"Irreverent": Scoundrel pretends to be a preacher in small-town Australia. With 5 gay teases, Colin's cock, and Lex Luther

Scoundrels pretending to be priests, ministers, and nuns?  It's outdated.  I've already seen Sister Act, Nuns on the Run, and the Civil War episode of Righteous Gemstones.   But I'm still going to review Irreverent (2022), on Peacock, because it is set in Australia and stars Colin Donnell, the Green Arrow in the DC Universe and Connor Rhodes in Chicago P.D., Chicago Fire, Chicago Med...well, all of the Chicagos.

Colin has not only given us some beefcake shots, he has provided a j/o video (photos after the break).

Irreverent is based on Impastor (sic), a 2015-16 series starring Michael Rosenbaum, Lex Luther on Smallville.  Not particularly relevant, but an opportunity to post Lex Luther's d*ck.

Episode 1.1: "The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away."

Scene 1: Clump, Queensland. A woman with a man's haircut runs along the beach, a boy and girl lifeguard share donuts, and everyone gathers for a wedding.  Uh-oh, a crocodile grabs the preacher just as he gets to the "speak now or forever hold your peace" part!  Everybody runs.

Man's Haircut comes running up late and asks what happened.  A croc ate the preacher.  "Not another one!  That's three in two months."  Maybe stop holding weddings on the beach?  Where will they find a replacement?  

Scene 2: Chicago (a town in the United States).  In a parking garage, Paulo meets with some mafiosi.  The Boss wants a ceasefire, and is offering $1.6 million to seal the deal.  

The other bad guy refuses: "Nope, you killed two of my men!"  

So the Boss's Son (Charles Cottier) opens fire, killing the men.  Paulo is shot, but manages to sneak up and hit him with a brick, killing him. He's in trouble now!  He runs. Wait -- they both work for the Boss, so why is the Boss's Son targeting Paulo?  I guess this is all irrelevant, just a Maguffin to get Paulo to Australia.

Scene 3: Paulo bangs on the door of his boyfriend Lewis (Marcus Johnson), who runs a boxing gym.  Lewis fixes him up -- nice chest shot -- but says he can't hide out there -- it's the first place the Boss  will look.  He decides to go to the airport, figure out a way to hide the money, and catch the first plane to "the other side of the planet."  They hug.

Cut to Clump, where the townsfolk are gathered in a cabana, discussing plans to greet the new preacher and his wife.  They take bets on how long he'll stay alive.  Is that a gay couple cuddling?  Nope, in a close up we see that the guy is cuddling the woman with the man's haircut, now wearing a constable's uniform to obfuscate her gender even more.  Gay Tease #1  

Scene 4: On the plane, the town's New Preacher (PJ Byrne, below) is rehearsing a speech.  When he talks about his years of boredom, should he say he was alone, or with Greg?  Wait -- the New Preacher is gay!   Paulo sits next to him, with the money hidden in thick hardback books.   

New Preacher: "Are you married?" 

Paulo: "No."

New Preacher: "Neither am I.  I was, but my wife ditched me at the airport.  Served me divorce papers so she could be with Greg."   So Greg is the guy the wife was having an affair with, described in a weird way so we would think he was New Preacher's boyfriend.   Gay Tease #2.

Paulo tries to ward the guy off, but he's keen to buddy-bond.  

Scene 5: The Gold Coast (a region of Queensland around Brisbane).  New Preacher and Paulo -- same hotel, go figure -- sit in the bar while waiting for their rooms to be ready.   

As Paulo tries to discourage his advances,  he announces that because his wife has left him, he has no purpose in life.  Um...your ministry?

Also, he not going to take the new job in Clump, because his wife leaving him proves that there is no God.  Say what?  Dude, people get dumped every day.

Next: "Our rooms are on the same floor.  What is the universe trying to tell us?"  That you're soul mates?  Paulo tries to discourage him again, but then he feels guilty and buys New Preacher a drink. 

Scene 6: Paulo is very drunk, high on painkillers, and jet-lagged.  New Preacher helps him into his room, and pushes him down onto the bed. You won't get any action, buddy -- he's too drunk.

Cut to Paulo waking up in his underwear.  Did New Preacher get some after all?  No, he stole Paulo's clothes, along with his money, credit cards, everything!  Gay Tease #3

Paulo rushes to the Preacher's room, but it's empty except for a clerical robe.  He puts it on, then asks at the front desk -- New Preacher checked out four hours ago!  The parish booked the room, and sent a car for him, so there's no personal information listed.

The only thing left is to drive to Clump and see if they have some personal information.

Clump is a three day drive north of Brisbane.  Assuming that he drives eight hours per day, it's right around Cairns. 

More after the break, including Colin's cock

Grosse Pointe Gardening Society: Heterosexuals garden, have affairs, and murder someone. With a hung Hodge and Wolfe wang

 

Don't you hate it when you subscribe to a streaming service for one movie or tv show, and then find nothing else of interest?  We just finished Paramount Plus for Twin Peaks, and now we've in Peacock for Wicked, Nosferatu, and since I'm trying to watch everything from Adam Devine, the hottest guy on the planet,  Break Point.  Done. But I'm not going to spend $18 a month to watch three movies, so here's a review of Grosse Pointe Garden Society: one of the garden-society members is male, gardening is gay-coded, so surely he'll be gay.

Note: Grosse Pointe is an affluent suburb of Detroit.  It just means "big tip," as in tip of land, in French, but it sounds funny. 

Prelude: The gardeners dump a body into a hole they dug. The four stories are interspliced, but I'll separate them to make the plots easier to follow, and give them nicknames: From left to right, Entitled, Pink Hat, Male Gardener, and White Hat.

Pink Hat's Story: Six months earlier, a park area with a lot of flowers. Pink Hat puts up a "lost dog" flier on the community bulletin board and narrates: "They say people look like their dogs, but when you're in a garden club, you're more like the flowers you plant." She begins unloading geraniums, but the Snippy Leader tells her that they're not good enough to win the award this year. 

"I think I'd be a geranium," Pink Hat continues, flashing back to smooching with her underwear-clad boyfriend (they don't unclench long enough for a screen shot).  Then to her high school class, where they're discussing the Romantic Poets (that's the Romantic Era, 1790-1830, not "romance').  She hates it, although she does gaze lustfully at one of the Hunkoids (Christian Finlayson).

Cut to Hunkoid's Mom coming in to complain about her son's grade -- "D on a poem?"  He copied the lyrics to a Kenny Lamar song.  So why not an F?    Mom threatens.  

In other news, Pink Hat's application for a job at the New Yorker has been rejected. 

Later, Pink Hat and boyfriend (Alexander Hodge) have dinner with his parents, who criticize her writing ambitions and his job painting restaurant signs.  They want them to move into their rental property, four bedrooms and two baths, for when you have children.  "You know the heterosexist trajectory: job, house, wife, kids?  Have some kids, already."

Pink Hat doesn't thnk she wants kids, which horrifies them."  But...you have a uterus...

After the horrible dinner, Pink Hat meets Male Gardener outside a garage to drink.  He reveals that they found her missing dog -- she's dead.  At least it doesn't die on camera.  Someone shot her!  Pink Hat seethes for revenge.

At school, the Hunkoid who plagiarized his poem drops by to explain: "That song moved me."  White Hat isn't impressed.  So does this mean that you'll stop lusting after him?  "So why did you give me a D?  D means dick. You think I'm a dick."

He approaches threateningly, and hints that because she "got personal," he killed her dog.

Seething, Pink Hat complains to the Principal: "He's rude, disrespectful..." Arrogant?   But the Principal won't expell him, because his parents are rich: they built the lacrosse stadium, the library...well everything.  "We work for them; they can do what they want."

Left: Hung Hodge

So she accosts Hunkoid's mom at the beauty parlor and says that she's reconsidered his grade: now it's an F, "because you've failed him as a parent."  That's not a good reason.  "Your son killed my dog."  Not a good reason either. 

Cut to Pink Hat being fired for standing up to the rich people.  Hunkoid drives up in his new car to gloat. 

Potential Victim: Hunkoid or his Mom

Male Gardener's Story: He's Ben Rappaport, top photo, introduced talking to Pink Hat about cars: "Coyote-V8 with dual Blistein shocks. It's the exact '66 Bronco I restored with my Dad"  What's with the car talk at a garden club?  Are the writers trying to prove that this guy is "a real man," that is, heterosexual?

Pink Hat tells us that Male Gardener is a dandelion.  They can grow anywhere.  Cut to him bringing his two toddler kids to "see Mommy."  Heterosexual identity established at Minute 2.14, unless you count the car talk.  He bursts into the office to find Mom "pollinating with another flower," har har.   So they broke up, and now he's gazing longlingly at Pink Hat.

In the present,  Male Gardener drops off the kids at his ex-wife's elegant Tudor.  But he has them for two more minutes, so he forces them to stay in the car, while they complain and ex-wife and Current Husband (Josh Ventura) glare at him.  

Left: on his Instagram, Josh Ventura claims that he's one of these guys, the stars of the tv series Satisfaction.   His followers commiserate over having a guy lying next to him; that must have been awful! 

But he not actually in the photo. They are Family Man Matt Passmore and Blair Redford as the hustler his wife hired.  Josh appears in just one episode.

Back to Gardening Society: Male Gardener waits in the back yard, glaring, for the kids' clothes to be washed and dried (by the ex-wife, naturally). In other news, Husband is speaking at his kid's career day.  Male Gardener offers to do it, but they say "Don't be silly, you have an awful job."  But it's Ex-Wife's fault: she promised to stay home with the kids while he started his car restoration business, but then she had an affair and cancelled the deal.  

Male Gardener and Current Husband compete to see who can throw a football at the son (into sports, like all "real boys."  Annoyingly gender polarized).  

Later, Male Gardener is driving with his kids, when he callously drives by a stalled motorist, even though he's a skilled auto mechanic.  Then he thinks, this might be a way to prove that he has a bigger d*ck that Current Husband, so he turns around and helps, blabbing car trivia and grunting.   The Motorist wants to thank him somehow.  Male Gardener grins.  No, of course he doesn't have that in mind.  No gay people in this universe.

More after the break

Robert Ri'chard: The Nickelodeon teencom star grows up to play strippers, scoundrels, and bad boys, and display his d*ck

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

"Twin Peaks: The Return": Paranormal weirdness, 25 years later. See if you can figure it out. With Beymer butt and James' junk

  

We've been watching the 1990s cult classic Twin Peaks, about paranormal, cryptic, and just weird events befalling FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLaughlan) as he investigates the murder of high schooler Laura Palmer, who had "lots of secrets."  And now we're on Twin Peaks: The Return (2017-18), a continuation of the original story.  

Some problems:

1. People stare for lengthy periods before speaking, and then speak slo-www-ly.  If conversations occurred at a normal pace, each episode would be ten minutes long.

2. About half of every episode consists of a naked woman talking to a fully-clothed man.  Granted, some of the men are attractive, but there's no way to look at them without seeing a lot of lady parts.

3. The story makes no friggin* sense.

See if you can figure out what's going in the first 2 episodes, plus a scene.

Red Room:  The original series ended with many unresolved plotlines, notably Agent Cooper (left) losing his (second) True Love and being possessed by the malevolent spirit Bob.    

In 2016, we discover that Agent Cooper was split into three parts.  The Doppleganger, controlled by the evil Bob, was loosed upon the world.  His body, now named Dougie, moved to Las Vegas, got a job in insurance, had a wife and a kid, and now consorts with naked prostitutes who stare at him for a lo...ong time.  Agent Cooper's spirit was trapped in the Red Room, where the other spirits make cryptic remarks, talk backwards, and stare at him for a lo...ong time. 

Still trapped, Agent Cooper's spirit is talking to the Giant Alien, who told him that "the owls are not what they seem," one of the big unresolved mysteries of the original.  Now Giant Alien tells him to listen to the sounds on an old Victrola. 

Twin Peaks: The psychiatrist who counseled and had sex with Laura Palmer, now batshit crazy, is in his survivalist cabin, waiting for delivery of a bunch of shovels. 

New York: A young man (James Croak) has a job sitting in an empty room, staring at a large round window, to see if anything happens.  A girl from the coffee shop drops by, hoping to have sex with him, but he can't because the security guard is watching, and he's not allowed visitors.  No one should know what's going on.  Doing a good job!

Twin Peaks: Benjamin Horne (Richard Beymer of West Side Story, top photo), owner of the Great Northern Hotel and the One Eyed Jacks casino and brothel, who had sex with Laura Palmer before she died, was last seen going batshit crazy and thinking that he was a Civil War General. In 2016, he is telling a newly hired lady about the hotel rules.   His younger brother comes in, lambasts him for hiring someone else to have sex with, and talks about his new business, marijuana.

Meanwhile, at the sheriff's office, Lucy the Receptionist turns away a salesman who wants to see "the sheriff," because he doesn't know which he wants: there are three of them, two named Truman, and one is sick.  The other is Robert Forster (left), the brother of the Sheriff Harry Truman who buddy-bonded with Agent Cooper 25 years ago.

Unknown Location: The Agent Cooper Doppelganger gets out of his car  and bangs on the door of an isolated house.  After disabling the guard, he goes inside and stares for a lo...ong time at several people who will never appear again. He criticizes one for having inadequate guards, but she explains that "it's a world of truck drivers."  

She fetches a man (George Griffith) and a woman, and they hug everyone else in the house -- I forget how many people -- and leave with the Doppelganger.

New York: The coffee shop girl visits the young man who has a job staring at a window, with more coffee.  This time the security guard is out, so he invites her in.  They begin sex: she is naked, her backside bouncing, her breasts heaving, while we get a glimpse of his chest. Pay careful attention, as that's the only beefcake you'll be seeing amid the endless heaving breasts.  Then a wraith comes through the window and slashes them to death.  

Buckhorn, South Dakota.  An apartment has a weird smell coming out of it, so a resident calls the police.  There's a long, involved bit about who is in charge and who has the key, with a lot of characters who never appear again, until the lady realize that she has the key.  Oy vey.  Inside the apartment is the school librarian's head on the decapitated body of an older, chubby man.  We never find out who he is, or why the killer arranged them like that.

Twin Peaks: Sheriff Hawk receives a phone call from the batshit-crazy Log Lady, whose pet log has psychic powers.  It has a cryptic message explaining that the disappearance of Agent Cooper 25 years ago was related to Sheriff Hawk's Native American heritage and "something missing."

Buckhorn, South Dakota: The Forensics Lab has a match on the fingerprints in the decapitated librarian's apartment: they belong to the high school principal. (Matthew Lillard). So two agents and two cops, including the principal's best friend George, arrest him.  "It's all a mistake," he yells. 

Twin Peaks: To discover "what's missing," Sheriff Hawk pulls all of the files on Agent Cooper, and he and Receptionist Lucy go through them.  She ate a chocolate rabbit from some Easter evidence, but that's not it: his heritage has nothing to do with Easter bunnies.

Buckhorn, South Dakota: The Principal is interrogated about the decapitated people.  He was not having an affair with the librarian, and he was never in her apartment.  He can account for all of his activities on Thursday, except for about 15 minutes.  They lock him up, then get a warrant to go search his car.  There's either a human tongue or a piece of fish in the trunk.

The wife visits the Principal in prison to tell him that she framed him so she can pursue a romance with his best friend, George (Neil Dickson).  As she leaves, we see another cell occupied by a guy in an old-fashioned Davy Crocket outfit, covered with soot.  He vanishes.

At home, the Doppelganger tells the wife that she did a good job pretending to be a human being, and shoots her.

More non sequiters after the break

"Oz, the Great and Powerful": A walking penis (not in a good way) finds true love, two wicked witches, and a flying monkey

  

Last night for movie night, we saw Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), a Disney retread of the Oz mythos, with reflections of both the original books by L. Frank Baum and the 1939 movie.  It had some visual appeal, but the heteronormativity was so intense and unyielding that it burned.

In black-and-white 1905 Kansas, Oz (James Franco) is a circus sideshow magician who seduces every woman in sight -- three in the first five minutes.

Easter Egg: The circus is run by Mr. Baum.

He has an assistant (Zach Braff), whom he treats horribly, and an ex-girlfriend (Michelle Williams), who is in love with him but plans to marry John Gale instead because he doesn't want a "normal" life, the heterosexist trajectory of job, house, wife, and kids.  Not because he is gay, because he is irresponsible.

Easter egg: It's not mentioned, but the ex-girlfriend is going to become Dorothy's mother, then die, so Dorothy can go live with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, and get zapped to Oz in seven years. 

Oz's act comes to a halt when he admits that he can't cure a disabled girl in the audience.  

Then he has to flee when the circus strongman and clown  (Tim Holmes, Brian Searle) get angry over the seduction of their wives. Oz jumps into his balloon, and is zapped through a tornado into Oz.

I figured a guy playing a strongman would have some beefcake photos,but Tim Holmes doesn't.  Instead, we have him saying that he's visiting his kids "to see his grandchildren"..with his hand on one of their bellies.  No baby in there, buddy; those are your twin sons. 

Left: Eugen Sandow, the original strongman.

Back to Oz.  The wilderness is brightly-colored, with singing foliage out of Fantasia, and things that keep zapping you in the face (the film was originally 3-D).

Oz meets the Good Witch Theodora, who happens to be traipsing around the wilderness with no supplies.  Discovering that he is coincidentally named after her country, she concludes that he is the Wizard prophesied to free the kingdom from the evil Wicked Witch, so of course he seduces her.  Is this supposed to be an endearing trait? 

Next they go to the Emerald City, picking up a flying monkey in a bellman's outfit (Zach Branff) along the way.  Evanora, the Witch in power, will be happy to hand over the throne, as long as he saves them by breaking the wand of the Wicked Witch, which will kill her.  

More Oz after the break

Miles Heizer: Gay and nearly-gay roles, a real-life girlfriend and several boyfriends, plus a penis and Guy's Bar

I am certainly going to visit a bar full of  guys, even if it's spelled wrong.

Or is Guy the owner, so it's Guy's bar?

I'm going either weay, but I'm not sure if Miles Heizer wants to come along.

You probably remember Miles from Parenthood (2010-2015), the sitcom with Craig T. Nelson and his four children and eight grandchildren.  It was like Modern Family without the diversity.  Miles played grandson Drew Holt: shy, sensitive, artistic, but still girl-crazy, with several girlfriends fighting over him.

The Greenville, Kentucky native was born in 1994, and began acting in 2005, with many guest spots before Parenthood, plus Rails & Ties (2007), about a young boy who survives a catastrophic train crash, and Rudderless (2014), about a father grieving over his dead son.

He had some gay-positive roles after Parenthood.

In Love, Simon (2018), he plays Cal, who the closeted Simon mistakenly identifies as Blue, another closeted teen who posts about his experiences online.  Cal is not, but he offers an ear if Simon wants to talk, suggesting that he may be bisexual, or at least an ally.

In 13 Reasons Why (2017-20), which spends three seasons explaining why a high school girl killed herself, Miles plays Alex Standell, who kisses his boyfriend Timothy Granaderos, after they are named prom kings, and everyone in the school applauds. 

He also gives us a n*de scene.  Wait, that's a woman you're on top of.  What gives?

According to Wikipedia, he dates Jessica in Seasons 1-3, then Winston Williams (Deaken Bluman) and Charlie St. George (Tyler Barnhart) in Season 4. 

Wait -- AZ Nude Men says that Miles is  kissing Timothy Granaderos (left), but the fan wiki says Charlie St. George.  Granaderos plays Montgomery de la Cruz, a series antagonist who hooks up with guys, but isn't actually gay. 

Take your pick.  

After 13 Reasons, Miles appeared in two podcast series, Undertow: Narcosis and The Sisters.

He also starred in The Ex-Husbands (2023): a Manhattan dentist (Griffin Dunne of American Werewolf in London gets dumped by his wife, so he flies out to Tulum to crash his son's bachelor party. Whoops, that son gets dumped, too. Miles plays another brother, who is gay and therefore doesn't have to worry about marriage (um...gay marriage happens?)

It gets weird after the break

Jesse Bradford: The gay and gay-subtext roles of yesteryear have vanished, but he still has a physique. And a cock.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Caleb Ruminer: From fundamentalist Arkansas to angst drama, softcore straight porn, j/o videos, and gay teases

 

In the teen drama Finding Carter (2014-2015), 16-year old Carter (Kathryn Prescott) discovers that the woman she thinks of as her mother actually kidnapped her when she was three.  She is reunited with her birth family, and must juggle the standard high school "boyfriends! fashion!  mean girls!" drama with soap opera angst: kidnapping, insanity, sexual assault, cancer, drug abuse, murder, "shocking revelations," and "dark secrets."

She has two potential boyfriends, the violent drug dealer Crash (Caleb Ruminer) and the kind, gentle Max (Alex Saxon). 

There are two lesbian characters, Madison and Bird, who face extensive homophobia, go through extensive angst, and date Max before figuring "it" out. 

I've already done a profile of Alex Saxon, so this is about Caleb Ruminer,  which is hard to type without it sounding dirty.  It means "someone who ruminates," fixates on negative thoughts.

Caleb was born in Cabot, Arkansas, about 25 miles north of Little Rock.   Ulp.

He found his passion for acting while singing in church, appearing in church plays, and so on. Ulp.

After graduating from high school, he attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, AMDA, in Los Angeles, for two years. Then dropped out because they were too liberal?

His first acting gig was an 2013 episode of Castle, as the brother of a teenager who would grow up to be on death row.

Then came the unyielding angst of Finding Carter 

In a 2014 interview in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (wait -- there are Democrats in Arkansas?), Caleb talks about a struggle with being a Christian and playing a bad dude.  But, he figures, the bad dude is never praised for committing sins, so it's ok.  He found a church in Los Angeles where they talk about how you can be Christian and an actor.  

Ulp.  Doubtless there's some (a lot) of homophobia in Caleb's background.

But some penises, too (after the break)

After Carter, Caleb starred in Lethal Seduction (2015), which is what it sounds like: teenager Caleb is seduced by his cougar neighbor, who influences him to do  a lot of deviant stuff.  His mother is also in love with him, so the two psychos have an increasingly violent tug-of-war with Caleb in the middle. Plus he has a teen girlfriend and a best buddy (Sam Lerner, right)

Sam Lerner is best known as Geoff Schwartz on The Goldbergs (2014-23). Here he chills with some very gifted homies.

Next Caleb had guest spots on:

Episode 1.5 of The World According to Billy Potwin (2018), about a far-right anti-vax 13-year old in a family of liberals. Like Family Ties? 

Episode 1.1 of Strange Ones (2018): "Two enigmatic travelers make their way across a remote landscape," facing paranormal peril. First up: an abused high school girl conjures a demon.  Wait, a movie entitled The Strange Ones and a tv series called Strange Ones both premiered in 2018.  I may be mixing them up.

Episode 2.3 of Dirty John: Betty Broderick (2020), a true-crime show about the woman who murdered her ex-husband (Christian Slater) and his new wife in 1989.  "Betty takes a desperate step to save her marriage."

Episode 1.1 of The Irrational (2023): A professor (Jesse L. Martin, left) uses his knowledge of human nature to solve murders.  His roommate and best friend is a queer woman.

Caleb's character is a former Marine suffering from PTSD and alcohol abuse.  Figures.

Dude, try a comedy.  They aren't that bad.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit

"The Hooligan": N*de musclemen, a Fat Thug, and some gay vibes in the life of a hooligan drug runner in Poland

 

The Hooligan popped up on my Netflix feed this morning, with a cute, stern-looking guy staring at the camera.

Football hooligans are fans who support their team in excessive, violent ways. Whether they win or lose, they storm through the town, celebrating by overturning cars, breaking shop windows, setting fires, and assaulting bystanders.  

Sounds violent, but at least there will be some musclemen, and...maybe....possibly...one of the hooligans will be gay.

Left: When I googled "muscular football hooligan," this popped up. 

Scene 1: The Hooligan walking in slow motion down a dark street, with lights flashing as if he's being photographed by papparazi.  His left hand is gone, and his arm is in a leather cast.

Cut to the Hooligan, Kuba, and his mum, dad, and little brother drinking beer in a family restaurant.  Kuba is 17, and still has both hands.    

Wait -- this tv series is from Poland!  Not going to have any gay....

The IMDB doesn't say which actor is playing which character, but I think Kuba is played by Grzegorz Palkowski, who starred in a gay-themed Polish movie, Sucker's Death (2024).

"Gay-free zone" Poland has gay movies?

 

Dad is played by Wojciech Zelinski.

 Fat Thug complains to the Other Thug is too close to him, brushing against him (ugh!  contact with another dude -- disgusting!), and the Other Thug counters that his mother is not very good in bed. After demonstrating that they're homophobic, they stand back while their Boss approaches Dad and asks when he got out of prison. 

Back story: Dad used to be a famous soccer player, but then he went to prison for six or seventeen years.

They discuss the game tonight.  Third Guy thinks that Kuba has potential, and invites him to the gym to work on his chest.  Dad disagrees: they should work on his arms.  Wait -- do they want him to train to be a player, or a fan? .

When Mom goes up to pay the check, Boss approaches.  Apparently they were lovers 17 years ago, while Dad was in prison, and Kuba is his biological son, but they can't tell anyone.

Scene 2:  RKS Gladius Stadium, a match between the Mazovia team and the good guys. A huge crowd of hooligans tryiing to get into the game, being rowdy as security checks them for guns. Fat Thug says "Don't grope me too much, ok dude?  I'm not into you."  Ok, he's protesting too much.  Dude is gay and closeted.

The game begins.  The fans of the two teams are kept strictly separate, under heavy guard, so they don't attack each other, but some musclemen jump over the barracades and push through the police cordon!  Dad tells Kubi that they have to leave to avoid being clobbered.  On the way out, they see some fans beating other fans to death.

More after the break

Gladiator II: Not as homophobic as you think, and there are musclemen

 

Tonight's movie night movie was Gladiator II, the sequel to Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000) -- 25 years later.  I didn't want to see it because I heard it was extremely homophobic, but actually it wasn't bad.  Well, it was jingoistic and very violent, but the homophobia and heterosexism weren't too bad.

The wife of Numidian soldier Hanno (Paul Mescal) is killed during a Roman invasion around 200 AD, and he cries, screams, tries to prevent her from crossing the River Lethe for about five minutes, but then he rarely mentions her again, and he doesn't get a new girlfriend.  

He concentrates on getting revenge on the leader of the invading force, General Acacius (Pedro Pascal, left), which he will accomplish by becoming a gladiator under the scheming Macrinus (Denzel Washington).  

These aren't the hand-to-hand combat gladiators of sword-and-sandal movies.  The spectacles in the Coliseum include fights with baboons and a rhinocerous, and a sea-battle with full-size ships in a shark-infested tank

Guess what: Hanno discovers that he is actually the grandson of Marcus Aurelius, and therefore the true heir of the Roman Empire.  Plus his mother is now married to General Acacius -- he wants revenge on his stepfather!  Anybody up for an Oedipal conflict?

The only other heteronormative moment occurs when Hanno asks gladiator physician Ravi (Alexander Karim) why he traveled from India to Rome: "I met a woman."

Hanno grins: "There's always a woman."  Not always, heteronormative jerk. Gay men exist.

Homophobia: Pedro Pascal and Paul Mescal have both played gay characters. Macrinus, who is plotting to take over the Empire, has a "twinkle of bisexuality," according to Ridley Scott. 

 I've published a lot about gay subtexts, and I didn't notice anything. A scene where he kisses a guy was cut, "but not due to homophobia."  Of course not, due to the belief that this is 1973, and audiences will rush from the theater.   All that is left is a statement that he "doesn't like women" some days. Dude is closeted to the point of invisibility.

The decadent (that is, acting like women) twin Emperors Geta and Caracalla (Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger) are oozing with homophobic villain stereotypes, except one is gay and the other is straight (we can tell because they are each fondling a consort during a depraved-party scene).

The gay one, Caracalla, actually seems to be a little more stable (which is not saying much: he installs his pet monkey his chief advisor).  

They just need to be swishy stereotypes to counterbalance the hard straightness of their rival Hanno.

More after the break.

"The Stranger": The one with a Kai Alexander butt, an alpaca-biter, Eddy from "Absolutely Fabulous," and two heterosexual horndogs

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.