Out at the Movies: "The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela", "Choke", "Towelhead"

A unique little film opens this week in NYC and LA that is definitely worth checking out if you're in either city and are looking for a reprieve from the junk cramming the multiplexes lately. Winner of the Berlin Film Festival's Teddy Award (Best Gay and Lesbian Film), The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela is a brisk and colorful half-documentary, half-fairytale that follows a Filipino "ladyboy" named Raquela Rios as she looks for love and a better life.

Raquela, a transgender prostitute in her home country, eventually turns to Internet porn to make the money she needs to escape to a better life ... in Iceland. Will her online romance with an American porn mogul lead to her dream of moving to Paris? 

Raquela Rios as herself

I saw Raquela recently and while I found it a bit troubling, its quasi-documentary approach and its subject are fascinating, and the film has stuck with me. If you want to learn more, check out the trailer after the jump.

Also opening this weekend are two films that aren't in-and-of themselves gay, but that come from two of our most acclaimed gay creatives. Choke, based on the cheerfully disgusting novel by gay author Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club), stars Sam Rockwell as a sex addict who fakes choking bouts in fancy restaurants to guilt people into supporting him financially. And that's just the beginning. Word is the film version (adapted and directed by Old Christine cutie Clark Gregg, of all people!) is madcap fun ... but if it remains true to the novel, get ready for some serious gross-out moments.

And then there's Towelhead, the troubled directorial debut of Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, American Beauty, True Blood), which debuted years ago as Nothing Is Private before going back underground for some retooling and a new title (taken from the novel on which it is based). The story of a young Arab-American girl's sexual awakening (partly at the hands of an adult neighbor, played by Aaron Eckhart) is reportedly at turns shockingly funny and deeply disturbing. Gay-fave Toni Collette (Muriel's Wedding) also appears as another neighbor.