Quick takes on 5 queer films of the 90s

My Own Private Idaho was the third film from celebrated director Gus Van Sant. Released in 1991, it features a fantastic cast including costars River Phoenix (sadly, nearer the end of his career and life than the beginning) and Keanu Reeves (who was looking for more serious roles after his breakout in Bill and Ted). They play best friends Mike and Scott, respectively. Mike is a male prostitute and gay man, working the streets hard but living with a serious mommy complex, dreaming about losing her years ago. Scott is also prostituting, but seems to be biding his time, as he is set to inherit a fortune from his father, the mayor of Portland. The film follows their adventures on the street with friends and various johns, with moments of tenderness interspersed, such as when Mike admits to Scott one night that he loves him, only to be rebuffed when Scott says he only sleeps with men for money, and is romantically interested only in women. This comes to a head when the two friends travel to Italy on a lead to find Mike’s mother, and Scott falls in love there with a woman, leaving Mike feeling lost. The film is lightly based on the Shakespeare plays Henry IV parts I and II, and Henry V, which I wasn’t feeling for awhile until the introduction of Bob, sort of the “king” of streets hustlers and Mike’s and Scott’s mentor, who delivers occasional random soliloquies in Shakespearean tongue with the best of them. Reeves is fine, though I’ve always thought he was better in action films (Matrix, John Wick) than his drama roles, but Phoenix shines. Brother Joaquin is great, but you have to wonder what River could have given us if he’d survived. This movie will move you to laughs and tears, and feels real and raw throughout. ★★★★★

Three years before the Wachowski sisters burst onto the scene with The Matrix, their directorial debut came in 1996 with Bound. It stars Jennifer Tilly as Violet, and Joe Pantoliano as her gangster boyfriend Caesar. They live in an apartment, and down the hall, ex-con Corky (Gina Gershon) is renovating a neighbor’s apartment while he is away. Violet is immediately attracted to Corky, despite later admitting never having shown any lesbian tendencies. Caesar is the jealous type and always on the edge of violent anger, so Violet and Corky need to be clandestine. Eventually, they see a way out of their sticky situation. Caesar and his buddies torture a man (in their bathroom, which Corky can hear down the hall through the thin walls in the building) because he was embezzling, and Violet knows Caesar will have that $2 million in his possession for a short time until the higher ups come over to claim it. Corky and Violet hatch a plan to make off with the money and leave Caesar high and dry. As with all “best laid plans,” things do not go smoothly, leading to shoot outs, stand-offs, and bucketfuls of blood. This movie is much different than Idaho; in that one, you know you are watching a great “film.” Bound may not be that, but it is pure entertainment and one hell of a good time. ★★★★★

Finishing today with director Gregg Araki’s Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy, three films looking at the seedier, darker, and more blatantly sexual side of teens, lives that were not shown on film and TV at the time. First up is 1993’s Totally F***d Up. It starts with a solid 30 minutes of “interviews” with the characters, and all they talk about is sex. It might get the teen and 20-somethings excited, but for a more mature audience, I lost interest pretty quickly. Which is unfortunate, because there is a good plot (eventually) that later develops about an affair one of the men has with another, and what it does to his relationship. If they had led with that, and interspersed the interviews here and there throughout, it could have led to more interest, but by the time the plot was really going, I was already mostly checked out. If you want to give it a go, do yourself a favor: watch the characters introduce themselves, then skip past 25-ish minutes, and go from there. The film does do a good job of reminding you how bad it was for gay men and women in the early 90s. These days its almost cool to be gay, but once upon a time it was rough out there for anyone that didn’t fit in with the norm. ★★

The Doom Generation goes a mile a minute and I enjoyed (almost all of) it. The film that was the breakout for Rose McGowan (she won an Independent Spirit Award), she plays Amy Blue, the vulgar in-your-face teen girlfriend of Jordan White. One night, they pick up a drifter named Xavier Red, who exudes sex appeal with the whole “bad boy” look, and the viewer immediately knows he’s trouble. He doesn’t take long to show it; when they stop at a gas station, Xavier gets into an argument with the worker and ends up killing him. As the night goes on, that guy won’t be Xavier’s only victim. On the run, Amy first has sex with Jordan, and later with Xavier, though Jordan doesn’t seem to mind at all; in fact, he encourages them. To go along with the serious themes, the movie offers plenty of humor, so much so that I would laugh out loud many times. Every time the trio stops to buy something, the total is $6.66. They run into several guys who all think that Amy Blue is an ex-girlfriend, and each is obsessed with her, chasing after her and wanting to kill the men she is with. Before the end, they are attacked by a group of neo-Nazi’s who are out for blood, leading to a gruesome ending. I mean, seriously messed up, enough to turn your stomach. I liked the film a lot until that ending, which soured the whole experience for me, but until that point it was a wild ride. ★★★★

If The Doom Generation goes a mile a minute, Nowhere is an all-out assault on your senses. Araki called it “Beverly Hills 90210 on acid” and that’s pretty much it. It follows a group of teens over the course of one day, and all anyway wants to do is bang, or talk about banging. But it’s not all sex, there’s also a TV evangelist convincing two people to commit suicide, a Baywatch star date raping a girl, and a lizard alien thing vaporizing a trio of valley girls. The scenes come fast and furious from the get-go and it never lets up, to the point that I felt exhausted by the end. It can be entertaining at times, but it all feels like too much, though I bet today’s TikTok generation would enjoy it even more than the late 90s crowd. One cool thing about it is the cast: this movie is stacked top to bottom. Relative unknown James Duval is the lead, but the supporting crew includes Christina Applegate, Ryan Phillippe, Heather Graham, Scott Caan, Mena Suvari, Beverly D’Angelo, Denise Richards, Shannen Doherty, Rose McGowan, John Ritter (yes, that John Ritter!), and Christopher Knight (Peter Brady!). So much wasted talent in a film that is just eye candy for 80 minutes. ★★½

• TV series recently watched: Harley Quinn (season 5), The Pitt (season 1), Deep Space Nine (season 1), Daredevil (season 2), 1923 (season 2)
• Book currently reading: Winter’s Heart by Robert Jordan