THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

What Lies Beneath ( Dreamworks ) : What lies beneath What Lies Beneath is a movie that can't decide if it wants to be a supernatural thriller or a murder mystery. Perhaps if director Robert Zemeckis ( ...Roger Rabbit, Death Becomes Her, and others ) had chosen one genre, and stuck to it, he would have had a better end result. As it is Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer play Norman and Claire, a married couple adjusting to their empty nest in Vermont after Claire's daughter from her first marriage goes off to college. In addition to that adjustment in her life, Claire is still recovering from a nasty car accident from the year before. The house, which previously belonged to Norman's dead father is haunted ( the front door opens by itself, the stereo receiver goes on by itself, a bathtub fills by itself, and after the computer boots up on its own, it tries sending Claire a cryptic message ) and Claire must find a way to convince those around her, including her new-agey best friend Jodie ( Diana Scarwid, who played Cher's lover in Silkwood and the adult Christina Crawford in Mommie Dearest ) that someone is trying to communicate with her from beyond. The domestic violence occurring next door to Norman and Claire is a red herring, as the movie becomes a cross between an old-fashioned occult flick and a somewhat suspenseful ( but overly long ) whodunnit. On a scale of 1 to 10: 5

Time Regained: As the character Marcel ( Marcello Mazzarella ) , based on the French writer Marcel Proust, dictates from his deathbed at the end of his life in the first few minutes of this opulent period piece, "Then one day everything changes." At almost three hours in length, the slow-moving Time Regained occasionally felt like a day, but the changes that occurred were all worth watching. At times as surreal as a dream and as real as great literature, this movie uses memory and remembering to weave the lives of its characters together into an elaborate biographical fiction with a great deal of same-sex love and attraction. In addition to references made to women who love women and male homosexuality, there is a scene involving a visit paid to a male brothel by Marcel, the Baron De Charlus ( John Malkovich ) , and heroic soldier Robert Saint-Loup ( Pascal Greggory ) . Additionally, both the Baron and the soldier share an affection for and an attraction to musician and army deserter Charles Morel ( Vincent Perez ) . As complex as a Proust novel, the time you spend watching Time Regained will be time well spent. In French with subtitles. On a scale of 1 to 10: 8 Opening July 21 at The Music Box

But I'm A Cheerleader ( Lions Gate Films ) : Peter ( Bud Cort ) and Nancy ( Mink Stole ) , the parents of bubbly blonde cheerleader Megan ( the wonderful Natasha Lyonne ) have an intervention when they fear that their daughter might be straying from the righteous Christian path and heading toward a life as a lesbian in this John Waters-esque comedy of the absurd. Sure, her sexual fantasies are about her fellow cheerleaders and she has a Melissa Etheridge poster on her bedroom wall, but does that make her a lesbian? She is, as she points out, a cheerleader, after all. At True Directions, the candy-colored rehabilitation center where she is taken to be straightened out, she is under the watchful eye of Mary Brown ( Cathy Moriarty ) and Mike ( RuPaul Charles, out of drag ) , and put through the ex-gay ministry's five-step program. While there, she meets Graham ( Clea DuVall, who is reminiscent of a young Ally Sheedy ) , and they fall in love. While this movie doesn't live up to its comedic potential, there is something sweetly entertaining about it. Plus, viewers get to see RuPaul try and play it straight and the stunning Eddie Cibrian ( as Mary Brown's queer son Rock, you might know him from TV's Third Watch ) play it gay in tight-fitting tank tops and short shorts. On a scale of 1 to 10: 7

Chuck & Buck

Opens in Chicago

by steve warren

Were you ever on a ride that flung you around and took you up slow and down fast and swirled you and twirled you and rattled your teeth until you thought you couldn't stand any more? Then it threatened you with something even worse than it had already done and you wished you could be anywhere but there?

Then it didn't follow through and you were never so disappointed in your life?

Chuck & Buck is like that. A lot of it is painful to watch. You don't know who to feel sorrier for, emotionally retarded Buck who is trying desperately to revive a childhood friendship or mature Chuck whose carefully ordered, upwardly mobile life is upset by the reappearance of his old buddy. Just when it seems the situation can only be resolved by murder, suicide or both—well, I'm not going to tell you what happens, but the intensity peters out with far less catharsis than you've been dreading/looking forward to.

With its agonizingly dorky main character, the film Chuck & Buck most resembles is Welcome to the Dollhouse. While that was about a girl and ended in adolescence, this is about a boy—an eternal boy—whose adolescence is only the prelude, the back story. Chuck and Buck were inseparable from some point in childhood to the age of 11, when Chuck's family moved South to Los Angeles. Buck stopped developing emotionally at that point. He made it through high school somehow but never went to college or took a job. Now he's 27 and for the last five years he's been taking care of his sick mother, but she's finally died.

With his sole source of love gone Buck's thoughts turn to the last person he loved. He invites Chuck to his mother's funeral and Chuck arrives with Carlyn, the woman he lives with and intends to marry.

Lest you think Buck even weirder than he is, let me tell you a lot of guys fool around with each other when they're young. Puberty must come from a Latin word meaning "guys fooling around with each other." Most of them, if it really was a phase they outgrew, never talk about it; some even block it from their memories.

Because Buck is so odd we can't be sure whether he's telling the truth about a game they used to play—"Chuck & Buck Suck & Fuck"—or a long-held fantasy has become reality in his addled brain. As for Chuck— "Most people call me Charlie now"—is he in denial, in the closet or rightfully indignant?

Buck pulls up stakes and moves to L.A., where he becomes a full-fledged stalker. Charlie and Carlyn try to be polite at first, but the more Buck calls and drops by unannounced at Charlie's home and office, the more Charlie tries to avoid him. It doesn't help that when Buck is granted an audience he will sometimes seize the opportunity for a brazen sexual overture.

Buck spends his days staking out Charlie's office from a children's theater across the street. He gets the idea of winning Charlie back by writing a play that will remind him of the old days. He makes a deal to rent the theater and hires Beverly, the house manager, to direct Frank & Hank. Whatever she thinks of the play, nobody's given Beverly a chance to direct before and Buck's willing to pay her to do it, so it's a no-brainer for her.

Beverly sees the play as "a homoerotic, misogynistic love story." To Buck it's just a fairy tale about a witch who comes between lifelong friends who wander into her forest. He doesn't see the dark side, but neither is he aware of one in any of the classic fairy tales.

One source of humor in the film is that Buck dresses as dorky as he acts but people keep complimenting his wardrobe because—well, it's L.A. where nobody ever tells the truth about anything.

Buck does every inadvertent thing he can to sabotage his play, including insisting on casting Sam, a no-talent actor, as Hank because he looks something like Charlie. Actually the actors are brothers, Chris ( Charlie ) and Paul ( Sam ) Weitz, the team that made American Pie.

Director Miguel Arteta ( Star Maps ) has cast most of the major roles with talent from parts of the industry other than the acting ranks, and it works pretty well. Mike White ( Buck ) , who wrote the screenplay, has been a writer-producer on Dawson's Creek and Freaks and Geeks. It's hard to imagine anyone more believable, although Patrick Bristow ( Ellen ) might have been equally good in the part.

Beth Colt ( Carlyn ) is the film's co-producer and has a background in producing and talent management. She's fine, but another actress could have given the character more depth. The only real actor among the top five is Lupe Ontiveros, who plays Beverly with far more nuance than she showed as Selena's killer.

Adding to Chuck & Buck's indie cred, Arteta shot it on Digital Video. That might not have worked for Gladiator but it's fine here. But the director has to share the blame with the writer for their film not living up—or down—to our expectations, because they worked together to build those expectations. We don't want anything really bad to happen to Buck or Charlie, but after all they put us through they shouldn't get off scot-free either.

Opens July 21. [ See last week's Outlines, www.outlineschicago.com for an interview with the film's creator and main characters. ]

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