60 Movies I Will Never See (Or Saw and Regretted)

There are 6 basic emotions, 1 positive (happiness), 3 negative (sadness, anger, and disgust), and 2 which could be either (surprise, fear)  The function of a movie, book, song, or other work of art is to elicit positive emotions, to make the audience feel better after viewing than they did before.

So I don't understand movies that deliberately elicit sadness, anger, or disgust.  Why would anyone want to watch something that makes you feel bad?  Don't you get enough bad feelings in real life?

Here are 60 movies that I will never see, or that I saw and regretted.

No dying of long, slow, debilitating diseases.  With scenes of yelling at doctors, reconciling with estranged relatives, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, and holding hands on death beds.

1. Terms of Endearment (1983). Shirley Maclain's daugher dies of cancer.

2. Beaches (1988).  No one surfing or swimming, just Bette Midler singing and crying.

3. Steel Magnolias (1989).  Women face tragedy in the South.

4. My Girl (1991).  Boy falls in love with a dying girl.

5. Lorenzo's Oil (1992).  Family tries to cure their dying son.

6. Stepmom (1998). Hugging and dying.

7. Here on Earth (2000).  Boy's girlfriend dies.

8. Bridge to Terabithia (2007). With Josh Hutcherson (top, recent photo). They fool you into thinking it's a fantasy movie, like Harry Potter.  It's actually about a boy befriending a dying girl.

9. Moulin Rouge (2008).  Fortunately, I walked out because it was so awful long before the deathbed scene.

10. The Fault in Our Stars (2014).  A support group for people dying of cancer.

Especially no dying-of-AIDS.  Yelling at doctors, reconciling with estranged relatives, sobbing, sobbing, and so on, but with homophobia.  Lovely way to spend an evening.

11. An Early Frost (1985).  Guy dies of AIDS.

12. Parting Glances (1986).  Guy dies of AIDS.

13. Longtime Companion (1989). Guy dies of AIDS.

14. Philadelphia (1993).  I was forced to watch this, but kept my nose in a book the whole time.  Guy faces discrimination because he's dying of AIDS.

15. And the Band Played On (1993). The government refuses to acknowledge that people are dying of AIDS.

16. The Cure (1995).  Guy dies of AIDS.

17. It's My Party (1996, left).  AIDS and suicide!  Fun!

No Holocaust as entertainment.  Um... 6,000,000 people died. How can that be turned into two hours of fun?

18.  Sophie's Choice (1982).  She has to choose which of her kids to kill, and later gets a couple of boyfriends.

19. Schindler's List (1993). He helps some people escape from the Holocaust.

20. Life is Beautiful (1997).  Set in a concentration camp. Are they kidding?

21. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2009).  More concentration camp hijinks.

No main characters dying, period. Who had th bright idea of killing off the protagonists in car accidents, gunshots to the head, or zombie bites?  Why would I want to get invested in a character, only to have them die?

22. Easy Rider (1969).  I saw this, not realizing that everybody dies, and the movie is ruined.

23. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969),  What's the point of a homoerotic buddy "comedy" if they're just going to die at the end?

24. Thelma and Louis (1991).  I watched this, too.  No one told me that they go over a cliff.

25. Titanic (1997). I was conned into seeing the musical.  Hint: they all drown.

26. The Perfect Storm (2000).  They all drown.

27. Children of Men (2006). Everybody is dying.

28. Pan's Labyrinth (2006).  Girl is dying.

29. Into the Wild (2007).  He starves to death!

30. 28 Weeks Later (2007).  Zombie movies are supposed to have survivors!

31. Burn After Reading This (2008).  I went into this thinking it was a comedy, and walked out when Brad Pitt's comic relief character suddenly was shot to death.

32. Apollo 18 (2011).  Dying astronauts.


No inmates on death row.  You know they're going to die from the beginning.  Why bother to watch?
 33. The Executioner's Song (1982).
34. Dead Man Walking (1995)
35. The Green Mile (1999)

No war.  War is one of the biggest tragedies of life, not a source of entertainment!  If the movie is about humorous hijinks far from the combat zone, ok.  But angst-ridden, somber music, people dying of bullet holes -- no way!  I don't care if the whole platoon struts around naked.
36. Platoon (1986)
37. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
38. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
39. We Were Soldiers (2002)

No ends of the world.  Nuclear holocaust, giant meteor, whatever.  Even worse than the main characters dying, the end of everybody and everything, the most depressing thing imaginable.

40. Dr. Strangelove (1965). Why would you yell "yahoo" while plummeting to your death on the back of a nuclear bomb? I actually saw this, under the impression that it was a "comedy."  It's not.

41. Miracle Mile (1988).  I actually saw this without realizing that the world ends until it was too late, and I was trapped there with a date.

42. 2012 (2009).  A new flood kills everybody on Earth, except for two hetero couples.

43. Cabin in the Woods (2012). I thought it would be a standard horror movie, with survivors at the end, not "the old gods awaken and start the Apocalypse," and everybody dies.

44. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012).  A "comedy" about a man and a woman (of course) falling in love just before an asteroid kills everybody on Earth.

45. This is the End (2013).  I actually watched this.  Everybody dies,but some of them go to heaven.

No LGBT people dealing with homophobia.  Getting yelled at, rejected, beat up, experiencing angst, and dying.

46. Get Real (1998).  I saw this, thinking it would be ok because no one dies.  Horrible!

47. Boys Don't Cry (1999). Transman is killed.

48. The Laramie Project (2002).  A movie about a real-life horrific hate crime!  Just the thing to brighten your day.

49. Brokeback Mountain (2005). Bisexual cowboys facing homophobia and dying.  No way!

No horrifying handicaps.  I don't care if they overcome adversity and find love, having a handicap is by definition bad, so no movie about it can be good.

50.  The Miracle Worker (1962). I got grossed out by the passage in the book where the child Helen Keller doesn't eat at the table, she just goes from plate to plate and grabs whatever she wants.

51. Johnny Got His Gun (1971).  A blind, deaf, and dumb quadriplegic?

52. Tommy (1975).  A blind, deaf, and dumb boy, plus homophobia.  I turned off the DVD and zapped it back to Netflix.

53. The Elephant Man (1980).

54. Mask (1985).  I don't know what it's about, but it sounds gross.

55. My Left Foot (1989). This one sounded even more gross.

56. The Sessions (2012).  A man living in an iron lung decides to have sex.  Gross.

No movies where the plot summary itself makes me nauseous.

57. Harold and Maude (1971).  I saw this one.  Sickening romance between a teenage boy and an 80-year old lady.  No, I don't think it's at all hypocritical that I'm 55 years old and dating twinks. Plus she commits suicide because she loves life so much.  Huh?

58. Pink Flamingos (1972).  Seen it.  According to John Waters, they offered Divine a substitute, but no, she wanted to really eat the dog poop.

59. Funny Games (1997).  A family is terrorized and killed by a pair of psychos.  Uplifting!

60. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).  He ages backwards!  Can you think of anything more disgusting?  I couldn't even sit through the trailers.

See also: 10 Gay Movies  I Hated.

How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) and Annoy Every Gay Person in the World

In 2015, the German police burst into the Leipzig home of Max Moritz, and found320 kilos of drugs stored on shelves in his bedroom, plus 13,000 euros in cash and two hard drives detailing the transactions of a drug dealing empire.  The teenager was the biggest drug dealer in Europe, selling online through a website called Shiny Flake.

Sounds like a good story in there, right?  Netflix brought it to the small screen as the short series How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast).  But of course for...um...narrative purposes, the writers had to make a few changes.

1. Instead of booming cultural capital of Leipzig, Moritz Zimmerman lives in Rinseln.  There is no such town in Germany, but it's described as insular, boring, and depressing, where everyone wants to get away.

2. He has a best friend, who happens to be in a wheelchair.

3. He has some family issues.

4. He decides to sell drugs only in order to win the GIRL of his dreams (actually the GIRL who just dumped him). 

That's right, the most cliched, conformist, heterosexist, offensive plotline imaginable.

Hint: gay boys exist, and even heterosexual boys occasionally do things for reasons other than to WIN GIRLS.

Besides, you can't win A GIRL.  They're not prizes in a competition.  If a GIRL is not interested in a social relationship with you, leave her alone.

Who's responsible for this slap in the face of gay people and GIRLS everywhere?

I just ran through it on fast-forward, to see if there might be any beefcake or gay characters to partially redeem the mess.

Beefcake: None.  Nobody unbuttons a button.

Gay characters: No.

Gay subtexts:  Maybe Moritz and his best friend Lenny. 

Maybe.

One episode guide has Lenny  "confiding in a new friend," suggesting some gay-subtext buddy-bonding, but guess what -- the "new friend" is a GIRL.

Well, do the actors at least have a gay connection? .

1. Moritz is played by Maximilian Mundt, otherwise known for a few guest spots on German tv and Tigermilch (2017), about two teenage GIRLS who witness a murder (top photo shows Max and his buddies in another movie ogling a GIRL).

2. Lenny is played by Danilo Kamber, otherwise known for Die Pfferkorns, a long-running series about kids who solve crimes.  Two boys and three GIRLS.

3. Moritz's drug-dealing competitor, Bubba (who thinks of these stupid names?), is played by Bjarne Madel, previously the star of the humorous cop show Tatortreiniger (Crime Scene Cleaner, 2011-2018).  His character is straight, but at least he appears in his underwear.

4. Ruben Brinkman plays another dealer.  In the Dutch drama Feuten (2010-2013), about fraternity hazing, he plays one of the adults.  But at least he takes his shirt off.

5. Daniel Riffert, who The Girl is dating,  is played by Damian Hardung, also seen in the Italian tv series The Name of the Rose alongside John Turturro and Ruper Everett.  Maybe he plays the gay monk.

But he also stars in Das schönste Mädchen der Welt (2018), a retelling of the Cyrano de Bergerac story about a boy trying to win THE GIRL of his dreams.  And his demo reel is about a boy trying to win a Muslim GIRL.

Well, at least there are a lot of beefcake photos of Damian online.

6. Max Von Pufendorf has nothing to do with How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast).  But he popped up when I was searching for "Danilo Kamber" "schwule." 

You could do worse. Like spend more than 5 seconds watching Moritz trying to win The Girl.

Two Boys are "Eaten By Lions" in a New British Comedy

In Eaten by Lions (2018, on DVD in 2019), hunky teenage Omar (Antonio Aakeel) and his half-brother Pete (Jack Carroll) who has cerebral palsy and a penchant for shoplifting, are orphaned when their parents are...well, eaten by lions.

At first they live with their grandmother, and then with Pete's racist aunt and uncle (Kevin Eldon, Vicki Pepperdine).  They treat Pete nicely, but Omar is "eaten by lions," dismissed and ignored, forced to sleep in a a cupboard under the stairs, a la Harry Potter.

  But then the boys discover that they're not entirely orphaned -- Grandmum left them a cryptic note about Omar's biological father, living in Mecca.  So off they go on a road trip to find their new dad.

She didn't mean Mecca, the Muslim holy city.  She meant Mecca-by-the Sea, Blackpool, the sleazy, tacky, tawdry tourist trap.  Americans, think of Atlantic City or Coney Island.  Or Branson, Missouri.

Omar and Pete run into many colorful characters on the way, most played by recognizeable British actors.

Ray (Johnny Vegas) runs a tawdry bed and breakfast.

Jason Redshaw plays a drag queen named Tooty Fruity. Ok, that's homophobic.

Tom Binns plays a crazy fortune teller.

They finally discover that two brothers on holiday had sexy time with Omar's mother, so either could be his father:  the wealthy, conservative Malik (Nitin Ganawa), or Irfan (Asim Chaudry), who runs a tacky seaside souvenir shop.

Now it's Pete's turn to be "eaten by lions," dismissed and ignored by Omar's new family.

Both of the boys find love, or at least sex, with the horny daughters of their various encounters.  But there's still a strong gay subtext coming from their obvious chemistry.

Not a lot of beefcake. Jack Carroll,who is not very impressive in the physique department, gets most of the shirtless and nudity scenes, played for humorous effect.

Of course, Antonio Aasif is so handsome that he has to be careful covered up.  If he took his shirt off, no  one would pay any attention to the plot.  .

Antonio got his start on the teen soap Skins.  He played a gay teenager in Waiting for Garbo, and the best friend of a transitioning boy on Doctors.  He states: "To think we still live in a world where attitudes toward sex, gender, orientation, and identity can be so prejudiced is shocking."

"Special": A Non-Heartwarming Sitcom about a Gay Guy with Cerebral Palsy

At first I wasn't interested in Special, about a gay guy with cerebral palsy.  "Special"? Must be a heartwarming, gushing, "live every day to its fullest" warmedy, with lots of hugs and understanding.  Yuck.

But I dated a guy with cerebral palsy back in grad school. His legs and hands didn't work very well, but he had a massive upper body, completely cut, not an inch of body fat anywhere.  He got cruised constantly.

I figured, it wouldn't hurt to watch for the beefcake.  I could always fast-forward past the hugging and motivational speeches.

Ryan O'Connell, a writer and editor with credits including Will and Grace (the reboot), Daytime Divas, and Awkward, turns out to be not particularly buffed, but he is definitely cute.  Still, he was ashamed of his CP, and spent years trying to hide it, attributing his "limp" to a car accident.

His CP is obvious to me -- stiff-leg walk, random hand movements -- but I guess it worked.  He finally came out as disabled in a 2015 book, I'm Special and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves, which inspired Special (2019).

8 episodes, about 15 minutes each, which actually is not as short as it sounds.  In traditional 23-minute sitcom episodes, the A plot takes about 15 minutes, with 8 minutes devoted to B and C plots.  Here it's mostly A-plot. 

Episode #1: Ryan Hayes, who has led a sheltered  life due to his cerebral palsy and helicopter-mother (Jessica Hecht), wants to break out into the world.  He gets a job -- an unpaid internship at an online magazine (he has an income from his CP) --and a new bestie with body issues of her own, Kim (Punam Patel).  He tells everyone the limp story. 

Episode #2:  At a pool party, Kim encourages Ryan to display his body.  He  almost hooks up with Keaton (Jason Michael Snow), but Keaton bails when Ryan turns out to be a bad kisser (hint: when you're kissing a guy with CP, his head should be below yours).

Episode #3: Ryan has sex for the first time, with a sex worker (Jordan Alvarez) who is very understanding and even cuddles afterwards.

Episode #4: Ryan moves into a new apartment, and tries to hold a housewarming party, but he doesn't have any friends.  So Kim invites some of her friends, including Carey (Augustus Prew), who becomes his new gay bff.

Episode #5: Devoted to Mom, who is a harried caregiver to both Ryan and her own mother, and now has a new boyfriend.

Episode #6: Carey invites Ryan to a gay guy-only poker game.  Ryan thinks it's a date, but it turns out that Carey has a boyfriend.

Episode #7:  Ryan goes on a blind date with Michael (Andrew Daly), who is deaf, and speaks through an interpreter (Justin Kirk).  Ryan is freaked out by the encounter, and realizes that he has a problem with disabled people.

Episode #8:  Ryan comes out at work (as having CP), tells Carey that he likes him  (which is fine -- Carey and the boyfriend seem to have an open relationship), and stands up to his mother.

Ok, I changed my mind.  That did seem rather short.

Beefcake: Lots. Hot guys are always wandering in and out of Ryan's life.

Gay characters: Lots.  Most played by actual gay men.

I'll give it an A-.

Not an A because it's too darn short. I could have used more character development.  The Mom B-plot was just distracting.

But at least it was not at all heartwarming.

See also: My Student Steals My Boyfriend

"Speechless," Season 2: I Am Disgustipated

I liked the first season of Speechless (2016-), the sitcom starring J. J. DiMeo (Micah Fowler), a teenager with cerebral palsy, who is wheelchair bound and "speechless," and his crazy relatives. It was nice to see a disabled character who was neither a saint nor a jerk, especially since the need to communicate without speech results in broad, theatrical, feminine gestures that could easily be read as gay.

Micah Fowler can speak but uses a wheelchair in real life.  Here he completes a mile-long walk with the aid of a special walking device.  Nice arms.

Plus J.J.'s early-teen brother Ray (18-year old Mason Cook, left) was not unbearably girl-crazy, and his personal attendant Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough) was presented as so roly-poly asexual that he could be read as gay, too.

That left Mom and Dad, who were of course the leaders of a frazzled sitcom nuclear family, but came across more like team leaders than romantic partners.



Then came Season 2. Gulp.  Ok, we've got the audience used to this disabled kid, so let's pull out all the stops.  It will be nonstop Girls! Girls! Girls!

In the season premiere, the family hatches a wild scheme to get J.J. to kiss the girl he met at summer camp. Later he dates Norah, a new special needs girl at school.

J.J. and his brother get free tickets to a movie they're both dying to see, but at the last minute J.J. ditches him for a girl. Ray shouldn't be upset; he should know that on tv, male friendships are ephemeral.  A buddy will drop you in an instant if a girl smiles at him.

J.J. lies about his disability on an online dating app to get more girls interested.

In one episode, J.J. starts a brief buddy-bond with an actor starring in a movie he wants to be in (Nick Viall, left).

Later he has a "friend date" with Aaron (Christian Lees), a boy he really, really wants to like him.

And in a Halloween episode, Ray switches bodies with a girl and doesn't express any homophobic panic.

But that's cold comfort.

Ray pursues several girls before settling down with Taylor. So episodes involve meeting the parents, wanting to get more physical, having "the talk" with Dad, and so on.  Then they break up, and Taylor starts dating another boy, so Ray is jealous.

Ok, the kid is 18, but his character is about 15.  Do we really need a serious romance?

Kenneth suddenly has an ex-wife and girl-crushes.

Even the preteen Dylan, a girl, starts sparking over boys.

Of course, gay people do not exist.

I am disgustipated.

See also: In Bed with Mason Cook.

Paralympic Muscle Men

There were special Olympic-style competitions for disabled war veterans as early as 1945, but the first Paralympics open to all disabled athletes was held in Rome in 1960.  Today thousands of athletes from over 150 countries compete.  They have cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, visual impairment, and a variety of missing and malfunctioning limbs.

There are 22 paralympic sports, everything from canoeing and badminton to wheelchair basketball.  In search of beefcake potential, I just looked at the swimmers.

Scottish swimmer Andy Mullen has won silver and bronze medals in freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly events.  Very nice hairy chest.

Josef Craig won the gold medal in men's freestyle. His pecs, abs, and basket all win gold medals, too.

Mattheus Angula from Windhoek, Namibia.The absence of legs doesn't detract from the aesthetic beauty of his arms and shoulders.

More after the break.

Speechless

We need more disabled actors playing disabled people on tv, but it's hard for non-disabled writers and directors to make the characters authentic, .

Speechless (2016-) seems to be doing it right.

It's a nuclear family sitcom with Mom, Dad, and three kids, one of whom, the teenage JJ (Micah Fowler), is confined to a wheelchair and "speechless" due to cerebral palsy.  He uses a communication board to spell out words and phrases.

18-year old Micah Fowler has cerebral palsy but can speak.  He notes that it's difficult to adapt to a non-speaking role.  There's a lot of eye-rolling and grimacing involved. .

The rest of the family is filled in by a nebbish dad (John Ross Bowie, the bully Kripke on Big Bang Theory), a fiercely protective Mom (Minnie Driver), the conniving little brother Ray (Mason Cook), and a sarcastic sister, whose name I didn't catch (Kyla Kenedy).

Plus Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough), JJ's assistant.

The A plot of each episode involves JJ's push for independence (he plays hockey, joins the choir, gets drunk at a party), with Ray's conniving in the B.

Speechless is smartly written, with few moments of gag-inducing smarm.  My only complaint is that heterosexism reigns supreme.  Plotlines involve what boy is interested in what girl.  No gay people exist, unless Kenneth happens to be gay (he hasn't mentioned any romantic interests of any sort).

No beefcake, either.  Although Cedric Yarbrough has a nice physique, it's under wraps.

There are occasionally cute guys in guest roles, like Joseph John Schirle as Ben (one episode).



















The only gay connection I could find was Emerson Collins, who plays teacher Mr. Powell.  He played half of a gay couple with Jonathan Slavin (left) in The Boomerang Effect.

Dating an Amputee

Do you find this guy attractive primarily because of:
1. His face
2. His physique
3. His missing right leg

Most people find #3 neutral or even a turn-off, but for a surprising number, it's a big plus, making him infinitely more attractive than guys with four limbs.

The absence makes the whole body stand out in vivid detail, drawing our attention to every muscle.

The lack of symmetry brings a pleasant dissonance, like a minor chord in music.

We're not supposed to look, not supposed to notice; when looking is forbidden, it becomes erotic.




A fetish is a primary erotic interest in an object or part of the human body other than the sex organs.  Acrotomophilia, the amputee fetish, is all about the absence.

Most amputee fetishists prefer guys with a single missing or shortened limb.

Some prefer double missing limbs, two arms, two legs, or one of each.

A smaller but still significant number prefer four missing limbs.











They can be quite specific about how much of the limb should be missing for optional erotic potential.

Whatever type they find preferable, partners are hard to come by.

Although there are nearly 2 million amputees in the U.S., over half are elderly diabetics with a host of medical issues, probably not interested in erotic exploration.  Less than half have lost limbs due to accidents.

Another 100,000 people were born with limb loss or limb difference, due to a variety of genetic and prenatal factors.

It works out to about 50,000 gay adult men with missing limbs and no significant medical problems that would preclude dating.

With a combination of prosthetic limbs and innovative mobility techniques, amputees can do everything anyone else can do, including drive a car, swim, and lift weights.  There's a guy who goes to my gym who is missing most of an arm, yet has fully defined, symmetrical pecs and shoulders.

There have been very few amputees working in movies and on tv.  The sitcom My Name is Earl was remarkable in having two amputee characters:

Didi (Tracey Ashton), one of the people Earl had wronged ("stole the car of a one-legged girl).

Plus her boyfriend, played by Cameron Clapp, a triple-amputee athlete and motivational speaker (seen here surfing).

The Amputee Coalition offers support groups and assistance to help amputees and their families and friends live to the fullest.  One of its activities is the Paddy Rossbach Youth Camp, a traditional summer camp founded in 2000  that has served  790 children with limb loss and limb difference from the U.S., Britain, Australia, Mexico, and Tunisia.

How do amputees feel about fetishists, people who are intensely attracted to them because of missing or reduced limb?

Some like the attention -- anything that makes you stand apart from the crowd is a good thing, right?

Most dislike being objectified, reduced to only an amputee, just as guys dislike being sought after simply because they are Asian or black, or have large penises.  They want to be desired for their  face and physique, their eccentricities and quirks, their accomplishments, their intelligence, their sense of humor, and everything else that makes them unique.

An uncensored version of this article, with nude photos, is on Tales of West Hollywood.