It allowed Eileen to show that she has her own mind, she confesses to voting for Walter Mondale. The scene with Adrian chatting with his mother in the bathroom might be unrealistic. I can understand if his parents think Madonna's music is too much for Andrew but Bryan Adams!
The religious aspects of the movie is heavy handed. In some many films the bully remains a jerk. Even the high school bully who has regrets about his past behaviour. Adrian who visited to say his final goodbyes to his parents and tell them everything. Adrian trying to wake his younger brother before going back to New York and Andrew is still asleep. The beauty is the small things in this movie which are all too real. It is set in a time where there was speculation that AIDS could become widespread once it emerged that this was not something that just affected homosexuals. Dale even tells Adrian that he knows that Adrian is gay and that he can talk to him even if he is unhappy about his lifestyle choice.ġ985 is a small scale drama. The money that Adrian has spent buying them presents. However his father Dale (Michael Chiklis) and mother Eileen (Virginia Madsen) sense something is wrong. The reasons he went to New York to start a new life and his illness.Īs for his parents, Adrian cannot just bring himself to tell them the truth. Adrian goes to see his former high school girlfriend Carly and finally tells her about his sexuality. Over the next few days, Adrian reconnects with his younger brother Andrew who might also be gay. He is dying of AIDS and is struggling to tell them about it. Adrian Lester (Cory Michael Smith) visits his conservative Christian parents in his hometown in Texas for Christmas.Īdrian has been living and working in New York and not been home for three years. Only the American television movie, An Early Frost had a lead character who was gay that contracted AIDS.ġ985 goes back to the days of Reagan's America, AIDS along with homosexuality had a lot of taboos and false information surrounding it.įilmed in stark black and white.
Sweet as You Are was a BBC film that starred Liam Neeson as a lecturer who got HIV after a brief affair with a young woman. Broadcasters were at pains to show this was not a 'gay' disease. When dramas about AIDS came out in the mid 1980s. Overall, there are some compelling scenes but the style is too static. With the oppressing black and white, I would have liked some color to accentuate some of the scenes. It would have been better to come out of the closet early and then reveal the darker secret later. There is a reason why Adrian and Carly together have the best scenes. The problem with holding the secret for so long is that it forces the movie into stall mode. Texas has great visual potential but this is not doing any of that. With B/W, Adrian holding back secrets, and the static shooting style, it does have the sense of sadness and death but it also has a sense of a slow grind. He reluctantly tells her about his devastated life in NYC and fears the news surfacing to his beloved younger brother Andrew. He reconnects with his childhood love Carly (Jamie Chung).
He struggles to come out of the closet to his father (Michael Chiklis) and mother (Virginia Madsen). In 1985, Adrian Lester (Cory Michael Smith) goes home for Christmas to visit his conservative Texas family. Reviewed by SnoopyStyle 6 / 10 static black and white