Independent filmmaker Nina Menkes returns to Sundance with the explosive Brainwashed Sex-Camera-Power, based on her own lecture (Sex and Power, the Visual Language of Oppression), a compelling illustration of the pervasive objectification of women in the history of Hollywood film and its off screen, real world implications such as employment discrimination and a culture of... Continue Reading →
Chase Joynt's follow up to his exceptional No Ordinary Man (co-directed with Aisling Chin-Yee) about the life of jazz musician Billy Tipton, is the equally thrillingly and similarly genre-defying feature Framing Ages—expanding upon his own 2019 short—which just had its world premiere in the NEXT lineup at Sundance. It's a fitting section of the festival... Continue Reading →
Oscar-nominated actor, author, and playwright Jesse Eisenberg makes his feature film writing and directing debut with When You Finish Saving The World, which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival last night. It's adapted from his own award-winning Audible Original audiobook voiced by Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard who reprises his role as Ziggy Katz.... Continue Reading →
Writer-director Gabriel Martins' sophomore feature, Mars One (Marte Um), which world premiered on the opening night of Sundance 2022 and is part of the festival's World Cinema Competition, focuses on a Black working-class family in Contagem, Brazil, the Martins, as the far-right extremist Bolsonaro prepares to take office. One of the many pleasures of the... Continue Reading →
When we met with writer-director Sam Max in 2020 to discuss their haunting play Coop, they described the inspiration for the work as coming from "a profound sense of isolation, particularly as a queer person”. Their impressive debut short film, the delicate and gripping two-hander Chaperone, which world premieres at Sundance 2022 feels like it... Continue Reading →
With more time than is healthy spent alone in 2021, I had the opportunity to see literally hundreds of films…way more than I could ever possibly review. One of the great perks of being a film critic are the free screenings, be they in person, on DVD, via links, or loaded onto my Apple TV.... Continue Reading →
Toto, I have a feeling we're in Kansas...Manhattan, Kansas to be precise. It's the conservative hometown of Sam (Bridget Everett, who hails from the town herself), a middle-aged woman who returned there to care for her terminally ill sister, Holly, and where she still finds herself living six month's after her sister's passing. Sleeping on... Continue Reading →
When the last season of the Emmy-winning Queer Eye landed on our screens in June 2020 I called it "just the queer tonic for the soul we all need in our lives right now". I hadn't anticipated that all these months on we'd still be in such need of that same tonic, but thankfully the... Continue Reading →
As a young, Jewish boy growing up in small town Ohio, I was in awe of the B’nai B’rith girls such as Sue Malkoff, Jodi Raven and Sharon Marks. They had such supreme confidence, mercurial tempers, and smarts. I was always jealous of how put together they were with their Izod shirts, corduroys, and suede... Continue Reading →
N.B. Review contains spoilers of And Just Like That... episodes 1-4. In the opening moments of the first episode of And Just Like That..., streaming now on HBO Max, the absence of an integral part of Sex and the City, a certain "sexy siren in her sixties", is immediately addressed. "Where's the fourth Musketeer?" As... Continue Reading →
