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Stop! That! Train!

By Golu
Coming out of the same studio that gave us RuPaul's Drag Race, and stacked with a whole crew of former contestants, Stop! That! Train! plays like RuPaul basically taking a bow for the entire franchise she's built. It's not really a gay film in the traditional sense, but with so many drag stars from Ru's shows popping up alongside a few cameos from well known out gay actors, I figured it earns a spot on this blog anyway. The whole thing is completely over the top, packed with GenZ slang, loud flashy visuals, and humor that's constantly winking at you knowing how ridiculous it is. Going in you'd assume it's meant to be a laugh riot, and a lot of critics online seem to be eating it up, but I just couldn't get into it at all. I've never really been someone who vibes with campy silly stuff like this, so honestly my reaction doesn't surprise me one bit. The setup follows Tess and DeeDee, two low level stewardesses who sneak onto the fancy Glamazonian E...
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Lost Everything

By Golu
This could easily have been a simple straight forward film focussing on the closeted life of a famous movie star, but there are a bunch of ancillary storylines introduced here which, in my opinion, just introduce confusion to the overall plot and takes away from the focus of the main story. Also, I feel, ambitions of the film were too high but the treatment was done at a very basic level with minimal production qualities which fails to give it a realistic film at all.

Brian is a famous movie star who comes to Miami for a film shoot and is staying at a hotel. He has everything that one could ask for, except he is in closet and cannot be openly gay. The hotel bartender David flirts with him and they both start an affair. There is a journalist who is watching every move and is looking for the big story when he finds out that Brian might be gay. Then we have all these other ancillary stories of the bartender's best friend who is also gay and has a religious famous father, who has hired a team to find dirt on his son's boyfriend and to kill him off. The guy hired to kill him falls in love with the main, best friend who runs a local art store. Then we have Brian's manager, mommy dearest like lady who arranges for a girl Michele to play act Brian's girlfriend (except Michele and Brian are friends). Weird things go on and when David realizes tht this is not going anywhere, he decides to make money out of the whole deal. He makes a video of the himself with Brian and sells it to the reporter. When the reporter refuses to give the video to Brian, the actor ends up killing him thereby destroying himself completely. Michele steals all of David's money that he made selling his video to newspaper. All the ancillary stories have their own endings and one way or the other most people lose everything that they have.

The direction was strictly ok for the film. And the acting was very uneven throughout. David and Brain did a good job but everyone else felt a bit over the top, or somehow just not fitting into the film. The film is a wannabe thriller but instead it's a bit preposterous and its hard to take anything seriously thats going on. There is a lot of talk around the actor coming out and being a role model for the society but things are so fake that you eventually don't care. The movie is a melodrama trying to give lessons but fails on both accounts. The only good thing was some good eye-candy but besides that there is nothing much impressive to hold your attention.

Strictly below average affair which can be easily skipped. (4/10)
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