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Reviews
Joshua (2007)
An anti-gay adaptation of a HELL HOUSE vignette?
JOSHUA is an effectively strange film, until it falls apart in the third act where it is offensively insinuated that the titular character is a young homosexual whose evil deeds have all been an effort to live an openly gay life with his gay uncle.
When I saw the director's previous effort was HELL HOUSE (a brilliant and creepy documentary), I began to wonder if this movie is simply an adaptation of a narrow minded evangelical cautionary tale on the evils of Godless parenting in the Big Apple.
We have Sam Blackwell playing the Wall-Street power-broker who has turned his back on a rural Born-Again upbringing to marry a "Big Fat Jew" (as Farmiga's character puts it.) The family lives in an opulent ROSEMARY'S BABY style uptown apartment with their 9 year old son, Joshua, who is fastidiously well-groomed, anal-retentive, and loves nothing more than tickling the ivories with his Broadway-loving gay uncle (who never appears in a scene without a martini.) Joshua even mentions to his Dad early in the film that he hates playing soccer -- and baseball too!
Rockwell's mother comes to help with the family's newest addition - a relentlessly screaming infant girl who drives Farmiga into a severe (at times melodramatic) postpartum depression. Of course, Mom-In-Law is born-again, and in the scope of HELL-HOUSE-like vignettes, is the family's last hope for redemption. After taking Joshua to church, Grandma announces that Joshua has accepted Christ into his evil life and is met with an anti-Christian tongue lashing that would have made Julia Surgarbaker proud.
After driving his mom to the brink of insanity, Joshua goes on to kill poor Grandma - and incites his father to beating him in public. This was Joshua's master plan as a young homosexual. In the final scene we see Joshua once again tickling the ivories with his gay uncle (and new guardian) saying , "We were always meant to be together." Joshua then sings a Castrati-pitched love song to his new dad.
The big question is why the writers choose to link Joshua's satanic tendencies (the spawn of a city-dwelling agnostic couple) with a thinly veiled coming out story? They have some hefty explaining to do on the DVD. This has gotta be booth #42 in the HELL HOUSE hay ride, right?
Meanwhile, I'd like to propose the sequel to this film: A musical comedy set 6 years in the future where happy and well adjusted Joshua and sister are living a life of wacky antics with their gay uncle. Josh struggles to balance the demands of his first boyfriend while preparing to audition for the lead role in the revival of SPRING AWAKENING.
Never Met Picasso (1996)
Stay away from this dud.
I rented this movie a couple of weeks ago. This is one shallow and terribly
undeveloped film. I agree with the other reviewer -- there is no substance to any of the characters whatsoever, and the plot is very dull. I don't know how this film got funding --- it's sub-quality freshman filmmaking.