Change Your Image
erebrown-64167
Reviews
Medusa (2015)
MEDUSA
Note: It's a review I wrote months ago and kinda filed away but after seeing 2021 Drag Race and its winner, Symone, in a stunning Medusa outfit, I just have to dig it up and post.
REVIEW: MEDUSA
Jorge Ameer never ceased to amaze me. My first exposure to his works was through his masterpiece about the power of fluid love, The Family Tree. It is a film that evoked nostalgia and memories of a past facet of my life. It has touched a deep chord in me. So yes, The Family Tree will always be my favorite Ameer film. But watching Medusa also evoked memories of another facet of my past life: my love for campy 70s horror films!
So, whether you're old enough to remember the reign of the VHS or not, you're more likely aware of its existence. And tell you what, on eBay, you can still get one. What's with the VHS machine chat? Because friends, you won't find these 70s campy horror movies on Netflix, but you can find battered copies at your neighbor's garage sale, at the local thrift shop, or yes, on the ever-reliable eBay. And if you feel that's too much work, there's always Jorge Ameer's Medusa!
Medusa is Jorge Ameer's homage to 70s campy horror films. Obviously, he is a fan because he nailed it. The film is formulaic in terms of that gone-by genre, and it's a winning formula! There's an old-fashioned professor, played with a wink at the audience, if you will, by the exceedingly handsome and talented (aren't they all in Ameer's films?) Jeff Allen. There's a mysterious antique artifact known as "The Mirror," which imprisons a supernatural force that the Professor, of course, unwittingly unleashes. And of course, the ubiquitous harbinger of doom and horror, in this case, a witch doctor played with over-the-top campy fun by Ameer himself, which honestly, is a turn truly worthy of an Oscar, or a Razzie, which either way, should be considered an honor and a validation of success.
Medusa was, from start to finish, Jorge's extraordinary aesthetic vision. And that's a good thing. Watching Medusa won't turn you into stone, but it'll definitely make you hard...for Ameer's next step as an outstanding filmmaker!
Oasis (2017)
OASIS:
REVIEW: OASIS
My first exposure to Jorge Ameer's works was last Christmas Eve when my partner and I chanced upon his most recent movie, The Family Tree. Years ago, we decided to ditch watching the holiday classics like The Christmas Story, or It's a Wonderful Life as part of our Christmas eve film viewing tradition and instead focus on similarly themed LGBTQ films. In the early years of our new tradition, the pickings were slim, but now, fortunately, the halls are decked with many LGBTQ movies to choose from. Progress, I guess.
So, watching and reviewing OASIS, which Jorge Ameer made in 2017, I felt a bit of apprehension that I might maltreat this movie. That I might compare it to his latest The Family Tree and that it would come up short of the cinematic brilliance that Jorge's 2020 film has achieved for me. So I hemmed and hawed, gave myself all sorts of excuses not to watch Oasis yet, but eventually, the excuses run out. So cautious self-advice be damned, I'm going to the Oasis!
As the logline said, OASIS is about two friends who embark on a tropical expedition to bury their past. But if you know Jorge Ameer, the way I know him now, a "burial of the past" in his world is never just a mere act or ceremony of burying a past- done, over, let's move on. No. It's unearthing skeletons in the ground you just dug; it's digging up the future; it's discovering that Ameer, once more, set us up with a ticking time bomb that could explode in a second or could be disarmed with the flick of a master storyteller/editor's hand.
At the beginning of OASIS, we see Andrew (Matthew Lynn) arriving in Panama, where through a series of stunning shots of the city, we find out that Panama is much more than just a canal. It's breathtaking beaches, modern skyscrapers, and later in the film, lush tropical rainforests. Andrew is here on a business, but he has a more critical agenda on his pretty mind: to reconnect with his friend Oliver (Cesar de Fuentes), whom he last saw days before his own wedding, which Oliver did not attend on purpose.
When Andrew visits Carlos, he sees all sorts of troubles- financial, emotional, psychological, you name it- in his friend's married paradise and decides to take him away from his beautiful nagging wife to a resort for a weekend of chilling and bonding...and then some. Turns out, Andrew suffers from similar issues, so this weekend boding is really for them to heal, resolve, come to terms with their f-up lives. It helps that before they went on this trip, Andrew bought some synthetic hallucinogenic street drug called "Oasis" from a mysterious gypsy, played with gleeful abandon by Jorge Ameer himself!
"The burial of the past," as I've said earlier, turned out to be so much more than that. In this movie, everything life-changing happens as only Ameer can depict it-with whimsy, with humor, with nudity, violence, and, most of all, with the audacity of pushing the film's premise into a deep and daring burial ground.
I saw Jorge's journey as a filmmaker in this movie, and it's incredibly fascinating. I'm very, very interested in what Jorge Ameer's does next.
D'Agostino (2012)
D'AGOSTINO. A Greek Tragedy Re-imagined
This is a re-imagining of a Greek tragedy from the amazing perspective of provocative filmmaker Jorge Ameer. Once a beautiful young god was so spoiled and arrogant, he was sent to Earth by his grandfather Zeus thinking that perhaps, living with the mortals, he might learn a lesson in humility and other good character traits. Alas, London, where the young god, who now calls himself corporate executive Allan Dawson, was cast out, was not a good fit. He became more arrogant, calling people he passed by on the streets fat and ugly. Allan also has an Oedipus complex, finding a fiancée who was very attractive but looks old enough to be his mother. And, oh, he became so bored out of his mind! Watching from the heavens, Zeus and the other Olympian gods were disheartened and decided maybe a change of scenery would help.
Allan Dawson was sent by the gods to Santorini, Greece, under the guise that he inherited a beautiful beachfront property from his grandmother, probably Hera. To help him navigate this new stunning world and watch over him, the gods sent a minor deity Niko. The gods also sent another minor deity, who resembles Allan, who is also egocentric like his uncle Narcissus. What better ploy for Allan to learn about himself and return to Olympus, a changed, better god, right? Wrong! Instead, Allan treats this demi-god cloned to his image, like a dog, keeping him on a leash, humiliating him, and basically making him his "b-tch"! Well, Zeus and the gods have had it! They cast the fierceness of their wrath on him! The punishment was twisted and completely shocking, but sometimes, to teach a lesson, you have to scare the living sh-t out of that pr-ck! Do you think Allan learned his lesson? Only time will tell.
D'Agostino. From the very provocative mind of Jorge Ameer. Superbly and unabashedly acted by Keith Roenke, Michael Andricopoulos, Torie Tyson, and Jorge Ameer himself. Stunning cinematography by Zach Voytas.
The Family Tree (2020)
THE FAMILY TREE: Where every kind of love blossoms and grows.
THE FAMILY TREE Review
Love is love is love. In Jorge Ameer's The Family Tree, this message is celebrated in the most beautiful of ways possible-loving, honest, funny... heartbreaking, because sometimes fluid love is that too. Life is just what it is, a combination of magic and tragic. The fluidity of love flows from up to down and then, maybe, up again. The Family Tree captures that amazingly! The journeys of the central characters, Roy, Victor and Alina, portrayed with such utterly believable naturalness by actors Michael Joseph Nelson, Keith Roenke and Anais Lucia, were bound to become intertwined and warm your hearts and then break them with such shocking suddenness! Such is the amazing effect of this must-watch movie! So, if this indie film is seen by enough of us, this movie hands down with it message of fluid love, deserves a lot of recognition during this award season. It is that good!