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Soul Mate (Japanese Series)

By Golu
Is this technically a gay show? Even after getting through the whole thing, that's still kind of tricky to answer. There's never any physical intimacy shown between the two leads, not even a single kiss. What it gives you instead is something that goes way deeper than that. It traces an emotional bond that spans a full decade between two guys who are both dealing with their own baggage, and what they share basically amounts to being soulmates. The story moves across Japan, South Korea, and Berlin. Honestly, whether people want to call what they have a romantic relationship or not doesn't really matter to me. A relationship doesn't need a label like boyfriends attached to it to actually mean something. And closeness doesn't need to be physical to feel genuine. What this show captures is something quieter but way more powerful, a bond rooted in understanding, respect, and just showing up for each other. Across eight episodes, each running 35 to 45 minutes, this is one...
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Eleven Men Out (Icelandic)

By Golu
This film is both comedy and also shows dysfunctional characters in Icelandic areas. This is an identical plot to the German movie Guys and Balls but where the Guys and Balls was funny and very interesting, the same cannot be said about this film. Eleven Men Out is a very depressing, serious, and awkward movie where the acting is barely passable. And I did not like that the main character's son gets caught in the middle of his father coming out and his mother being a slut and a drunk.

Ottar, a famous local football player playing for the first and most popular team in Iceland announces in the beginning of the movie that he is gay just to get a story and a picture in the local magazine. Life is not the same then. He is forced to quit the team. Being a rebel, he joins a local third rate local gay team to show everyone that he can still be gay but a great footballer. The rest of the movie is the tribulations of him adjusting to his new life and team. His father is a psychiatrist and a member of the board of his former team. At first his former team chastises him but toward the end this team tries to get him back. His ex-girlfriend was a beauty queen with a son now. The worse part is when neither of them cares too much about their son, where father is having random sex with men and mother is being a drunkard slut. There is a game at the end of the movie between the gay team and this straight team. The gay team fails miserably.

This film is joyless and ugly, often chauvinistic, sexist, biggoted and, well, all confusingly so. All the female characters are saps, whores, or drug-addled. The men are cruel or pathetic, or 'lost'. This film fails, mostly, because of a flaw in the story. You never get the chance to know or like Ottar beyond the plain facts that he is an attractive, spoiled, self-centered egotistic dummy who does whatever he wants without really thinking his actions or their consequences through. The cover of the film is seductive. How we wished, the film had half the potential.

Watch 'Guys and Ball's instead. That one is much better. (4/10)
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