THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL

‘I’ve just had sex!  Holy sh-t!’ is the very first thing we hear uttered from 15 year-old Minnie even before the opening credits roll.  She is not talking to us but to her cassette tape recorder into which she secretly records her innermost thoughts. Minnie backtracks to relive the past two days that led up to losing her virginity to Monroe her mother’s current boyfriend, who at aged 35 is 20 years older then Minnie.

He hadn’t been the instigator of her deflowering as Minnie had not only been a willing participant but she had all but thrown herself at this very laid back older man who just wasn’t going to turn down this golden opportunity.  It is the mid 1970’s and they live in San Francisco and life couldn’t possible have been anymore free-spirited. Minnie’s mother is probably not the best role model for a teenager daughter as she parties hard and somewhat indiscriminately with her pals, and hides little from Minnie or her younger sister.  Minnie apes her mother’s attitude to life and soon gets a taste and a liking for drugs and drink from her school chum Kimmie who has already gained quite the reputation for being generous with her sexual favors.

When Monroe is not immediately available to satisfy her increasing sexual appetite, then Minnie makes out with a boy her own age, but she is immediately disappointed with his inexperienced clumsy performance. She has better luck when she encounters a rather wild and streetwise lesbian called Tabatha. 

The only person who attempts to act like a parent to this adolescent who is suddenly growing up very fast, is their stepdad Pascal who now lives in NY. His claim to take control is based on the fact that he was the only boyfriend that their mother had actually bothered to marry. Now that they are divorced however, he’s rather jealous and upset that their lives have moved on without him.  Neither mother nor daughter welcome his attempts to get involved in their affairs.  

Monroe and Minnie’s relationship is like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.  Not only is there the real possibility that their secret will be discovered especially as they all live together at close quarters, but there is the whole question of Minnie’s maturity. She can handle the sex well enough and be physically satisfied, but on an emotional level, she has such innocent dreams and ideals of ‘true love’. Monroe the object of her affection on the other hand thinks the affair is no more than a pleasant and satisfying diversion which he knows he must put a stop too.

Based on the graphic novel of Phoebe Gloeckner, the movie is written and directed by actress/filmmaker Marielle Heller who skillfully ensures that the teenager’s affair is never sensationalized or feels even remotely immoral.  She imbues Minnie with the naturalness of a precocious child that on some level is mentally mature for her age and who innocently wants to enjoy her sexual awakening with an experienced lover who can fulfill all her desires.

Heller incorporates some clever animation with the live action which helps us see how Minnie’s over-active imagination works. The rest is left to the 23 year-old British actress Bel Powly with her big saucer-like eyes that Heller picked from near obscurity, and who so perfectly captures manipulative Minnie with such alarming perfection. It is a powerful performance and is a career-defining moment that marks the arrival of a major new star.  Her ‘Minnie’ beautifully molds with that of devilishly handsome Alexander Skarsgard as the easygoing and passive Monroe, and playing Minnie’s poor mother who never really grew up enough to parent children is the always wonderful Kristin Wiig.

The Diary of A Teenage Girl is a perfect record of a time of sexual revolution when being uninhibited was no longer a cause for moral indignation and will strike a chord with not just those that lived threw it, but also others who wished they had.

★★★★★★★★

TRAINWRECK

Funny woman Amy Schumer effortlessly makes the transition from her successful TV career to being the brightest new star to hit the big screen this year in what is destined to be one of the summer’s blockbuster romantic comedies. If that is not enough, she wrote the very hilarious script herself.

Amy plays Amy a magazine writer for one of those obnoxious self-congratulatory ‘Lads’ magazines who has never forgotten the mantra that her rather sleazy father drummed into her when she was a young girl ‘monogamy is not realistic.’  So daughter like father with her insatiable sex-drive Amy adopts a strict love–em-and-leave-em policy manipulating a never ceasing line of hot dates into pleasuring her before she ups and disappears never ever sleeping over with any of them. The one time she breaks her rule and wakes up in strange bedroom with its walls plastered with football insignia she begs ‘please don’t let this be a Dorm room’.

One day she is assigned to write a profile on a surgeon who specializes in putting famous athletes together again after they have got injured. It’s a tad more serious than the fluffy stuff that she is used to writing about but she dare not argue with her fearsomely aggressive editor and her foul-mouth expletives.  (A shockingly wonderful Tilda Swinton who could give any ‘Real Housewife’ a run for their money.)

Amy is determined not to like Aaron but cannot stop herself and when dinner and drinks follow the interview she invites herself home to his house afterwards.  Not only that she allows him to persuade her to stay the night, and next morning at her Office she is deeply regretting it. It had been the first time that she had ever had sex whilst still sober, and worst still, she had enjoyed it. 

Now there is even more role reversal as Amy cannot understand why she actually wants to see him again as this is an unprecedented feeling for her, whilst Aaron is being congratulated by his fiends that he has finally met someone after a two year dry spell.  His best friend is LeBron James who is playing himself and surprisingly enough he does a very good job of it.  Well, it may not totally be the real James as it is hard to imagine him as a penny-pinching guy who insists on splitting the restaurant check to the dime before dashing home to watch 'Downton Abbey' with his teammates.

Amy has been happy playing the field and enjoying her own bad behavior, but there are secondary plot lines with her sister, who took an opposite route and married ‘safely’ to a very sensible man and even took on his precocious son, plus their father’s health is failing and the siblings have to put in an assisted living home.  If this is meant to try to persuade Amy to change her ways and conform before it is too late, it fails.  Panic not, after she panics about being swept away by her too-nice-for-words Doctor and losing sight of her slutty single days, their break up is followed by a ‘make up’ but one very much in Amy’s own style.

Amy simply shines on the screen and although she is best in the more frenetic mad banter scenes, she proves she can hold her own when it comes to getting all romantic and emotional.  She gives a powerhouse performance, which is complemented by a funny, but understated, turn by Bill Hader as Aaron the man who may eventually tame her.  I am still in something of shock discovering Tilda Swinton’s yet untapped gift for comedy in all her scene-stealing moments.

Directed by Judd Apatow, considered the master of this genre, but for once it would have better if he hadn’t been quite so formulaic in his direction too and let Amy’s own voice come through more.  That said, it is still a gloriously wonderful movie that shows what a total charmer this breath of fresh air really is.

★★★★★★★★

GONE GIRL

When the movie opens on a quiet July morning in a small Missouri town there is no visible indication we are looking at a man who has falling on hard times. It turns out that Nick Frost has been been virtually unemployed since being laid off from his job on a magazine in NY and is now penniless.  He and his wife live in a large ugly suburban house that they lease using the remains of her depleted trust fund, and this morning on his 5th wedding anniversary he is feeling sorry for himself and sipping a shot of Bourbon in the small empty bar he owns with his sister.  As he sounds off about the stale state of his marriage the telephone rings. Its his neighbour telling him that the front door of his house is wide open.

That's not the only thing he discovers when goes back home, as the house is totally deserted and furniture is turned over and broken as if there has been a struggle of sorts.  When the Police check it out they find signs of blood and enough clues to be concerned for Amy's safety and decide to mount a Press Conference the next day to appeal for help. Nick is joined for this by Amy's psychiatrist parents who are famous authors having once made a fortune on a series of books called Amazing Amy that ruthless exploited their daughter's childhood.

Initially there is an overwhelming abundance of sympathy and support for Nick from both the police and local community but as Detective Rhonda Boney keeps uncovering further clues that indicate that Nick may be responsible for his wife's disappearance, the mood rapidly changes.  Egged on by local TV pundits who have already declared that Nick is guilty of killing his wife, everybody turns against him.  When his young mistress goes public about their affair it seems like now that a motive has been establish, they can be no further doubt about his guilt.

Things are far from what they seem in this latest movie from the master of suspense director David Fincher who excels at complicated thrillers such as this.  By using a series of flashbacks he has shown that this once fairytale romance is now on the rocks, but even so it's impossible to comprehend the depths that Amy will go to resolve it in a manner that will try and exact such diabolical revenge on her unfaithful husband.

It is one of those movies that is best enjoyed knowing little beyond these bare bones of the plot, because what follows is so astonishing it will certainly stupefy you. Just when you think you have it all worked out, the story will twist another 360 degrees to confound you yet once again.  It is however unquestionably one of the BEST movies of 2014.

Ben Affleck is superb as put-upon Nick who you may dislike for wanting his own way, but even he doesn't deserve the punishment Amy wants to exact on him. The movie however belongs to the British actress Rosamund Pike who, in an Oscar worthy performance, is nothing less than outstanding as Amy.  It's a amazing revelation to see her being so brilliantly devious, manipulative, demented and stunningly seductive when she wants her own way. She is such a sheer joy to watch (apart from all the bloody bits naturally).

Lest I should forget, there are also some great supporting turns that deserve mention too.  Kim Dickens (TV's Sons of Anarchy) as the Detective, Carrie Coon (TV's The Leftovers) as Nick's sister Margo, Neil Patrick Harris as Amy's stalker boyfriend, and Tyler Perry for once playing it straight as a Nick's hot shot lawyer. 

The script, the first ever written by Gillian Flynn, and adapted from her own novel gave Fincher a great canvass to work with, but it is his superb attention to the most minute detail that make it such the spectacular roller-coaster ride that it is.

★★★★★★★★★★

THE FINAL MEMBER

Some 40 years ago someone gave Sigurdur 'Siggi' Hjartarson a School Head Teacher in Iceland, a bull's penis as a joke.  It kicked started what turned out to become a lifetime obsession of collecting any mammalian phallus's he could lay his hands on ..... it evidently pass those the long dark dismal days and nights of Arctic winters. Soon his jars of organs in formaldehyde filled ever nook and cranny Of his home and his frustrated wife cracked another yet joke (even though she must have known by now that Siggi took them too seriously). 'Why' she asked 'don't you open a Museum?'

Thus the World's first ever Penis Museum was started  ... although it is officially known The Icelandic Phallological Museum  ... and the world flocked too it.  Siggi, a very likable and seemingly sane man, continued to expand his vast collection of phallus's that had ranged in size from tiny (hamster) to outsize (sperm whale) but he was always aware that it could never ever be considered complete until he got a specimen to put into the empty jar labelled 'Homo Sapien'.  Now that he is nearing retirement and in poor health, the pressure is on to insure that the dream of his legacy will be fulfilled. 

According to an hilarious piece of Icelandic folklore concerning an old married woman who demanded the Sheriff permit her to divorce her husband because she wasn't satisfied with the size of his john thomas'.  It was only 3" long and legend has that she insisted that it should be at least 5" to keep her happy, and over the years this has evolved into what the Icelanders now call 'a legal 5'!  ( Who ever said they had no sense of humor in the frozen wastes of the North?)

Siggi located two possible donors who were prepared to give their all (i.e. scrotum, testes and penis...) so that he could die a happy man.  One was an Icelandic explorer and eccentric local hero Pall Arason who at aged 96 years old had documented proof that he had slept with over 300 women.  He initially claimed that he was more than adequately sized to qualify for the exhibit, but then he and Siggi started to panic as, like most body parts when you are that old, it started to shrink drastically.

Meanwhile in California native sixtysomething  year old American Tom Mitchell, who sports a full seven inches (nicknamed 'Elmo' by his first wife), is so determined to be the chosen one for the exhibit. What he can boast of in size in his pants, he seriously lacks in other body parts, as he not only gets the thing tattooed with the stars and stripes, but he seriously starts to investigate having it surgically removed before he dies.

Its Mitchell's obsessive determination to be the first donor regardless of how he achieves it that makes this whole story becoming side-splitting hilarious. He has this totally deadpan expression and irrational annoyance, and he completely lacks any humility or a sense of humor.

Full credit to newbie directors Jonah Bekhor and Zach Math for pitching this wee joyous story so perfectly.  There is no titillation, or eroticism at all, but a great deal to laugh about  .... and most importantly for Siggi at least, a very happy ending.

★★★★★★★★

12 YEARS A SLAVE

I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that it took a British acclaimed filmmaker, and a Golden Globe nominated British and a German actor to make what is possibly the best movie EVER about American slavery. Steve McQueen's take on the true story of Solomon Northup, an African-American free man who in 1841 was snatched off the streets in Washington and shipped South and sold into slavery is an electrifying tale of sheer brutality and human suffering that is so far removed from the usual Hollywood depiction of slaves ( think 'Gone With The Wind').

The movie starts with Solomon already enslaved and living a miserable existence on a cotton plantation, and the story of how we got there is told as a flashback.  He learnt from other free men that had been kidnapped that to survive he had to submit to every whim of his 'Master', but as he was just a few days into his new life he refuted this saying that mere survival was not enough for him 'I want to live'. After years with one reasonably decent Plantation Owner he is sold on to a another who is the worst kind of a violent drunk and whose sadistic streak insures that Solomon (now named Pratt by his owners) now focuses on survival after all.

Pratt now knows to keep dumb about his past life and how educated he is, as Plantation owners, and their wives feel threatened by any negro that could possible be a challenge to them.  When he is sent to a nearby Trading Post to get supplies he thinks about escaping but then he comes across a mob lynching two other slaves who had the same idea, so he quickly changes his mind.

Epps the Plantation Owner preaches to all his slaves every Sunday but twists the words of the Bible to justify his barbarous cruelty of them all. Even with the pretty one who he sleeps with frequently but still almost beats too death when he perceives that she may be showing some spirit. He is a thug and a bully and even his own wife does not escape his vicious temper tantrums.

Chiwetol Ejilofor gives a spellbinding Oscar worthy performance as Solomon that you simply cannot take your eyes off. He just so encapsulates the part that even though the title conveys the possibility of a happy ending, you are nevertheless convinced that he could never possible come through this ordeal alive.  Already with a powerful resume to his name ('Kinky Boots' 'Dirty Pretty Things', 'American Gangster') this is a career defining moment for this extraordinary actor.

Michael Fassbender, re-united with McQueen for their third collaboration ('Hunger' 'Shame') is the very epitome of evil with his portrayal of Epps.  He is nothing less than scarily stunning and although he teeters on the point of excess, still keeps it realistic and totally believable.  There has to be some acting nominations in line for him for this latest wonderful performance of his.

The remarkable aspect of this true story that as it was the work of an educated man, it's portrayal of the slave's daily struggle just to exist is not only so more authentic but studied with such fine detail that makes it both more realistic than other movies, and much more horrifying.  'Lee Daniels The Butler' for that came out earlier this year for example was about a slave who became a free man and who spent his whole life bettering himself : Solomon who never was a slave has a much more intolerable and desperate situation.

McQueen, who was an award winning artist before he turned his hand to filmmaking, has used his remarkable eye to make some powerful visual imagery that insures that the impact of the ferocious savagery never ever escapes your rapt attention for one single moment.

The whole movie is nothing short of excellent. 

P.S. Lest I forget, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumerbatch Alfre Woodard, Paul Giamatti and last year's 5 year old Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis are also in the cast.

★★★★★★★★★★

NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN

Jonah is a scruffy twenty-something who lives in a large ramshackled house in Sydney's inner city that he inherited from his parents and now shares with his two best friends Gus and Stevie with whom he makes a passable living throwing weekly wild house parties.  Money may be tight, but there is plenty of drugs, sex and rock' n roll.

One night his latest sex partner casually tells him that he has a lump in his 'privates' which the Doctor diagnoses the next day as testicular cancer.  The good news is that he can be cured, but the bad news is that the treatment will make him impotent.  And Jonah, a slacker cum hedonist extraordinaire, suddenly develops a desire to father a child whilst he still can. The trouble is that he only has a two week window before his operation, and his sperm is unsuitable for freezing, and more importantly he doesn't have a steady girlfriend.

The bulk of the tale is Jonah's hapless quest for a potential mother.  He goes through ex-girlfriends, casual pick-ups, lesbians, single older women etc anyone he can try and persuade. Stevie, ardently anti-children herself, facilitates his search until one day when it suddenly seems like Jonah may have struck lucky, she realises that she wants the job after for herself after all.

This likable Australian romantic comedy works mainly because of the charming performances of the two leads.  Jonah is played by Ryan Kwanten, better known as shirtless Jason Stackhouse in 'True Blood' ... he keeps his shirt on in this except when he is trying to procreate, and he has traded in his normal debonair matinee idol look for something far more cuddly.  Sarah Snook is a sheer delight as the cool sardonic Stevie that I am so convinced that she is destined for bigger and better things.

Just don't go expecting any deep observation on the plight of young men with testicular cancer, its not that kind of film. It is however a sweet funny crowd-pleaser movie with a predictable happy ending. 

Not suitable for children, and also certainly not for people on a first date! 

★★★★★★★

THREE WORLDS

Al is about to win the Lottery. Or the equivalent of it.  In 10 days time he will be promoted to General Manager of car dealership in a Parisian suburb where he started out as a lowly mechanic years ago,  and he will be given a 25% stake in the business, and he gets to marry the Boss's daughter too.  Things are going swimmingly for him until the early hours of one morning when he is driving home rather too fast after a night of celebrating and he runs over a pedestrian who gets hit badly. His friends persuade him to jump back in the car quickly and drive off before they are caught, but unbeknown to them the whole accident has been witnessed.

Juliette has seen it all from her apartment balcony and its she who calls for the ambulance and police.  She is still in shock when questioned but anyway wasn't close enough to get too much detail of the car and driver to help the Police a great deal.  She does however persuade her boyfriend to take her to the hospital next day to visit the victim in intensive care and discovers that he is an illegal immigrant with false papers. As the Authorities seem to care little about establishing the man's true identity, Juliette decides to do this herself and manages to track down Vera his Moldavian wife who also has no legal status in France.

A distraught Vera is quick to seize on Juliette as a friend and a support, and on one of the occasions they are are visiting the hospital together, Juliette is convinced that the young man seen leaving the ICU could in fact be the hit and run driver.  Her assumptions are correct as since the incident Al has been racked with guilt and is desperate to discover the condition of the victim.

The drama gets worse when the poor man dies and leaves his widow with a large unpaid hospital and an unsolved crime.  Vera takes it upon herself to recruit her brothers in law to hunt the driver down to get some revenge and extract some blood money too to pay her mounting debts.

Meanwhile Juliette has kept it quiet that not only has she located Al, but she has confronted him with the realities of the situation. Somewhere along the line this do-gooder of a student falls for Al who by now is so beset on making good that he is exploiting ways of robbing his wealthy future father-in-law to repay Vera and has even lost all desire to even get married now in a few days time.  He seeks solace in Juliette and in a moment of weakness, she succumbs.

From here it all spirals out of control and Al gets found out by everybody, and the only time his luck holds out is when the brothers-in-law get disturbed when they are about to pummel him to death.

It's a strange melodramatic story that at times seems to get lost in too much detail, although very wisely at the end it redeems itself totally when things are left untied and we are left wondering.  It's a very classy thriller which, as indicated by th title, crosses over  three different worlds: Al's blue-collar roots, Juliette's middle-class well-meaning bourgeois, and Vera's undocumented underbelly of society. Directed and co-written by filmmaker Catherine Corsini, but it is not nearly in the same class as her 2009 superb movie 'Leaving' starring Kristin Scott Thomas.  There are strong performances from Raphaël Personnaz as the frenetic Al whose world is coming apart, and from Clotilde Hesme as Juliette  who tried to please everyone and in doing so pleased no-one.

P.S. Even though Al ended up winning nothing, he was still left with that stunning face of his. Shallow? I know!   But I defy anyone not to go weak at the knees at the sight of him in the final frame. 


★★★★★★★

Available from Film Movement NOW

EAST SIDE STORY

Diego is 30 years old, and although a Culinary School graduate, is stuck working as a waiter for his Grandmother's family style Mexican restaurant 'Tio Pepe' in East Los Angelas. The restaurant, like the neighborhood, has seen better days but all that is about to change as white gay men (gringos) are about to invade the area. These fearless pioneers are forsaking all the comforts of West Hollywood knowing that they will get more house for their dollars even if it means there is no gym, no Starbucks or no A.A. meeting in the area yet.

Whilst the bigoted local inhabitants are none to happy with this new development closeted gay Diego who has been wanting to move to Phoenix for years soon warms to having Wesley and Jonathan as his new neighbors .... well Wesley in particular who is realising now he is 'sober' that maybe  hooking up with a boyfriend at The White Party was not the smartest move since he has turned out to be a real pain.

Diego had been getting his 'action' via fantasy role-playing with local Real Estate Broker Pablo who wants to stop their clandestine rendezvous's as he wants to get married.  To a woman.  He's a Latino and its expected after all, even if you are gay.  For his 'intended' Pablo chooses Diego's flighty Aunt  Bianca who has just returned back to the family home after blowing yet more of her mother's money on trying to live the high life in Europe.

In this very affectionate romantic comedy that seems to have more than it's fair share of cliched stereotypes, there are no surprises at all to the somewhat predictable outcomes: cute and handsome Diego gets his man, tired Grandma gets to retire, pretentious Auntie gets to wake up and smell the roses, and the area gets a fab Nouvelle Cuisine Restaurant. (And a Starbucks ....thank God!).   Despite this ..... or maybe because of it .... its a throughly entertaining joyous wee romp with more than its fair share of laughs and bare-chested hot looking men. Enough to make one thing of moving into the 'hood even.

P.S. It does have some great one liners such as 'a four way is NOT an orgy'!   But we knew that didn't we?

★★★★★★★

THE SEX OF THE ANGELS

Bruno is a struggling student who gets mugged in a Barcelona street when he is watching a breakdance performance, and Rai one of the dancers comes to his rescue. There is an immediate bond between these two men who also happen to be very hot.  (I know that's very shallow, but it's that kind of movie). Rai puts the moves on Bruno who backs away in a panic as he has a girlfriend Carla whom he loves very much (she's also very hot).

Bruno is straight and Martial Arts Teacher Rai is maybe gay or just perpetually horny or both, and very quickly their new friendship gets physical. Well, sexual actually.  They get caught in flagrante delicto by Carla who naturally has a hissy fit.  Bruno moves out of the apartment they share and goes to live with Rai in the country.  That new arrangement lasts about a week when they both realize that he misses Carla too much for this to work.

Carla meanwhile is so distraught that she can hardly function on a day to day basis, much to the chagrin of her colleagues on the small struggling magazine where she works, and which is in danger of folding.  Its never clear if their real sympathies are with her, or the very fact that most of them also fancy Rai.  (Did I mention that he is hot?)

Rai persuades Carla to take Bruno back on the understanding that he can still see him on the side too.  She agrees to this because she thinks a part time Bruno is better than no Bruno, but she soon discovers she is way too jealous of Rai's relationship with him for this new arrangement to ever work.  She befriends her 'rival' and ends up falling for him physically and he does for her too (I did mention he is hot, didn't I?).  And before you can say W.T.F., now Carla leaves Bruno and runs off to the country with Rai.

I really wanted to like this new take on a menage a trois but the problem is that all three of the protagonists are barely skin deep. Albeit very pretty skin.  They are such lightweights that it's hard to really empathize with them at all, especially self-centered Rai who needs to fulfill his very active sex drive at any cost.  I will credit director Xavier Villaverde for the fact that unlike most movies that feature bi-sexuality, he doesn't flinch away from the man-on-man action which was both intimate and convincingly real.

If you like your romantic melodramas to have a happy ending then you will be OK with this one, except I am still convinced that once the credits stopped rolling, that Claudia would have start whining again as she just couldn't help herself.

P.S. I still cannot fathom out why they chose this title.  They were hot (did I mention that?) but hardly angelic.

★★★★★

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA

Steven Soderburgh's gloriously wonderful biopic would have horrified his subject Mr Showmanship .... if he had still been alive.  Liberace was the most flamboyantly outrageous camp superstar pianist ever, who in the 1950's & 1960's was the highest paid entertainer in the World, but who had unbelievably spent his entire life in the Closet.  He and his multitudes of adoring fans put out this seemingly ridiculous farce that the king of kitsch was not a big Queen at all, and everyone just played along with it.

In 1976 Liberace met Scott Thorson, the latest in a long line of young men that he overwhelmed with expensive gifts in exchange for their company and sexual favors.  Thorson was 17 at the time (although in this film based on Thorson's own book,he is much older). 57 year old Liberace took a real shine to him and so Thorson went from toy boy to live-in lover in no time at all.  It looked like the old man may have finally have found a life partner, but despite their sexual activity together, it seemed that he wanted the younger man to be more like a son than a husband, and demanded that Thorson undergo plastic surgery to be made to look exactly like him.

Thorson, now very spoilt and completely content with his new extravagant and indulgent lifestyle  was looking quite corpulent and he soon took a liking to the diet 'speed' pills which made him slim, but also very mean  spirited and difficult. So soon Liberace took a liking to a newer younger man to be his replacement

The going got rough, Thorson once treated as Liberace's equal and heir was thrown out with just the clothes on his back (and the odd fur coat), so  in 1982 he fired off a lawsuit for Palimony for $113 million but ended up settling for a mere $75000.

Soderburgh captures the man and his era so totally perfectly.  This larger than life ostentatious and quite preposterous character with his voracious appetite for anything and everything 'shiny' and new, was rather brilliantly portrayed by Michael Douglas who imbued his performance with just the right amount of creepiness.  Whether Matt Damon was too old for the part was questionable but he was the consummate foil for Douglas and the chemistry between the two star actors was completely believable.

In fact the whole movie had the benefit of some

excellent casting choices : Debbie Reynolds as Liberace's pushy overbearing mother, the most scary looking Rob Lowe as the Plastic Surgeon who had evidently been practising on his own face, Dan Ackroyd as the Manager, and I failed to recognise Cheyenne Jackson who played one of Liberace's earlier proteges.

The movie was wonderfully camp and great fun as a homage to the man who put kitch on the map should be.  It also had its darker sides covering the moments it appeared that the Great Man may even had a conscience, and of course the great sadness of his death scene and the scandalous way that the Authorities who also were compliant with Liberace's closeted status during his lifetime, now took to unnecessary invading his privacy. 

Roger Ebert hailed it as one of the best movies to come out of Cannes Film Festival last year, which may be a tad exaggerated, but it definitely deserves to be seen by the widest possible audience.  I must confess that I am still having a great deal of trouble accepting the reality that the movie, with its high wattage star power, was considered 'too gay' to be played in movie theaters in 2013. (Thank you HBO for once again stepping up to the plate!)   I'm equally shocked that the respected Huffington Post should join in the media clamour from other more spurious Press and devote a whole column to the bravery of Mr Douglas and Mr Damon for choosing to play these roles.  Brave?  Ridiculous!  They are choice parts that they were both so suited for and for which the Award Nomination gossip tweeting has not stopped since the Broadcast.

★★★★★★★★