“I was born in 1938 in a little house on the edge of the Mississippi River. My father worked on a steamboat. His name was Steamboat Milton.” So begins Paul Reubens at the start of Matt Wolf’s remarkable documentary Pee-Wee As Himself, placing himself squarely in the role of unreliable narrator to his own life... Continue Reading →
At the heart of writer-director Elena Oxman's stunning feature debut Outerlands is a richly nuanced and captivating central performance by Asia Kate Dillon. It is an affectingly understated, delicate film and Dillon, with their beautifully expressive face and underlying emotional intensity, proves to be a perfect fit for Oxman's style. As the film opens we... Continue Reading →
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 →
