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Al Mar (Spanish) [The Sea]

By Golu
This movie was just plain weird. I really went in wanting to like it, but the whole pretentious, overly poetic vibe, combined with this choppy editing that keeps hopping back and forth in these tiny five to ten second bursts, just made it feel dragged out for no real reason, way too self indulgent if you ask me. Honestly this could've been trimmed down to a fifteen minute short and lost nothing. And I still don't get what the deal was with women dancing along the beach while some overwrought, flowery narration plays over the top. The plot creeps along at a snail's pace, slowly building toward some confrontation that you can see coming from a mile away and that just gets duller the closer it gets. By the time it actually happened I'd totally checked out as a viewer, even with two genuinely good looking guys leading the film. The setup itself is pretty basic. Lorena and Diego are trying to settle into a new life in a small town by the coast, both nervously starting fresh ...
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Drive Him Wild (Vertical BL Drama)

By Golu

Like the recycled tropes across pretty much every vertical BL show weren't already enough, now the writers aren't even bothering to try anything new. The second I started this, it felt weirdly familiar, so I actually went back through my old reviews to check, and sure enough, this is basically a carbon copy of Hard Shift, just with the jobs swapped around and a bit more thirst trap content sprinkled in. Seriously, put in a little effort here.

Set in a Christian university, Brady is the campus heartthrob, a well known playboy and captain of the hockey team, who takes a hit to the crotch during a game and gets injured. Medical intern Marven rushes over to help, and right away Brady feels this weird pull toward him. During the exam, which actually makes Brady finish, Marven tells him he might have erectile dysfunction and needs to spend a few days under Marven's care to sort it out. Brady's always considered himself straight, but Marven's upfront about being gay, and Brady starts finding himself increasingly drawn to him anyway. The whole treatment setup becomes an excuse for the two to grow close. Of course, like clockwork, Brady's already got a girlfriend in the picture. As Brady wrestles between what he wants and what he's denying to himself, the two of them get pulled into this intense, forbidden bond that ends up shaking everything Brady thought he understood about who he is. The twist comes through the coach, who secretly wants the doctor for himself. He tries drugging him at one point and repeatedly threatens to expose Brady's secret, but every single time Marven proves that protecting Brady's reputation matters more to him than anything, and he'll do whatever it takes to keep him safe.

New actors this time around, sure, but sitting through a completely recycled script wasn't what I signed up for. My tolerance for these vertical dramas is already razor thin as it is. I get it, on some level all these shows recycle the same tropes, some toxic, some just generic, but when the writers can't even put in the effort to craft an actual script, that's genuinely disappointing. There's plenty of thirst trap material here too, with Brady and Marven constantly almost getting caught fooling around, always managing to talk their way out of it just in time. This could work as a fun guilty pleasure for someone brand new to this genre, but for me, it just felt like wasted time. (2.5/10)

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