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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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Naomi Campbell (Spanish)

By Golu
I still don't know this film was actually fiction or a documentary. Either way I was hoping to see more content or drama to explore the purpose behind, but I saw neither of it. I would have liked to see the issues and lengths that our protagonist goes to get her sex change surgery, but instead all we get to see is her going about her daily life doing things that she likes to do. Meh!

Thirty-year-old Yermén is a transsexual woman who works as a spiritual adviser and fortune teller. She enjoys filming her neighbors and street dogs in her neighborhood in the suburbs of Santiago de Chile. Her unclear identity frightens the people she meets. She dreams of  sex change but doesn't have enough money to go for it. When she hears about a reality TV contest, she signs up for it because  the main prize is the plastic surgery of your choice. There she meets an enigmatic immigrant who wants to get an operation to look like Naomi Campbell. Rest of the film is all focused on Yermen going about her daily life praying to God at any given moment.

Starting first from the title itself, the film documentary-drama makes absolutely no sense at all. The filming is minimalist, and combining amateur video footage with staged scenes, it is never clear what it wants to be. Is the maker trying to make a statement on sexuality, or society, or the problems that a trans person may have to go through for sex change or what? I read somewhere that one of the idea behind the film was to show the problems of people who are different in a world frightened by everything that is unfamiliar. But even that doesn't come across in anyway. This is a very lazy style of film making where to seems some people just got together and just pretend to make something pretentious. People really need to have a clarity on what they are trying to make before they get into film making. (1.5/10)
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