Short (Slightly Homoerotic) Take: "August" and "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows".

The premise of August is simple: Troy (Murray Bartlett) returns to Los Angeles after living in Spain for years and decides to contact his ex, Jonathan (Daniel Dugan). Their reunion is marked by nostalgia and sexual tension, propelled by the notion that Troy wants Jonathan back but there are two problems: Jonathan still hasn't forgiven him completely for having left and he's also in a relationship with Raul (Adrian Gonzalez).
Where the movie could've been trashy and perpetuated the idea that gay men are promiscuous and soulless, it uses a very sensitive approach taking its time to explore who these men truly are.
You understand why Troy left and you understand why Jonathan would want him back. The film offers glimpses of their lives that could've been used for lurid purposes (how Raul for example is married to a woman in order to get a work permit) but instead it focuses on who these people are when no racial or sexual labels are attached. Troy's deep selfishness is heartbreaking in its black-hole voracity and Jonathan's naivete makes us all remember that sometimes we truly would give everything up to be with the one that got away.

The first Sherlock Holmes installment was enjoyable because it essentially conveyed the love story between Sherlock (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law). Director Guy Ritchie is the master of the modern homoerotic action flicks (unless those slow motion sequences of ripped, sweaty bodies are in fact to attract all kinds of audiences).
The second one suffers because they aren't together all the time, in fact a recurring joke has Watson's fiancee (Kelly Reilly) worried about Sherlock getting in the way of her wedding. Give or take the queer subtext - even if in the end Watson always goes for Sherlock- the movie pretty much consists of sequence after sequence in which the heroes get in trouble while trying to save the world from the evil Moriarty (Jared Harris). Despite its glossiness and inarguable technical mastery the film drags because it reaches a point where you don't even know what mystery Sherlock is trying to solve. Ritchie always lets the big action scenes get the best of him and forgets to emphasize on the plot (an essential part of any mystery movie). Then all of a sudden Sherlock irrupts into Watson's honeymoon train compartment in full drag and you can't do but wonder how much better the movie would be if it had explored an angle as unique as this one.

Grades:
August ***
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows **

Triage **

Director: Danis Tanovic
Cast: Colin Farrell, Jamie Sives, Paz Vega
Kelly Reilly Branko Djuric, Juliet Stevenson, Christopher Lee

Sticking to the kind of austere-by-way-of-beautiful aesthetic he explored in No Man's Land, Denis Tanovic once again examines the chaotic nature of war in Triage.
Colin Farrell plays Mark Walsh, a journalistic photographer who comes home from Kurdistan with scars and no recollection of what happened to his best friend David (Sives).
Not knowing what to do, his wife (Vega) sends for her estranged grandfather (Lee), a prominent psychoanalyst who slowly begins to get to the mystery of what happened to Mark.
With little consideration for nuance, Tanovic constructs a story of such archaic proportions that you don't need to know much about storytelling devices to know where it's going.
Farrell's character, being the center of the film and all, never sees himself fully realized and by the time we get to the big breakthrough, Tanovic had made sure the events unfold in pure soap opera style.
What gives Triage somewhat of a spirit are the little details that escape the main plot's constriction; Reilly for instance is divine as David's very pregnant wife, filling her character with the sort of life everyone else in the film seems obsessed with ignoring.
Her relation to the void left by her husband at the beginning of the movie and Mark's need to call death upon himself could very well recall some derivation of the Apollonian versus Dionysian spirit.
But other than Reilly, none of the actors ever truly evoke something that feels real. When not even the astonishing Christopher Lee is capable of moving something in you, whether intellectual or emotional, you know what kind of movie you're in for.

Ever woken up in handcuffs before?

Robert Downey Jr. has.
Read my short notes on "Sherlock Holmes" here.