Out on Film highlights

ANONYMOUS Like some American answer to French shock queen Catherine Breillat (Romance, Fat Girl), underground filmmaker Todd Verow's film flits maddeningly between porn and social commentary. Shot on digital video, the film's grainy Über-ugliness only underscores the grubbiness of movie theater manager Todd's (Verow) world. Todd's isolated cubbyhole office affords him plenty of time for anonymous phone sex, glory hole adventures in public restrooms and other gestures of strangely reckless cruising in the age of AIDS. But despite sex scenes verging on the gratuitous, Anonymous has some of the shoddy, lowbrow chutzpah of Paul Morrissey's films. Vertow manages to capture something hollow and even routine in all of that extreme behavior. There is a truth in how what may have begun as pleasure-seeking has become grinding, ruinous habit. Mon., Nov. 15, 9:30 p.m. — Felicia Feaster

DIXIE QUEEN Do Southern drag queens have a harder life than their sisters in New York City and other big city gay scenes? Probably, asserts NYC drag diva (and former Southerner) Lady Bunny and the tightly knit members of the Wilmington, N.C., drag scene. Bible thumping and homophobia seem to go hand-in-hand in Dixie, and the cast of Southern fried queens headlined by Tara Nicole interviewed in Miles Christian Daniels' documentary have the psychological scars to prove it. Best approached as a crash course in one city's drag subculture, Dixie Queen will probably disappoint those looking for bigger ideas to chew on in this rambling doc. Sun., Nov. 14, 2 p.m. — FF

EATING OUT (NR) Lovelorn straight hunk Caleb (Scott Lunsford) discovers that free-spirited Gwen (the vivacious Emily Stiles) gravitates to gay guys, so he masquerades as a homosexual to get close to her. When Caleb finds himself reluctantly dating Gwen's gay roommate, Eating Out offers genuine insights into the quirks of gender relations and physical attraction. But too often writer/director Q. Allan Brocka strains to be arch and witty, as if auditioning to be a staff writer for "Will and Grace." The film works overtime to be an ambisexual farce, complete with a zany climactic dinner party that could be called Guess Who's Coming Out at Dinner? Sat., Nov. 13, 7 p.m.__ — Curt Holman

GIRL PLAY (NR) In their co-written autobiographical play Real Girl, Robin Greenspan and Lacie Harmon recount how they fell in love when cast in a play as lesbian lovers, despite Greenspan's long-term relationship and Harmon's commitment issues. For much of Lee Friedlander's film adaptation, Greenspan and Harmon stand on an empty stage and pour out their hearts in overlapping monologues that make them out as dour and self-absorbed. Occasionally we see other characters, but the running commentary never stops (not even during a pair of steamy skin scenes), so Girl Play never breathes naturally. Acting as a fey play director, Dom DeLuise fails to restrain his mugging. Sun., Nov. 14, 7 p.m. and Wed., Nov. 17, 9 p.m. — CH

LAST RIDE (NR) You can't fault the ambition of Atlanta filmmakers Jonathan M. Harris and Michael D. McAllister. Their film debut uses musical interludes reminiscent of Pennies from Heaven's Dennis Potter to get inside the head of a young gay man (Anthony J. Durand) whose fate echoes the late Matthew Shepard's. Last Ride's crazy-quilt narrative incorporates the cha-cha, country line dances and bumbling gay-bashers with the intentionally horrendous theme song, "We Are the Fag Patrol!" The iffy performers, scruffy production values and impenetrable plot keep Last Ride from meeting its potential, but Harris and McAllister emerge as visionary directors to watch in the future. Mon., Nov. 15, 7 p.m. — CH

WHEN OCEAN MEETS SKY (NR) This leisurely documentary explores nearly a century of history at Manhattan's famed gay-getaway Fire Island Pines and brightens with such gabby interviewees as "Queer Eye's" Carson Kressley. Director Crayton Robey devotes too much time to real estate deals and statements of the obvious, like how fun it is to have sex outdoors. But the film introduces some fascinating personalities, like showgirl-turned-hotelier Peggy Fears, and compellingly records the periods of tension — straights vs. gays in the 1960s, gay men vs. lesbians in the 1970s — that occasionally interrupt the island's carefree hedonism. Tues., Nov. 16, 9 p.m. — CH??

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