"I Kill Giants": Just Shoot Me

I have had the misfortune of seeing I Kill Giants (2017).  It was one of several dreary choices that my relatives offered.  The cover shows a girl with a battle axe facing a giant, with an evocation of Harry Potter.  Naturally one expects a rollicking adventure with trolls, goblins, and magic swords, perhaps set in a fantasy world on the other side of the looking glass.

By the time I realized the depth of deception in that cover, it was too late: the movie was playing, and I couldn't say "let's watch something else!" or leave.  I had to bury my head in my cell phone for two annoying hours.

See, there aren't any giants, nor magical battle-axes.  A girl named Barbara (Madison Wolfe), who is much younger than the cover art suggests. is crazy.  She has created a whole elaborate mythology in her mind: a giant invasion is immanent, heralded by ghostly harbingers, and only the Chosen One (guess who?) can save the world.

And above all, don't go near the room at the top of the stairs.  The most horrible, most frightening thing imaginable lives there.

If only there were a teensy bit of ambiguity, the slightest possibility that maybe, just maybe, the giants are real. After all, no one believed Alice about Wonderland or Dorothy about Oz, either.

 But no, the movie all but screams at us from Scene #1: "THERE ARE NO GIANTS!  THIS GIRL IS CRAZY!  THE ONLY WAY SHE CAN GET BETTER IS TO GIVE UP THESE FANTASIES!"

Barbara isn't even a sympathetic crazy person, someone nice, caring. for instance. She rejects everyone who tries to reach out to her with a snarky comment: "Sorry, I don't have time for idiots like you!  I'm busy trying to save the world!"

Actually, she's trying to destroy death.  The giants represent death.  The horrible, frightening thing at the top of the stairs is Barbara's mother, who is dying amid iv bags and drawn curtains.

That big reveal was broadcast in scene #1, too.

When Barbara finally meets a giant, it turns out to be as interested in restoring her to sanity as people in the real world.  It delivers a long speech about how everyone eventually dies, and we should cherish each moment as a wonderful gift rather than worrying about the end.  Then there's a smarmy song, and Barbara is ready to finally visit Mom on her death bed.

So basically Bridge to Terabinthia, without the cute boy.

The only thing I liked about this movie was the girl power.  Barbara doesn't get a boyfriend.  Actually, there virtually no boys or men around at all.  Instead, a girl name Sophie makes a number of overtures of friendship.  Although rebuffed, she tries again and again, with the zeal of the smitten.  Finally, in one of the ending scenes (I forget which -- there are so many, they just keep ending the movie over and over), the two girls walk off hand in hand.  Lesbian subtext!







Here's the only boys: Art Parkinson in one scene as Barbara's clod of a brother.

And Noel Clarke (not nude) in one scene as the sympathetic psychologist's husband, who is holding their newborn baby.  Barbara snarkily tells them, "She's going to die."

Yeah, sure, in about 80 years.  But we should savor every moment, right?

Except for the moments wasted on this horrible movie.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to look at Noel Clarke's penis.

Floating Skyscrapers: Guns Don't Kill, Gay People Do

In April 2013, the Tribeca Film Festival in New York screened the "First LGBT Film in Poland," Floating Skyscrapers.  It's slow, claustrophobic, and creepy, presenting gay people as abnormal, mentally ill, askew.  And the guys aren't even cute.

Young swimming champion Kuba (Mateusz Banasiuk) seems to be heterosexual; he likes his girlfriend, Sylwie, and has sex with her regularly.  But he's also drawn by his dark, subconscious longings to enage in "down low" anonymous gay encounters in public toilets. Kuba and Sylwie live with a possessive, smothering mother, Ewa, who has a weird incestuous interest in scrubbing his back while he bathes.

Oh, that's why he turned gay -- a possesive mother drove him crazy.  Got it.

Meanwhile, Michal (former Polish teen idol Bartosz Gellner),who is more open about his sexual identity, tries to come out to his parents. His father recoils in homophobic rage, and his mother -- another possessive, smothering mother, by the way -- refuses to believe it.

The two meet at an art museum -- Kuba is with his girlfriend, but that doesn't stop him from hooking up with Michal.   They begin seeing each other regularly, although it's not really a relationship, just an expression of their psychosis.  Kuba becomes so obsessed that he can't concentrate on his swimming.

Finally Sylvia and Ewa figure out what's going on, and band together with Michal's mother to force them to give up their abnormal obsession -- or die trying.  And death happens.

This movie is about how being gay is a tragedy that destroys lives.

Director Tomasz Wasilewski has only one previous credit, In the Bedroom (2012), about a woman whose uncontrollable sexual obsession drives her to prostitution and destroys her life.  So it's not just being gay -- it's nymphomania, too.

And Bartosz Gellner previously starred in Suicide Room (2011), as the crush of a high school boy,  Dominik (Jacob Gierszal, left).  When word of the infatuation gets out and humiliates him, Dominik commits suicide.  Nice.

Josh Hutcherson: Straight but Not Narrow

In April 2012, 19-year old Josh Hutcherson became the youngest person ever to win the GLAAD Vanguard Award for the "Straight but Not Narrow" anti-homophobia campaign that he started (with buddy Avan Joggia of Victorious).

Paradoxically, his on-screen performances have veered toward the heterosexist.

I first noticed him in Bridge to Terabintha (2007), about two preteens who escape from the horrors of real life into an imaginary world, but find that it can't help them.  Real life is too awful.

I hated it: the trailers led me to expect a Chronicles of Narnia-style adventure about a "real" fantasy world, not two mentally ill kids who were hallucinating.  And one of them dies. Oh, and Josh's character gets a girlfriend.

And Firehouse Dog (2007), about a movie-star dog who goes to work in a struggling firehouse, and revives it with the help of a boy, Shane (Josh).  Who gets a girlfriend.

So far this actor's work was depressing, but being a Jules Verne fan, I gave him another chance in the latest adaption of Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008).   In search of his missing brother, geologist Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) explores the Center of the Earth, along with his nephew Sean (Josh) and their teenage guide Anita.  Both Trevor and Sean are into Anita (she picks Trevor).

Ok, what about Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009), based on the gay-subtext novel series by Darren Shan?  There's some buddy-bonding: Darren (Chris Massoglia) offers to become a vampire to save the life of his buddy Steve (Josh).

And The Kids are All Right (2010): Josh plays Laser, teenage son of a lesbian couple.

But The Hunger Games (2012): Peeta (Josh) and Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) are chosen to participate in a teenage survival-death game where the last one alive wins.  They fall in love, and find a way to both survive.  Fade out kiss.

The Forger (2012), with Jansen Panettiere, looks promising. But Paradise Lost (2014) will star Josh as a young surfer who meets "the girl of his dreams" in Colombia.

Besides, I'm still mad about The Bridge to Terabintha.