The VCH at the Movies

  Last night we watched The Skeleton Key starring Kate Hudson.  I don't expect movies to scare me, with the possible exception being if they have zombies in them, but this one was even worse than I expected.  I won't give away any of the "surprises" but I will say that there is plenty of predictability and laugh-inducing horror, including the classic 'false scare' jump moment. It definitely passed my test: If it's a horror movie rated PG-13, then it sucks. This movie only had three redeemable qualities for me: 

-Kate Hudson in a tank top.

-Kate Hudson sleeping in her underwear.

-Kate Hudson showing a partial left breast in the classic horror 'pointless shower scene'.

1 star 

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 Then this afternoon, my sister and I went to see Brokeback Mountain.  I shouldn't be surprised at how much media attention this film has been getting given its subject matter... 

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...but I can honestly say that it never once crossed my mind about how 'it would look' if I went to see this movie.  Well, except for a couple of weeks ago when my brother joked that he would only go if he could hold my hand.  Then he went without me! 

  Anyway, maybe I'm desensitized from years of watching David and Keith on Six Feet Under, but the gayness factor hardly plays into the movie at all.  It is first and foremost, a tragic love story.  It is about an affair that does what any affair does- it tears lives apart.  That the couple having the affair is two men only adds a layer of complexity to the whole situation. 

  Everyone by now knows what happens to the two dudes up on Brokeback Mountain, but what I was not expecting was how the movie follows them off the mountain and into the next twenty years of their lives.  The world they live in would in no way accept the feelings that they have for one another and in some ways they themselves can't even accept it.  They are forced to become lonely and domesticated and ultimately bitter. 

  The movie also spreads out to make us feel sorry for everyone.  The two men who can't be together and are forced to sneak away on fishing trips, which become the only thing they really live for.  The wife who knows what's going on, yet has to put on a brave face because she needs a husband to survive.  Even the children, who are barely fleshed out as characters, get some sympathetic scenes.

  So to anyone who doesn't want to see this movie because of politics or homophobia, I say it's your loss.  Seeing a movie about gay people doesn't make you gay. 

3.5 stars

 

 

  Did I mention that you can see Kate Hudson's breast in The Skeleton Key?