Short Reviews -- "B"

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Short Reviews -- Titles Starting with "B"

Written by Heather Picker

Bad Girls (1996)

Excruciating, unintentionally hilarious western starring Drew Barrymore, Andie MacDowell, Mary Stuart Masterson, Madeleine Stowe, and Dermot Mulroney's sideburns. The girls are prostitutes on the run after a shooting at a brothel. A bunch of unexciting things set to a horrid Jerry Goldsmith score happened that I immediately forgot. Probably guns and horses and stuff like that were involved. Skip it, and if you see a copy, burn it. [Also available in an unrated version.]

Bananas (1971)

"I object, your honor! This trial is a travesty. It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham." Bananas, Woody Allen's follow-up to Take the Money and Run, marked not only significant growth for the new filmmaker, but introduced audiences to a zanier kind of humor that continued through Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, Sleeper, and Love and Death, eventually culminating in the flawless Annie Hall. In Bananas Allen memorably stars as Fielding Mellish, a nervous and self-deprecating products tester prone to inappropriate statements like "I once stole a pornographic book that was printed in Braille. I used to rub the dirty parts." Following a painful breakup with his political activist girlfriend, Fielding heads for San Marcos, where he winds up a fascist dictator so important his honeymoon is televised and given the play-by-play treatment by Howard Cossell. Written with Mickey Rose, the film's screwball plotting, slapstick humor, and overall craziness remain exhilarating more than 30 years later.

The Banger Sisters (2002)

Not nearly as bad as you'd think. Goldie Hawn plays a free-spirited bartender named Suzette who sets out to reunite with Lavinia (Susan Sarandon), the best friend she hasn't seen in years, after losing her job. Once upon a time the two were infamous groupies known as the Banger Sisters; now an uptight Lavinia is married with teenage daughters and living in suburban luxury, and she doesn't want to be reminded of her past. Writer-director Bob Dolman's script is flimsy and predictable as can be, but Hawn is so exuberant as the Great Liberator, and everyone around her so willing that it hardly matters while you're watching it. Her performance, which suggests Penny Lane three decades later, makes you wish her career was more active. An added surprise is provided by Sarandon's daughter Eva Amurri, who is delightfully daffy as Lavinia's bratty 16-year-old.

Bar Girls (1994)

The worst lesbian movie ever, including The Killing of Sister George and Dude, Where's My Car. Okay, The Killing of Sister George isn't exactly a lesbian movie, but you get my point. Bar Girls is about a group of lesbian (shocking, I know) friends who hang out at an L.A. dyke bar. From what I observed their lives consist mostly of telling flat jokes and sleeping with each other in various couplings. All of the women are thoroughly uninteresting, if not intolerable. Perhaps worst of all is lead character Loretta (Nancy Allison Wolfe), who wisecracks like she's Alvy Singer. She's not. She's really, really not. Directed by Marita Giovanni from a script by Lauran Hoffman, who adapted her own play, apparently while sleeping.

Barfly (1987)

Henry Chinaski, protagonist of many a Bukowski novel, is brought vividly to life by Mickey Rourke, who can play greasy, bruised, and hunched over with the best of them. Barfly, written by Bukowski and directed by Barbet Schroeder, chronicles writer Chinaski's relationship with Wanda Wilcox (Faye Dunaway), a fellow drunk he meets at the bar. It's lowdown, grimy fun and Dunaway's fantastic.

Basic Instinct (1992)

Lurid potboiler about icy blond bisexual writer Catherine Trammell (Sharon Stone) and troubled detective Nick Whatshisname (Michael Douglas), who suspects her of murder and proceeds to do what any seasoned professional would: has sex with her. Lots and lots of dirty, dirty, vigorous sex. Immensely watchable, if only the first time, thanks to the talents of those meticulous maestros of guilty pleasures, Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhaus. Stone is genuinely charismatic, even without the nudity.

Batman (1989)

Tim Burton's fantastic take on the Dark Knight saga is an astounding visual feat thanks to the production design of the late Anton Furst. Michael Keaton stars as the brooding Bruce Wayne, whose alter-ego, the vigilante Batman, battles Jack Nicholson's entertaining but woefully underdeveloped Joker. Kim Basinger is striking as Bruce's love interest, photographer Vickie Vale, and Robert Wuhl somehow manages to entertain rather than annoy as Alexander Knox, the newspaper reporter who cracks wise to Vickie but ultimately has little to do. The screenplay was originally written by Sam Hamm but retouched by other writers (including Warren Skaaren); it isn't as cohesive as it could have been, but Burton's visuals more than make up for textual inadequacies.

Batman Returns (1992)

When Michelle Pfieffer is on-screen as Catwoman/Selina Kyle Batman Returns crackles with electricity; when Danny DeVito appears as the Penguin everything goes dead for a while. Daniel S. Waters' script introduces too many characters and plotlines to resolve anything satisfactorily and reduces Michael Keaton's Batman to what is essentially a supporting role in his own movie; Tim Burton is left to chart the efforts of evil businessman Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) and his cohort Penguin as they smear the Dark Knight's reputation and plot to assume control of Gotham City when he should be exploring the intriguing dynamic between Keaton and Pfeiffer, whose characters share so many parallels. It's frustrating to consider what might have been, but nonetheless Batman Returns remains the franchise's best sequel.

Beaches (1988)

The lifelong friendship between boisterous entertainer CC Bloom (Bette Midler) and WASPy lawyer Hillary Whitney (Barbara Hershey) exists only to jerk your tears and director Garry Marshall and screenwriter Mary Agnes Donoghue make no bones about it. The problem is they don't give you a reason to care about anything that goes on, they just expect the crying to come naturally. The only reaction I had was in response to Hershey's appearance: "What the hell did she do to her face?!" The childhood flashbacks are arguably the best sequences in the film, aside from Midler's opening rendition of "Under the Boardwalk," and contain great work by Mayim Bialik as a miniature Midler and Lainie Kazan as her mother.

Beautiful Girls (1996)

Slight slice of life picture starring Timothy Hutton as a pianist who returns home for his 10-year reunion to lament adulthood and romantic woes with high school pals Matt Dillon and Michael Rapaport. Natalie Portman is the bright spot as as Hutton's funny, verbose, 13-year-old neighbor; the two share a wholly believable bond rarely found in movies. Beautiful Girls is good, not great, but screenwriter Scott Rosenberg's ear for dialogue and Ted Demme's thoughtful direction give it a distinct charm that survives multiple viewings.

Beautiful Thing (1996)

Director Hettie Macdonald blends the serious, sweet, and strange in this British look at a smart, sensitive teenager Jamie (Glen Berry), who falls for his neighbor, sporty Ste (Scott Neal). Their romance is as true a portrait of first love as you'll find in contemporary film, despite (or because of?) the unrealistic ending, and the casting of layered, everyman actors adds a special poignancy, as do the quirks of secondary characters, like Mama Cass loving neighbor Leah (Tameka Empson). It isn't as vibrant as Get Real or tense as Different for Girls, but it is buoyed by the same doe-eyed, curious sensibility its lead characters wear on their sleeves. Adapted by Jonathan Harvey from his stage play (also directed by Macdonald).

Being John Malkovich (1999)

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's hyper-creative, endlessly bizarre comedic fantasy about a porthole into the mind of John Malkovich found the perfect directorial match in the kinetic Spike Jonze, he of "Buddy Holly" and "Sabotage" music video fame. Jonze's first feature film stars John Cusack as a depressed puppeteer married to a sweatpants-sporting, nearly unrecognizable Cameron Diaz, who discovers the porthole and, with the assistance of an enterprising coworker he has a crush on (slyly played by Catherine Keener), turns it into a thriving attraction, unbeknownst, of course, to Malkovich. Chaos ensues and it's fun while it lasts, but you may find yourself scratching your head when it's over.

Best in Show (2000)

Christopher Guest trains his camera on the world of dog shows, mining a previously untapped comic goldmine with more than a little help from a host of Waiting for Guffman players. Gaggles of strange, ribbon-crazed dog-owners, including socially awkward Gerry Fleck (Eugene Levy, who co-wrote with Guest) and his, um, very social wife, Cookie (Catherine O'Hara); bickering, therapy-dependant, catalogue-shopping yuppies Meg and Hamilton Swan (Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock); exceptionally flamboyant Stefan and Scott (Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins), and Anna Nicole Smith-ish Sherri Ann Cabot (Jennifer Coolidge) and driven trainer, Christy Cummings (Jane Lynch, also known as "that lady from all the commercials"), descend on Philadelphia for the Mayflower Dog Show, where wisecracking sports commentator Buck Laughlin (Fred Willard) calls the competition. Oh, the humanity!

Better Than Chocolate (1999)

Amiable festival favorite about a young lesbian, her new girlfriend, and the visiting mother she isn't out to. Peter Outerbridge is excellent as the pre-op suitor of stuffy bookstore owner Ann-Marie MacDonald.

The Big Kahuna (2000)

Kevin Spacey talks and talks and talks in the film version of Roger Rueff's play "The Hospitality Suite." He and Danny DeVito are the seasoned industrial lubricant salesmen on a business trip to Kansas with an earnest baby-faced rookie (Peter Facinelli) where they hope to make a big sale. Mostly they sit around their hotel room yapping about their lives and line of work. There's not much of a story but the dialogue is good and when he's in sarcastic mode - and when isn't he? - I could watch Spacey read the side of a shampoo bottle. Directed by John Swanbeck from a screenplay by Rueff.

Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss (1998)

Before Sean Hayes was "just Jack," he was lovelorn photographer Billy in this good-natured, utterly forgettable comedy in which Billy lusts for sexually ambiguous waiter Gabe (Brad Rowe).

The Birdcage (1995)

Even those who like their homosexuals flaming will be insulted by this piece of crap La Cage Aux Folles retread by director Mike Nichols, who should have known better. Christine Baranski and Dan Futterman are cool; everyone else sucks.

The Bishop's Wife (1947)

I'm not big on Christmas movies, but if I had to choose one to watch each year it would be The Bishop's Wife, the only one with Cary Grant's dimple. The actor formerly known as Archibald Leach plays Dudley, an angel dispatched to earth to help David Niven's harried bishop Brougham, so busy raising funds for a new cathedral that he is neglecting his wife, Loretta Young, and child. Dudley and Young become buddy-buddy and Niven acts like Niven, and meanwhile Harold "The Singing Nun" Koster's cheerful direction of singing and skating and Santa -- oh my! -- makes it an uplifting picture that isn't sappy like Miracle on 34th Street or It's a Wonderful Life-ish like It's a Wonderful Life. (By the way, I'm not certain that The Bishop's Wife featured any singing at all, but I needed a third "s" to round out that sentence, and a little exaggeration or outright lying never hurt anyone.)

Black Widow (1987)

Director Bob Rafelson's thriller builds a lot of suspense that goes nowhere, and it gives Black Widow some sort of unclassifiable distinction amid the legions of big-haired, shoulder-padded, synth-scored crime flicks of the 1980s. Debra Winger stars as Alex Barnes, a federal investigator on the trail of Theresa Russell's title character. The two generate mucho chemistry that, like everything else in the film, goes nowhere, but it, great acting, and Rafelson's taut direction will keep you watching. Screenplay by Ronald Bass.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Three kids go into the woods with a camera, and, like, a bunch of choppily photographed scary stuff happens. Blah, blah, blah, something about a witch, blah, blah, blah, people stand in corners. Heather Donahue almost made me throw my TV out the window (out of irritation, not hysterical horror), so assuming she's not a sniffling attention whore in real-life, that's a credit to her.

Blame It on Rio (1987)

Michael Caine is a gross old lech with poodle hair in this unfunny comedy about a middle-aged man who screws his best friend's teenage daughter while vacationing in Rio. I've taken countless showers since seeing it a few years ago and still feel dirty in a not-good way. Directed by Stanley Donen. (Yes, you read that right.) [As a side note, I don't remember whether Caine had poodle hair in Blame it on Rio. It is entirely possible he didn't, but since at other times in his career he has sported poodle hair, and because there's really nothing I could say about this movie other than "Eww. Ewwww," I thought why not mention it.]

Blaze (1989)

Rob Shelton's screen adaptation of Blaze Starr's memoirs chronicle her headline-making relationship with eccentric Louisiana governor Earl K. Long is an underrated affair featuring sensational performances by Paul Newman as the rascally politician and Lolita Davidovich as the hillbilly stripper. Sure, they have a sex scene involving watermelons and a 65-year-old Newman pinned beneath Davidovich that gave me an inkling of what it would be like to walk in on your grandparents and find a frightened goat in the corner (yeah, I don't know what I'm talking about, either), but the whole thing is as fun as almost anything Shelton's done in his career.

The Blue Angel (1930)

Marlene Dietrich is dreamy times a thousand, and still utterly unattainable in the densely layered early talkie that made her a star. Here she is Lola Lola, the nightclub entertainer who ensnares Emil Jannings' married professor and causes his very public ruin. Josef von Sternberg, who directed Dietrich in six more films, was heavily influenced by the German expressionist filmmakers and you'd know it watching The Blue Angel, a bold visual feast of darkness, shadows and distorted reality. Filmed simultaneously in both German and English.

Blue Collar (1978)

Three assembly line workers at a Detroit auto factory rip-off their union hoping to solve financial problems, and end up getting much more than they bargained for in Paul Schrader's directorial debut, co-written with brother Leonard. Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto and Richard Pryor pack a powerful punch as the desperate friends, and Schrader's simple, direct style makes the film, which handles some heavy issues, accessible and stripped of pretense. Get the DVD for a fascinating Schrader commentary and a look at the original promotional artwork, which tried to fool moviegoers into thinking the film was one of Pryor's comedies.

Body Heat (1981)

Double Indemnity-like (in an '80s way, and without Billy Wilder, or Barbara Stanwyck, or...) film noir starring William Hurt as a skirt-chasing Florida attorney and Kathleen Turner (in her screen debut) as the calculating wife of a successful businessman (Richard Crenna) who have a steamy affair that leads to murder and, well, that's all I'm telling you, except that I laughed whenever Hurt went running because he'd always light up a cigarette afterward. Also, there's something funny about William Hurt glistening with sweat, too, though I'm not sure what. [Read the full review]

Boiler Room (2000)

I don't remember much about Boiler Room, just that it has Giovanni Ribisi and Vin Diesel and some other guys, stockbrokers for a hella shady brokerage house, who sit around quoting Wall Street and hurling profanity and ethnic slurs at each other. It reminded me of grade school. Anyway, when the guys aren't doing that, they dress in suits and talk really fast and sucker people out of their money. More or less they're a cross between Gordon Gekko and anyone from Glengarry GlenRoss, but Daryl Hannah isn't getting naked and there's no Jack Lemmon in sight. Ben Affleck shows up, though, and as usual it's little consolation. Back to Boiler Room: it has energy, the good kind, and hums along nicely and you don't get the feeling that writer-director Ben Younger idolizes his subject, which is refreshing since a lot of young filmmakers are dumb like that. For every con (the stupid father-son subplot) there is a pro (Nia Long), and the ending is sort of a letdown but Ribisi has a fragile quality and one of the most interesting mouths in the movies, which makes it impossible to look away unless he's in The Mod Squad.

The Bone Collector (1999)

Denzel Washington is confined to a bed and the movie isn't going anywhere, either. Washington is Lincoln Rhyme, a brilliant homicide detective who was paralyzed on the job. His new job is to be crotchety, and Queen Latifah's job is to play his nursemaid, a pointless role I'm assuming she took because she wanted to hang around Denzel and Angelina Jolie. Jolie is a young cop taken under Rhyme's wing to crack the case when a serial killer starts doing serial killer-ish stuff, like, you know, murdering a bunch of people. Jeremy Iacone's adaptation of the Jeffrey Deaver novel (that I thought was pretty suspenseful, but I still read Patricia Cornwell, so what do I know?) is boring times infinity, which leads us to an important point about suspense movies that filmmakers sometimes forget: For thrillers to be thrilling, there should probably be some suspense, or at least a little nudity. Directed by Phillip Noyce.

Bound (1996)

Before they spawned the Matrix trilogy, Andy and Larry Wachowski wrote and directed Bound, a stylish, low-budget neo-noir caper that was one of the best and most overlooked films of 1996. Gina Gershon stars as Corky, a freshly sprung convict who goes to work as a plumber in an apartment building. Soon, unsatisfied gangster's moll Violet (Jennifer Tilly) is calling for help with her, uh, pipes, and the two begin an affair complicated by Violet's proposed plan to steal $2 million from her hotheaded boyfriend Caeser (Joe Pantoliano). Funny, violent, and seriously sexy, the Wachowski Brothers masterful directorial debut gained a cult following upon its video release. The unrated version, available on DVD, extends a Tilly-Gershon sex scene by mere seconds.

Bowfinger (1999)

If you like the idea of a movie called Chubby Rain chances are you'll like Bowfinger, which follows downtrodden hack Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin, who wrote the screenplay) and his motley gang of associates on his very bizarre quest to make that very bizarre movie. It has a lot of good gags that I refuse to spoil, and director Frank Oz is slyer here than he was in In & Out, but the greatest endorsement I can give is that I was highly impressed with Eddie Murphy (upon whom Martin has bestowed the gift of two great characters), whom I normally find tedious.

Boys and Girls (2000)

She's All That director Robert Iscove reunites with favorite leading lady Freddie Prinze Jr. for an admirably moronic When Harry Met Sally... strictly for middle school students and anyone else who dots their i's with fluorescent purple hearts. Prinze stars as geeky architecture student Ryan (you can tell he's geeky by the way he tucks in his shirt and knows how to read) and Claire Forlani shows an incredible range of three to five facial tics as his love interest. My favorite was the blinking.

Boys on the Side (1995)

Mary Louise Parker plays the sweet, shy, sickly one, Drew Barrymore's the fresh-faced, free-spirited, knocked up one (who dates a cop named Abe Lincoln who cannot tell a lie, which is supposed to be funny but, well, you took history, right?), and Whoopi Goldberg is the sexless lesbian (you'd have to ask screenwriter Don Roos how she can have a girlfriend and still be sexless since director Herbert Ross is dead) who stands around being sympathetic. You'll care for the characters, thanks to good acting, but when I'm in the mood for manipulative tearjerkers I pop in Total Recall.

The Breakfast Club (1985)

There is a lot of embarrassing stuff here, like the soundtrack and dance sequence and wardrobe and writing and direction, and also Judd Nelson's gargantuan and actually quite frightening nostrils. Maybe that's why people like it so much. The Breakfast Club is a poorly staged cult classic about five high school students (all different but all the same, blah, blah, blah, lazy writing) who spend a Saturday in detention together and learn a bunch of stupid, unrealistic, fist-pumping crap about themselves and each other. The acting, by Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, and Ally Sheedy (whose dandruff fares well in a supporting role) is good enough (I'll attribute Nelson's unsuccessful "If I brood it gives me layers" approach to filmmaker John Hughes forgetting to give him a character) but I can't get past the screenplay, full of one-dimensional representations of teenage clichés that would be funny if Hughes didn't think he was Edward Albee.

Bringing Down the House (2003)

Peter Sanderson (Steve Martin) is an affluent lawyer with little time for his kids or ex-wife when he meets Charlene Morton (Queen Latifah) in an Internet chat room. He goes by the handle LegalEagle, and she calls herself Lawyer-Girl and needs help with a case. Their friendship deepens online but soon they discover they've both misrepresented themselves: Peter described his hair as light rather than white, and Charlene called herself an attorney when she's actually an escaped con. By-the-numbers sitcom-style hilarity ensues as Charlene refuses to leave his life until he helps overturn her conviction and winds up improving his life in many ways. Forget the boring legal subplots, the real crime here is that Steve Martin and Queen Latifah spend the whole movie sniping at each other and Jason Filardi's screenplay doesn't even have the balls to let them have sex! As if that isn't bad enough, Latifah hardly gets to interact with the man she is allowed to hook up with, Eugene Levy. It was a blockbuster, all right, but Bringing Down the House is also a disappointment: It asks the audience to laugh at racial humor without making a single incisive joke. Directed by Adam Shankman (A Walk to Remember).

Bringing Up Baby (1939)

Hawks, Hepburn and Grant are the only words necessary to describe Bringing Up Baby, a touchstone of screwball comedy involving all the things a good comedy should, namely Hawks, Hepburn and Grant. (Not to mention the leopard-on-the-loose or Cary Grant as a befuddled paleontologist in irresistible geek garb or Katharine Hepburn being all silly and seductive.) There are a couple of strange moments that don't quite fit (Grant exclaiming that he "just went gay all of the sudden" is good for giggles, but not for anything having to do with the movie), but it is as fast and funny as nearly any comedy ever made. Written by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde.

Bring It On (2001)

Or don't. It's cool either way. My fundamental problem with Bring it On, a comedy about a white, upper-middle class high school cheerleading squad and the financially strapped black squad whose routines they unwittingly ripped off, was that it wasn't good or funny. I also didn't like how a presumably straight character casually tossed the word "fag" around - and that the gay guy we're made to believe barely knows her responds enthusiastically to it. If you're going to use that word in a movie and you aren't a gay man, or a character who is shown to be crass or bigoted, my thought is you have to earn it, and the lame-ass script by Jessica Bendinger doesn't.

My oversensitivity to that issue aside, I'll admit I saw flashes of a good, even smart comedy in the film. While the key players behind the scenes - Bendinger and director Peyton Reed - were too inept to do anything with it (Reed's work is especially mystifying: If you can't make the one or two important cheerleading scenes more rousing than a teeth-brushing sequence, maybe you shouldn't have done a movie about, you know, cheerleading.), Kirsten Dunst, who proved in the hilarious Dick and the lesser Drop Dead Gorgeous that she's one of the best young comediennes in movies today, is a game lead possessive of an almost preternatural perkiness. Eliza Dushku, as the new, sarcastic cheerleader in town with a cute brother and a Sleater-Kinney "Hot Rock" poster on her bedroom wall, has a one-dimensional part but anyone who slobbered over her in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (hey, my hand's raised, too) will be pleased to know she's in top eye-rolling form here. Also hanging round the set are an underused Gabrielle Union as Dunst's rival captain, and Jesse Bradford, appealing as the type of unassuming love interest who Bendinger misguidedly thought would be cutting edge if he listened to the Clash.

Broadcast News (1987)

William Hurt smarms and Albert Brooks sweats as newsmen battling for an anchor position and a place in producer Jane's (Holly Hunter) heart, bed, whatever. James L. Brooks, the emotional terrorist behind Terms of Endearment, wrote and directed it, which tells you all you need to know. There is good dialogue and acting and editing and if you're the type who falls easy for quirky brunettes with good vocabularies who are played by Holly Hunter (and who isn't?) chances are you'll get swept up in it without much thought until you wake up the next morning feeling a little used. Forget about Jack Nicholson's unbilled cameo and keep your eyes peeled for a uniformly hilarious Joan Cusack. She's hard to miss, what with the hair.

Broadway Danny Rose (1984)

Oft-overlooked Woody Allen film about the comic misadventures of Danny Rose (Allen), an agent who handled "talent" no one else will touch. Stories about Rose are told and retold at a deli where show biz types congregate, including the most famous one, about what happened when his most talented client, Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte), wanted his girlfriend, a mob wife (a marvelous Mia Farrow), to attend an important show, and we witness them in flashback. Broadway Danny Rose's running time is a slight 84 minutes and Gordon Willis's black and white photography contributes to it's small and intimate feel.

The Broken Hearts Club (2000)

Hot gay guys look for love in a nice-looking movie with all the depth of a Friends rerun. Timothy Olyphant and John Mahoney give good performances in weakly written roles; Dean Cain fans, assuming they exist, will enjoy this showcase for his pecs. The Carpenters-centric soundtrack admittedly has a certain allure, but there’s not much here.

Bull Durham (1988)

Undeserving of the almost mythical reputation it's gained over the past 15 years, but it's very, very good. Susan Sarandon is baseball groupie Annie Savoy. Once she believed in Isadora Duncan but then she found her way to the Church of Baseball. Kevin Costner is Durham Bulls catcher Crash Davis. His belief system involves genitalia and a general disdain for Susan Sontag. You know plain as day they're meant to be together, but movies have to be filled with something so Annie, who does a bit of bedroom mentoring each year with a new rookie, hooks up with dorky pitcher Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins). Their romantic triangle plays out perfectly, thanks to Ron Shelton's wonderful screenplay and sure handed direction.

But I'm a Cheerleader (2000)

Funny premise, graceless execution. Natasha Lyonne (whose voice never fails to make me laugh, even when she's being serious, because I always picture her as a world-weary, gum-smacking diner waitress named Flo) plays Megan Williams, a high school cheerleader whose concerned parents - Bud Cort and Mink Stole - begin to suspect is a lesbian because she likes Melissa Etheridge's music and doesn't eat meat. They send her off to Cathy Moriarty's True Directions homosexual rehabilitation camp, which is naturally a hotbed of hookups second only to that annual Dinah Shore weekend, given the presence of so many same-sex oriented hormone-crazed teenagers. There she meets Graham (played, in a brilliant piece of casting, by Clea DuVall, pin-up extraordinaire to baby dykes the world over), who likes girls, a lot, spurring Megan to realize, "Oh my God, they were right ... I'm a homo." Everyone else said it so I'll say it, too: If John Waters had directed, it would have kicked ass. And it would have been much dirtier, which is always a plus. Directed by Jamie Babbit from a screenplay by Brian Wayne Peterson.

By Design (1982)

Claude Jutra's comedy about alleged lesbians Helen and Angie. Funny thing about them -- they share a home and a bed and business, but never kiss. However, we do get to see them have sex - sex! - with men. That is not, to my knowledge, something lesbians do much of, but I wasn't around in 1982 so I can't say with complete certainty. Helen wants a baby but Angie isn't sure, and screwball antics ensue as they decide to go for it and attempt to conceive. Patty Duke and Sara Botsford are appealing leads and the sweet ending will make some viewers forget that when it comes to the sexuality of, um, sexuality, 1982's Personal Best makes By Design look like child's play. Co-starring Saul Rubinek as a womanizing photographer. Written by Jutra, David Eames, and Joe Wiesenfeld.

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