Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Movie watching is out-stripping movie reviewing, even movie remembering. The only solution is a list, before everything dissolves away. Ida (2013) is about a Polish novitiate who discovers from her only living relative that she is Jewish. The film is directed by Pawel Pawlikowski and stars Agata Trzebuchowska as Anna/Ida, and Agata Kulesza as Wanda, her free-living, depressed aunt. Beautiful cinematography. Absorbing narrative, except for the rather facile ending. In Cloudburst (2011), two old lesbians escape to Canada to get married. They pick up a young male drifter and teach him a few valuable life lessons. Written and directed by Thom Fitzgerald, the movie stars Olympia Dukakis as Stella and Brenda Fricker as Dot. Ryan Doucette is the young hitchhiker with the symbolic name of Prentice. Heartwarming and convincing. Guy and I watched Love Is Strange (2014) at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. After Ben and George got married, George is fired from his teaching job. Both have t...

Attended the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards last night and presented the gay and lesbian poetry awards with J. Bob Alotta. GH, who egged me to accept Don Weise's invite to be a presenter, was there too. The lesbian poetry award went to Love Cake , by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and the gay award to A Fast Life: the Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos , edited by David Trinidad. I was too nervous, really, to enjoy the reception before the ceremony, though I was glad that GH had the chance to talk to Armistead Maupin, the recipient of this year's Pioneer Award, and to Olympia Dukakis, who was presenting the award to the author of the Tales of the City series. GH kept urging me to talk to people but since I was doing this event with half a heart, I was uneasy with myself and resentful of him. He was so good at talking to the celebrities and thought up great lines for me to use during my presentation. I resisted him throughout, thinking and thinking that we are such diff...

The film's ostensible subject is Alzheimer's disease, but its real theme is that of the marital bond tested by different kinds of infidelity. Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent are powerful, but Olympia Dukakis stole my heart through her utterly convincing portrayal of a disillusioned wife whose husband falls in love with Christie's character in the nursing home. The film redeems the suffering of Christie's and Pinsent's characters with a vision of love. But what about the wife who confesses that the only reason she stays with her mentally ill husband is to hold on to the house?