J K

Clever from start to finish, a glittering and very funny screwball comedy!

Some excellent acting helps make up for a inadequately explained story of how HIV and AIDS impacted a segment of the gay community in London in the 1980s. Unless you know the backstory of how this disease was vanquished by the effective drug treatments that came out in 1995, you’re not going to get that information here. The homophobic title plays into the fundamentalist religious view that AIDS was some sort of punishment for gay sex, without mentioning that if this was the case, then why were Lesbians totally unaffected by the disease? (Or the fact that in Africa, among people of color, it was an almost exclusively heterosexual disease). After all, in the conservative mindset, the sexual activity of Lesbians was immoral, too. Also, the producer, as he did decades ago with his “Queer As Folk” series, loves to portray the cold heartlessness and blatant bigotry of heterosexuals, especially parents, who swooped in to care for their ill children, only to then seek to obliterate their memories once they died. As a gay man who grew to adulthood in the 1980s, this was not the lived experience I observed of the several unfortunate friends I knew who died of the disease before the wonder drugs came out. I saw much compassion and resistance to the hate by many people in that period, even in the backwards Southern USA where I lived then. There were many straight allies. So overall, not a balanced picture of the time, much as Queer As Folk was not either.

So funny and clever! A real winner.

Flawless from start to finish, I return to this film when I want to see the indomitableness of the human spirit. This beauty story tells of the previously unsung African-American women striving for excellent in spite of the odds. Their success gives hope to anyone who has ever been underestimated, especially for discriminatory reasons. 5 stars!

I agree with “Tiger King”. My spouse is watching it but I refused (tho I seen chunks of it inadvertently and was totally underwealmed). I don’t want to watch trashy people doing bad things, thank you very much (nor hear the “GDs” or 4 letter words either). But I get it. We have a narcissistic bigot in the White House and a pandemic raging, so things are pretty dark right now. But they will improve. Better to focus your minds on more positive fare while staying home and staying safe. NBC (remember FREE TV?) had a Parks and Rec reunion show that was really funny! Or if it has to be pay TV, try the excellent “Home Before Dark”, on Apple TV (yes Virginia, there are alternatives to the overrated Netflix). It’s an entertaining mystery with a engaging cast (shout out to Brooklynn Prince, the bright child who leads the cast) that also has a moral compass. And people to root for. And no filthy mouth creeps. 5 stars to “Home Before Dark” and 1 star (at best) to “Ozark”.