until there is a serious relationship? Or do you say anything at all? How would you answer those questions if instead of being trans, it was breast enhancement surgery or plastic surgery of some type. For me, I don’t think we can make any judgments on when a person should tell or if. It is a very personal decision and there is no right or wrong answer.

The next short, Fresh Air Therapy 2 (16 minutes) left me going “Hun, what was the point of the movie” it totally made absolutely made no sense to me. It was something about two women in some type of therapy.

The next short, The Bus Pass (3 minutes) was also really good. According to the write up…

A woman sees the girl of her dreams on the train home from work. Will she dare take the plunge and ask for her number?

The last short, “52” (5 minutes) was also good; it was about a man’s nightmare. It also had me going “Hun?” but at the very end it tied everything all together and had me laughing at the end.

The feature film was Cloudburst (95 minutes) and the write for the film festival said,

Starring Oscar®-winning stage and screen icon Olympia Dukakis as a foul-mouthed, tough-talking butch lesbian, and Oscar®-winning Brenda Fricker as her devoted life partner, this is a Thelma & Louise-type story with a gay-wedding twist.  Dukakis gives a tour de force performance as Dot, who attempts to run off with Stella, her partner of 31 years, after Stella's granddaughter tricks her into moving into a nursing home.  Dot springs Stella from the nursing home and they head to Canada to get married in this new, romantic road movie written and directed by Thom Fitzgerald (The Hanging Garden).  Along the way they pick up a hot and often shirtless hitchhiker, who would give Brad Pitt a run for his money, encounter a naked psychopath and endure a Canadian strip-search.  Cloudburst is a wonderful, adventure-filled, one-of-a-kind film that will appeal to all audiences.

Olympia Dukakis gave an excellent performance and she had a great supporting cast. By the end of the movie I was in tears, I give it 4 out of 5 tears. It had many funny scenes like when Dot breaks out Stella from the nursing home and some highly charged moments like when Dot and Stella were trapped on a tidal island with the tide coming in fast. One word of caution, the movie has full frontal nudity.