Spring Film: Outside of festival, season offers little new for us at the movies

We’ll cover them in more detail in our April 29 issue, but if you like to plan ahead you should check the festival schedule for “The Seminarian” (4/29, 5/4), the comedy (duh!) “Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same” (4/30, 5/7), “We Are the Hartmans” (starring Richard Chamberlain) (4/30), “Without” (5/1, 5/4) and “Vacation!” (5/2).

Also look for documentaries “I Am” (5/2, 5/7), “Disabled but Able to Rock” (5/4, 5/7), “Corpus Christi: Playing with Redemption” (5/7) and “What’s the Name of the Dame?” (5/1), the last featuring drag queens doing ABBA songs.  Men’s shorts will screen April 30 and May 2 and women’s shorts April 30 and May 3.

Two out directors will be represented on local screens this spring. François Ozon’s “Potiche” (4/15) stars Catherine Deneuve as a ‘70s housewife who learns it’s never too late to discover her grrl power. There’s not much gay content but (spoiler alert!) her artistic son (Jérémie Rénier) comes out-ish in the end. Rob Marshall (“Chicago”) directs the fourth in the campy series, “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” (5/20), which adds Penélope Cruz to the Johnny Depp-led cast.

A 10-year-old boy is bullied at school in the Oscar-winning Danish film “In a Better World” (4/22). In “Beginners” (probably June) 75-year-old Christopher Plummer comes out to his son (Ewan McGregor) about being gay and having terminal cancer.

Fashionistas may be interested in the documentary “Bill Cunningham New York” (5/13), about an octogenarian photographer who’s been covering Manhattan’s couture scene since models wore animal skins instead of animal-skin prints.

As un-gay as he can be, Atlanta’s own Tyler Perry dons the plus-size drag again for “Madea’s Big Happy Family” (4/22), while Ken Jeong will presumably be as gay as he can be again in “The Hangover, Part II” (5/26).

A steady stream of DVD releases will provide a budget-friendly alternative to a night at the movies, and watching at home allows you to indulge your spring fever if the films trigger an attack.

They include at least four alumni of last year’s Out on Film: “Violet Tendencies” (due 5/24), “Undertow” (6/1), “Children of God” and “From Beginning to End” (both 6/7). Gregg Araki’s “Kaboom,” which played here recently, drops May 31.

PBS will premiere the documentary “Stonewall Uprising” on April 25, the day before its DVD release.

Hollywood’s “summer” begins any day now. Expect plenty of eye candy of the beefcake variety, beginning with Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson and Vin Diesel in the locally-filmed “Fast Five” (4/29) and Chris Hemsworth as “Thor” (5/6). But don’t expect a lot of gay-positive plots or messages — unless the studios already reached their annual quota of homophobia in “Your Highness.”

 

Top photo: Judging by title alone, it’s easily the queerest film of the season: ‘Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same’ stars Lisa Haas (left) as Jane, a shy retail employee who falls in love with Zoinx (Susan Ziegler, right) without realizing she is an alien. It screens April 30 and May 7 at the Atlanta Film Festival. (by Nat Bouman)