In examining the life of artist, photographer, writer, actor, musician, filmmaker, and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz, using his own words, imagery, and music, director Chris McKim (Freedia Got a Gun, Out of Iraq) has created a rich and riveting work that captures Wojnarowicz's unapologetically queer spirit, and serves as a testimony to the enduring power... Continue Reading →
**Contains potential spoilers** Happiest Season, which arrives on Hulu in the US today Wednesday November 25th, ticks all the Christmas film and rom-com boxes. It’s got awkward family encounters and secrets. It’s got festive set ups from ice skating to Christmas parties. It has ghosts of Christmases past (and relationships past) and a healthy dose... Continue Reading →
Most aspiring writers, at one point or another, receive the advice to “write what you know”. Clearly, filmmaker Lawrence Michael Levine has taken that to heart with his tricky, startling, engaging feature, Black Bear. Transposing himself, possibly onto more than one character, Levine has made a film about filmmaking, artistic control, identity, marital fidelity, feminism,... Continue Reading →
Ahead of the release of Oscar-winner Alan Ball's latest feature film as writer and director, Uncle Frank, which lands on Amazon Prime Video this Wednesday November 25th, The Queer Review's editor James Kleinmann spoke exclusively with the movie's cast including Peter Macdissi. Peter plays Wally, the longterm partner of Paul Bettany's NYU professor character Frank... Continue Reading →
Actress Lois Smith, who turned 90 earlier this month, received her third Tony nomination in October for her deeply moving performance in Matthew Lopez's epic gay play The Inheritance. Born in Kansas, Smith moved to New York City in 1951, making her Broadway debut the following year in Time Out for Ginger and her auspicious... Continue Reading →
Paul Bettany, the British born BAFTA and BIFA nominated star of acclaimed films such as Gangster No. 1, A Beautiful Mind, and Master &Commander: The Far Side of the World, made his stage debut in 1993 in London's West End in the Stephen Daldry directed production of An Inspector Calls. His first big screen role... Continue Reading →
In a year when it's often been a challenge to see the light, not only did Dolly Parton help bring some joy to lockdown with a surprise appearance on the RuPaul's Drag Race season 12 finale, she also soothed our souls with the hopeful single When Life Is Good Again, and most significantly, as has... Continue Reading →
There's a touching speech towards the end of Happiest Season, beautifully delivered by multiple Emmy-winner Dan Levy revitalising the gay best friend role, that eloquently makes the point that when it comes to coming out there's no one-size-fits-all experience. It's typical of Clea DuVall and Mary Holland's smart, funny, heartwarming and unsentimental screenplay which goes... Continue Reading →
In 2015 New York became the ninth US state to require all health insurance plans to cover gender-affirming surgery. The following year New York City's Mount Sinai hospital opened its Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, with a medical team headed up by the cisgender Dr. Jess Ting. Tania Cypriano's compelling and moving feature documentary... Continue Reading →
Adaptation has been on my mind for most of 2020. As we all have had to isolate from each other and figure out a way to move forward amidst this global pandemic, our ability to adapt has remained a formidable challenge. Although we wear masks, work from home, stay six feet apart, and stream movies... Continue Reading →
If like me you've found solace this year in the company of television drag queens you might have run out of shows to watch. I have comfort-binged all twelve seasons of Drag Race, all five of All Stars, Secret Celebrity Drag Race, Drag Race: Vegas Revue, plus all the international Drag Race iterations (well, apart... Continue Reading →
The fourth season of the Golden Globe, Emmy and BAFTA-winning Netflix series The Crown, which launches globally on Sunday November 15th, spans the eleven and half years of Margaret Thatcher's time in 10 Downing Street from 1979 to 1990. Baroness Thatcher of course was no friend of the LGBTQ community. Growing up in Thatcher's Britain,... Continue Reading →
Writer-director Francis Lee's follow up to his stunning 2017 debut feature God's Own Country, immerses us in the imagined day-to-day life of an often overlooked historical figure, English fossil collector and palaeontologist Mary Anning, in the absorbing, exquisitely crafted Ammonite. Mary (Kate Winslet) shares a humble but well-kept home with her ailing widowed mother Molly... Continue Reading →
David Freyne returned to his hometown in Country Kildare in Ireland last summer to direct his semi-autobiographical screenplay, set in 1995, just two years after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the country. The film, Dating Amber, which is released on demand and digital in the US today, is a platonic romantic comedy that sees two... Continue Reading →
Our dancefloors are empty and dark. Lunatic right wing clowns fumble responses to a global pandemic. You have to take your little shots of happiness where you can get them - from the best sources, the brightest lights. Even if that neon laser light is reflected from a disco ball. Suddenly, Kylie Minogue drops her... Continue Reading →
Writer-director David Freyne's semi-autobiographical comedy Dating Amber, which recently delighted virtual audiences at both Toronto's Inside Out and New York's NewFest LGBTQ film festivals, focuses on the platonic love story between two queer teenagers, Eddie (played by Normal People's Fionn O'Shea) and Amber (rising star Lola Petticrew). Coming to terms with their own sexuality and... Continue Reading →
Brian Belovitch's GLAAD Award-nominated autobiographical play Boys Don’t Wear Lipstick celebrates its 20th anniversary with a virtual benefit playreading tonight, Monday November 9th at 8pm ET. Boys Don't Wear Lipstick, directed by Everett Quinton, details the writer's journey "from boyhood to manhood – by way of a 15-year detour through womanhood." The event will feature an all-star... Continue Reading →
Following the suicide of one of their peers, best friends Carrie (Madeline Grey DeFreece) and Hannah (Rachel Sennott) are forced to spend the afternoon at their upstate New York Hebrew school reflecting on the passing of a classmate they apparently hardly knew in this queer dark comedy. Unfurling compellingly more or less in real time,... Continue Reading →
Gil Baroni's Alice Júnior is a neon pink filled delight that stylishly puts the T in teen movie. The dynamic, fast-paced opening sequence, with some great aerial shots by cinematographer Renato Ogata, immediately takes us into the coastal city of Recife in North Eastern Brazil and into the bedroom of the charismatic and self-assured titular... Continue Reading →
The virtual 11th edition of America’s largest documentary festival, DOC NYC runs from November 11th to 19th and will be available online throughout the US. The 2020 lineup of over 200 films, includes 107 features, with 23 world premieres and 19 US premieres. Over half of the features are directed or co-directed by women and... Continue Reading →
Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell's stunning new book, LOVING A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s-1950s, is a collection of previously unpublished vernacular photography depicting romantic love between men that powerfully and movingly reasserts both that love is love and that we've always been here. A married couple themselves, Neal, who works in the... Continue Reading →
Despite its relatively short running time of just 53 minutes, or perhaps because of it, director Ben Anthony's made-for-television documentary Keith Haring: Street Art Boy, which premiered at NewFest, manages to cover a lot of ground. In fact a parallel emerges of a prolific artist with an intense creative drive, and the film's style which,... Continue Reading →
The winners at the 32nd NewFest the New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival were announced at a virtual ceremony on Sunday October 25th with top honours going to writer/director Anna Kerrigan for Cowboys which took the Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize; director Assel Aushakimova for Welcome to the USA, which won the Grand Jury Prize for International Feature; director... Continue Reading →
Radha has hit a wall. Once a promising “30 Under 30” playwright, she now faces her 40s with nothing but a stalled career, a thankless teaching job, and a crummy Brooklyn apartment to show for it. When opportunity knocks, she opts to…wait for it…pursue rapping instead. Beautifully shot in black and white by the gifted... Continue Reading →
The prestigious celebration of West End theatre, the Olivier Awards, took place at London's Palladium yesterday. Well, sort of. As with much of theatre this year, the Oliviers were an odd mix of the live and not-quite-live. Some awards had already been given out, with the winners sworn to secrecy, and the full ceremony streamed... Continue Reading →
Veteran Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox's outstanding new feature Sublet, co-written with Itay Segal, opens with the arrival of a jetlagged and disorientated fifty something gay man, Michael (The Inheritance's John Benjamin Hickey) to bustling Tel Aviv. He's a travel writer for The New York Times who has come to uncover the "real" city over a... Continue Reading →
Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley's frequently hilarious high camp queer absurdist dark comedy Circle Jerk is very 2020. It's confronting, chaotic, unrelenting, far-fetched, deranged, and overstimulating. The theatrical equivalent of spending 100 minutes or so multi-screen doom scrolling yourself down a wormhole of alt right conspiracy theory threads punctuated with viral TikTok lip sync videos... Continue Reading →
Posy Dixon's debut feature documentary Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story is a delicate, nuanced and life-affirming tribute to the experimental folk-jazz turned synth singer-songwriter. With an interview with the musician, who now goes by Glenn Copeland, at its centre, the film paints an intimate biographical portrait focused on his emotional and creative journey, with... Continue Reading →
Historian, activist, and public speaker Blair Imani is fast approaching an audience of 300,000 Instagram followers whom she educates on topics that centre women and girls, Black communities and LGBTQ+ folks through her regular bite-sized Learn O’Clock and Smarter in Seconds Reels features, while offering more in-depth lessons on Patreon. In 2017, Blair came out... Continue Reading →
Equal is an ambitious, fast-paced, dynamic, creatively told, often gripping and frequently moving four-part docu-series landing on HBO Max this LGBTQ History Month to remind us that queer history in the USA did not begin and end with the Stonewall riots in June 1969. The final episode though, Stonewall: From Rebellion to Liberation, directed by... Continue Reading →
The Max original LGBTQ+ civil rights docu-series Equal premieres on HBO Max today, Thursday October 22nd. Dynamically and stylishly breathing life and potent emotion into queer history, the series recontextualises the Stonewall riots in the final episode, having set out in the previous three episodes the long, often hidden, fight for equality that came before... Continue Reading →
The second episode of HBO Max's impactful four-part LGBTQ+ rights docu-series Equal, focuses on stories of trans pioneers and trans resistance. Bookended by the Compton's Cafteria riot, we're presented with figures that might already be familiar like Christine Jorgensen as well as names we're far less likely to have encountered, such as Black trans socialite,... Continue Reading →
Following her work as director of photography on Sam Feder's groundbreaking documentary Disclosure, Ava Benjamin Shorr has now lensed the dynamic and stirring four-part LGBTQ+ civil rights docu-series Equal, which premieres on HBO on Thursday October 22nd. Her work on the series saw her collaborate with directors Stephen Kijak and Kimberly Reed to create visually... Continue Reading →
Experimental drag queen and fine artist Yvie Oddly, aka Jovan Bridges, releases her sickening debut hip hop album Drag Trap on Friday October 23rd. Her unconventional, unpredictable and endlessly creative approach to drag, along with that signature deliciously dirty cackle, and gag-worthy physical contortions, saw her crowned the winner of RuPaul's Drag Race season 11... Continue Reading →
This month, the Criterion Channel is celebrating the groundbreaking work and enduring legacy of the late queer Black filmmaker, activist, poet and educator Marlon Riggs. Race, Sex & Cinema: The World of Marlon Riggs features a complete retrospective of his still searingly urgent, provocative, nuanced, and beautifully crafted video work exploring Black identity and representation,... Continue Reading →
This month sees the work of queer experiential filmmaker Jenni Olson celebrated on the Criterion Channel, with a five film retrospective, plus a new insightful interview. Included in the collection are Olson's two features, The Joy of Life (2005) and The Royal Road (2015), which both world premiered at Sundance. These, along with her 1998... Continue Reading →
Tonight, Sunday October 18th at 8pm ET, Entertainment Tonight's Keltie Knight and RuPaul’s Drag Race star Nina West host the virtual variety show Divas For Democracy: United We Slay. Broadway divas will belt out some of the most iconic musical theatre numbers while their drag diva counterparts match their vocal prowess with lip sync passion... Continue Reading →
The search for your latest Netflix binge ends right here. Gripping, nuanced and urgent, Brooklyn-set high school drama Grand Army, adapted from creator Katie Cappiello's own 2013 play Slut, follows the lives of a diverse group of students navigating contemporary teenage life. Among them is Indian-American Sid Pakam, played by Degrassi: Next Class star Amir... Continue Reading →
NewFest, the 32nd New York LGBTQ Film Festival launches today Friday October 16th at 8pm ET with the NYC premiere of God's Own Country filmmaker Francis Lee’s Ammonite. Oscar-winner Kate Winlset who stars opposite Saoirse Ronan in the film, will virtually present Lee with NewFest's inaugural World Queer Visionary Award ahead of the opening night... Continue Reading →
The Broadway production of Matthew Lopez's epic two-part queer play The Inheritance has received 11 Tony Award nominations, while Jeremy O. Harris' Slave Play featuring prominent queer characters has received 12 Tony nods, with both receiving Best Play nominations, alongside Grand Horizons and Sea Wall: A Life. The 2020 Tony nominees for Best Musical are... Continue Reading →
This year's Iris Prize, Cardiff’s LGBT+ international film festival, took place over October 8th to 12th. And while circumstances meant that the festival felt very different to other years, there was still an extremely strong offering of British and international film. Here are a few highlights from the short films, from both the British and... Continue Reading →
The opening of amfAR’s digital The Great Work Begins: Scenes from Angels in America, which premiered on Broadway.com’s YouTube channel on October 8th, places the memory of the AIDS pandemic at its worst alongside now all too familiar images from 2020’s battle with COVID-19. The opener is a stark and sobering reminder of an obvious... Continue Reading →
The experience of watching Jen Rainin and Rivkah Beth Medow's feature documentary Ahead of the Curve, which just played Toronto's Inside Out film festival before heading on to New York's NewFest, is much like spending an hour and half getting lost in the pages of your favourite queer magazine; insightful, stimulating, empowering, with a deep-dive... Continue Reading →
Joe Biden, Jennifer Lopez, Angelica Ross, Karamo Brown, Carmen Carrera, Isaiah Thomas, and GLAAD’s Sarah Kate Ellis, are among the many advocates and artists set to appear on Revry’s QueerX Live! awards show on National Coming Out Day, October 11th. The show will include screenings of the winners from QueerX’s film festival competition, along with performances by VINCINT, ROB.B, Debby Holiday, and... Continue Reading →
The winners at this year's LGBT+ Iris Prize film festival were announced at a special awards ceremony on Saturday October 10th night including performances by Casi Wyn and Heather Small. Victoria Warmerdam's Short Calf Muscle (Kote Kuitspier) is the winner of the Iris Prize 2020, Cardiff’s International LGBT+ Short Film Prize, supported by The Michael... Continue Reading →
Peter Murimi's I Am Samuel, which has its European premiere at the London Film Festival on October 10th, is an intimate portrait of Samuel, who lives in Nairobi, Kenya, and his partner Alex. Shot in verité style, the documentary opens with footage of the two men visiting a beauty spot, a waterfall in a forest,... Continue Reading →
During this current global health crisis, amfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research), has been working to identify gaps in current COVID-19 research efforts and to quickly mobilize resources to fill them. Drawing on 35 years of funding HIV research and working to find a cure for the 38 million people worldwide living with HIV, amfAR have... Continue Reading →
Today the National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund announced an on-going Queer the Vote multi-faceted campaign to inform, educate and mobilize LGBTQ+ communities as we approach the November 3rd 2020 elections. Tonight, Wednesday October 7th at 6:30pm ET / 3:30pm PT, there will be a Queer the Absentee Vote Text Party. The National LGBTQ Task Force... Continue Reading →
The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) will present The Great Work Begins: Scenes from Angels in America this Thursday October 8th at 8:30p.m. EST. on Broadway.com’s YouTube channel to benefit amfAR’s Fund to Fight COVID-19. Working with playwright Tony Kushner, director Ellie Heyman has enlisted an impressive array of performers, who filmed themselves remotely, for this... Continue Reading →
This year’s Inside Out Toronto LGBTQ+ Film Festival opened with Jump, Darling, the feature debut of writer/director Philip J. Connell. On the surface, the tale of a young gay man escaping the big city to live with his grandmother in the countryside, reeks of every fish-out-of-water story ever conceived. The beauty of this film, however... Continue Reading →
The 2020 Iris Prize LGBT+ Film Festival starts on Tuesday October 6th and runs until Sunday 11th, with screenings, talks, podcasts, and events reaching a wider audience than ever before. For the first time in the festival’s history, film lovers across the UK will be able to attend the festival virtually online for free on... Continue Reading →
One of the highlights of last month's Toronto International Film Festival was the extraordinary No Ordinary Man, which world premiered at TIFF's semi-virtual 45th edition. The thought-provoking and emotionally potent feature documentary takes an innovative approach to reclaim and reframe the life story and legacy of popular 1940s and 50s jazz musician—and transmasculine icon—Billy Tipton,... Continue Reading →
Horror-comedy Roommate Wanted, from director Michael McCartney, is a classic case of housemates-gone-bad. It’s a tale of all of the different ways white male privilege runs wild; it’s a typical horror story about a man with many personalities in his head; and it’s also a surprisingly sweet look at a young woman coming to terms... Continue Reading →
Back in June 2019, I reported on a wonderful new musical which premiered at the Hudson Theatre (remember theatre?) in Los Angeles called Shooting Star. With a book by Florian Klein (aka real life porn star Hans Berlin), and music and lyrics by Thomas Zaufke and Eric Ransom respectively, the show took a deep dive... Continue Reading →
Judah (Judah Vivancos) is a dancer. He’s a beautiful dancer and a beautiful man, lithe and muscled and with perfect razor-angled stubble. He dances primarily with the alluring Rebekah (Leonor Campillo), and while their choreographer and director have a lot to say about how they can improve, director Manu Herrera’s camera captures their performance with... Continue Reading →
One of the more esoteric films premiering this weekend at the digital Salem Horror Festival is director Ryan Glover’s debut The Strings. I’d call the film a slow-burn, except The Strings doesn’t burn at all. Instead, it’s a deeply unsettling film that sticks to your bones like a deadly winter chill, seeping under your skin... Continue Reading →
The Salem Horror Festival is typically held every year, as you might expect from its name, in witchy Salem, Massachusetts. This year, though, as in-person events aren’t possible, the festival has moved its program online, offering a number of worthwhile and enjoyable movies to kick off October with some respite from the real-world horrors this... Continue Reading →
The 30th annual Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival, Canada’s largest LGBTQ film festival, opens today Thursday October 1st with the drive-in premiere of David Bowie biopic Stardust. Set in 1971, a 24 year-old David Bowie (Johnny Flynn) embarks on his first road trip to America with Mercury Records publicist Ron Oberman (Marc Maron), only... Continue Reading →
Brooklyn-based queer musician Jayse Vegas has just unveiled his latest music video, his fifth in as many months, for his single Energy, shot at NYC LGBTQ+ nightlife venue 3 Dollar Bill. "I really miss performing, and passing along great energy through my art on stage," the 25 year-old New York native singer-songwriter told The Queer... Continue Reading →
Established in 1987, Atlanta's Out On Film LGBTQ Film Festival is in the midst of its 11-day 2020 virtual edition, which ends on Sunday October 4th. The 33rd Out on Film offers a diverse selection of LGBTQIA+ narrative features, documentaries and shorts, with 82 films from 20 countries. The festival opened on September 24th with... Continue Reading →
Robin de Jesús received both critical acclaim and his third Tony nomination for his show stealing, hilarious yet soulful, performance as the fabulously flamboyant Emory in the Ryan Murphy produced 2018 Tony-winning Broadway revival of Mart Crowley's groundbreaking play The Boys in the Band. He's now reprising that role, alongside his all-star, all publicly gay... Continue Reading →
New Orleans local hero, international hip hop legend, and the undisputed Queen of Bounce, Big Freedia, is using her massive platform to explore the complexities of the epidemic of gun violence in her city which disproportionately impacts Black communities, and to light a new way forward with the documentary Freedia Got A Gun. Following a... Continue Reading →
Premiering Off-Broadway in April 1968, Mart Crowley's groundbreaking play The Boys in the Band was a hit with queer and straight theatregoers alike. Two years later it was adapted for the screen by Crowley, and upon the playwright's insistence the William Friedkin directed movie featured the entire cast from the original stage production. Initially hailed... Continue Reading →
Are we forever fated to become our parents or is there a chance to carve out our own identities? This, the central question of Miranda July’s wonderful new film, Kajillionaire, takes an original, engaging route towards such a discovery. July, best known for her first feature, Me and You and Everyone We Know, in which... Continue Reading →
New York-dwelling pop artist on the rise and fitness instructor Josey Greenwell has just released his new single a catchy late summer anthem Fiesta for Two featuring K-Lero, from his forthcoming debut album City Games. And, yes, he does sound as good as he looks. "The inspiration for this track was really wanting to experiment... Continue Reading →
Oscar and Golden Globe-winning actress Regina King (who added a fourth Emmy win to her name last night), makes an impressive directorial feature debut with One Night in Miami..., which screened at this year's Venice International Film Festival on September 7th, making headlines as it marked the first film directed by a Black woman to... Continue Reading →
The 64th BFI London Film Festival (LFF) runs from October 7th-18th, and like many other festivals, Covid-19 restrictions mean that it's taking a different form this year. Given current circumstances the 2020 programme offers a reduced number of feature films, just 58, plus collections of short films and experimenta, but with an expanded reach across... Continue Reading →
The 45th Toronto International Film Festival closed last night with a drive-screening of Mira Nair’s A Suitable Boy. “TIFF 2020 was a year we won’t soon forget,” said Cameron Bailey, TIFF Artistic Director and Co-Head. “Overthe last 10 days, we have experienced community in the truest sense. The pandemic hit TIFF hard and we responded... Continue Reading →
Todd Verow's 1995 feature debut Frisk elicited strong reactions, resulting in a near riot, when it world premiered on as the closing night of the 19th San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (now Frameline) at the iconic Castro Theatre, before going on to screen at Sundance, Berlin and Toronto. Based on Dennis Cooper's... Continue Reading →
The Queer Review had a very special Zoom conversation, along with some other members of the press, ahead of today's launch of season one of Ratched on Netflix. The virtual press conference was attended by lead actor and executive producer Sarah Paulson, along with some of her co-stars including Cynthia Nixon and Sharon Stone. Created... Continue Reading →
The world's second-oldest queer film festival, Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival, will mark its 38th anniversary next week with its first virtual edition. Reeling38's programme will include 30 features and 54 short films from 21 countries, along with more cast and filmmaker Q&As than ever. As there will be no in-person screenings, over... Continue Reading →
Today, Friday September 18th, sees the release of peachy pop newcomer Luke Baron's debut single, inspired by one of the most beloved queer movies of recent years (or ever), Luca Guadagnino's 2017 Oscar-winning Call Me By Your Name, based on the novel by André Aciman. The dreamy anthem, Summer Of '83 (Call Me By Your... Continue Reading →
The Welsh-born New York City-dwelling queer prince of indie electro pop, Bright Light Bright Light, aka Rod Thomas, is about to unleash his latest album, Fun City. The Queer Review's James Derek Dwyer calls it, "a slick, heartfelt dance floor masterpiece that wears its purple influences as proudly as its star-studded features". And for an... Continue Reading →
As a Jew, I had grown tired of Holocaust narratives in film. Can anyone make anything better or more definitive than Schindler’s List? I’d always been dubious until Son Of Saul proved me wrong. So, with a more open mind, I approached Antebellum, the debut feature by directing partners (and partners in life) Gerard Bush... Continue Reading →
Thrice Oscar-nominated actor and Renaissance man Viggo Mortensen makes his writing and directing feature film debut with the poignant family drama Falling, also composing the film's beautiful piano led score. Currently in the running for Best Canadian Feature Film at TIFF, Falling had its world premiere earlier this year at Sundance. Mortensen plays John Peterson,... Continue Reading →
After Madonna teasing the project on social media in recent weeks, Universal Pictures announced today that the studio is developing an all-new untitled movie based on the "untold true story" of groundbreaking artist and LGBTQ ally and activist Madonna, who will direct the film and co-write the screenplay with Oscar-winner Diablo Cody (Juno, Tully). Oscar-nominee... Continue Reading →
Following the lead of other film festivals, Sydney's Queer Screen is delivering its 8th edition lineup of over 40 narrative features, documentaries and shorts, including 29 Australian premieres, digitally - making 90% of the programme accessible nationally online from Thursday September 17th to September 27th. “This festival, we get to queer up screens and devices... Continue Reading →
The inaugural GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics' Dorians TV Awards were celebrated in style on Sunday night with a two-hour virtual event broadcast on LGBTQ+ streamer Revry: The Dorians TV Toast 2020. Hosted by talk radio personality and GALECA member Karel, the night included special guest appearances and acceptance speeches from the likes... Continue Reading →
Netflix's Ratched is just what the doctor ordered: a pulpy, twisty, hugely entertaining thrill-ride with layered, complex characters matched by some nuanced, phenomenal performances. It's lavishly stylish yet emotionally potent. No wonder it's already been greenlit for a second season. Created by Evan Romansky and developed by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, Ratched is inspired... Continue Reading →
Bright Light Bright Light aka Rod Thomas' latest album Fun City is a slick, heartfelt dancefloor masterpiece that wears its purple influences as proudly as its star-studded features. An LGBTQ+ who’s who with the likes of Sam Sparro, Jake Shears, Caveboy, Justin Vivian Bond and Andy Bell all dropping in on tracks that buzz with... Continue Reading →
Directors Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt take us on a thought-provoking and emotionally potent journey as they track the life and legacy of trans masculine icon American jazz musician Billy Tipton, who enjoyed a successful career in the 1940s and 50s. When he died in 1989 his story was co-opted and sensationalised by the media,... Continue Reading →
You might know the name Pete Souza from from his Instagram account that has amassed over 2.3 million followers with images of Barack Obama being presidential; showing human empathy, dignity, grace and a concern for others, traits rarely, if ever, evidenced by the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Souza doesn't need to mention the... Continue Reading →
The 45th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) got underway today in true 2020 style with a mix of virtual and socially distanced in-person screenings, remote video Q&As, press conferences and in-depth actor and filmmaker conversations. The first film I screened, from the comfort of my own sofa in New York, saw my TIFF-at-home get off... Continue Reading →
“Welcome to our crisis, already in progress,” says fellow camper Darcy Culpepper to Connor Major, the hero of Adam Sass’s phenomenal new debut YA horror novel Surrender Your Sons. It’s Connor’s first morning at Nightlight Ministries, the gay conversion therapy camp to which he’s been dragged by the burly men his mother hired to kidnap... Continue Reading →
Get those eggplant emojis ready. New York based queer pop singer, writer and composer Aish Divine has just unleashed his throbbing BBC. The video for this pulsating new track has already racked up nearly a quarter of a million views on YouTube in just a few weeks and marks the second offering from his forthcoming... Continue Reading →
Janelle Monáe, Regina King, Billy Porter, Hugh Jackman, Annie Murphy and Dan Levy are among the nominees appearing in GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics’ inaugural Dorians TV Awards Winners Toast 2020, on LGBTQ+ streaming service revry this Sunday September 13th at 5pm PT/8pm ET. During the epic two-hour virtual event, hosted by Karel... Continue Reading →
The 45th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) gets underway this Thursday September 10th and will run both virtually and with limited socially distanced in-person screenings until Saturday September 19th. The Queer Review is looking forward to bringing you news, reviews and interviews from this year's TIFF, which features a number of LGBTQ+ related shorts, documentaries... Continue Reading →
My parents considered themselves cinephiles, but by the time they reached their 40s, they claimed they had seen every story told ever told. When I begged my father to take me to see Alien, he applied that same argument. Due to my persistence, he relented, thanking me afterwards for dragging him to see what he... Continue Reading →
New space drama Away, which launches on Netflix today Friday September 4th, feels like a show out of time. The series focuses on mankind’s first mission to Mars, with a crew of international astronauts led by an American, Commander Emma Green (Hilary Swank). In her crew are a Russian cosmonaut and engineer Misha Popov (Mark... Continue Reading →
At a virtual press conference for the upcoming Netflix series, Ratched, attended by The Queer Review, lead actor and executive producer Sarah Paulson discussed some of the LGBTQ elements of the show. Created by Evan Romansky and developed by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, Ratched is inspired by both Ken Kesey's novel and the Oscar-winning... Continue Reading →
The trailer for director Joe Mantello's new screen adaptation of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band has just made its debut online. The Ryan Murphy produced film version of this classic play that explores internalised homophobia with poignancy and humour, reunites Mantello with the stellar all gay cast of the Tony-winning 2018 Broadway production.... Continue Reading →
In 1978, Gene Mulvihill, a Wall Street penny stock scammer, created New Jersey’s infamous Action Park. Featuring insanely dangerous water slides, go-carts, boats and more, which skirted regulations and safety laws, the park added many injuries and some deaths to its roster before closing in 1996. Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott’s documentary, Class Action... Continue Reading →
This year’s Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival came to a close tonight with the world premiere of writer-director Travis Fine’s exceptional Two Eyes. Fine, who also serves as editor, effortlessly weaves an ambitious, rich cinematic tapestry with a triptych of narratives that explore and celebrate the spectrum of queerness and gender identity over more than... Continue Reading →
The world premiere of writer-director Travis Fine's stunning queer cinematic tapestry Two Eyes will close this year's Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival tonight, Sunday August 30th, with both drive-in and virtual screenings. Set over three time periods - 1860s, 1970s and present day - we're introduced to a diverse range of characters at different... Continue Reading →
This year's Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival closes on Sunday August 30th with both drive-in and virtual screenings of Travis Fine's exceptional Two Eyes. It's an ambitious, stirring, rich cinematic tapestry that weaves a triptych of narratives exploring the spectrum of queerness and gender identity over more than a hundred years. Set in the... Continue Reading →
A gay Brooklyn teenager (The Inheritance’s Samuel H. Levine) charts his own sexual awakening and the complexities of his Russian Jewish family in documentarian Eric Steel’s narrative debut Minyan. The work of James Baldwin is certainly in the zeitgeist again as, much like Tomasz Jedrowski's brilliant debut novel Swimming in the Dark, Giovanni’s Room provides... Continue Reading →
According to the Institute on Disability, “If people with disabilities were a formally recognized minority group, at 19% of the population, they would be the largest minority group in the United States.” They would, in fact, be the largest minority group in the world, but in terms of representation, among many other issues, the world... Continue Reading →
Tunde Johnson is a normal 17 year old boy. He’s Black; he’s gay; he loves his parents; and he’s been sleeping with the hottest guy in school, even though he’s dating Tunde’s best friend. Oh, and, no matter what he does, every night Tunde is murdered by the Los Angeles Police Department. And then he... Continue Reading →
“They always forget the ones who were first,” someone says in voiceover in Joe Castel’s remarkable documentary, Nelly Queen: The Life and Times of José Sarria. After watching this essential record of an important life in the LGBTQ+ community, I doubt anyone will forget him. Sarria’s list of accomplishments include establishing the Imperial Court System,... Continue Reading →
Handsome Henry 'handsome' Golding stars in this drama by Hong Khaou (Lilting) about a man returning to his home country and trying to come to terms with his past and all the things he’s lost. But don't think this is Crazy Rich Gaysians, Khaou has something more rewarding in store. Lilting was one of the... Continue Reading →
With Taiwan passing the first Marriage Equality Law in Asia in 2019, it’s exciting to delve into LGBTQ+ stories from a historically conservative society going through such immense changes. Ming-Lang Chen’s The Teacher (Wo De Ling Hun Shi Ai Zuo De) follows a young Civics teacher name Kevin (Oscar Chiu) who meets an older factory... Continue Reading →
What is it about remote fishing villages that are so romantic? The gorgeous vistas of the windswept ocean... the hardscrabble men with their windswept hair... the way everyone wears enviable cable-knit sweaters... the extra likelihood of being caught in the rain together...? The remote fishing village in The Strong Ones (Los Fuertes) is in Chile,... Continue Reading →
Pierre Cardin - a label, a logo, a contradiction, a sell-out? Here is P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes' The House of Cardin to answer some of these questions and give us, less of an in-depth look at the life of the man, but more a celebration of the influence and rise of the eponymous... Continue Reading →
Yes, way! We got to have a most excellent conversation with queer non-binary actor, musician and Waif magazine co-founder Brigette Lundy-Paine (they/them) about starring opposite Keanu Reeves as Ted's daughter Bille in Bill & Ted Face The Music, on demand and in theatres this Friday August 28th. The Atypical star also appears alongside Samara Weaving... Continue Reading →
Middle-aged fertilizer company manager Sandro (Leandro Faria Lelo) is supposed to be helping organize a union, but all he can think about is sex. He has a lot of it with his handsome younger coworker Ricardo (Allan Jacinto Santana), meeting up after their shift in the nearby forest for regular trysts, getting down and dirty... Continue Reading →
Jonathan Wysocki’s debut feature Dramarama is about the last summer after high school, after the curtain has fallen in the high school auditorium for the last time, just before the cast is about to split up and head their separate ways, everyone going off to college to pursue their dreams. Gene (Nick Pugliese) has decided... Continue Reading →
One of the best films so far at this year’s Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival is Dramarama, a sweet comedy about five drama club friends getting together for one last murder-mystery dinner party before they all go off to college. It’s an unconventional teen flick, one where the characters are largely resistant to change instead... Continue Reading →
Over the years, too many LGBTQ+ films have relied on tired tropes to tell our stories. Coming out angst, U-haul lesbians, and drugged out circuit queens have seemingly been done to death. Imagine my surprise while watching writer/director Caleb Johnson’s The Carnivores, which on the surface trots out the old chestnut of Lesbian Bed Death,... Continue Reading →
Director Lisa Donato’s Gossamer Folds focuses on the heartwarming friendship between two Kansas City suburban neighbours in 1986. When his parents decide to move the family away from the city in an attempt to salvage their marriage, ten year-old Tate (Jackson Robert Scott) is ordered by his prejudiced father Billy (a suitably menacing Shane West)... Continue Reading →
In New York City in the hazy summer of 2013, Ben (Matthew Fifer) is finally coming into his own. He’s told his mother that he’s bisexual — she’s fine with it and reassures him that “a mother always knows.” As his friend puts it, Ben is “back on the dick,” filling his days and nights... Continue Reading →
Two pensioners, Nina (Barbara Sukowa) and Madeleine (Martine Chevallier), living across the hall from each other are at the centre of Filippo Meneghetti’s debut feature film, Two of Us (Deux). These women are not just neighbours, friends and companions as Madeleine’s children believe, they are long-term lovers. But when Madeleine is rushed to hospital, Nina... Continue Reading →
One of the standout performances of Thom Fitzgerald's uplifting comedy Stage Mother, which opens in select US theatres and on demand this Friday August 21st, comes from queer Canadian actor Allister MacDonald who portrays a talented San Fransisco drag queen with an inspired name, Joan of Arkansas. MacDonald appears in the movie alongside Oscar-nominee Jacki... Continue Reading →
At the start of writer-director Martín Kraut’s new thriller The Dose/La Dosis, Marcos (Carlos Portaluppi) is a man who likes his routine. He’s a night nurse at the same clinic where he’s worked for twenty years, where he does everything he can to makes sure his patients are taken care of. He then enjoys the... Continue Reading →
Lisa Donato's heartwarming drama Gossamer Folds, produced by Yeardley Smith, played in competition at last week's Bentonville Film Festival and will be available to stream for a limited time from this Thursday August 20th as part of the 2020 Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival. Set in 1986 in the suburbs of Kansas City, the... Continue Reading →
An audience favourite at January's Palm Springs International Film Festival, Thom Fitzgerald’s Stage Mother is in select US theatres and on demand from Friday August 21st. The uplifting comedy stars Oscar-nominee Jacki Weaver as a small town Texas choir director, Maybelline, who unexpectedly inherits her estranged son's struggling gay bar in San Francisco and decides... Continue Reading →
Enigmatic gay country star Orville Peck released his debut album Pony last year. Peck famously wears a showy, fringed mask in all of his public appearances. Sometimes it’s glittery and bedazzled; sometimes it’s made of leather, and paired with the right pair of chaps, works almost like a kink object. He refuses to say why,... Continue Reading →
In 1977, Arthur J. Bressan Jr. was promoting his landmark documentary Gay USA (1977) on the gay-centered New York City television program Emerald City TV at the height of gay liberation. He dressed unpretentiously in blue jeans and a t-shirt with long-hair and a mustache that made him look more 1960s San Francisco Haight Ashbury... Continue Reading →
The Amazon Original Series World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji premieres on Amazon Prime Video this Friday August 14th 2020. As well as being an epic, often genuinely inspiring and nail-biting thrill-ride, Toughest Race, presented by Bear Grylls, is also the perfect chance to see determined humans at their most active in some breathtakingly exotic locations... Continue Reading →
Playing in the feature narrative competition at this week's Bentonville Film Festival, Gossamer Folds is a heartwarming tale of an unlikely freindship between ten year-old Tate (It star Jackson Robert Scott) and his twenty -something neighbour Gossamer (Empire's Alexandra Grey) who happens to be a trans woman. Set in the 1980s Midwest, the film is... Continue Reading →
The filmmaking team behind 2016's critically acclaimed, BAFTA nominated Weiner, proved that they were adept at capturing rivetingly unselfconscious, humanising, and often very funny, footage of the former Congressman turned New York mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner. Next for The Fight, directors Eli B. Despres, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg, joined by executive producer Kerry Washington,... Continue Reading →
I May Destroy You, a co-production between HBO and the BBC, is fast becoming one of the most talked about television series of the year on both sides of the Atlantic. Centring authentic Black voices and exploring frank and nuanced questions around sexual consent and exploitation it is compelling and essential viewing. Written and created... Continue Reading →
Dawn Porter’s feature length documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble is both an up close and personal biographical study of the activist and longstanding public servant, as well as a compelling examination of the history of the Civil Rights movement, through Lewis’ vital role in it. What results is a fascinating and inspiring chronicle of an extraordinary life... Continue Reading →
In the spirit of the landmark documentaries The Celluloid Closet and Ethnic Notions, Sam Feder’s ambitious, ground-breaking and nuanced Disclosure, which launches globally on Netflix on Friday June 19th, examines over a hundred years of trans screen representation. Covering an impressive range of frequently damaging trans portrayals and storylines, Disclosure takes in Oscar-winning movies like... Continue Reading →
This Wednesday June 17th sees the mid-Pride month release of all ten episodes of the new Hulu Original series Love, Victor. Set in the world of the 2018 GLAAD award-winning movie Love, Simon, which was inspired by Becky Albertalli’s much-loved YA novel Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, the series stars Michael Cimino as Victor, a... Continue Reading →
Selected to play at Mexico's cancelled Guadalajara Film Festival in March, queer director, cinematographer and co-editor Bruno Santamaría's hauntingly beautiful Things We Dare Not Do/Cosas que no hacemos finally premiered in the World Showcase section at the 2020 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, which ran online from May 28th until June 6th. Following his... Continue Reading →
If you're a regular reader of The Queer Review you'll already know that we are big fans of HBO's We're Here, which has been helping to uplift us and give us some comfort and hope during self-isolation. And, without fail, making us cry! We've already spoken exclusively to We're Here's drag mothers, Drag Race alum,... Continue Reading →
Can I get a Hallelloo up in here? Shangela Laquifa Wadley aka D.J. Pierce burst on to our television screens a decade ago competing in the second season of RuPaul's Drag Race. She might've been first to sashay away that year, but you can't keep a fierce queen down and she was back for the... Continue Reading →
"How many Black people have to die before anti-Black violence is taken seriously? Our thoughts are with George Floyd’s loved ones for their untenable loss. And we support the ongoing protests underway in Minneapolis and St. Paul demanding that the four officers who were involved in this fatality be arrested and charged with murder. Today, Hennepin... Continue Reading →
She may not have made it to tomorrow night's RuPaul's Drag Race season 12 grand finale, but she has undoubtedly won an indelible place in viewers' hearts, and is likely to snatch this year's Miss Congeniality title. Hailing from the small country town of Ramseur, North Carolina, Heidi added some new phrases to the Drag... Continue Reading →
“I cannot sanction your buffoonery." That’s what Tommy Lee Jones reportedly said to Jim Carrey as they were about to make a Batman film together. It also neatly sums up the critical reaction to Joel Schumacher’s two Batman movies, Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997). Subversive, camp, kinky - Joel Schumacher queered the... Continue Reading →
August 2020 US RELEASE UPDATE: The Lawyer is available now on DVD via TLA Releasing and to stream via Dekkoo. For the last decade Lithuanian filmmaker and LGBTQ+ activist Romas Zabarauskas has been making provocative, genre-bending films underpinned by queer characters. His debut short Porno Melodrama, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, and his... Continue Reading →
