Bros: Love ain't pretty

Bros (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, and quite generously, for relentless nudity, profanity and explicit sexual content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.30.22

This is not your grandmother’s rom-com.

 

Billy Eichner and Nicholas Stoller’s boldly audacious dramedy is ground-breaking: not merely for its gender-appropriate casting, but also for the story’s unflinchingly candid depiction of modern-day love among (primarily) gay men.

 

Bobby (Billy Eichner, standing) floats an idea to his fellow museum board members:
from left, Angela (Ts Madison), Wanda (Miss Lawrence), Tamara (Eve Lindley),
Robert (Jim Rash) and Cherry (Dot-Marie Jones). Alas, they aren't buying it...

Eichner and Stoller’s caustic, sharp-edged script also is wickedly funny, with the former — also starring as our key protagonist — demonstrating perfect comic timing with a relentless series of arch one-liners, aggrieved declamations and impassioned laments.

But conservative viewers be advised: The R rating is generous, given this film’s frequent and quite explicit sexual content. Although … ah … dangling bits remain off-camera, virtually nothing else is left to the viewer’s imagination.

 

The story actually is an amplification of the material Eichner has long delivered via stand-up and sketch comedy, notably on the long-running TV series Billy on the Street.

 

The setting is trendy New York, where Bobby Leiber (Eichner) has carved out a laudable, media-centric career as an observer and ferocious activist in the LGBTQ+ scene. He has a successful podcast, writes books, gives speeches, and frequently is recognized for his advocacy.

 

His newest project is massive, as a member of the board of a revolutionary, as-yet unfinished LGBTQIA+ Museum.

 

Bobby ideally would cast himself as a “personality,” despite the fact that his actual personality keeps getting in the way. He’s caustic, domineering, condescending and totally dismissive of outdated concepts such as “dating” and “love.” He’s 40 years old and defiantly proud of being a singleton.

 

He’s also — as quickly becomes obvious — his own worst enemy: wound tighter than a crystal radio coil, while suppressing a boatload of emotional baggage.

 

Trouble is, the personal lives of his friends are evolving, whether via marriage, families or polyamorous relationships such as throuples. Bobby feels increasingly left out … although he’d die before admitting as much.

 

The U.S. vs. Billie Holiday: A missed opportunity

The U.S. vs. Billie Holiday (2020) • View trailer

Three stars. Rated R, for strong drug content, nudity, sexual candor, violence, lynching images and considerable profanity

By Derrick Bang

J. Edgar Hoover has a lot to answer for.

 

He’s name-checked but never actually seen in director Lee Daniels’ harrowing study of jazz chanteuse Billie Holiday’s final tempestuous decade, available via Hulu. But Hoover’s spirit hovers over an early back-room meeting that includes Sen. Joseph McCarthy (Randy Davison), Roy Cohn (Damian Joseph Quinn), Congressman John E. Rankin (Robert Alan Beuth), Congressman J. Parnell Thomas (Jeff Corbett) and a gaggle of other sclerotic, racist martinets determined to make America safe for their wealthy white friends and colleagues.

 

Despite having been assured by her attorney that she'll be sent to a rehab hospital,
Billie Holiday (Andra Day) is horrified to hear the judge sentence her to "a year and a day"
at West Virginia's Alderson Federal Prison Camp.

By — in this case — removing Holiday from the equation.

 

Not a difficult task, given that her well-publicized heroin habit dovetails nicely with the “war on drugs” championed ruthlessly by U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund, much too young for this key role).

 

The concern — a primary focus of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ screenplay, adapted from a chapter in journalist Johann Hari’s non-fiction dissection of the war on drugs, Chasing the Scream — is that Holiday’s signature song, “Strange Fruit,” is “stirring up the masses” (Black and white, it should be mentioned).

 

And, Lord knows, we can’t have that.

 

Daniels’ film is anchored by star Andra Day’s all-in, absolutely mesmerizing portrayal of Holiday: as astonishing an impersonation as could be imagined, even more so given that this is Day’s starring debut. And yes, to anticipate the obvious question: She does all of her own singing … and her replication of Holiday’s ragged, whiskey-soaked, gravel-on-grit delivery is equally impressive.

 

That said, Day isn’t similarly well served by Daniels’ slow, clumsy film, or by some of the odd narrative choices in Parks’ script: most notably a weird framing device involving flamboyantly gay radio journalist Reginald Lord Devine (Leslie Jordan, as a wholly fictitious character), which sets up the flashback that bounces us to February 1947. 

 

It’s a celebratory evening, with Holiday performing before an enthusiastic sell-out crowd at New York’s Café Society, the country’s first racially integrated nightclub. The audience includes Holiday’s friend and occasional lover, Tallulah Bankhead (Natasha Lyonne); her husband Jimmy Monroe (Erik LaRay Harvey); and worshipful ex-soldier Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes).

 

Backstage, we meet Holiday’s loyal family unit: stylist Miss Freddy (Miss Lawrence); hairdresser Roslyn (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), also charged with caring for Billie’s beloved dogs; trumpeter — and frequent heroin partner — Joe Guy (Melvin Gregg); and saxophonist Lester “Prez” Young (Tyler James Williams, all grown up from his TV days in Everybody Hates Chris).

 

The care and attention they pay each other is genuinely touching, throughout the entire film. They’re far more attentive and compassionate than husband Jimmy: merely one of many examples, as we’ll see, of Holiday’s lamentable taste in men.