Overrated

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Am I Missing Something?

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Madonna, like all good pop culture icons, was all things to all people. By the early nineties she, or her managers, saw that this could be consolidated by her seeming to embrace and become an avant garden patron saint of the LGBTQ+ community of the time. Madonna was seen on TV wheeling out Sandra Bernhardt as her girlfriend - she was in fact seeing Warren Beatty. She made a mainstream hit of 'Vogue', just a dance craze song in the old tradition but culled from underground gay and drag culture. Vogue and the Blonde Ambition tour it was part of, required young male dancers from the dance subculture it exploited. Madonna handpicked dancers and soon became the mother hen of an elite inner circle of the mainly gay men. 'Strike A Pose' catches up with the surviving members of Madonna's male dance troupe and discovers some whose lives were changed by it, some for the better, some now worse off. Archive footage shores up the stridently powerful woman we recall of Vogue era Madonna as a naive and superficial "issues" hound who used - or was advised to - the LGBTQ+ community to expand her market to the "pink dollar". However Madonna actually, personally cared. Through interview, segments of expressive dance and more than honest reminiscences. A startling and heartfelt deconstruction of those on the fringes of fame and a true interrogation of the sincerity of commercial pop art.

It was really interesting to follow up on their lives. They have had so many struggles through the years trying to find their way in life. Although the guys don't hold resentment, I must say that this makes me dislike Madonna even more than I already did. In my opinion, she took hold of "kids" who thought they were family and when she was done with them, she was done...She's a very cold person.

Strike a Pose (2016) is a Dutch documentary that was directed by Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan. It tells the story of the six surviving members of the seven-man dance group that accompanied Madonna on her Truth or Dare tour.It's a truly sad film. These young, talented men reached great heights during the tour. They became famous in their own right. They were like a family, and Madonna, who was in her 30's at the time, was like their mother hen.When the tour ended, they learned that they weren't really a family. Some of the dancers complained that Madonna had outed them in the movie Truth or Dare (1991). The conflict ended in a lawsuit.One died of AIDS, and the others have struggled with HIV, alcohol, and drugs. None of them maintained the heights they had achieved during the tour. All of them are struggling. (Some more than others, but still struggling.)In retrospect, these talented men would have probably done better if they hadn't been chosen for the tour. No one would have believed it then, but we can see it now.I didn't enjoy this film. The men may have been great dancers, and they may have felt like a family, but they each went their own way, and that way was down. I had hoped the movie would have had more dancing, but there wasn't very much of that either.Not my kind of movie, but the film carries an high IMDb rating of 7.7, so obviously I'm in the minority. I think dancing works better on the large screen than it does on the small screen. However, this movie will work well on either, because there wasn't much dancing.We saw the film at Rochester's excellent Little Theatre, as part of ImageOut, the wonderful Rochester LGBT Film Festival.l

Lots of crying. Documentary-makers love it. Almost everybody in the movie gets to cry. Coming out of the closet and AIDS, AIDS, AIDS. No, it is not "powerful." It is stagey and manipulative. The individual stories are familiar. The only difference is Madonna. Like the gay Waiting for Godot. Everybody talks about Madonna, but she's not there. "We were like a family" is the motif. I doubt that the dancers were really that naive. They were Madonna's employees. Did they really think that they were going to be pals with her once the tour was over? There is a shot of a mother watching a video of her dead son. There is a discussion of Bell's palsy. There is an awkward reunion dinner apparently staged for this film. It's as if the dancers know what is expected. Lots of hugging and more crying. Declarations of undying love and friendship. A cringe-inducing replay of truth or dare. Everyone aware of the cameras. It seems self- conscious. What do you do with your life if it peaks when you're 22? To be cast out of MDNA paradise. There are vague images of the dancers in what may be their present careers. One of them is a waiter, but it is implied that they are still in dance. No specifics are given. The idea is to leave on an upbeat note.