Top 5 DVDs – December
Cloudburst
Oscar winners Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker star as a longtime lesbian couple going on the run to find the freedom to live their lives together, this film has earned rave reviews and had a crossover appeal with audiences everywhere – lesbian, gay and straight. Stella (Dukakis) and Dot (Fricker) have been together for 31 years, faithfully accompanying one another through life’s ups and downs. Now in their seventies, they are beginning to lose some of their faculties, but this doesn’t affect the love they feel for each other. When Dot’s granddaughter Molly (Kristin Booth) decides to put Dot, who is legally blind, into a nursing home, the frustrated Stella must take matters into her own hands to ensure that she and Dot can stay together. Armed with a battered old truck and the ambition to protect their relationship by getting married in Canada, Stella and Dot become outlaws, embarking on a journey from Maine to Nova Scotia. Along the way they pickup young hitchhiker Prentice (Ryan Doucette), a small-town boy turned ”interpretive dancer”, making his own voyage home to visit his dying mother.
Behind the Candelabra
A name synonymous with showmanship and extravagance, Liberace was a world-renowned performer who enjoyed a 40-year career. Liberace (Michael Douglas) lived lavishly and embraced a lifestyle of excess both on and off stage. In the summer of 1977, handsome young Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) walked into his dressing room and, despite their age difference, the two embarked on a secretive five-year love affair. This Emmy Award-winning (for best movie, lead actor Michael Douglas, and director Steven Soderbergh) HBO TV film takes a behind-the-scenes look at their tempestuous relationship from their first meeting to their sensational and very public break-up. The two leads give sensitive and courageous performances, and are brilliantly supported by Debbie Reynolds, Rob Lowe, Scott Bakula and Dan Ackroyd. This is a film which manages to be both funny and moving, as one see’s the flamboyant Liberace’s manipulation, neediness and vanity (with a particular highpoint being when Scott agrees to undergo extensive plastic surgery to turn him into a younger version of “Lee,” as the pianist’s friends call him,) while still also capturing the poignancy of his loneliness, and their final reconciliation after their bitter falling out.
Yossi
Returning to the role that won him many fans in Eytan Fox’s ‘Yossi & Jagger’ in 2003, Ohad Knoller is extraordinary as Yossi, a closeted gay man living a solitary existence in Tel Aviv. A chance encounter with a group of soldiers ignites Yossi’s desire to live an open, fulfilling life. Directed with uncommon honesty and compassion by Fox, this is a deeply moving film about the power of second chances.
The Men Next Door
This is a charming romantic comedy about finding love a little too close to home. As he reluctantly celebrates his 40th birthday, Doug finds himself falling for two very different, yet equally lovable, men – 50-year-old Jacob who came out late in life, and Colton, an adventurous 30-year-old who literally is the boy next door. But what he doesn’t know is that the two men are, in fact, father and son! Everything comes to a head when all three show up at the same cabin for the weekend – creating some hilariously awkward farce and fun.
Gayby
Jenn and Matt are best friends from college who are now in their thirties. Single by choice, Jenn spends her days teaching hot yoga and running errands for her boss. Matt suffers from comic-book writer’s block and can’t get over his ex-boyfriend. They decide to fulfill a promise to have a child together… the old fashioned way. Can they navigate the serious and unexpected snags they hit as they attempt to get their careers and dating lives back on track in preparation for parenthood? Gayby is an irreverent comedy about friendship, sex, loneliness, and the family you choose.
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