"The Cat and the Moon": An almost canonical gay couple and a gay-subtext romance on the Mean Streets of New York

The Cat and the Moon (2019) was advertised as a "coming of age" movie with Alex Wolff (left) playing an updated Holden Caulfield.  So I  went in expecting depression, drugs, suicide, heterosexual machinations, and rampant homophobia. I found lots of drugs, suicidal ideations, insanity, and heterosexual romance, but no homophobia, and so many gay subtexts that I couldn't keep track of who was in love with whom.  

New Guy (Alex Wolff) moves to New York City while his mom is in rehab, stays with his dad's old buddy (Mike Epps, who reputedly belongs to one of these cocks).  He gets involved in a lot stuff.  This review will only cover the gay subtext scenes.

Scene 1: New Guy's first day in school.  Boyfriend (Giulian Yao Gioello, left), hot for the new guy, befriends him and shows him around.

Scene 2: In algebra class, two stoner buds are playing a game involving fluttering their hands together. 

Scene 3:  New Guy is in the restroom, trying to get high with a bong made of a toilet paper roll, when the stoner buds come in, bickering like an old married couple and talking like "he got into my motherfuckin' grill, yo."  

One stands at the urinal; the other doesn't have to go, so he just stands nearby to get a peek at his bud's penis.

They introduce themselves as Seamus and Russell (Skyler Gisondo, Tommy Nelson).  I'll call them Gay Guy and Straight Friend.  They invite New Guy to a party Friday night.

"Wait -- will your girlfriend be there?"  Gay Guy asks.  

"Yes."

"Fuck!  You never pay attention to me when she's around."  To New Guy: "His balls just evaporate when she's around." That must make sex difficult.

Scene 4; The party was cancelled, so Gay Guy and Boyfriend (from Scene 1) invite New Guy to a club .  Straight Friend and his Girlfriend will also be there.  So when they go out, it's Straight Friend-Girlfriend and Gay Guy-Boyfriend?  

On the way, Gay Guy and Straight Friend argue and break up.  The Girlfriend tells New Guy not to worry: they break up all the time, but get back together again. "Honestly, I think they just secretly want to fuck each other."  Ok, so it's not a subtext.

Left: New Guy Alex Wolff's penis

They end up partying on the roof. Gay Guy and Straight Friend kiss.  Wait, I thought you had other partners.

Later, while the guys are dealing with an overdose, New Guy and The Girlfriend bond.

More 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?)

He starred in Boots (2025), a Netflix dramedy about a closeted gay teen who joins the Marines in 1980.

It gets weird after the break

"Superman" (2025): You'll believe a man can queerbait

 

I don't usually review movies that are playing in theaters, but we just saw Superman (2025).  I went in with an internet full of complaints about "wokeness," so I expected a lot of LGBTQ representation.  Here's what I got:

The Wokeness: There are some nonwhite people around.  Big deal.

The Plot: The tyrannical leader of Boravia (mostly Russia, a little Israel) wants to invade neighboring Jarhanpur (mostly Palestine, a little Ukraine), and promises to make Lex Luthor  (Nicholas Hoult, left) king of half the country if he helps.  So he sells them $80 billion in arms for cheap. 

But Lex's main goal is to discredit and hopefully kill Superman (David Corenswet), because he doesn't like aliens, because he's envious of Supe's popularity, because...well, even he isn't sure. He's a movie villain, it's his job.  

Lex has a vast number of high-tech resources to help with the discrediting/murder:

1. The Engineer, who can fill your lungs with nanobots so you suffocate.

2. A prison in an unstable pocket universe, where he keeps political prisoners and people who criticized him on social media.

3. An interdimensional rift that can take down whole cities.

4. A lot of Superman clones.

5. Super-genius employees played by Terence Rosemore and Stephen Blackehart.

6. A monstrous kanju that grows to Godzilla-size and breathes fire.

Left: Blackehart's d*ck

7. The message that Jor-El and Lara sent along from Krypton. Supe always thought that they asked him to help the people of Earth, but they actually told him to rule Earth, and massacre anyone who resisted.  This is real, not fake, and when it gets into the media, people reject poor Supe.  Why do they care about the career his parents planned for him?  My parents wanted me to work in the factory.  

Supe has a number of allies this time around:

1. Food cart guy Malik Ali (Dinesh Thyagarajan), who jumps into a crater to help the injured superhero. Lex kidnaps him.

2. Krypto the Superdog.  Lex kidnaps him, too.  Spoiler alert: The dog doesn't die.

More after the break

Matt Cornett: "Bella and the Bulldogs" and "High School Musical" alum shows his d*ck . With gratuitous Buddy Keaton

Several years ago, I reviewed the Nickelodeon teencom Bella and the Bulldogs (2015-16), about a girl on the previously all-boy football team.  The premise sounded like a critique of gender polarization, acknowledging that sometimes boys like to cook and date other boys, but, at least in the episode I watched, there were no queer codes at all. Even  the obviously gay boy had a crush on a girl.

Now I'm profiling some former Nickelodeon/Disney teencom stars who informed our childhoods.  Should I go with the Bella cast member who is gay but has no adult videos online, or the one who is straight but shows us his stuff?

Buddy Keaton (née Handleson), the gay guy, played Newt Van der Rohe, a geek with an unrequited crush on the geek-hating Sophie.  Eventually she warms up to him.

I believe that the expression is "woof!," not "bark!"

Matt Cornett, the straight guy, played Zach Barnes, a player from a rival team who invited Bella to the homecoming dance, but uninvited her when his teammates disapproved (Two houses, both alike in dignity....).   After a few more "are they or aren't they?" episodes, they kiss.

Ok, Buddy with just some beefcake, or Matt with the Full Monty?

That's what I thought.

After Bella, Matt Cornett did the guest-spot circuit, playing girls' crushes (in Speechless, Game Shakers, and The Goldbergs), a girl's boyfriend (in Life in Pieces), a girl's friend (in the Middle), and for a change of pace, a bully murdered by one of his victims in Criminal Minds 

Also A-Lan in Disney's Zombies 3, which adds aliens to the already crowded world of zombies and werewolves.  He is dating the female alien A-Li.

But Matt is best known as jock-turned-thesbian E. J. Caswell in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (2019-23).  The rationale for the clunky name: it's a tv series about high school students putting on the musical based on the movie High School Musical (which starred Zac Efron as the jock-turned-thesbian). 

In later seasons, they put on musicals based on the Disney films Beauty and the Beast, Frozen, and High School Musical 3: Senior Year.

Anxious to get to Matt's junk?  After the break.  Caution: Explicit