Movie – XXY (2007)

XXY was Argentina’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2008, although it didn’t make it to the final nominations.  It did win its home country’s Silver Condor (Best Picture), as well as Spain’s Goya (Best Foreign Film), and a host of other countries’ and festivals' Best Picture awards.  I say all of this because I had never heard of this film until it showed up as a “new to DVD” movie in Netflix.  Luckily I decided to watch it and discovered a great performance from a young actress named Ines Efron.

Movie – St. Trinian’s (2007)

When I first watched this film I didn’t realize what a British institution the St. Trinian’s stories were.  As an American I had never heard of them.  I found out afterwards that a set of cartoons of the misbehaving St. Trinian’s girls were widely circulated in the 1940s.  These were followed by a series of popular movies in the 1950s and 1960s, and even a revival in 1980.  Finding this out helped explain to me how this little comedy, starring at the time relatively unknown actresses, could attract such a notable cast of adults in supporting roles.

Movie – Hairspray (2007)

The 2007 film Hairspray is not a direct remake of the original 1988 John Waters movie of the same name.  It is actually a film adaptation of the Tony Award winning Broadway musical, which was itself a musical adaptation of the non-musical 1988 movie.  I have not seen the original film, but a friend who was a big fan of it also watched this version of Hairspray and found that he liked it even more than the original.  I feel that Hairspray is a lot of fun and one of the best musicals of the 2000s.

Movie – Transamerica (2005)

The title “Transamerica” has multiple meanings.  The literal meaning is accurate in that it is a road movie where two people drive across the country, learning about each other as they go.  It’s also a play on words because one of those people is a pre-op transsexual and the other doesn’t know that.  Nor does he know that this woman he is with in this comedy/drama is actually his biological father.  I’ll explain.

Movie – The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

I can’t remember how or why I rented this film back in the mid 1990s.  Maybe the cover looked interesting or maybe the description sounded like it would have some good laughs in it.  In either case I ended up getting a lot more than I bargained for when I watched this film.  While it does have comedy in it, it also has some drama.  While it does have a couple of flamboyant characters, its heart is really the more reserved, worn down by life character.  The result is that I found that the movie simultaneously has some depth to it, while at the same time it still knows how to have fun.

Movie – The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

The title “The Year of Living Dangerously” refers to the time period and location that the movie takes place in.  It is 1965 in Indonesia – the year that the dictator Sukarno faced a coup d’etat.  He crushed any opposition, and even worked to drive out any foreigner who was caught in the country.  Imagine, then, the peril that foreign journalists were in trying to cover these events for their home countries.  This concept was an influential one and several other films about reporters in war zones soon followed (i.e. The Killing Fields, Salvador, etc.)

Playing the Other Gender

“Girls will be boys and boys will be girls/ It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world/ except for Lola.” – Lola, The Kinks

You can probably think of a couple dozen movies where a character masqueraded as the opposite sex – Yentl, Tootsie, Just One of the Guys, Shakespeare in Love, etc.  This category isn’t about those kinds of “playing the other gender” movies.  In those cases the character was the same gender as the actor/actress, and their character was pretending to be the other gender.

No, this category is for those rare movies where an actor/actress played a character who was actually a different gender.  An example is the first movie I will review – 1982’s The Year of Living Dangerously.  Actress Linda Hunt played a Eurasian man…and won an Oscar for it.  She is the only actor/actress in this category to do so, although in my opinion there is another who also deserved an Oscar, as you will see when I get to that movie’s review.

As I post the reviews, I will come back and add links here for those posts:

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
Transamerica (2005)
Hairspray (2007)
St. Trinian's (2007)
XXY (2007)

On to the reviews…