Shortbus (Unrated Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Shortbus (Unrated Edition)
Movie Review: a different approach to sex
Summary: 5 Stars
When the young gentleman at the video store told me it had the most graphic sex he'd seen second only to XXX, I almost didn't rent Shortbus. XXX gets really boring. From experience, I can tell you it is more interesting to sleep with the people who make XXX than to watch their work. As I kept running across references to Shortbus in my reading, I took a chance. It is rare in how direct it is about what it has to say, and so brutally honest in what it is portrayed. Movies of this genre are often just so over the top to be tedious. The average viewer-if there is such a thing-will indeed see that finding different approaches to sex is that important in some people's lives. It makes it painfully clear that the prices to be paid for such knowledge aren't for the faint of heart. Movie Review: The magic "bus"
Summary: 5 Stars
This term is so cliched, but to this film, it really applies: I've never seen anything quite like this movie.
"Shortbus" is a unique film that is about sex, yet more about everything else in our lives which connects to it. Writer-director John Cameron Mitchell did a beautiful job of guiding this tapestry of sexual pathos. Like porn, you see people engaging in sex; yet, it is more "humanly" tangible because we feel the genuine emotions coming from each sex act, not just "acting" or rather, mechanical sex.
How this film was assmbled is almost as interesting as the film itself: Actors helped craft the script as well as their own characters with Mitchell.
"Shortbus" is a sex club in New York; sort of a bohemian-like atmosphere in which, as one character describes, "people come here to use 'the motherboard of life' in order to find the right connections". Here, people from all walks of life gather to find something---whether through sex or deep conversation.
As the film progresses, we watch these characters intersect with one another, and help, solve, or simply listen to each other's life dysfunctions. Whether the characters are straight, gay, bi-sexual or transgendered, the labels do not matter---they are just people trying to relate to one another through the wonders of sex and love.
If you feel you'll be overwhelmed by the frank content, then don't watch. But I think you'll be compelled to by the sadness, honesty & compassion of the interweaving plots.
Movie Review: Throwing light on topics not often discussed, at least in American movies
Summary: 4 Stars
If Robert Altman had ever taken on the subject of sex in America in one of his big, sprawling, multi-character epics, the result would probably have looked a lot like John Cameron Mitchell's outrageous yet moving "Shortbus". You get all the things Altman gave us in films like "Nashville" and "Short Cuts": lots of characters, lots of situations, a lot of sadness, but a lot of hope, too. Of course, here you also get lots of sex, in a very graphic manner and in all its various permutations. If you can take that, and if you don't mind a film that doesn't offer easy answers to its many characters' many predicaments, I think you'll enjoy this movie, or at least find it fascinating.
By the way, if some of the sex scenes overwhelm you, be sure to watch the special features. You'll be reassured to see that the challenge of those scenes overwhelmed, at least temporarily, many of the actors called on to perform them. For some reason, it was good to see that hip young people up for being in an edgy, sexy movie could nevertheless feel a little shy when it came to actually doing certain things in front of the camera. Maybe because seeing such trepidation on the part of the actors made the sexual problems of their characters, many of which involved shyness and discomfort, feel all the more believeable.
Movie Review: I loved Hedwig. I tried hard to like Shortbus.
Summary: 2 Stars
John Cameron Mitchell's first movie, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, is one of the most original, interesting, and entertaining movies I've ever seen, so I expected to like Shortbus, his second movie. It pains me to say that I don't. I wanted to, I tried hard to, but I don't. Maybe because of Hedwig my expectations were too high.
I just don't understand Shortbus at all. I never understood Hedwig either, although I saw it six or seven times live in New York and dozens of times on film and DVD, but not understanding Hedwig didn't keep me from loving it. Maybe if I'd ever really understood Hedwig I might understand and appreciate Shortbus too. I didn't, so I don't know. Paraphrasing Hedwig, I don't have much to work with.
Somewhere in the Shortbus DVD extras, Mitchell said he wanted to do with sex in Shortbus what he did with music in Hedwig. That implies that the two movies might be fundamentally similar but using different media: music in Hedwig, sex in Shortbus. Okay.
So, since I don't understand either movie, the difference for me comes down to the difference in media. The problem is that Stephen Trask's music for Hedwig was brilliant, moving, and exhilarating, but the sex in Shortbus is just boring. Mechanical, uninspired and uninspiring, tedious. Like watching robots have sex. Maybe that's how Mitchell meant it to be, maybe he's trying to make some point that I just don't get, but the bottom line for me is it just doesn't make a good movie.
I have to say, though, there is one very, very good five-minute scene in Shortbus. It's when the characters played by Paul Dawson and Lindsay Beamish are locked together in a closet during a game of Truth or Dare. That scene is sweet, moving, perfectly constructed and paced and infinitely accessible. I can watch it over and over and over and never get tired of it at all. If the whole movie had been half as good as that scene is, I'd be raving about it and wanting more than five stars to give it, but it's not.
Also on the positive side, Jay Brannan is luminous in his few scenes (and in the DVD outtake called "Are you sure you don't want to **** me?"). Unfortunately, his best scenes in the movie are shared with the unwatchably creepy, lizard-like mayor played by Alan Mandell (and it's not because he's old).
And talk about creepy, I don't understand what anybody sees in Justin Bond. He may be a delightful person when he's at home, but listening to his whiny, grating voice drawl out that awful, interminable musical number "In the End," which bloats out the last four hours (it seems like) of the movie, that's like water torture!
So, even though I'm seriously disappointed in Shortbus, I'm giving it two stars: one for Dawson, Beamish, and Brannan; and the other for Hedwig, who may be lurking somewhere in Shortbus and I just haven't found her yet. I intend to keep looking.
Movie Review: This film is....um....penetrating!
Summary: 5 Stars
This film was like being dosed and getting lost back stage at an Elton John concert. Whether you think it a bad trip or good depends on your own sexual set of pathos. However, any non-porno film that showcases self-fellatio replete with facial, shoooo.....got my vote. If only I could do that, I wouldn't be writing this right now....hells, YEAH!!PILATE: A Brutal Bible Tale