The movies of 2011 seen through 3-DLGBT glasses - 5587 - Gay Lesbian Bi Trans News

With the Best Actress race extremely competitive this year, Glenn Close is attempting an end run by going for the Best Actor prize instead. By playing a man—or rather a woman who's lived most of her life as a man—in Albert Nobbs, she avoids having to compete for Best Actress with Adam Sandler, who plays his own twin sister in Jack and Jill, as well as Meryl Streep, Tilda Swinton, Viola Davis and Michelle Williams.

Not really, but it's getting harder to tell the girls from the boys. Close and Janet McTeer take their drag seriously in Albert Nobbs, while Sandler just wants to have fun, as do this year's other dudes in dresses: Martin Lawrence and Brandon T. Jackson in Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; New Orleans' gay Carnival Krewes in The Sons of Tennessee Williams; and over-the-top campy Robert Downey Jr., whose Sherlock is jealous over losing Watson (Jude Law) to a woman in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

And don't get me started on Leonardo DiCaprio's Norman Bates moment in drag in J. Edgar! Despite a screenplay by Dustin Lance Black (Milk), Hoover (DiCaprio) never quite comes out, even though he lives most of his life with Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), who is more open about his sexuality.

Two women who do have fun with drag are Jools and Linda Topp, whose story is told in The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls. The endearing lesbian country singers, whose sketch comedy lets them portray both genders, are among New Zealand's favorite entertainers.

Sometimes a person's gender is hard to pin down. We follow Chaz Bono's transition from female to male in two TV documentaries, Becoming Chaz and Being Chaz, while biological male Candy Darling, the Andy Warhol favorite profiled posthumously in Beautiful Darling, performed as a woman without benefit of surgery.

On the fictional side, a remarkable 10-year-old girl pretends to be a boy in the French drama Tomboy and transgender actress Harmony Santana plays the transitioning son of homophobic Esai Morales in Gun Hill Road. In The Hangover Part II, a transgender individual is used as a punchline in an attempt to top the first film, while Ken Jeong continues to play his flamboyant is-he-or-isn't-he? game.

Once again Focus Features, which has given us Milk, Brokeback Mountain, Taking Woodstock and The Kids Are All Right, was the LGBT-friendliest of the mainstream distributors in 2011, with Beginners for the boys and Pariah for the girls.

The former, filmmaker Mike Mills' story based on his father's coming out late in life, may win Christopher Plummer his first Academy Award. Dee Rees expanded Pariah, about a lesbian teenager coming out, from her like-named short that played the queer-festival circuit in 2007.

Speaking of gay septuagenarians, Richard Chamberlain plays it straight-ish in We Are the Hartmans, as a dying patriarch whose children are trying to sell his business, "the only gay-friendly bar in three counties."

As for lesbian teenagers, the problems faced by the one in Pariah are nothing compared to those of the two in Circumstance. Iranians really don't know how to treat a lady-loving lady.

Out actor Neil Patrick Harris has fun with his image in A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, playing a hilarious version of himself who pretends to be gay to score with chicks.

Surprisingly for its context, the best "It Gets Better" speech in this year's movies is given by Jonah Hill to his 13-year-old charge (Max Records) in The Sitter.

John Krasinski's character in Something Borrowed follows the formula for the heroine's (Ginnifer Goodwin) gay best friend, but with a twist—he's straight, even though he pretends to be gay at one point to shed an unwanted suitor.

In I Melt with You, four dudes, now 44, meet for their annual reunion. One of them (Christian McKay) is gay, but that's the least of his problems. The odds are as good for the siblings in Our Idiot Brother, where Zooey Deschanel, one of Paul Rudd's three sisters, may be bisexual but has a lesbian partner (Rashida Jones).

Last year's hottest bisexual, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is back, this time speaking English and played by Rooney Mara. Again, she has one scene with a woman before getting it on with the male protagonist.

Michael Fassbender in Shame prefers women, possibly including his sister (Carey Mulligan), but is such a sex addict he'll get it on with a man, in a three-way or—well, they're saving the farm animals for a sequel.

A pair of gay directors went a little bit bi in their latest films. Gregg Araki's Kaboom has everyone having sex in all kinds of combinations while awaiting the apocalypse. In Heartbeats, filmmaker/star Xavier Dolan competes with his straight female friend for the affections of the new hunk in town.

From England, Andrew Haigh's highly praised intimate romance Weekend has two opposite types (Tom Cullen, Chris New) falling in love—or not—on a deadline.

Besides Tomboy the French gave us Love Crime, a Hitchcockian mystery that opens with Kristen Scott Thomas flirting with Ludivine Sagnier and goes off in all sorts of sexual directions ... but it would be a shame to spoil the surprises. It's less of a spoiler to reveal that Jérémie Renier, Catherine Deneuve's artistic son in Potiche, turns out to be gay, especially when director Francois Ozon is, too.

Toast is a dramatization of the early years of gay British chef Nigel Slater, with Freddie Highmore playing him as a teenager.

On the documentary side, Pierre Bergé tells the story of his 50-year personal and professional partnership with Yves Saint-Laurent in L'Amour Fou.

One of the year's best documentaries, David Weissman's We Were Here recalls San Francisco at the height of the AIDS epidemic through the stories of five people who were in the middle of things.

The promised theatrical release never materialized after writer-director Kevin Smith toured with Red State, his horror film about a Fred Phelps-style pastor (Michael Parks) who takes extreme measures to wipe out homosexuals (and anyone else who's having any fun); however, it went to VOD and DVD, so it's not hard to find.

Likewise, just about every film on this list, many of which opened in only a handful of cities, will be available in other formats within a few months, if they're not already.

It was a gift to comics everywhere when Jodie Foster directed a movie called The Beaver, but it died a deserved death before anyone could come up with a punchline.

Blame it on the economy, but Death is a common thread in my top 10 favorite films of 2011. Oh, some are genre films, and you expect a body count in westerns (Rango) and crime movies (Drive, The Guard); but terminal illnesses drive the plots of The Descendants and 50/50, an accidental death sets Cedar Rapids in motion, and Poetry and Into the Abyss explore the justice (or lack of it) meted out to young men who caused deaths. The hero of Midnight in Paris travels back in time and sees people who are now dead, and The Artist is about the death of silent films and one actor's career.

Happy New Year! Note however that at least half those films are comedies, however dark.

This year will be remembered for the emergence of Jessica Chastain, who came out of nowhere to appear in five major films, often in leading roles. Her five performances are no match, however, for this year's three by Ryan Gosling, whose body of work, to paraphrase one of his films, looks like it's been Photoshopped.

The award for the worst way to follow an Oscar win goes to Natalie Portman, whose career took a Black Swan dive within weeks of the ceremony with Thor, Your Highness and No Strings Attached.

It's too soon to call it a trend (twice is a coincidence, three times a trend) but I wonder if we'll see more masturbatus interruptus scenes of family members walking in on bathroom monkey-spanking like in Shame and We Need to Talk about Kevin.

Missing from my list are arty films like The Tree of Life and Melancholia, which critics are supposed to pretend to like, while praying no one asks them to explain them; and Martin Scorsese's overblown, underconnected Hugo.

If that doesn't cement my lowbrow status, I consider 2011 notable for the low-budget sci-fi/horror films it gave us. Attack the Block, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil and TrollHunter brought back memories of Roger Corman's heyday, as did Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, which played a number of festivals but deserves a proper release. Another Earth is a classier marvel (though not as classy as Melancholia, with which it shares a key visual effect).

I can't say I was sorry to see the Harry Potter series over with, but I'll be happier next year to see Twilight end. After a promising beginning, it's gone steadily and rapidly downhill.

It was a year for May-December casting. By the time Glenn Close got to do her dream project, Albert Nobbs, she was half again the age of the character she was playing, which makes it creepy when "he" woos a woman half his age—or one third Close's age. Michelle Pfeiffer only had to knock off five years to tell Zac Efron, "I'm twice your age!" when he kissed her in New Year's Eve. And Johnny Depp is twice as old as the representation of Hunter S. Thompson he plays in The Rum Diary.

Although I consider it a weasely copout when someone else does it, I'm alphabetizing my Top Ten this year. There just isn't one that stands out for me as the year's best picture.

TOP TEN (alphabetical)

The Artist

Cedar Rapids

The Descendants

Drive

50/50

The Guard

Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life

Midnight in Paris

Poetry

Rango

HONORABLE MENTION (alphabetical)

Another Earth

Attack the Block

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Hanna

Horrible Bosses

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Super 8

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

War Horse

BEST ACTOR Dominic Cooper, The Devil's Double

Runners-up: Brad Pitt, Moneyball; Demián Bichir, A Better Life

BEST ACTRESS Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Runners-up: Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk about Kevin; Viola Davis, The Help

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Runners-up: Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; Ezra Miller, We Need to Talk about Kevin

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Octavia Spencer, The Help

Runners-up: Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs; Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

BEST ENSEMBLE The Ides of March

Runners-up: We Need to Talk about Kevin; The Descendants

BEST DIRECTOR Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive

Runners-up: Alexander Payne, The Descendants; David Fincher, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

BEST DOCUMENTARY Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life

Runners-up: Buck; We Were Here

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM Poetry

Runners-up: Incendies; Love Crime

BEST ANIMATED FILM Rango

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY The Guard, John Michael McDonagh

Runners-up: 50/50, Will Reiser; Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Moneyball, Stephen Zaillian & Aaron Sorkin

Runners-up: The Descendants, Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash; Incendies, Denis Villeneuve

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Drive, Newton Thomas Sigel

Runners-up: The Artist, Guillaume Schiffman; War Horse, Janusz Kaminski

While I spared myself some obvious stinkers this year, I suffered through enough crap to single out 20 of the worst. Some are listed because they fell so far short of their ambition, wasting enormous resources in the process. How many great low-budget independent films could have been made, for instance, with the money squandered on Cowboys & Aliens?

BOTTOM TEN

1. Your Highness

2. The Tree of Life

3. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1

4. The Rite

5. Peep World

6. We Are the Hartmans

7. Salvation Boulevard

8. The Beaver

9. Cowboys & Aliens

10. Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil

DISHONORABLE MENTION (alphabetical)