Giles De'Ath is a widower who doesn't like anything modern. He goes to movies and falls in love with film star Ronnie Bostock. He then investigates everything about the movie and Ronnie. ...
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As Michael and Robert, a gay couple in New York, prepare for Robert's departure for a two-year work assignment in Africa, Michael must face Robert's true motives for leaving while dealing ... See full summary »
Director:
Bill Sherwood
Stars:
John Bolger,
Richard Ganoung,
Steve Buscemi
Jeffrey, a young gay man in New York, decides that sex is too much and decides to become celibate. He immediately meets the man of his dreams and must decide whether or not love is worth ... See full summary »
Director:
Christopher Ashley
Stars:
Steven Weber,
Michael T. Weiss,
Peter Jacobson
A successful young L.A. doctor and his equally successful television-producer wife find their happily-ever-after life torn assunder when he suddenly confronts his long-repressed attraction ... See full summary »
Director:
Arthur Hiller
Stars:
Michael Ontkean,
Kate Jackson,
Harry Hamlin
Giles De'Ath is a widower who doesn't like anything modern. He goes to movies and falls in love with film star Ronnie Bostock. He then investigates everything about the movie and Ronnie. After that he travels to Long Island City, where Ronnie lives, and meets him, pretending that Ronnie is a great actor, and that's why Giles admires him.
When the mailman delivers mail to Ronnie Bostock's mailbox,he raises the mailbox flag, presumably to signal to the resident that mail has been delivered. (Ronnie's girlfriend, seeing the mailbox flag has been raised, seems to interpret the signal accordingly.) Although it may be the convention for mail delivery wherever the director/writer is from, it is not the case on Long Island, where it is the custom for the resident to raise the mailbox flag to alert the mailman that mail is in the mailbox waiting to be picked up. Once the mail has been picked up, the mailman lowers the flag - the opposite of what occurred in the film. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Giles De'Ath:
It is so difficult to know where I should begin, especially when, unlike you, I already know the ending. But let us say that this story began with end of another.
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"A puerile romp without a single redeeming feature."
That's what an imaginary Sight and Sound review gives the trashy teenage exploitation film Hotpants College 2. However, for "erstwhile fogey" and famous English writer Giles De'Ath (John Hurt) this Porky-esque flick, which he watches purely by accident (he meant to see an E.M Forster adaptation) has one very redeeming grace. It contains the love of Giles' life Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestley).
This witty and poignant film, which divides itself between London and Long Island, may have faltered badly if it had been left in lesser hands than John Hurt. However, Hurt is simply mesmerising. He is one of the few actors who never shies away from making the audience utterly ill at ease watch 1984, the monster shooting out of his stomach in Alien or The Elephant Man for confirmation.
Self-exiled from the modern world in his stuffy flat, with a picture of his recently deceased wife by his writing desk, and a fussy maid (Sheila Hancock) tending to his every whim, Giles' emotions are thoroughly repressed. Until, that is, fate lends a hand and exposes Giles to, amongst other things, terrible American teenage movies, video stores, fax machines, One Man and His Dog, and, finally, to his own sexual desires.
Love and Death in Long Island is brimming with quirky cameos, including weirdo diner owner Irv (Maury Chaykin), a motel manager (Elizabeth Quinn) reminiscent of Shelley Winters in Lolita, and a surprisingly good Priestley (lampooning his "bimbo" soap background much like Maxwell Caulfield in The Real Blonde).
However, it is ultimately a "warts and all" performance from Hurt that holds our gaze. Dignified, perplexed and slightly tragic, Hurt makes Giles one of the most touching "stalkers" in film history. Much like James Mason's Humbert in Lolita, Giles is a man of culture finding beauty in youth, in coarseness - in "all that I myself have never been."
Ultimately, a slow, witty work with one outstanding feature.
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"A puerile romp without a single redeeming feature."
That's what an imaginary Sight and Sound review gives the trashy teenage exploitation film Hotpants College 2. However, for "erstwhile fogey" and famous English writer Giles De'Ath (John Hurt) this Porky-esque flick, which he watches purely by accident (he meant to see an E.M Forster adaptation) has one very redeeming grace. It contains the love of Giles' life Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestley).
This witty and poignant film, which divides itself between London and Long Island, may have faltered badly if it had been left in lesser hands than John Hurt. However, Hurt is simply mesmerising. He is one of the few actors who never shies away from making the audience utterly ill at ease watch 1984, the monster shooting out of his stomach in Alien or The Elephant Man for confirmation.
Self-exiled from the modern world in his stuffy flat, with a picture of his recently deceased wife by his writing desk, and a fussy maid (Sheila Hancock) tending to his every whim, Giles' emotions are thoroughly repressed. Until, that is, fate lends a hand and exposes Giles to, amongst other things, terrible American teenage movies, video stores, fax machines, One Man and His Dog, and, finally, to his own sexual desires.
Love and Death in Long Island is brimming with quirky cameos, including weirdo diner owner Irv (Maury Chaykin), a motel manager (Elizabeth Quinn) reminiscent of Shelley Winters in Lolita, and a surprisingly good Priestley (lampooning his "bimbo" soap background much like Maxwell Caulfield in The Real Blonde).
However, it is ultimately a "warts and all" performance from Hurt that holds our gaze. Dignified, perplexed and slightly tragic, Hurt makes Giles one of the most touching "stalkers" in film history. Much like James Mason's Humbert in Lolita, Giles is a man of culture finding beauty in youth, in coarseness - in "all that I myself have never been."
Ultimately, a slow, witty work with one outstanding feature.