Following are reviews of movies premiering in the final week of the Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, July 20-25. Up to the day of show, tickets may be purchased in person at TLA Video locations (11 a.m.-10 p.m.), by phone at 267-765-9700, ext. 4, and online at www.phillyfests.org (up to 24 hours in advance). Same-day tickets are available only at the screening venue. Tickets are $9.50. Reviews of first-week premieres with remaining screenings are available at www.citypaper.net.

All times are p.m. An asterisk (*) indicates scheduled appearance by director or other guest.

Recommended
Venue Codes: PMT = Prince Music Theater 1412 Chestnut St. • AB = Arts Bank 601 S. Broad St. • WT = Wilma Theater 256 S. Broad St.

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Since 2004's Eating Out, Q. Allan Brocka has learned how to write dialogue that sounds believable when spoken by human beings. That could be the influence of Matthew Rettenmund's source novel (I'd still be wary of the Brocka-penned Eating sequel also screening this year) or the less overtly comedic story, but Culture's characters actually engage in whole conversations free of snappy one-liners. Brocka's cynical wit is most evident in the unnamed lead's voiceover, which does fall in love with its own cleverness from time to time but is restrained overall and often wryly funny. He's also aided by a far superior cast, including fest honoree Darryl Stephens, who ably juggle the entangling motivations that complicate their desires. —Shaun Brady (7/22, 7:30 PMT*; 7/23, 2:15 PMT)

In this quirky coming-of-age tale, Zachary is the second-to-youngest of five boys born to a Catholic French Canadian family. He is thought to be "gifted" as a result of an early near-death experience, but all he knows for sure is that he is different. It's the 1970s and while his brothers are playing sports and romancing the ladies, he's in his bedroom listening to glam rock and fantasizing about men. In order to come to terms with his sexuality, though, he must confront the stern disapproval of his beloved father. Director Jean-Marc Vallée consistently gets it right, sensitively walking the line between the familiar experiences of adolescence and the particular struggles of his engaging characters. Gorgeously filmed and impeccably acted, C.R.A.Z.Y. is a standout. —Elisa Ludwig (7/21, 7:00 PMT; 7/23, 4:30 PMT)

The five prison inmates in Dan Hunt, Janet Baus and Reid Williams' documentary are referred to as "women with male genitalia," a definition as challenging to the prison system as it is to the English language. Placed in general population with male prisoners, they're immediately at peril, but the alternative — prolonged solitary confinement — is even worse. Prison officials, used to seeing every unusual request as a test of wills, habitually reject appeals for female hormones, even though going without them is, in one inmate's words, "like being forced to be someone you hate." The movie's most heartbreaking subject is Linda Thompson, an indigent ex-oil worker who shows off the results of a jailhouse self-castration she felt was the only way to convince the warden she wasn't a cross-dressing malingerer. Powerful as its look behind bars is, Cruel and Unusual grows truly tragic when it follows Linda into the outside world. Riding the rails in heels and falsies, she's deprived of every legal means to support herself (oil rigs not being the most progressive of workplaces), destined again for the prison she hates. —S.A. (7/22, 12:30 PMT)

Shot haphazardly enough to border on incompetent, Robert Douglas' Bois on the Side follows an Icelandic soccer star who is ousted from his club when he comes out to a magazine writer. As Ottar (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson) fields his own group of gay ball-kickers, Douglas tries to wring laughs from their sheer incompetence (too bad the title Bad News Bears was taken). But the movie's tone is disastrously off, particularly in a putatively comic scene where Ottar fools around with his new boytoy while his teenage son watches in disbelief. Apart from the chance to hear "Walk Away Renee" in Icelandic, it's hard to recommend a soccer movie where we never see anyone kick a ball. —S.A. (7/20, 9:30 PMT; 7/21, 5:00 PMT)

Ash Christian's self-penned and -starring debut gets points for high school authenticity (not surprising since he was 21 when he made it), but grows way too fond of its handful of jokes. It's briefly funny that his character's fundamentalist mom only allows Bible-themed food, but he should have cut the cord somewhere between "angel food cake" and "holy hamburgers." Fat girls, for the movie's purposes, are rejects of any size or shape, although Christian throws in an actual fat girl just to drive the point home. Shot on oddly defocused DV, Fat Girls is closest to the everything-is-aestheticized hyperrealism of 12 and Holding, although Christian gives his actors (including Tarnation's Jonathan Caouette) a little more room to breathe. Christian ably captures the disaffection of growing up gay amid the freakshow of suburban Texas, but he neglects to give his characters anything they're not alienated from. —S.A. (7/21, 5:30 WT*; 7/22, 9:30 WT*)

Featuring the most extensive use of the word "poofter" since Monty Python's Philosophers Sketch, Stewart Main's Kiwi coming-of-age drama centers on a pair of sexually ambiguous 12-year-old cousins. Chubby, femme Billy doesn't even know what "poofter" means, just that, based on the evidence and his dislike of rugby, he wants to be one. Lou, on the other hand, outplays the boys on the rugby team and is distraught at the prospect of being fitted for a bra. Main gussies up a fairly average story of sexual awakening with fantasy sequences reminiscent of his countryman Peter Jackson's. But where Heavenly Creatures created a dream world key to understanding its characters' madness, Main's intentionally cheesy '50s sci-fi interruptions are little more than window dressing. —S.B. (7/22, 5:15 PMT; 7/23, 9:15 PMT)

You know you're at a gay and lesbian film festival when a glammy queen pulls an American flag out of her ass while lip-synching "The Star-Spangled Banner" and not a single person boos. Sean Mullens' debut doc about San Francisco's infamous Tuesday night cabaret is all lip liner, hairspray and bags of cocaine — the foundations upon which their country was built. Audience shots of Bauhaus, David Bowie and Papa Roach performances are spliced with plainclothes interviews, wherein Mullens casts a spotlight on the same queens who've been hogging it since 1996: The Steve Lady, Rusty Hips, Suppositori Spelling, Peaches Christ, Ana Matronic, Precious Moments and a half dozen others. Self-congratulatory and skin-deep, Filthy Gorgeous has earned its seat in the pantheon of glittery drag documentaries, despite its inability to wipe away the eyelash glue. Here's hoping the Motherfucker doc will do it one better. —Ashlea Halpern (7/22, 9:30 PMT; 7/24, 8:15 AB)

Travis Reeves' tortoise-paced documentary would be dreadfully boring if its protagonist, Simon de Voil (née Ruth), weren't so damn likeable. After years feeling uneasy in his own skin, de Voil makes an 18-month transition from butch lesbian to transman. Reeves, also an FTM, captures the highlights: discussing it with the folks; realizing and comprehending that, as a singer-songwriter, he may lose his canary voice in the transition; marching in a gay pride parade; nauseously giving himself his first shot of testosterone; checking the "Mr." box on a form application; and going into the hospital for top surgery. (Irritatingly, we never see the de-bandaged results.) By film's close, the blue-haired lead in the Tranniboy T-shirt is all man, dancing in the rain with his bride-to-be and relishing this found semblance of a normal life. —A.H. (7.22, 2:45 PMT; 7/23, 9:30 PMT)

Setting this tale of middle-aged lesbian awakening in the silky hammocks of a Cirque du Soleil-like aerialist act distracts from an overly familiar story with arresting visuals. A tightrope-taut Dreya Weber stars as an ex-gymnast, famous for a career-ending fall, miserable in a loveless, childless marriage. Desperately trying to conceive and capture some happiness in her remaining years, she instead finds escape with her Korean-American partner in rehearsals for a Vegas act. Sure, it's Lifetime movie stuff, but first-time director Ned Farr lets it unfold in the physicality of his two leads. If only he had followed that instinct further, as a silent scene that plays out during the closing credits is far more expressive than all the preceding dialogue. —S.B. (7/20, 7:30 WT; 7/23, 4:45 AB)

Life gets tough for 17-year-old Eric when his family decides to leave Hong Kong and move to Toronto, forcing him to abandon his boyfriend. Right away he meets an older man, Larry, and they begin an affair that Eric makes clear is not going to be serious. Instead, he has his eye on Jim, a rebellious classmate whose sexuality is ambiguous. In the meantime Eric's parents struggle with their marriage and adapting to life in a new country. Director Simon Chung has an appealingly quiet sensibility, but Innocent never develops dramatic momentum and its obtuse personalities never quite gain our sympathies. —E.L. (7/20, 7:15 AB; 7/24, 6:00 AB)

What a difference a year makes. In that time Sebastien (Benoit Deliere) goes from a small-town kid uncomfortable with his sexuality to a club-hopping Parisian with a ready supply of hair gel and a Moulin Rouge poster on his wall. Co-directors Bernard Alapetite and Cyril Legann alternate between the two time frames to demonstrate Sebastien's unrequited (though maybe requited after all) love for his best friend. At 55 minutes, the film feels both overlong and unrealized, being more of an idea than a story. Nothing much happens, characters don't develop and the Paris half in particular is little more than sex and regret. Mostly sex. It all feels like peeking in the window of a kid with a crush. —S.B. (7/20, 9:30 WT; 7/23, 7:00 AB)

A forbidden Catholic school lesbian romance is at the heart of this tepid, unconvincing drama from first-time director Katherine Brooks. Annabelle is a senator's daughter who immediately makes a stir at her new boarding school by smoking in public and refusing to give up her Buddhist beads. Things get even trickier when she makes a pass at her passive, lonely English teacher Simone. Sexual tension builds, rumors fly and the inevitable against-the-wall make-out session looms. Replete with religious imagery, convenient meteorological metaphors and one-dimensional characters, Annabelle is pat and overwrought, playing like a Skinemax film that, in the end, has nowhere near enough sex to be gratifying. —E.L. (7/21, 7:45 WT*; 7/23, 2:30 WT*)

Erin Greenwell's shoestring debut tells the story of odd couple Kelly, an uptight market researcher, and Linda, a goofy butch cameraperson who dreams of opening a tattoo parlor. Stranded in a New Hope hostel, Kelly struggles with her identity and Linda confronts an old fling; universal lessons on friendship, love and happiness follow. Mom takes a while to get going, but the adventures of this offbeat duo — played with heartfelt sincerity by Emily Burton and Julie Goldman — prove that a decent script with a lotta heart can go a long way. —Termeh Mazhari (7/22, 4:45 WT*; 7/24, 6:00 WT*)

You know this isn't an ordinary hip-hop doc the minute a bouncy rapper drops a shout-out to "all the TGs in the heezee." Tracing the history of LGBT rap from the late '80s, Alex Hinton's boisterous doc skimps a bit on the backstory, tossing off references to the heyday of pioneers Rainbow Flava as if they're a household name, but its copious performance footage makes an instant case that queer hip-hop deserves a much larger place in the pop-cult sphere. A few rappers, like the rhythm-impaired Johnny Dangerous, come off as little more than novelty acts, but the varispeed rhymes of San Francisco's Deepdickcollective are enough to send any hip-hop fan searching for MP3s. Mic's focus on performance footage documents the music's audience as well as its artists, although it's too bad we have to wait till the end credits to see if the music's production is as radical as its lyrics. —S.A. (7/23, 9:15 AB*)

A mini-scandal boiled up out of Sundance's muck after Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer's sweetly effective neighborhood tale took this year's audience award. But PIGLFF viewers, intimately familiar with Wash West's journey from adult films to erotic dramas, put two and two together long before the MSM caught on. The surprise for those who've seen The Fluffer is the size, and the effectiveness, of Quinceañera's leap for the mainstream. Set in L.A.'s rapidly gentrifying Echo Park, the movie's central character is a misfit Latina (Emily Rios) whose biggest concern in life is that her preacher father won't spring for a Hummer limo when her 15th birthday celebration comes around. Not surprisingly, other comings-of-age are just around the corner, for Magdalena and her cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia), a pumped-up cholo whose family has just kicked him out of the house. Despite its thoroughly ordinary look, the movie's script cleverly plays with audience expectations, especially where Carlos' familial estrangement is concerned. When Carlos' new neighbors, a white gay couple whose presence is the surest sign of the neighborhood's changing face, invite him to their all-male housewarming party, you wait cringing for the moment when the wrong person will make a pass at him and he'll erupt in violence — only the moment never comes, replaced by a more intriguing twist. Though its shape is as familiar as a cozy armchair, Quinceañera still finds little ways to surprise. —S.A. (7/24, 7:15 PMT)

Produced for California public TV, Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman's thumbnail history barely fills out its hour. Stryker, a transgendered history professor who narrates the film, proclaims the 1966 riot at a San Francisco eatery "the transgender community's debut on the stage of American history," essentially trying to swipe Stonewall's crown. But the movie provides little context to back up Stryker's words, and little evidence of Stonewall's ripple effect. Queens does better with period detail, building a vivid portrait of life in pre-liberation San Fran, when the police had a special squad devoted to harassing queers. —S.A. (7/22, 5:00 PMT*)

Repurposing Mountain's "Mississippi Queen" to delirious effect, Malcolm Ingram's doc trolls the back roads of the deep South, pulling up at Rumors, a roadside gay bar in Shannon, Miss. (pop. 1,657). From the outside, it looks like any weather-beaten watering hole, at least until you see the "Silence = Death" sticker on the door. But inside, a vibrant, if not particularly numerous, community holds sway, giving gay nightlife a toehold in the Bible Belt. Ingram includes the requisite interviews with local fag-bashers (including the loathsome Fred Phelps, who runs his God Hates Fags empire out of a nearby town). But the biggest threat facing Rumors, and its counterpart Crossroads, is a slow Thursday night, a sign that former customers have decamped for Memphis or Mobile. Exec-produced by Kevin Smith and edited by his longtime producer Scott Mosier, small town gay bar doubles as a valentine to rural life, a reminder that not all good things are to be found in the big city. —S.A. (7/22, 7:15 PMT; 7/23, 2:30 AB*)

Despite the dozen films and AFI education under his belt, it's clear that Todd Verow resolutely refuses to learn anything about style or technical competence. Perhaps it's a phobia that production value equals blandness, but Verow's DIY efforts offer nothing but half-baked self-absorption. A memoir of Verow's high school years peopled by a bunch of twentysomethings indistinguishable from their teachers, Vacationland wanders aimlessly through memories relevant and otherwise; a subplot involving the lead's sister keeps reappearing just as it's been forgotten, but remains unresolved nonetheless. A consummate exhibitionist, Verow manages some nice moments in extreme close-up, an anonymous grope between adjoining bathroom stalls becoming almost tender, but falls apart again with every artless wide shot. —S.B. (7/20, 9:30 AB; 7/22, 5:00 AB)

Moving from the absurdist to the merely baffling, Charles Busch makes a directorial thud with this blandly shot coming-of-age tale. Redhead P.J. Verhoest plays a proto-gay teen whose ailing grandmother (Polly Bergen) takes on a severe male nurse (Busch). Busch's cloistered caregiver banishes cheery balloons with a disapproving stare, but it's only a matter of time before his star-spangled inner self starts to shine, unlocking his young tagalong's burgeoning sexuality in the bargain. Too broad even for the small screen (perhaps a cell phone?), Serious mugs its way into the ground. —S.A. (7/22, 7:15 AB*; 7/23, 12:15 WT*)