Ornaments (U.S. 2008)

The Gist:

Three friends and their assorted significant others have spent the Christmas holidays together for the past eight years. This year that means a self-centered woman who is indifferent to her girlfriend's desire to be a mother; a depressed man who is antagonistic to the fact that his new boyfriend is in love with him; and a sappy man whose wife is so newly pregnant, no one has been told yet. Over the course of the get together people act terrible to each other, testing love and friendship to the breaking point. 

Mildly Spoiler-ish Comments: 

There seems to be a train of thought that the holiday season isn't depressing enough on its own, so Christmas movies should be sad to lend a helping hand in making everyone even more miserable. Although in this case the Christmas setting is inconsequential. Any holiday or date of note that friends would use as an excuse to get together would have served, spring break, thanksgiving, a birthday, a graduation reunion, even Arbor Day would have been equally fine.

The issue of holiday aside, we have people leading sad lives, and facing issues that will quite likely end their friendships and relationships. Happy times. 

On the positive side, the acting is more or less ok (with a couple dips into over-dramatic). A larger sized man is cast as the depressed self-destructive gay man, so if nothing else, he is not the standard actor you'd expect for a gay role. 

Also, the story isn't uninteresting. It's just massively depressing. Additionally several of the characters are written to be incredibly unlikable, to the point that I didn't care about the terrible things they were going through. If anything, it quickly turned into "Oh that horrible person just had a bad thing happen to them? Good."

If movies where you actively want people to end up divorced and alone is your kinda movie, this was tailor made for you. 

Women:

Yes

People of color:

One boyfriend

Gratuitous nudity:

Nope

• Director: Brian Samuel Davis
• Writer: Brian Samuel Davis 
• Actors: Mattie Spradlin, Arthur Spradlin, Julie Tolman
• 92 min
• IMDB

Visions of Sugar Plums (US 2001)

The Gist:

Closeted protagonist dude and his boyfriend happily prepare for their first Christmas together. Unfortunately for them things quickly break down when closeted dude admits that not only are his conservative religious bible-thumping parents coming over for the holiday, but that they don't know their closeted son is gay. So he needs to de-gay the apartment. Starting with the boyfriend. 

Will the relationship survive? Will the parents find out their nelly, unmarried son is a nelly homosexual? How badly will they react? Will the boyfriend have an affair with a random guy he meets while sulking at a bar on Christmas Eve? Does anyone care?

Comments with a couple of spoilers that don't matter since you're never going to see this:

Strip off the Christmas tinsel and you are left with a simple gay coming out movie. Unfortunately not a very good one. Extremely not good. Which leads to the question "Is it so bad that it becomes good again?"

So, reasons not to see this in no particular order:

1. It feels like the movie was shot on a video camcorder, only using the built in microphone and ambient lighting. Every time conditions are even slightly less than ideal (the majority of the time) it is muddy looking and the dialogue is barely understandable. 
2. For a melodramatic coming out story, this is REALLY melodramatic.
3. The sassy black drag queen neighbor, who depending on your attitude to the gay movie stereotype that the lone African-American gay man present must be an effeminate queen, is either boring or offensive or both.
4. Terrible overacting.

On the other hand, reasons to see the movie include:

1. The terrible overacting is funny when the mom discovers that her son is gay and yells out: “No!" "NO!" "Oh Jesus NO!" "NO!" "NOT MY SON!” Sadly, unintentional hilarity only happens the one time and the rest of the movie is just regular bad acting.
2. The movie is only a little over an hour long.

All in all, not worth watching.

Women:

Landlady and weepy conservative religious mother who weeps a lot.

People of Color:

The aforementioned landlady and a sassy black drag queen neighbor who hosts a drag show at what appears to be someone's living room disguised as a gay bar.

Gratuitous nudity:

No nudity. Just a boyfriend who appears to have been cast for his looks, so is somewhat shirt-phobic. If skin is the reason to watch a gay movie, the DVD cover art with a present strategically placed over the boyfriend's “junk” (and the closeted guy screaming at the present (because it's badly wrapped?)) is the most you will see.   

• Director: Edward J. Fasulo
• Writer: Anthony Bruce
• Actors: Edward J. Fasulo, Mark W. Hardin
• 78 min
• IMDB