Saturday Church

Beautifully filmed, beautifully tracked, and beautifully cast. Anyone who has any major critiques of this film seems to be homophobic and transphobic. Praying that love enters their hearts!

A teenage black male (Luka Cain) who just lost his father struggles to find his sexual identity in the urban jungle that is New York City. His journey is further complicated by a mom who is too busy working; a pious, verbally-abusive aunt and caretaker; a snitching 8-year-old brother; and bully male classmates.

At its core, Saturday Church is a touching coming-of-age drama/musical (I think) that despite its flaws, does a great job at tugging at the heartstrings of viewers. However, after having seen other LGBTQ films over the past few years such as Moonlight and Blackbird, I find Saturday Church to be very unpolished by comparison in a number of areas.

First off, dealing with such taboo subject matter, the tone is obviously very heavy and uncomfortable at times. And that's OK because this is what we deal with in the LGBTQ community. However, there are times when this very effective tone is abruptly disrupted by musical numbers which seem out of place here. This film could easily have worked without the musical scenes. To me, it's as if the creators of the film couldn't decide if they wanted to make this a full on musical or not so they just threw in a few musical scenes as a compromise. I wish they would have committed one way or the other as it's very obvious they couldn't.

Additionally, the script was very dry and awkward in places. The acting and dialogue suffered as a result, although I must commend the cast because everyone was at least good. Now imagine how great the acting could have been if the material was airtight. That said, Luka Kain did an excellent job here, and I will be looking forward to seeing him in other roles as he grows in the film industry.

Anyway, the biggest thing this film has going for it (other than the cast) is it accurately details the real-life story of so many LGBTQ individuals in the United States (if not dramatically). LGBTQ often struggle and fight to be who they are in a society, where even today, we are sometimes seen as outcasts and treated as such. Thankfully, the tides are turning, but IMHO, not fast enough. However, films like Saturday Church and the aforementioned Moonlight and Blackbird are shedding light on the subject, and for that alone, it scores big in my heart.

What a sweet, if at times heartbreaking, story of coming of age and exploring gender.

A bit more subtle on the story line that most mainstream movies out there but the cinematography and the emotion behind every scene was done perfectly. Love the lighting and Ulysses' daydreaming details. Seeing him come into his own confidence was amazing, heartbreaking scenes almost pissed me off but honestly this is something that happens to a lot of lgbt youth and its wonderful to see this kind of representation. This film and other films like it are important. The music was good, not full on songs which I was sad about because the quality was so good.

All the actors do an EXCELLENT JOB.. While it would be great if they had a big budget; this movie can stand on it's own.. The scenes with the two boys was incredibly sweet, and touching. And I felt as uncomfortable watching as Luka appeared in his first adult sexual encounter.. My heart ached for him. Having worked in gay clubs for many years, and hearing stories of boys who ran away or got thrown out of their homes and what they had to do to survive. . I am so grateful I didn't have to go thru that.

The music and songs were decent. Perhaps not the smoothest transition, from acting to singing but in my opinion most musicals have that difficulty

This movie was a real 'slice of life'. And everyone obviously was very into making this delightful movie

I look forward to future productions from Damon Cardasis, and the talent he pulls together. I thought this was excellent.