Vacuum Mon Amour - A Useful Ghost is a quirky, haunting, queer Thai masterpiece Think of your favorite spousal haunting movie. There are more than you imagine. Maybe it’s David Lowery’s slow and methodical A Ghost Story (2017). Or what about Patrick Swayze making clay pots with Demi Moore in the aptly-titled Ghost (1990)? Well,... Continue Reading →
As Mama Ru wisely observes, we're all born naked and the rest is drag. Each one of us is projecting an image—consciously or otherwise—that influences the way the world views us. On the verge of adulthood, surrounded by other teenagers trying to find themselves at college, it is easy to become a little too self-conscious... Continue Reading →
I know, I know, my review title is crass and probably a little inappropriate, but I’m frustrated at the moment and will take sexual innuendo any way I can. It’s hard out there for us singletons. I’ve often said that I’ve never felt more alone than when in a roomful of other gay men. I’m... Continue Reading →
I’ve often wondered what people really mean when they say, “They don’t make movies like they used to”. Are they talking about the scripts, directing, cinematography, subject matter, overall tone or something else? When I look back on films from the 1940s, for example, I often experience empty sound editing, flat staging, and tin-eared dialogue.... Continue Reading →
Andrew Ahn's contemporary reworking of Ang Lee's Oscar-nominated classic The Wedding Banquet—with a new screenplay by Ahn co-written with the original film's writer James Schamus—is a delightfully warm and uplifting rom-com with heart and soul, and an ensemble cast to die for. Shifting the setting west from New York to Seattle, Ahn and Schamus also... Continue Reading →
Really good romantic comedies have had a tough time melting my cold, dead heart as of late. For me, the formula wore thin right around the time Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan started exchanging those pesky e-mails. Despite a resurgence in the past couple of years with such films as Anyone But You and Hit... Continue Reading →
In a new interview, Rocky Horror creator Richard O'Brien says that he agrees with someone who once told him that it doesn't matter what he thinks of the cult show and movie now because it doesn't belong to him anymore, it belongs to its fans. It is a sentiment that comes at the end of... Continue Reading →
Receiving its world premiere at SXSW 2025 as part of the festival's Narrative Short Competition, writer-director Andy Reid's Brief Somebodies offers an enticing premise. The film opens with twenty-something actor-filmmaker Joel (Aldrin Bundoc) reviewing self-tape submissions for an unusually personal role he is casting, an actor to play opposite him in a scene that will... Continue Reading →
Jun Li's alluring third feature, Queerpanorama (眾生相), received its world premiere at the 75th Berlinale—aptly enough in the festival's Panorama section—where it was in competition for the 39th Teddy Award. Strikingly shot in black and white, it is a bold and inventive meditation on self-discovery that really got under my skin. The protagonist, listed in... Continue Reading →
"In space no one can hear you howl with laughter!" This is the queer animated scifi musical comedy you've been looking for. Co-writer-directors Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs made a splash at the 75th Berlinale with their debut feature, Lesbian Space Princess, which received its world premiere there last week. It went on to... Continue Reading →
