Although publicity for Guess Who, directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan, hypes the film as a comedy based on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967), the movie is instead an imperfect copy of Meet the Parents (2000). Simon Green (played by a nervous Ashton Kutcher), a stockbroker on Wall Street, is in love with Theresa Jones (played by Zoë Saldaña), who […]

Head-On (Gegen die Wand), directed and written by Fatih Akin, is primarily a story about the transformation of Cahit Tomruk (played by Birol Ünel), a Turk whose family went to Hamburg in search of a better life. He is a German citizen without a family who, at about the age of forty, has been living

Four Brothers, directed by John Singleton, is a fast-paced action film set in Detroit (though also filmed in Canada) that is a loose retake of The Sons of Katie Elder (1965). At the beginning of the film, two robbers enter a convenience store one evening, gun down the sole cashier and shoot saintly Evelyn Mercer (played by

Garçon Stupide (Stupid Boy), directed by Lionel Baier, is a coming-of-age tale about a handsome but rather skinny, anorexic twenty-year-old boy, Loïc (played by Pierre Chatangy), who was born in Brittany, now lives in Switzerland, works listlessly in a chocolate factory, sells his body on evening chatrooms and streetcorners, and socializes with Marie (played by

Fixing Frank, directed by Michael Selditch, is based on a stageplay by Ken Hanes in which Frank Johnston (played by Andrew Elvis Miller) gets in the middle of a conflict between two psychologists, Dr. Arthur Apsey (played by Dan Butler) and Dr. Jonathan Baldwin (played by Paul Provenza). The conflict is portrayed as a debate

Fighting Tommy Riley, directed by Eddie O’Flaherty, is mostly about Marty Goldberg (played by Eddie Jones), the closeted elderly gay trainer of an up-and-coming straight boxer, Tommy Riley (played by J.P. Davis, who authored the screenplay). In the early part of the film, the plot seems ordinary, perhaps a clone of Million Dollar Baby (2004). One day,

Ethan Mao, directed by Quentin Lee, is a story within a story about how a traditional Chinese parent rejects his gay son. When the film begins, eighteen-year-old Ethan Mao (played by Jun Hee Lee) is aware that he is gay, but his father is overly strict with him, his narcissistic stepmother Sarah (played by Julia

Eating Out, directed by Q. Allan Brocka, is an independent film which pursues the premise that some straight girls (“fag hags”) are friendlier with gays than with straight boys. When the movie begins, hunky University of Arizona political science major Caleb (played by Scott Lunsford) acts out a fantasy of self-possessed sex kitten Tiffani (played

Fear X, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, focuses on Harry Caine (played by John Turturro), a security guard at a Wisconsin mall whose wife is shot dead one day in the parking lot of the mall for no apparent reason. Caine then becomes so obsessed with finding out why she was shot that his work

Dorian Blues, directed by Tennyson Bardwell, is a coming-of-age story about a teenager named Dorian Lagatos (played by Michael McMillan) who concludes one day in the early 1990s that he is gay. The director-writer writes about someone he personally knows, and the story is realistic as a result, though unremarkable. When the movie begins, he