Luster | 
 enlarge | Director: Everett Lewis
Actors: Justin Herwick, Shane Powers, B. Wyatt, Pamela Gidley, Susannah Melvoin
Studio: TLA Releasing
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.99
Buy New: $8.52
You Save: $6.47 (43%)
New (28) Used (12) from $7.00
Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 14883
Format: Color, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 92
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: D054D
UPC: 807839000634
EAN: 0807839000634
ASIN: B0000DD75T
Theatrical Release Date: 2002
Release Date: December 9, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW AND FACTORY SEALED
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Description
An irreverent and refreshing take on the queer world of sex, lust and unrequited love. Lanky, blue haired Jackson, record store employee and poet, is in love with most of the men in his life! There's Billy, who he met at an orgy, Jed, his cousin, Derek, a customer at the shop, and Sam, his boss and best friend! A refreshing departure from the typical gay love story, LUSTER is a raw and darkly comic look at young punks in love. Limited Theatrical release.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Rare Storyline April 7, 2008
Hey,
This movie is really one of a kind. It's an odd story line of Jackson Jones with his confused sense of romanticism. This movie is very odd and yet poetic with a very odd edge to it. I think for gay film lovers out there this is one that has to be part of you'r collection
 Do not waste your money August 24, 2007
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
My friend bought this film as part of a bunch of about 9 or 10, and as she visits me each week, we've been watching them. "Luster" was the last of the bunch and thank we waited. I had no expectations of this film and, indeed the acting overall was quite good, but that's the reason for the first star.
I found this film horribly confusing, slow and mediocre. Jackson, our protagonist, works in a independent record store selling all sorts of weird and wonderful music as well as the mainstream stuff and he tools around the aisles on a skateboard and yells at customers of whose music taste he doesn't approve.
He's woken up at an orgy, and decided he's in love with Billy, a participant, and tracks him down. Unfortunatly, Billy is basically the sex toy/slave of a musician and doesn't want anything to do with Jackson.
Enter Derek, a straight-laced gay guy who fell for Jackson at first sight and tells him so, but whom Jackson find too "boring."
Then add in a cousin from Iowa, Jed, who's tortured by Billy and handcuffed in the shower. Jackson asks his boss and best friend Sam if it's incest to have sex with your male cousin (duh!).
Of course, Jackson and Derek end up together, but not after Sam dies, presumably from suicide, because he "cares" too much about Jackson.
The trouble with this film really is that everything that I wanted to see happened off camera or in the dark. The film would have been grittier and harsher and more realistic if we'd *seen* the sex, the "lust", instead of just hearing noises.
I got sick of the "poetry" after the first ten minutes, which seemed to me to be kind of drunken philosophy rather than poetry.
And yet, I had to see this film out. I wanted to know what happened. And therein lies the reason for the other star.
For all its faults, this film is like a car crash - you want to look away, but you can't help watching.
 UNFUNNY, UNSEXY, AND TOO BORING May 15, 2007
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
The story runs slowly and make me sleep till the end of this movie. There's no looking good of the guys.
rEFRESHING, fUNNY AND sEXY December 25, 2006
"LUSTER"
Refreshing, Funny, and Sexy
Amos Lassen and Cinema Pride
Unrequited love is usually not much fun and neither is it sexy nor refreshing. At least it is not until you see ?Luster? (Here! TV). Jackson is a cute, lanky frustrated poet who works in a record store. He is mad about Billy, a sexy young blonde who he meets at an orgy but Billy loves Sonny who is a musician into S and M. Then there is Jackson?s customer, Derek, who is in love with him and the owner of the record store who is straight (?) but obviously infatuated with Billy. (Got all this down?). Next we add Jed who is Jackson?s cousin who is responsible for leading his relative to contemplate incest. (Whew!!!!) To make everything even more complicated, Jed is seduced by a lesbian.
From the moment this film begins you know it is going to be different?first the actors are listed only by first name and secondly, the first scene is a bunch of young guys lying entwined and naked. So, is this a teen flick? In many ways it is but it also has a great deal to say about the nature of relationships. There is a good share of ?camp? and several of the mysterious subplots seem to bring the film down from what could have been a really good movie. Yet the more I watched the more I enjoyed it and the youthful exuberance of the cast makes it a lot of fun.
Jackson is the central character, he is cute as can be but he has his problems. His superior, record store mogul may be remembered as the gay guy on ?Sex and the City?, Stanford. He is supposedly straight but he does enjoy being beaten. The other characters give the whole mish mash a soap opera tone. Jackson could have had his character developed a bit more but somehow that did not happen.
This is a fun movie and doesn?t demand a great deal of thought or concentration. You may not remember much about it after you finish it but you will have a good time watching it while it is on the screen. Sit back, enjoy and move on. There is also a great deal of frontal nudity so that is a definite plus.
 "I think I love you!" August 20, 2005
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
Marked as a smart, sexy romantic comedic melodrama, the roughly made Luster is anything but. Well, it's sort of sexy, but it's not particularly smart, with a plot that takes a full hour to kick in and some pretty forgettable performances by the young cast. Also, for the most part, Luster isn't particularly funny, with a storyline that ends up veering into some pretty ugly and heavy S&M, non-consensual sex, and even suicide.
Set in Los Angeles, with much of the action-taking place in the more seedy areas of Hollywood, Luster opens just as Jackson Jones (Justin Herwick) wakes up from an all night orgy. Jackson is an alternative kind of guy - he has piercings and streaky blue hair, a goatee, and works in an independent record store.
Jackson is also an amateur poet, and when he's not shelving CD's while riding through the store on his skateboard, he's writing sexy love poetry in the hope of getting himself published. He has also set his sites on Billy (Jonah Blechman), a damaged twink in white leather pants whom he spotted at a party. Billy, however, is into being bashed about for kicks, and has been having secret liaisons with the deeply closeted rock star Sonny Spike (Willie Garson).
Jackson has been using his love for Billy, as inspiration for his poems and Sonny wants to use them as lyrics for a new album of rock music that he has planned. Jackson, however, is totally oblivious to Billy and Sonny's kinky relationship. A spanner is really thrown into the works when Jed (b. Wyatt), Jackson's hunk of a cousin arrives in Los Angeles from Iowa. Of course, Jackson falls immediately in lust with him, and wonders whether sleeping with your cousin is really incest, if it involves two guys.
Meanwhile, Jackson has a secret admirer in the clean-cut, straight-laced, and absolutely adorable Derek (Sean Thibodeau). Derrick is an unadulterated romantic, who believes in "love at first sight," and who falls hopelessly in love with Jackson when he wanders into the record store. After sharing a rather passionate kiss, Jackson decides that Derek is a bit too "normal" for his punkish, alternative persona.
But is doesn't stop there, while Jackson seems oblivious to all these romantic and sexual machinations that are going on around him, his "straight" best friend, Sam (Shane Powers), has also fallen in love with him. Tragically, Jackson hasn't a clue. He's far too preoccupied with writing his poetry and trying to bed Jed.
If this all seems a little much, well it is. Luster suffers from far too many extraneous characters that are constantly vying for screen time. There's also an unnecessary subplot involving Jackson's friend Alyssa (Pamela Gidley) is an aspiring photographer, who takes a shine to Jeb, and who spends most of her time annoyingly chattering away about post-modernist art.
Director Everett Lewis shows, with varying degrees of success, this alternative, punk acting group of men. Jackson in particular, is straight acting, far from effeminate, and is very accepting of his sexuality. And it's quite refreshing to see slightly edgy images of queer life that have nothing to do with cliched gym clones or drag queens.
But when one considers the outrageous proceedings, Luster ends up coming across as rather repetitive, dull, and bland. The lack of a meaningful story would be easier to take if the dialogue was wittier; the characterizations were a little deeper, and the production design of better quality.
The tacked on, melodramatic plot twist at the end only further accentuates the artificiality of the proceedings. Yes - there are some good-looking, hunky guys in this film, but don't be fooled by the cover of the DVD with its photo of a group of writhing, naked male bodies, because minor nudity is all that you're going to see.
With all its good intentions and its attempts to be gritty, resolute, and urban, Luster ultimately comes across as rather fraudulent; and even Herwick's quite nuanced and natural performance as Jackson can't save it. Mike Leonard August 05.
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