Love, Simon (2018)

Director: Greg Berlanti

Stars: Nick Robinson, Jennifer Garner, Josh Duhamel...

Genres: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Country: USA

Summary: Simon Spier keeps a huge secret from his family, his friends and all of his classmates: he's gay. When that secret is threatened, Simon must face everyone and come to terms with his identity.

As I'm thinking about all the movies I've seen in the past years in order to review them all by memory, I thought this movie was a couple years older, like 2017 but now I see it's from 2018... Guess it didn't leave that much of an impression on me then, huh.

I am one of the people who read the book first. And I read it so long ago that I barely even remember anything about it except for the characters' fascination with Oreo cookies (if I remember correctly, that was a thing right?). I am not a big fan of YA literature. I used to like it a lot before when I was younger, but I guess I just outgrew it. The story was cute and it's always so nice to see a positive LGBT movie, focusing on happy endings etc. So it's great that exactly this kind of movie was picked up by a major Hollywood studio. It's one of the most popular LGBT movies now. So many people have heard about this and I think a lot of the kids will really love this movie as it brings hope to a lot of them and it makes people feel good after watching, it has that heartwarming feel to it.

Still, I have to say that I felt it (both the book and the movie) to be a bit too sugarcoated for my taste. I know, I know, I'm hard to please. I don't like sad and tragic LGBT movies that deal with real problems and now I also say this is sugarcoated, but listen - this is not exactly a criticism per se. A lot of people like these kind of movies, including me too, but I don't know for some reason I just couldn't identify with this film. I consider myself a Millennial and I think I'm a bit more old-school about movies, music and aesthetic. Somehow I feel that mostly Gen Z kids will identify with this movie and its aesthetic more - from the fashion, relationship between characters, the way of life. Maybe it's just typical Hollywood aesthetic. In that case I wasn't used to Hollywood aesthetic being applied to LGBT movies.

Anyhow, it's not bad. It's a cute movie, but it was so hyped that I might have expected something more. I've seen better gay movies than this one. Still, I definitely support positive films like this and I hope more gay movies get promoted to the big market for more people to know about them.

Moonlight (2016)

Director: Barry Jenkins

 

Stars: Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Trevante Rhodes...

Genre: Drama

Country: USA

Summary: A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.

I've finally watched this movie. I guess you've probably heard of it by now and most of you probably watched it. Rotten Tomatoes puts it on 1st place in their list of 200 Best LGBT Movies of All Time. I disagree with Rotten Tomatoes. My list is a little bit different, but I still think this was a good movie. Tough one, but good. And when I say tough, boy do I mean it! First 80% of the movie gave me such anxiety. A little boy and then a teenager growing up in harsh environment - poverty, his mum doing drugs and neglecting him, other boys bullying him, being gay... The film is divided in three parts: first is the childhood, then the teenage years and the adulthood. From early on in his life he found a friend that later became a crush. His crush betrayed him and treat him sooo badly at one point that the main character's whole life just slid downwards from that point onward.

Chiron eventually became an adult, toughened up and tried to forget about his earlier life, but then unexpectedly he receives a call from his childhood crush who, in my own interpretation, only half-heartedly apologizes to him and wants to meet up. I had such a bad feeling about it as I was expecting Chiron, being a fool in love, to be taken advantage of again and that some tragedy is going to happen, but the movie actually has a somewhat happy ending, if you can call it like that.

I know for certain that I would never forgive Kevin for what he did (that's probably my Mars conjunct Pluto in Scorpio talking). Seriously, if that's love - I don't need that sh*t! I think the strong part of this movie is the subtle nuances that we, as audience, can notice in Chiron - that, even though he's physically sooo different in his adulthood than he was in his childhood, psychologically he hasn't changed a bit. He's still such a vulnerable, sensitive person and life is still tough for most of them. I wish we had seen Juan and his girlfriend meeting with Chiron after all those years as they've helped young Chiron when he needed a place to stay and such things. That would also be a great closure, but this happy ending we got is still better than nothing.