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Chained To My Bully Stepbrother (AI Vertical BL Drama)

By Golu
This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat.  The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...
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I’m Not Gay: A Musical

By Golu
This was a weird film. Overly stylish and a very stagey feel, it just felt like a mish-mash of things and unsure of what it really wants to say. The film employs split screen is more than a few scenes, includes several sequences shot with backlighting that more often than not silhouette the characters and obscure their expressions. I felt this film was more like an experiment or a gimmick for a new narration style, but personally for me, it failed. Both story and the execution.

MMA fighter Misha is a black guy who is dealing with his demons (we don't hear about it till much later, on what they are). He likes to dance but somehow never does, because of being perceived as gay. His ex-girlfriend is dropping off his daughter by a one night stand and the duo are not on best terms. After repeated self harm attempts by Misha, his doctor recommends him to see a transgender psychiatrist in Fire Island if he wants his pain prescriptions refilled. Once in the gay mecca, Misha falls in love with the house he is renting. However, the seller, will only let him buy it if Misha is gay. So, in an offensive subplot, Misha pretends to be gay to convince the neighbors so he can buy his dream house. The nieghbpurs are trip of gay men who are trying to win a dance competition. They want Misha to help them. Misha, who was a dancer — until a shameful incident from his past broke his spirit and he became an MMA fighter — is reluctant to help. He even refuses to teach his own daughter. Between ll these scenes, Misha, says at least on 10 different occasions that he is not gay.We all have scenes between Misha with his therapist, which include snippets of psychobabble as Misha comes to terms with his big dark secret from his past, where he comes clean as how he seduced his dancer teacher when he was young for sex. Somehow eventually, he accepts who he is, promises to help the trio for dance competition with the film ending with the four of them dancing their heart out.

The film is a full on musical with song and performances coming every 5-10 minutes that take the story forward. But when the story itself is so random, and unsure; nothing was able to hold my attention. Everyone from the start, including his ex-girlfriend and daughter, ask him or tells him he is gay. Don't ask why! He shouts I am not gay. Over and over. And in between all this, the story keeps moving from Misha's past, t his MMF career, to his teenage trauma to the trip of gays wanting to win a dance competition and Misha shouting I am not gay. The songs all sounded same after a while and the word choice pf color palette and everything that was going around was personally very uninspiring for me. While I’m Not Gay asks many questions, one of the things it refuses to do is give direct answers. With so much talk of queerness in the film, there is never an outright declaration of Misha’s sexuality; which goes back to my initial thought that it is hard to comprehend what is this film even trying to say. (3/10)
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