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Poly-ish Movie Reviews

Poly-ish Movie Reviews

De: Joreth InnKeeper
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Welcome to Poly-ish Movie Reviews, where I watch the crap so you don't have to! I watch a lot of movies. Some of those movies are great. But a lot of them are crap. I'm here to help you sort out which is which, so that you don't have to waste your time on bad cinema, unless that's your thing. No judgement - I like a lot of terrible movies. I'm just saying that, as we polys know, love may be infinite, but time is not. Let me help you manage that increasingly rare and precious time of yours by sharing my opinions on movies that some have claimed to be "poly" so that you can make better decisions on which ones to spend your time with.(c) 2015 Joreth InnKeeper Arte Ciencias Sociales Filosofía
Episodios
  • Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 57: iZombie

    Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 57: iZombie
    Aug 16 2025
    Yet another cop drama with non-monogamous people involved in a murder? Can Hollywood actually show ethical non-monogamy or is it just another excuse to punish "deviants"? Joreth reviews the Netflix show, iZombie, to find out. www.PolyishMovieReviews.com That was a surprisingly hopeful episode. Well, I mean, the whole series has a hopeful tone, given the subject matter and the impossible situations it spirals into. But I was still surprised by this one. iZombie is a quirky little show. The premise is that a young, over-achieving doctor gets invited to a trendy boat party by a rival who is impressed with her doctoring skills. At the party, a new designer drug is introduced, everyone but the doctor gets high, and then, inexplicably, a zombie outbreak happens. The doctor, whose name is Liv, gets scratched as she runs to jump off the boat and wakes up in a body bag on the beach with all the other victims of the party. This is just the opening credits. Now the walking dead, Liv goes into a major depression (I mean, who wouldn't?) upon learning that she's dead and craving brains. She breaks up with her fiance, quits her promising career as a heart surgeon, and goes to work in the cororner's office, where she can steal the brains from the dead patients when she closes them back up after their autopsies, before sending the bodies out to their final arrangements. Now, here's the kicker ... after she eats someone's brain, she gets flashes of memories from that person's life and starts to take on some of their personality characteristics. She accidentally has a flash of a murder victim's life while the investigating officer just happens to be in the morgue inquiring about the body. Her boss (who has figured it all out within 10 minutes of the first episode) covers for her blurting out this data that she couldn't possibly know by claiming that Liv is a pyschic. Because that's easier to swallow. So now Liv eats the brains of murder victims that her boss looks the other way for, in exchange for studying her condition and trying to find a cure, and she runs around solving crimes as a psychic cororner sidekick to the rookie cop who believes her "visions". I really like this show, but then I really like police procedural shows. I always have, and I continue to love them even now with all the shit going on about real cops. But that's not the point of this review. In this second episode, we meet a couple in an open marriage. Javier is a brilliant young artist married to Lola, who appears to adore him. Javier is a stereotypical "male artist", meaning that he is all about passion - passion in his work, passion in life, and passion in bed. When Liv gets a flash of Javier having sex with someone who is not Lola, the crime fighting duo think they have a break in the case with his affair. As the cop says, "it's always the spouse". But when they go to Javier's loft to speak with his wife, they find the mistress with her arms around Lola, comforting her. Lola introduces her as "my favorite of Javier's lovers". This is where we learn that they have an open marriage. I like this scene because Lola defends her relationship with Javier without sounding defensive, as in "methinks she doth protest too much". [insert audio clip of Lola introducing Tasha as "my favorite of my husband's lovers"] Now, here is where I would normally get really irritated at how non-monogamy is portrayed in pop media. In The Mentalist, the open marriage was a red herring, and I loved that about the episode. The cops spend time and resources chasing down dead end leads because sex is so often a motive for murder, but their particular open marriage had nothing at all to do with the murder. That's very rare, in my experience. Usually these shows indicate who is the "bad guy" by making them kinky or non-monogamous or a casual drug user, because only deviants do those sorts of things, and deviants must also be criminals, obvs. So usually I get pissed off about that. But I didn't see the anger in this one, because I see the motive all the time in the poly community, so it's clearly a common experience. The anger at being replaced, not murder, of course. That's a very common fear, whether it's from couples who create a bunch of rules to protect their marriage or it's monogamous people who tell us without a shred of shame that they could "never do that" because "what if your partner finds someone they like better than you?" As usual, in order to discuss the parts that are relevant to polyamory, I have to spoil the big reveal. SPOILERS: We eventually find out that Javier knocked up his manager's teenage daughter. Which could have led to the manager being the murderer as either pissed off at Javier for "cheating" on Lola, whom the manager secretly loved and not-so-secretly thought Javier was a poor husband for, or the manager could have been pissed off at this older man getting his daughter pregnant. But, as...
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    16 m
  • Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 56: Heartbeats

    Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 56: Heartbeats
    Jul 15 2025

    A movie in French about polyamory? Will this finally be the French film that Joreth doesn't hate? Does it actually have any polyamory in it?

    www.polyishmoviereviews.com

    Apparently my distaste for French ennui cinema extends to French Canadian ennui cinema. I just don't like ennui, I guess.

    Yet another Netflix recommendation. Heartbeats is about "two best friends, Mary and Francis, who meet a charismatic wanderer named Nick and suddenly find their longtime friendship tested to its limits. As the love triangle between the three intensifies, Mary and Francis vie for Nick's affections in this intense story".

    Well, it's not wrong, exactly. It's just not nearly as interesting as the summary makes it sound. Which, to be honest, wasn't that interesting to begin with.

    I will say this about it. I think it was well acted. The seething jealousy that Marie and Francis feel throughout the film felt authentic as a viewer. But 2 hours of people smoking and glaring at each other from across rooms is just not my idea of a good time.

    Marie and Francis meet Nick. Both develop an interest in him. Nick is so neutrally friendly that it's not even clear what his orientation is for the entire movie. He never says or does anything that could be construed as genuine romantic or sexual interest for either character. And they, of course, don't say or do anything overt to Nick. They just seem to be really good, affectionate friends.

    Eventually Marie and Francis actually get into a rolling-on-the-ground fight, ostensibly over Nick, yet neither of them has admitted to anyone that they harbor feelings for him. Annoyed, Nick stops hanging out with them. After not seeing him for a while, both Marie and Francis run into Nick independently and admit that they have romantic feelings for him and he rejects them both. So Marie and Francis fuck each other? When Francis is gay, not bi?

    Later, they run into Nick at a party, who tries to say that he's happy to see them, but Francis emits this nails-on-a-chalkboard scream to drown him out, so Nick walks away and Marie and Francis glare at his diminishing back until they, too, turn and leave.

    Interspersed throughout the story, we see these little vignettes of, I dunno, documentary-style interviews I guess? Of people who have utterly miserable love lives. Nothing in any of these stories is about non-monogamy, they're all about breakups, or falling in love with the "wrong person", or one guy who doesn't seem to believe in bisexuality? I have no idea what any of this had to do with the story, except to maybe set the tone that French people only seem to be happy when they're miserable, I suppose. I know it's a terrible cliche, but I've yet to watch a potentially poly movie that even tries to disabuse me of this notion.

    On top of all this, the movie was fucking boring. Nothing happened. People smoked a mountain of cigarettes and complained about the movies they saw and Nick flirted his way obliviously through life, until an hour and a half later someone finally admitted to having feelings and someone else said they don't feel the same. Then everyone was unhappy some more.

    I got so bored, I started surfing Quora, which was really hard to do because I had to read subtitles.

    There was no story here. No plot. No conflict except the one that the characters made for themselves. Everyone was just ... unhappy. Except for Nick, who was oblivious.

    That's 2 hours of my life I won't get back.
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    4 m
  • Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 55: The Duchess

    Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 55: The Duchess
    Jun 15 2025
    Can a Hollywood-made dramatic biopic made in the current century actually show polyamory? That might depend on how we define "polyamory". Joreth reviews the narrative version of Lady Georgiana Cavendish's life as portrayed by Natalie Portman to see if polyamory happened during the Georgian era and if polyamory can be shown in a movie made in the modern era. www.polyishmoviereviews.com The Duchess is based on a true story about Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, who married William Cavendish, the 5th Duke of Devonshire. Biopics can be challenging to review because, on the one hand, I don't like to give out spoilers and I only do so when it's absolutely necessary to explain why a movie is classified as "poly" or not. But on the other hand, these are true stories that happened years, sometimes centuries ago, and the conclusion is already well-known (or ought to be). I think I said in another review that we don't watch biopics to be surprised at the ending, we watch them to see how this particular storyteller tells this particular story. The short answer here, because I like to give it right up front so that you don't have to sit through an entire review unless you actually want to hear all my ramblings, is that I really enjoyed the movie, and I'm going to say that it's poly-ISH. I thought it was well acted, well directed, the costuming was georgeous (as it should be, given the main character's importance in the fashion world), and it was surprisingly accurate, according, at least, to what Wikipedia has to say about these historical characters. Normally I try to keep my reviews to the poly (or not) content within the film, regardless of historical accuracy, but this time I think its accuracy is relevant to my categorization. Georgiana Spencer is the oldest child of John and Georgiana Spencer, and much loved. In fact, "love" is rather prevalent in her childhood home, in contrast to many noble and upper class homes of her time. Her parents doted on her and, apparently on each other. According to Wikipedia, there is no record anywhere that indicates anything other than loving monogamy for life from her parents, quite apart from the custom of the time. This, unfortunately, sets up our young G with some unrealistic expectations of adulthood and marriage in the peerage. On her 17th birthday, Lady Georgiana was married to the most eligible bachelor in English society, William Cavendish, according to the arrangements of her mother. G (as she is sometimes called) had only met her husband-to-be twice prior to the deal being made, but she believed it to be a love match. Her mother had hoped to not marry her off so young, but could not pass up the opportunity to raise her daughter's station to one of the most powerful men in the realm. Also, a true fact. So, off she went, the new Duchess of Devonshire. Unfortunately for G, William did not consider "love" to be a relevant factor in marriage. He had entered into a business contract for a male heir, not a soulmate. And so begins a long, volatile relationship between the Duchess and Duke of Devonshire. William seems to have no interests in anything other than cards and his dogs. G, meanwhile, develops quite a few passions, including drinking, gambling of all sorts, politics, and fashion. Over the course of their marriage, she becomes the quintessential fashion/style icon of the day, with all of English society hanging on her every design and fashion trend. And, as many of my very male partners have been surprised to discover after numerous rants from me, fashion very strongly influences politics and vice versa, so our young fashionista is also quite politically influential. William does maintain one other interest - sex. G discovers numerous affairs and unhappily looks the other way, as is the custom. Several years into her marriage, G is introduced to Charlotte, the daughter of one of his dalliances from before their marriage, whose mother is now dead and William decides that G should raise her. In the movie, we see G as resistent to and hurt by this revelation at first, but growing to love Charlotte as if one of her own children. The surviving correspondence between G and her mother indicate that the love, at least, was true - she did indeed adore Charlotte as her own daughter. G goes on to have 2 more daughters before finally producing a male heir for William, thereby finally fulfilling her half of the marriage contract that William arranged for. And this is where the poly - or not - content comes in. Until this point, we only see William as having indiscriminate sexual affairs with various staff, and G not having any affairs of her own. At this time in real history, a woman of G's status was allowed to have affairs, the same as her husband, but only after producing a son to secure inheritance. In the movie, this little fact is never mentioned. It is just assumed that her husband is a common philanderer and she is the dutiful wife, pained by his ...
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    22 m
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