So I've realized people actually read my little reviews of VDO movies, so here's a couple more for those of you thinking about which movies to pick up.

The two I've watched most recently are The Velocity of Gary and Fires Within.

The Velocity of Gary got pretty bad reviews from critics (especially, I've noted, those citing the movie as some epic about AIDS and homosexuality, which merely shows they totally missed the point), but I thought this movie was absolutely wonderful. Vincent plays a bisexual porn star named Valentino (retired) who becomes the center of the lives of two very different people. One is his fun-loving, light-hearted girlfriend Mary Carmen (Salma Hayek) and the other the more somber and reflective "Gary." Valentino is dying of AIDS, and the story centers around the relationship between the three, in which the two rivals for his affection decide to tolerate one another (knowing he will give neither of them up) in order to spend his remaining days with him. I was a little skeptical of seeing Vincent in the role of a bisexual man, as he seems so masculine to me, but the way the entire movie portrays human relationships, it's easy for the fact that the relationship is between two men to take a back seat to the emotional context, and I found I benefited from the experience of watching it all play out. And...Vincent is so utterly amazing he even succeeds at being incredibly convincing and scorching hot while kissing a guy! And...watch out for the long black hair and the eye-makeup. Yum. Another warning though... there's an effort at light-hearted portrayal of the people/situations involved, and the ending is not without hope, but the true core of the movie is very sad. The sort of sad that stays with one for a bit, because it's so real.

As for Fires Within.... I read an interview in which Vincent stated that "the only thing good that came out of that movie was having a child with Greta (Scacchi)." After seeing it, I can understand what he meant. This movie was super disjointed, and honestly doesn't end up with him playing a significant role at all. There's a lot of pretext about his relationship with Isabel (Scacchi), and it seems that the director or writers wanted Isabel's inner conflict about choosing to be with Sam (Vince) or her husband, just returned from eight years as a Cuban political prisoner, to be a central focus of the story. However, there was next to nothing about Isabel and Sam...absolutely no character development for him, and one was left not realizing exactly what they'd been doing together for the last eight years (save one rather steamy flashback).  It seemed very haphazardly pieced together, and that possibly important scenes were cut out or lost...or...never filmed? I kept waiting for something to happen to draw me into the story, but it wasn't to be. Those of you looking for a movie with Greta Scacchi would do well to see this, but those of you interested in VDO...not so much.