Movie Review The Mattechine Family

The Mattachine Family (2023)

Directed by Andy Valentine

Written by Andy Valentine, Danny Valentine 

Starring Nico Tortorella, Juan Pablo Di Pace, Heather Matarazzo, Emily Hampshire 

Release Date May 12th, 2023 (SIFF) 

Published May 12th, 2023 

Movies like The Mattachine Family are necessary correctives to the historic record of gay men on screen. This story of a man struggling with a desire to be a father and the strain of a relationship at a breaking point is authentic and relatable human story regardless of whether the lead is gay or straight. One of the things that so often gets lost in the midst of trying to satisfy people's expectations of stories of gay or straight people, are the basic humanity at heart. The Mattachine Family may be about a gay man but it is mainly about a human being with relatable human problems. 

The Mattachine Family stars Nico Tortorella as Thomas, half of a couple in the midst of a wrenching experience. Thomas and his husband, Oscar (Juan Pablo Di Pace), have lost their son. The child hasn't died but the agony is similar. Thomas and Oscar were acting as foster parents when the boy's mother came back into the picture. The details are hazy but she's capable of being a mother, and a good one, and thus she has successfully petitioned to get her son back. She's grateful to Thomas and Oscar for taking care of her son when she could not but she intends to raise him away from where they are. 

As we will learn through the story of The Mattachine Family, the idea of being a father was completely foreign to Thomas before he met and fell in love with Oscar. It's easy to forget that gay marriage and adoption are so new that millennials like Thomas are still taking in the idea that they can be married and be parents. Specific to Thomas however was simply that he never considered parenthood until it happened. Now that it has ended suddenly, Thomas finds that he can't just go back to who he was before. 

Oscar, on the other hand, is traumatized but not willing to talk about it. He can't bring himself to be there when his son was returned to his mother, nor is he willing to discuss trying to be a parent again. Oscar is coping by focusing on work. Being a former child television star who lost his career when he came out as gay at a very young age, Oscar now finds himself with a chance to get back in the spotlight. The only complication is, the job is filming somewhere in Michigan, far from his and Thomas's home in Los Angeles. 

The escape may be what Oscar needs but not what Thomas needs. Thomas has a circle of friends who provide a support system he really needs, especially now. He loves his husband and is willing to sacrifice for their marriage, but when Oscar completely shuts down the idea of trying to be parents again, it may be the breaking point of their relationship. Most of The Mattachine Family will turn on this particular conflict and it proves to be a very compelling conflict. 

The Mattachine Family is a warm, inviting and charming film. It's an achingly human story that deals with serious relationship issues with a maturity and care I really appreciated. It's also a film populated by terrific characters. Thomas is surrounded by wonderful friends played by Emily Hampshire, Garrett Clayton, and Cloie Wyatt Taylor, who form the kind of found family that we should all hope to have. Found family, for me, is as important as blood relations, if not more, and The Mattachine Family captures that beautifully. Found family in the LGBTQ+ community can often prove to be even more important as many come from bigoted or merely unsupportive homes. 

The makers of The Mattachine Family are acutely aware of details like that while the film doesn't linger on making important points, the implications are clear and given depth by scenes depicting these friends being together and caring for each other. Another strong detail comes in the film's voiceover where we get lovely insights into Thomas's worldview. I normally have a rather low opinion of voiceover outside of very specific genre conventions but the makers of The Mattachine Family make it feel right for this story. 

Thomas tells us a lot of important things in his inner monologue and its mostly character details rather than simply a device to move the plot forward. It does function as a plot mover but not egregiously. No, rather, it smartly reminds those of us who don't share Thomas's background just how much things have changed for gay men in Thomas' merely 30 plus year existence. We certainly have not come to a place of equity for the gay community but Thomas' voiceover reminds us just how many possibilities have opened to men his age, legally speaking, in just the past two decades. 

Find my full length review at Pride.Media 

Movie Review Hostel 2

Hostel 2 (2007) 

Directed by Eli Roth 

Written by Eli Roth

Starring Lauren German, Roger Bart, Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips, Richard Burgi, Jay Hernandez

Release Date June 8th, 2007 

Published June 8th 2007

In the last three weeks I have seen the movie Waitress 3 times. In that time, I have been reading a terrific book about the movie The Big Lebowski that is soon to hit store shelves. I mention these activities on my part as examples of good things you could be doing rather than watching Hostel Part 2 a sad perverts fantasy of a horror film.

From the twisted mysoginist mind of Eli Roth comes another woman hating fantasy about torture and death. Was Mr. Roth simply was not hugged enough by his mother as a child? Did some woman break his heart in some unimaginably cruel way? Whatever the reasons for his misogyny, these are issues that would be better dealt with in therapy and not on the movie screen.

Poor misguided Lauren German is the alleged star of Hostel Part 2. I would call her a victim of Hostel 2 but I should save my criticisms for later in this review. German plays Beth, a rich American tourist traveling Europe with her friends, sexpot Whitney (Bijou Phillips) and introvert Lorna (Heather Mattarazzo, a long way from The Princess Diaries).

Together the three seek drinks and companionship and when the opportunity for some pretty scenery and cute guys on the cheap comes their way they can't resist. Enticed by their new friend Axelle (Vera Jordanova), they travel to an exclusive little European getaway that happens to be the site where tourists are captured and sold over the internet to rich guys for the purpose of torture and death.

What a bummer.

I am being flippant because writer Director Roth makes clear with his dull dialogue and sloppy takes that he doesn't care about these characters, he is merely setting them up for slaughter. Surprisingly, it takes a little while before the gore sets in but once it does, Roth's ugly misogynist side comes out in every way you would imagine.

I can't say I was surprised by any of the awful things that Eli Roth puts his actresses through in Hostel Part 2. The first film made quite clear his feelings about women, why would having females lead the cast of Part 2 change anything. If anything, as evidenced by Heather Mattarazzo's brutal death scene, hanging upside down nude and having her throat cut as a naked woman basks in the viscera, his hatred of women has only deepened since the last film.

I told a friend after the first Hostel, and left it out of the initial review, that I honestly felt that Eli Roth makes movies in order to keep himself from piling the bodies of real women in his basement. Again, I'm being flippant, I don't wish to be. I honestly believe Eli Roth is a very troubled soul. What other impressions are we to take away from Hostel Part 2. The awful things he does to his female characters, the callous treatment of life and death, the casual context free nudity. These seem to be the actions of a sociopath rather than a filmmaker.

Aside from the Hostel films, look at his work on Quentin Tarentino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse. Roth contributed a fake trailer to Grindhouse called Thanksgiving which features a scene in which a half naked female teen is jumping on a trampoline and is impaled through her vagina with a giant knife. Some might call that humorous since it is admittedly such a ludicrous death scene. But to have even conceived such a scene is a sign of a desperately twisted and perverted soul.

Roth does, I must admit, provide a few rather big laughs. Oh, not in his abysmal film. Rather, in the film's promotional tour during which he has claimed some sort of political perspective. Interestingly, I chastised Roth in my review of the original for skirting the edge of a political perspective before retreating to more nudity and gore.

Now, as he has further strayed from any point beyond his gore and shock, he claims that he has a humorous political point about how the rest of the world see Americans. Roth now claims that Hostel Part 2 is a metaphor for the attitude Europe has taken toward Americans in the wake of the war in Iraq. I would buy that argument if the point were made in a more satisfying way in the film itself, but to have Mr. Roth merely tell us this was his point, I'm not buying it. I watched the movie, I didn't find any point, political, metaphoric or otherwise.

Hostel Part 2 exists solely as Mr. Roth's masturbatory fantasy of torture. He has a twisted grudge against women and chooses to display that on film. I wish he would simply seek therapy, and save the rest of us from being subjected to the dark corners of his perversion.

Like the recent 28 Weeks Later, another mindless example of bloodlust for profit, Hostel Part 2 deadens the soul and steals a little of your humanity as you watch it. The excesses of the horror genre are reaching a critical mass and with filmmakers like Eli Roth being feted as innovators by true artists like Quentin Tarentino and being indulged for profit by movie studios like Lionsgate, there seems to be no end to this.

The MPAA is supposed to be the arbiter of such things but bestowing a mere R-rating on something so clearly in need of the NC-17 rebuke, they have tacitly endorsed the increasingly shallow depths of character left in this genre. Hostel Part 2 is sadly not the last but merely the latest in this increasingly degrading form of filmmaking so perfectly dubbed 'horror porn'.

Movie Review Saved

Saved! (2004) 

Directed by Brian Dannelly 

Written by Brian Dannelly 

Starring Jena Malone, Mary Louise Parker, Macauley Culkin, Patrick Fugit, Heather Matarazzo, Eva Amurri 

Release Date May 28th, 2004

Published May 28th, 2004 

As fans of Kevin Smith’s Dogma can attest, people do not have a great sense of humor about their religion. This makes the teen comedy Saved! a bold endeavor indeed. A religious satire set in a Catholic high school, Saved! is a savagely witty film about piety and acceptance, about being different and fitting in. Mostly though, it's just darn funny.

Jena Malone stars as Mary, a member of her Catholic high school's most popular clique, The Christian Jewels. The leader of the clique is Hillary Faye (Mandy Moore), a teen who takes her love of Christ more seriously than most girls take their first crush. Hillary has a brother, Roland, played by Macauley Culkin, who is in a wheelchair and she can't tell you enough how much she sacrifices to take care of him, whether he needs it or not.

Mary is an only child whose mother Lillian (Mary Louise Parker) is a dedicated Christian, recently named the number one Christian interior designer in the city. Her job takes her away from home often as does her faith. Also, Lillian has weekly meetings with the school's principal Pastor Skip (Martin Donavon). The meetings are poorly disguised trysts. Pastor Skip happens to have a son named Patrick (Patrick Fugit) who's the head of the Christian skateboarding team and has a crush on Mary.

Mary has a boyfriend, Dean (Chad Faust) who is the source of most of her troubles. While hanging out in Mary's pool Dean confides that he thinks he is gay. Shocked, Mary has an accident in the pool and has a vision of Christ that inspires her to try and save Dean. Her idea however is not the best, she thinks that having sex with him will cure him and that since it is in service of Christ, he will forgive her and restore her virginity. Instead she gets pregnant and Dean is sent to a facility that claims to cure homosexuality.

Also in the cast is Eva Amurri as Cassandra. She is the only Jewish girl at this Christian high school, there only because she has been kicked out of every other school. Cassandra is an absolute outcast and revels in her rebellious role and especially enjoys tormenting Hillary Faye. She really gets Hillary when she takes an interest in Roland and the two begin a tentative relationship. When Mary finds out she is pregnant she turns to Cassandra for help.

It's a terrifically funny setup that leads to a surprisingly softhearted ending. A slight disappointment but because the characters are so likable you can forgive the slight schmaltz. In its smart and savage wit the film evokes a little of the classic black comedy Heathers and the more recent teen satire Mean Girls. The religious setting gives the film some rich targets and it hits most of them with smart, funny observations.

This is a very funny cast of teen actors, especially Jena Malone whose indie smarts will guarantee her a long healthy career. Macauley Culkin is also a standout. Finally coming out of his own shadow, Culkin has a relaxed bemused manner and shows that he may still grow into a good actor. Mandy Moore deserves credit for taking a secondary ensemble role, eschewing her star status in order to take on a tough role.

The film’s best performance however comes from Eva Amurri. For a good portion of the film, Amurri is the conduit for the audience of non-Christians who can't stand the constant milquetoast piety thrust upon them. She savagely rips everything and everyone she sees and is hysterical doing it. By the end of the film she has softened a little but overall it's still the best performance in the film.

First-time feature director Brian Donnelly deserves credit for taking on a tough topic. Religious satire is often demonized and marginalized by controversy, Saved! has been lucky thus far not to have aroused the attention of the religious right. Donnelly, with his co-writer Michael Urban, has crafted a very funny teen movie with an edge that provides some very big and controversial targets. The film however does not rely solely on its setting to provide it's humor but smartly relies on it's talented cast to deliver the laughs. 

Movie Review Sorority Boys

Sorority Boys (2002) 

Directed by Wallace Wolodarsky

Written by Greg Coolidge

Starring Barry Watson, Michael Rosenbaum, Harland Williams, Melissa Sagemiller, Heather Matarazzo, Brian Posehn 

Release Date March 22nd, 2002

Published March 23rd, 2002 

I used to like college-based comedy. Films like Back to School and PCU are charming, funny films. But in 2002 we were treated to the genre at its worst with the god-awful Slackers and the shockingly worse Sorority Boys.

After getting kicked out of their fraternity, three idiot friends get the brilliant idea to dress up like girls and join a sorority. Barry Watson from TV's 7th Heaven is the lead doofus, backed up by Michael Rosenbaum from TV's Smallville and comedian Harland Williams. The guys aren't attractive enough to join a good sorority so they join a Sorority known as the doghouse. Because the girls are ugly, get it???

If you haven't already figured it out, our previously loutish leads will learn the lesson of not judging a book by its cover. They learn this oh-so original after school special message from your typical Hollywood group of girls who are only unattractive because the script says they are. Watson's love interest is Soul Survivor star Melissa Sagemiller, who is unattractive because she gets good grades and wears glasses.

There is not one original moment in this film, nor is there even one good chuckle. The film should have gone straight to the WB network as a marketing tie-in for its talented stars' more appealing series work. Both 7th Heaven and Smallville have more originality in the opening credits than Sorority Boys has in its entire 90-minute runtime.