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P.S. Burn This Letter Please (Documentary)

By Golu
This documentary pulls together oral history to trace a very specific New York chapter of gay life in America. Back in 2014, someone found a box stuffed with hundreds of letters sitting in a storage unit in LA. These letters went all the way back to the 1950s and were written to a young guy named Reno Martin, who'd later become known in Hollywood as agent Ed Limato. When Martin left home to chase a radio career, his closest gay and queer friends kept writing to him just to stay in touch. Every letter's signed with a fake name and ends with a warning to burn it after reading, which tells you everything about an era when just being gay, or dressing in drag, could get you thrown in jail. The filmmakers actually tracked down the surviving writers, now in their eighties and nineties, and turned what could've been dry historical digging into something genuinely personal and intimate. The people behind this doc found the original letter writers themselves, several of whom are stil...
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Hello Love! (Cambodia Mini-Series)

By Golu

We don't get a ton of BL content coming out of Cambodia, and honestly, if this is the kind of thing we'd be getting more of, I'm perfectly fine skipping it. I know that sounds harsh. But the whole concept of ordinary people in ordinary settings stumbling into love only really works if there's something genuinely compelling behind it. Both the leads and their romance here are so flat and generic that nothing about it is going to grab anyone who's watched a decent amount of BL or gay content before. At least it's only five episodes, each running twenty to twenty five minutes, so thankfully they don't drag it out longer than it needs to be.

The setup involves a group of students who get assigned a project by their professor, meant to teach them about how rice gets grown and processed, and to help them appreciate what makes Cambodian rice special in the first place. While out in the field they run into Sal, a resort manager who offers to show them around, mainly because he had a dream about one of the students, Sam, and wants an excuse to spend time with him. Sam and Sal clearly have feelings for each other right away, with this obvious romantic and sexual tension building between them. The more time they spend together, the closer they get, and they agree to stay in touch afterward. A few days pass and Sam starts missing him, so he decides to head over to Sal's resort to see him. Not long after, Sal's female friend comes to visit, and Sam gets noticeably jealous over it, eventually blurting out that he actually loves Sam and taking off before Sam even gets the chance to respond. Predictably, Sam tracks him down afterward, admits he feels the same way, and the two of them end up happy together with a kiss to close things out.

This is clearly a low budget production, and you can tell they're trying to cram a lot into a short runtime. There's a ton of drone footage, a lot of it repeated, showing off the rice paddies and countryside, and while it looks nice at first, it gets old pretty fast. The shots themselves are well done, but they end up feeling like filler, mostly because the script underneath is so thin. Even the two leads don't really bring much charisma to the table. They've got okay chemistry together, but as someone watching, I just couldn't bring myself to care. You can tell exactly where this story's headed within the first few minutes. The opening two episodes spend a surprising amount of time teaching viewers about different rice varieties and how it's grown and distributed, which honestly was kind of interesting on its own, but not really what I'm looking for in a BL. It almost feels like the creators couldn't decide if they wanted to make a travel documentary, an educational piece, or a boys love story, and just mashed all three together. And that final kiss scene, you could tell both actors were super uncomfortable shooting it, it really shows on screen. They filmed it from these weird angles clearly trying to hide how awkward the whole thing felt. If you're new to the genre this might work fine for you, but for someone who's watched a lot of BL like me, this one was a real slog to get through.

Bottom line, thin story, awkward chemistry, and way too much rice education for a BL. (3.5/10)

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