Four gay men of different generations are searching for love, and much more, one cold winter’s night in Philadelphia and this is the story of how their paths cross until the morning breaks.

Brian is a 30-something-year-old writer who is at the end of his tether as he has been unable to write a single word since the successful publication of his first book of poetry.  He seeks solace in a local bar in which he is the sole drinker until Chris comes in and immediately hits on him.  Chris fesses up to have a girlfriend back home in the burbs but just feels an urgent need to get some hot man-on-man action. Which is exactly what he gets back at Brian’s apartment but the moment their very passionate lovemaking finishes, Chris freaks out, and leaves a stranded Brian desperate to know what he had done wrong.

He shares his insecurities with his ex roommate whom he wakes up in the middle of the night insisting that they discuss his problems there and then.  Dan is straight but he too had once shared an emotional and physical connection with him and now Brian wants to know why that ended if it was all as real as Dan claims.

Whilst all this is going on, in another part of town super-hot 22 year old model Jim is being very energetically fucked by Drew his older lover on the bench of his workshop. Drew is a successful famous artist who considers Jim his muse, but a disgruntled Jim just believes he is being treated as a kept boy and threatens to leave and move to NY.

After he storms out of the house in a huff, he encounters Brian, and they hook up, and after more even hotter sex, he quickly abandons needy Brian who is now getting a serious complex about the men who just cannot leave him fast enough.  Jim meanwhile gets picked up by elderly Bob who has been cruising the streets all night in a big white limousine drinking heavily and looking to get lucky.

He doesn’t but others do when this intriguing wee film neatly comes to a climax and it is almost a case of all’s well that end’s well, but not quite.

Written and directed by Joseph Graham (‘Strapped’) this edgy and very sensual and unsentimental movie is by no means perfect but it’s forthright take on contemporary gay life ….. well, sex anyway …. is both refreshing and extremely entertaining. Evidently based on a true story, it has a good script which was very stylishly shot and with some rather excellent performances from newbie actor Brian Sheppard (Brian), hunky Zach Ryan (Jim), comedian Grant Lancaster (Dan) and established local actor Colman Domingo (Drew).

Tom is a celebrity hairdresser in Berlin although its been years since he picked up a

It’s Christmas Eve in Tinseltown and Alexandra has just blown her last couple of dollars on buying Sin-Dee her best friend a pastry to celebrate her return after a 28 day stint in Jail. The mood quickly changes as these two transgendered prostitutes are dishing the dirty and Alexandra lets slip that Sin-Dee’s boyfriend/pimp Chester has been been dating a ‘fish’ (their slang for a biological female). An enraged Sin-Dee storms off in a huff determined to find this usurper and ‘sort her out’ once and for all .

Alexandra sets out in pursuit of her friend but then quickly gets embroiled in her own dramas. She is trying to hustle up some of the other working ‘girls’ on the block to attend her debut performance at a Bar later that night, but is distracted from that when a ‘john’ in a car asks her for a ‘quickie’.  When he refuses to pay up because he cannot get aroused, Alexandra shows her mettle by attempting to beat the crap out of the man in order to get her money.

This is just another day on some of the meaner streets of the underbelly of a city which is the home turf of these very tough sharp-tongue lady boys who make their living selling sex and whatever else they can lay their hands on.  They are fearlessly fabulous and rule the roost of these few blocks between Highland Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard where straight ‘johns’ cruise to get a fix.

As the two manically rush around town separately Alexandra comes across Razmik a middle-aged Armenian cab driver who is a regular client of most of the ‘girls’ in the area and he is overjoyed to learn that Sin-Dee is back on the beat.  She tells the cabbie that Sin-Dee will be at the Bar later to watch her perform, and he promises to meet them there in the hope of scoring a ‘date’ with her. However nothing ever works out as planned and Alexandra ends up plaintively singing to an audience of one, so tonight is obviously not going to be when she gets the break to go legit that she pines for.

The plot gets messy from there when it takes a farcical turn, but frankly it is really not that important anyway. This whole movie is much more like a bizarre reality show with its the high voltage of energy that its cast of larger-than-life characters bring to it that is the essential ingredient of this wonderful big-hearted frenetic street drama.   The fact that filmmaker Sean Baker shot the whole thing on IPhones adds a real frisson plus the performance of his two lead transgendered newbie actors Kiki Kitana Rodriquez and Mya Taylor made such compelling viewing. Baker credits the actors for drawing on their own personal experiences that gave such a authenticity and vitality to all their unstoppable bad-mouthing which is such a sheer delight to watch and listen too.

When this rather audacious indie movie premiered at Sundance Film Festival audiences leaped to the feet at the end, a reaction that I feel will be repeated quite often whenever it is screened.

★★★★★★★★★

Greg Louganis is an American Hero. The sad thing is that it has taken such a long time for many people to truly acknowledge that.  Despite him being a four-time US Olympic diving champion whose many records remain unbroken today, he never always got all the acclaim and rewards that other sportsmen got just because he was gay. In this new documentary that covers focuses mainly on his more recent past filmmaker Cheryl Furjanic paints an affectionate and stirring portrait of a remarkable man who has survived more his fair share of  trauma and who has come through it all with a big smile on his face.

The film starts with Louganis trying to keep the Bank off his back as financial troubles have left him somewhat high and dry (we find out at the end of the movie that it all works out very well). The film then cuts back and forth covering his early diving days to his first days of retirement from the sport when the drama really seemed to get worse. What is remarkable is that right through all this from his abusive father to the blatant homophobia that dogged his career to the people in his life who just took advantage of him, a sanguine and honest Louganis shows no sign at all of anger.  A few regrets maybe. Even dealing with the messy and bitter collapse of his relationship with Jim in the 1980’s who had contracted Aids, there is no hint of even a harsh word.  Almost broke and now HIV positive, Louganis still supported Jim until the day he died.

Even though the Diving community shunned their greatest athlete for decades until the 2012 Olympics when he was invited to be a Mentor to the US Team, there were a handful of people like  Ron O’Brien who never ever wavered in their support throughout. O’Brien coached Louganis through the years of his Olympic years and was present on the fateful day when Louganis cut his head open on the diving board with blood spilling into the pool.  It was an incident that filled the closeted diver with dread especially as the doctors providing emergency care had no idea about Louganis’s condition and did not protect themselves.

It was a very emotional Louganis who told this story to Oprah on national TV years later when his memoir (a NY Times Bestseller for weeks) ‘Breaking The Silence’ was published in 1995 and his sexuality was made public.  Equally moving is when at a recent reunion he presented O’Brien with the Gold Medal that the Coach had helped him win that day.

What we see on screen is a healthy and happy 50 year-old-man.  His health had deteriorated rapidly in the late 1980’s until the introduction of life-saving protease inhibitors, and his new found happiness came to him via Match.com who provided with a rather wonderful husband.  Plus he has his dogs

Louganis is a disarmingly charming man but most of all he is a hero, and it seems only fitting that ‘Back On Board’ reminds exactly why.

★★★★★★★★

Jenni is a misfit and a nerd. She is so clumsy that she breaks most of the plant pots at the nursery where she works and that really pisses off her boss. Her self-absorbed roommates all but one ignore her, and she is totally friendless.  It gets even worse after she is hospitalized and loses both her job and her home.  Clutching one cardboard box of her worldly possessions she makes tracks to the nearest park and sets about hanging herself from a tree.

Even this does not go to plan as she is cut down and rescued by Sam (short for Samantha) a feisty lesbian with a buzz cut and ripped jeans and a great big grin. ‘This’ she tells a downcast Jenni ‘is the face of a nice person’. Something she feels the need to point out after listening to the miserable girl pour out her tale of woe as it seems likely that she has never encountered a nice person ever before in her life.

Part of the story is Jenni’s father who she hasn’t seen since she was brought to the city and dumped there when she was very little.  He is still in Los Angeles. Maybe. Jenni is very sketchy about details, but that doesn’t deter Sam who declares that they will set off for LA in search of him immediately.  Even the fact they do not have a car, or even the faintest idea where in the vast city he will be, is considered irrelevant by the overly optimistic Sam.

Their road trip is littered with characters that Sam just shrugs off, but which wind up Jenni even more. When they arrive in the city and the search for the father starts, Sam has a detour when she runs into an old fling who invites her …. and Jenni ….. to a wild party.  Whilst Sam goes off to make out with her Ex., wide eyed Jenni ends up tripping on a psychedelic cupcake and getting into some bedroom action that she didn’t didn’t count on. She freaks out and then as she has angered the owner of the house as well, runs off into the city and is really on her own now.  The question is will she survive, and will she find her father ?  Even more important will we have lost interest just like Sam does?

Broken Gardenias is billed as a dark comedy and is the work of first time director Kai Alexander whose bio states that he spent his childhood with his parents who were part of a Travelling Circus which may account for the bizarre roster of characters the two women encounter.  The script is by newbie writer Alma S. Grey who also plays Jenni.

The sole bright spot of this film is the performance of Ashley Morocco as the bubbly Sam as asides from this the movie just simply fails to really engage, and for a comedy, it is painfully unfunny.

★★