What if they released the LGBTQ-themed action movie we’ve all been waiting for and they didn’t bother to tell us?

It’s a rhetorical question, really, because we already know the answer, and it can be found between the lines in the distribution-and-release history of “In the Grey,” a typically slick and cynical “caper thriller” from veteran filmmaker (and former Madonna husband) Guy Ritchie, which is now available on VOD platforms after a perfunctory theatrical opening in May.

Like almost all of Ritchie’s films, it’s fast-paced, clever, and full of surprises, some of which have to do with the plot, but most of all involve its characters – who, also in the tradition of Ritchie’s former work, inhabit a rarified world in which confidence, bravado, and stoic humor define the moral environment while something else (call it “fate” or “karma” or simply “the consequence of choices”) works behind the scenes to deliver a conclusion that satisfies our jaded sense of justice even as it fairly drips with irony. Also like most of Ritchie’s films, it succeeds in sucking us into its plotting while drawing a clear line between the “good guys” (i.e. the ones who are ostensibly working toward an equitable outcome, if not a moral high ground) and the out-of-balance despotism of a weighted power hierarchy that defines the shadowy status quo of human endeavor.

The caper in question is being run by Rachel Wild (Eiza Gonzalez), an elite lawyer who specializes in retrieving funds owed to high-finance “asset management” firms by wealthy clients, whose latest case puts her into a showdown with ruthless crime boss Manny Salazar (Carlos Bardem) over a billion-dollar debt. She’s elite for a reason, though; she’s backed up by her own small militia of “fixers” headed by trusted “extralegal” operatives Bronco and Sid (Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill, respectively), who are more than capable of carrying out her plans and have no intention of allowing Salazar to gain the upper hand. The plan involves blocking and handicapping his operations until he is forced to return the money; but when their powerful quarry decides to make things personal by going after Rachel in retaliation, it’s up to her loyal protectors (and their highly skilled team) to keep her safe.

Crafted by Ritchie with his usual blend of intricate plotting, jocular amorality, and shocking violence, it’s also a movie that fairly oozes testosterone; yes, there’s a smart and powerful woman at the center of it all, but she’s got as much (or more) macho swagger as anybody else so the effect is just the same. In fact, there’s a lot of hyper-masculine posturing, attitude, and tough talk that goes on all around, most of it delivered with that jocularity we mentioned. Action, naturally, is key to the formula, and “In the Grey” ramps it up to near orgiastic levels with an escalating collection of high-octane set pieces – chases, gunfights, explosions, zip-lining – all carefully spelled out ahead of time for us, point for point, in expository detail so that we can keep up with them as they unfold. It’s a movie about planning and strategy as much as anything else, and it wants to make sure we’re all prepped and ready for “go time.”

As for feelings, in a film like this, you might just think they don’t matter and leave it at that – but that’s not entirely true. Almost hidden in the middle of all this morally murky bluster and bravado is an unexpected angle, and it lends a touch of tenderness to the whole thing that somehow ends up being essential.

The movie takes pains to create a slow reveal, so it feels like a spoiler (consider this your warning) to say it, but underneath all the non-stop action there’s a love story going on, and it’s between the two leading men. We’re not sure at first, though the jovial banter between Cavill and Gyllenhaal has a distinct “romcom” vibe from the beginning, but as the movie goes on it gradually becomes clear that they are, in fact, a couple.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there was no mention of the nature of their relationship in any of the film’s publicity; the studio (Lionsgate) delayed release for months and eventually gave up distribution rights to Black Bear International. When it hit theaters, it finished ninth at the box office; even the popularity of its two stars was not enough to make up for the lack of push that accompanied its release. Does all of this suggest that the studio scuttled their own movie just because of the “gay angle” and the reaction it might get in today’s environment?  It’s hard not to speculate on that possibility, but either way, those two characters are gay.

Does it matter to the plot? Not really; there’s no lovestruck romance here – these guys have obviously been together a long time, and they carry the comfortable familiarity to prove it – nor is there even a kiss. It’s just a layer to their characters, a nuance that offers a glimpse of relatable, everyday humanity in a plot where almost everything else is bombast. Importantly, it also raises the stakes for the audience; knowing they are together gives us a reason to root for them beyond simple “good guy/bad guy” dynamic (which is complicated in a movie where both sides are trying to gun each other down mercilessly), and while we might not be so invested in the film’s overarching plot – do we really care if a venture capital corporation gets its money back from the murderous gangster they lent it to in the first place? – we can at least hope that these two handsome mercenaries will be able to go home to their cats together at the end.

As for the acting, this is not a film that demands anything more subtle than broad strokes from its players, but Cavill and Gyllenhaal, given such rich possibilities for subtext in their otherwise formulaic dialogue, clearly play it up with enthusiasm; they also convey that all-important tenderness – especially Gyllenhaal, who stirs an occasional echo of his “Brokeback Mountain” performance from two decades back. The rest of the cast – with the exception of Fisher Stevens as Salazar’s long-suffering lawyer, and Rosamund Pike as Rachel’s treacherous client – mostly play stock characters, familiar, predictable, and not too deep, but they do it well enough.

All that said, and with or without the gay couple in the middle of it, “In the Grey” is not a very remarkable movie. It’s more clever than smart, and while it benefits from Ritchie’s signature fast-paced, edgy style it sometimes feels repetitive – it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, and even if the setting within the corrupt world of the financial elite might strike a note for some viewers today, it never gets political enough to stir up any kind of fervor.

Cavill and Gyllenhaal, however, are good enough together to make it worth a watch – so why not? After all, brains (and eyes) like candy once in a while, too.

No matter which generation you belong to, you have nostalgic memories of “teen comedy” movies from your adolescent years, even though you’re a little embarrassed about it today.

This is particularly true for the Gen X and Millennial crowd, who grew up with raunchy teen movies from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” to “Porky’s” to “American Pie,” and have lived long enough to experience the shock of watching younger generations deploring them for the very raunchiness and toxic behavior that made them appealing to us in the first place.

These are exactly the type of films that are channelled in “She’s the He,” a SXSW hit and Independent Spirit Award nominee that hit VOD platforms on June 30, which strikes a nostalgic chord that conjures both the extreme “political incorrectness” and heartfelt sensitivity of the movies that inspired it – but updates the formula to add an edge that’s especially relevant in our current time.

In other words, it recreates the “raunchy teen comedy” genre through a queer eye (with a focus on the fine points of gender identity), and it’s every bit as messy, awkward, inappropriate, and “cringey” as you might hope it to be.

Written and directed by trans/nonbinary filmmaker Siobhan McCarthy, it’s a movie that might result in mixed feelings from many audiences over a story that centers on two cis-male high school seniors, Ethan (Misha Osherovich) and Alex (Nico Carney), who pretend to “come out” as trans together as a way to get close to girls.

Actually, it’s mostly Alex’s scheme to gain “access” to his crush, Sasha (Malia Pyles), and quell the rampant rumors that he and lifelong BFF Ethan are gay, reasoning that being “trans” would technically make them girls, too. It works, incredibly, in the beginning, but as a burgeoning friendship with nonbinary Forest (Tatiana Ringsby) distracts Alex from his rampant teen hormones, Ethan begins to realize that she really is trans, after all. What started out as a juvenile ploy suddenly becomes a complicated mess, and the two best friends must try to navigate their way out of it; unfortunately, Alex can’t stop scheming for sex and Ethan is struggling with the prospect of coming out to her transphobic mother (Suzanne Cryer), and needless to say, it puts a strain on their friendship. Meanwhile, there’s a whole locker room full of testosterone-charged jocks who want in on the scam themselves.

If all that sounds incredibly problematic to you, you’re not wrong – it definitely is. The entire premise, with all its nonconsensual shadiness and its hormone-driven gaslighting, seems like enough to trigger calls for “cancellation” from both sides of our divided social mediaverse; add to that the fact that the whole thing is played for laughs, as a crass and foul-mouthed sex farce about high school kids, and the movie opens itself up to an even greater level of pearl-clutching.

Like most of those teen raunch-fests of earlier generations, however, “She’s the He” is doing it all on purpose. McCarthy’s wildly “inappropriate” movie is not just some cheap sexploitation comedy, but a savagely campy assault on the attitudes and expectations of the very people that might be offended by it. 

As McCarthy says in their director’s notes for the film, “By taking conservative talking points at face value and playing out their worst fears on screen, ‘She’s the He’ seeks to undermine and defang these harmful ideas while satirizing the very media that has fueled this fear-mongering.” 

Among the most obvious “conservative talking points” their movie lampoons is the whole obsession around gender and bathrooms (it is, after all, a story about two cis males who essentially disguise themselves as trans so that they can get into the girl’s locker room), but there are a whole lot of others, too: the excessive concern over pronouns, the obsession over  genitalia, the assumption that gender identity and sexuality are somehow synonymous, the sexed-up male fantasy of what happens between girls when they’re behind closed doors – all the typical exaggerated tropes are there, and exaggerated even further for full effect. In fact, it’s the film’s not-so-subtle subversion of the “male gaze” through a queer and feminist lens that might be its most satisfying flourish, underscoring the already absurd parody provided by Alex’s single-minded (and hilariously “incel”-ish) prioritization of his sex drive above all other considerations.

Yet what really raises “She’s the He” above the level of the crude humor it deploys has nothing to do with making fun of people, nor is it even about pushing against uptight social boundaries around sexual and/or gender expression; all the irreverent zaniness is wrapped around a deeper story about friendship, love, and growth, a journey of self-discovery and finding the courage to embrace who you really are. And at the center of it is a transgender nonbinary actor in the leading role – in itself a bold challenge to rigid expectations – with not just the talent, but the grace, nuance, and bravery to play it with full authenticity. Osherovich earned a well-deserved nomination for Best Breakthrough Performance at this year’s Independent Spirit Awards, and they’re the heart of the film.

In fact, it might be McCarthy’s deliberate choice to cast their film entirely with actors who identified in some way as queer that fuels its transgressive energy and keeps it feeling “real” even when it’s at its most ludicrously excessive. They make for a great ensemble of players, but naturally there are standouts: co-star Carney (who is also a successful standup comic, known for mining his own transmasculine experience for laughs) does a great job as Alex, endearingly unconcerned and frequently clueless about his shortcomings as he single-mindedly pursues the loss of his virginity, and his chemistry with Oserovich makes them a winning pair whenever they share the screen; Cryer brings a dose of needed maturity to the mix, while also conveying the struggle of a mom trying to navigate her child’s coming out; Pyles and Ringsby both bring the intelligence and depth to undercut our expectations of their characters; comedian Aparna Nancherla earns plenty of chuckles as a teacher haplessly trying to keep up with all the changing identities (and pronoun protocols) of her students; and knowing that the school’s entire male sports team is played by transmasculine actors adds a delicious flavor to the movie’s overall parody of conventional gender presentation that helps make its climactic “locker room showdown” scene all the more hilarious.

It’s worth noting that “She’s the He” is targeted mainly for Gen Z audiences – it’s their generation’s turn to put their stamp on the genre, after all – but older audiences needn’t feel left out; there’s plenty here that should feel universal enough for any age to enjoy; and if you’re afraid it will be too extreme, rest assured: the most shocking thing about it is that it might be the sweetest teen sex comedy you’ll ever see.

Considering they’ve been making them for decades, that’s saying a lot.

When one watches movies for a living, it’s as easy to fall into routine as it is with any job. Each movie is different, of course, each with its own characters, its own viewpoint, and its own story – (or at least its own variation on one), but in so many other ways, they have a tendency to be very much the same. 

This is because there is an entire “language” of filmmaking, established from the earliest days of cinematic storytelling, a process so subtle that most of us are barely aware of it: the image directs our attention, the script provides the shape and structure of the story, and the actors are our stand-ins, allowing us to “experience” the reality of the film through a transference of identity that occurs so reflexively that we don’t even notice it’s happened. 

That’s why it can be such a jolt when we come across a movie that doesn’t follow the expected rules, and we can’t think of a better recent example than Avalon Fast’s “Camp,” which drew attention as it made the rounds at last year’s festival circuit and embarked on a series of screenings in select cities beginning on June 26.

Fast, 26, is a queer Canadian filmmaker who specializes in “Girl Horror” (a genre that centers female experience), and who has already become a prominent force in the “new queer indie” movement. Her first feature, “Honeycomb,” got a Slamdance “virtual” screening, and she’s appeared as a performer in films like Alice Maio Mackay’s “The Serpent’s Skin” and leading trans filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun’s yet-to-be-released Cannes hit, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.” With “Camp,” however, she stakes her claim to territory in a burgeoning field of queer/trans/feminist cinema to establish herself as a formidable “brand” of her own.

Rooted in a blend of trope-ish horror conventions and presented in a dreamy, ethereal style that elevates feeling over cognition, it’s the story of Emily (Zola Grimmer), a young woman accidentally responsible for two horrific tragedies, who feels hopelessly trapped by guilt and shame. At the suggestion of her father (Mike Tan), she takes a summer job as a counselor at a camp for “troubled” young people like herself, where she is quickly embraced and assimilated by the core group of female counselors – most of them “hot weirdos” who are more interested in all-night partying and a kind of home-grown witchcraft than they are in the wholesome camp activities they supervise during the day. Her initial response to this new environment is guarded, but as the summer goes on she comes to feel a strong connection to her fellow counselors, beginning to hope that she has – at last – found her place among a “family” that accepts her despite the life-shattering incidents that have come to define her sense of self. Yet at the same time, she becomes ever more aware of a call to confront and quiet the ghosts of her misfortunate past – even if it requires an unthinkable sacrifice.

Dreamy and purposefully opaque when it comes to differentiating between real experience and metaphysical reflection, Fast’s movie draws us in from the start with its edgy mix of visual atmosphere, blending an aesthetic that combines home-movie nostalgia with the ironically whimsical flourishes of the digital age to establish a tone that feels like a half-forgotten memory reconstructed in the form of an Instagram “reel.” It’s a potent effect, creating a milieu of surreal impressionism in which the plot advances more through mood and fragments of subjective experience than through concrete narrative form; at times, it feels untethered, yes, but it always manages to orchestrate its seemingly disjointed perspective into a shape that makes sense — even if we’re not quite sure how or why, or even what is actually happening.

The effect is cumulative, as the story becomes less bound to logic and realism while leaning further into a perspective that favors the arcane and mysterious over the rational and concrete. And while that might prove frustrating for viewers expecting a more traditional kind of “horror,” it provides for an experience that’s more likely to satisfy the kind of fans who appreciate being left to provide their own interpretations. The most obvious comparison would be with the work of David Lynch; there’s clearly an influence there for Fast’s darkly intuitive approach, which goes beyond the obvious parallels of its “Twin Peaks”-ish setting (the forest is most definitely a character here) to emulate the stream-of-consciousness narrative flow that marked much of Lynch’s late-career work.

“Camp” is far from imitative, however. While it may share some traits with the work of Lynch and other masters of contemporary surreal horror, it creates a unique “vibe” by allowing its own creative feminine energy to take the lead. The traumas it depicts spring from a definitively female space, from first-menstruation nightmares to the absurdities of having to defer to the “leadership” of a mediocre male who has more power than you (in this case, Austyn Van de Kamp as the camp’s supervisor, a naive but endearing yokel whose Jesus-centric worldview is undermined by the “coven” under his tentative command), and the overall treatment of its few male characters is largely less than forgiving. Yet on a deeper level, its subtext of carrying “unforgivable sin” that affects every aspect of one’s interactive life feels ultimately as much an expression of queer trauma as it does feminist ideology. The result is just cryptic enough to leave us pondering what we’ve just seen yet clear enough to deliver an emotional catharsis which feels, if not exactly curative, at least healing enough to pave a way forward.

Admittedly, it’s not a film that will likely tick off all the boxes for hardcore horror fans; while it might deal in dark emotions and a certain witchiness that ties it to the legacy of such pagan-flavored classics as “The Wicker Man” or “Midsommar,” its terrors are more existential than visceral, pondering the difficulties of overcoming self-hatred rather than pitting us against a palpable physical threat, supernatural or otherwise. Indeed, it’s more introspective psychodrama than it is traditional horror – which is less a criticism than it is a disclaimer.

Though it’s Fast’s moody aesthetic that emerges as the “star” attraction of “Camp,” much of its effectiveness hinges on the performances of its cast. Grimmer, especially, is central, and she succeeds admirably not only in winning our empathy but in peeling back the morally murky layers of Emily’s path to redemption in a way that feels like empowerment rather than ethical compromise. However, the ensemble of “soul sisters” that surrounds her (Alice Wordsworth, Cherry Moore, Ella Reece, Lea Rose Sebastianis, and Sophie Bawks-Smith) all play their own particular part in creating the “magic” that makes the whole thing work.

All in all, “Camp” is an exhilaratingly fresh – if sometimes opaque – expression of queer filmmaking from a feminine perspective; that’s a regrettably rare occurrence which makes Fast’s fastidiously unsentimental (yet deeply empathetic) exploration of queer guilt all the more powerful, and makes her movie an essential addition to your watchlist.