jm10701

I have two big problems with this movie.

First, the only relationship I believed in was the one between Nate and Trent. There was real, palpable sexual and emotional attraction between those two, but there was none anywhere else in the movie. I didn't believe in Steven's relationship with Ray; every time he called him "Babe" I gave an involuntary shudder that he would say something like that to a stranger. Even worse, I didn't believe in anything at all between him and Nate, even conventional sibling affection, and the whole movie hangs on that supposedly overwhelming passion.

Second, the movie is based on a strange assumption that there's something so profoundly bad about sex between brothers that they have to sacrifice everything that matters to hide it and do everything they can to kill it. I never have understood that taboo. It's not like they'd have deformed babies. It's an absurd prohibition. But I suppose even now they wouldn't be able to get married, and since vicious lunatics have taken over the US government, that's not likely to get better anytime soon.

So I guess what I'm saying is that the actor who played Steven was badly miscast (he wasn't able to create any believable relationships on screen) and that the premise of the movie is absurd.

However, unlike many other reviewers, I loved the ending, for reasons that may be obvious from what I said earlier.

Do yourself a favor and see Maurice, the exquisite 1987 Merchant-Ivory movie about a gentleman in love with a gardener, instead of this excruciatingly, appallingly bad ripoff.

Maurice is one of the most beautiful and emotionally satisfying movies ever made. Everything about it--every detail, every word spoken, every performance by every actor (even Hugh Grant)--is absolute perfection, and the ending is both surprising and glorious.

This short movie is an obvious ripoff of Maurice, but it's as uniformly bad as Maurice is perfect. The intense pity I feel for its makers, for the time, effort and sincere commitment they obviously invested in it, hurts. I wish I hadn't seen it, but if it motivates even one person to see Maurice, it was worth making. Otherwise, no.

Peridot is about a young street hustler in Los Angeles who develops a platonic relationship with a successful, middle-aged female writer. It isn't the worst movie I've ever seen, but the lavish praise in gushing, maximum-star online reviews cannot have come from unbiased viewers. They're all about the same length and all sound like they were written by the same person.

Everything about this movie is mediocre, and since Shayne Pax wrote, directed, produced and starred in it, he gets the credit for its mediocrity.

The story is contrived and unbelievable, the direction and cinematography are awkward, and Pax's acting--pretty much limited to soulful looks--is boring. I got really tired of looking at his big soulful blue eyes, which seemed to get freakishly bigger as the movie progressed. The other actors are a little better than he is, but they get much less screen time, and they're not enough better to lift its rating above two stars.