Atypical Transgender Late Bloomer

From Wiki: The Crying Game is a 1992 crime thriller film. It explores themes of race, sex, gender, nationality, and sexuality against the backdrop of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and England. I must confess to being a Forrest Whittaker fan and he carries the opening and the viewer with him. This is not a transgender movie as much as a terrorist-vs-good-buys movie, with one character's transgender status playing a realistic role as the characters interact. Many people are surprised at the gender-bending reveal. I thought this was a great movie. It didn't pander, didn't milk the trans aspect for drama, and it sustained suspense throughout the movie.

From Wiki: The Danish Girl is a 2015 biographical romantic drama film, based on the 2000 novel of the same title, and loosely inspired by the lives of Danish painters Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener. The film stars Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe, one of the first known recipients of gender reassignment surgery. This was an excellent movie. It deals with a man who felt the tug of being a woman, in a time removed from our modern capabilities and sensitivities. There was controversy over casting a man to play a trans woman. Eddie Redmayne certainly carried the role. After the controversy arose, he stated that it was a mistake for him to have taken the assignment. I thought this was a good movie that avoided cliche and told the story of the people involved.

This is a review of Dog Dag Afternoon from a trans perspective. The movie stars Al Pacino, John Cazale, James Broderick and Charles Durning. (wiki) . Although Al Pacino is the designated star, and in fact chose the rest of the cast, I think the unrecognized star is John Cazale - a theater actor who was the love of Meryl Streep's life, and who played Frodo in the Godfather movies along with Pacino. Cazale died young, leaving his wife Streep a widow. This is a twisted-lovers movie. Pacino's character loves someone in the NY jail system because they attempted suicide. The lover needs money for an operation. So Pacino robs a bank, so the lover can pay for a sex change, but things go terribly awry. As it happens, Pacino's love is trans, male-to-female. The transness is not the lynchpin of the movie. I leave it to you as to whether it's sensational or titillating. Pacino's wife also takes a part in the movie. This is all based on a true story told in Life magazin...

Watched the movie, Will and Harper , on Netflix. I almost typed Netscape, that's how old I am. This is a great show and a great treatment of trans issues - by which I mean, exposing trans reality and trans issues to the cis audience. It is certainly a buddy movie and a road trip movie , in the vein of The Road to Morocco , but this went far beyond those tropes. And it's a movie , which is by definition an artificial story told with intent and agenda (a-gender?), but this was a pretty good one. It seemed balanced; it displayed the social ugliness they encountered in some spots, and on social media. It rang true. It is a very feelings-oriented movie, but it manages to do that without feeling cloying. We need a Bechdel Test for movies with trans characters. This one passes with honors; it has a trans woman, playing a trans woman, and the actor is playing themselves in a semi-documentary format. To sum it up, this movie hits much better than for instance Lil...

Saw the movie, Emilia Perez . Spoilers . This is the story of a terrible violent Mexican cartel boss, with a wife and kids, who strongly desires to abandon his life and become a woman, using the unlimited fortune they have built. To that end, he enlists a struggling attorney to make arrangements in the background. Bottom line up front: this is a fantastic movie. It might not be for everybody. It grabbed my heart. There are criticisms from the trans/ LGBTQ community. The narco boss is a terrible person who goes trans. It's not a positive role model. This is not too different from Silence of the Lambs having a purported trans character : sure, there may be a trans character, but they're a serial murderer. The scenes of the narco becoming a woman, and the results of four years of transition and surgery and a fortune spent, were compelling to me. Karla Sofia Gascon is the first movie actress I've just stared at and thought, Whoa, in a very long time. (Previous: J...