The Beautiful Boxer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuZIL4zD1tE
"Nong Toom", a boxer who followed his heart and fullfill his dreams of helping his parents. "He fights like a man so he can become a woman," reads the ad, but Uekrongtham's restrained film is neither as lurid nor as kitschy as the tagline portends. Much of its success rides on the shoulders of a young actor named Asanee Swan, whose ethereal presence in the lead role lends the film an elegance not always encouraged by the intermittently clunky script.
While "Beautiful Boxer" has its share of triumph-over-adversity cliches, much of Nong Toom's ascension from young country boy with a thing for lipstick to the nation's star boxer subverts our expectations. Snickering comparisons to "Million Dollar Baby" are inevitable, but "Beautiful Boxer" goes that Oscar nominee one better in its forthright delineation of the knotty relationship between sexuality and aptitude.
Mysterious Skin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlb47MmXCq4
Though the subject matter of Mysterious Skin is as sensational as that of Gregg Araki's other films (such as Totally F***ked Up, The Doom Generation, or The Living End), his direction is richer and more multilayered than ever before. Two Kansas teenagers named Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 10 Things I Hate About You) and Brian (Brady Corbett, Thirteen) share a childhood trauma--but their responses are radically different: Neil hustles tricks, while Brady, who can't remember what happened, believes he was abducted by aliens and left with "missing time." As both try to make sense of their lives and Brian struggles to find out the truth, Mysterious Skin builds to an emotional pitch that some viewers will find uncomfortable and others will find liberating. The characters of Neil and Brian have a fullness that lifts Mysterious Skin above most examinations of sexual abuse and trauma. Gordon-Levitt has...
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