While everyone else has picked apart the differences between the Snyder and Whedon cuts of the Justice League films, this film nerd spent 5 1/2 hours poring over the two versions of a little seen film from 2005 which went from fascinating 2 1/2 hour mess to out and out masterpiece on its journey to... Continue Reading →
Jump, Darling, the feature debut of writer-director Philip J. Connell, receives its international premiere at the 35th BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival. 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... Continue Reading →
Los Angeles is littered with aspiring filmmakers, some talented, while others maybe not so much. One can imagine a big fish in a little pond moving out West to discover the pond got a whole lot bigger. The resentment, especially for those whose ambition far outweighs their creativity, spreads until it sucks all of the... Continue Reading →
In the early 1990s, at the height of the AIDS crisis, I was an active member of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), a grassroots group who helped to improve the lives of people living with the virus in ways gentle and compassionate and in other ways loud and dotted with instances of civil... Continue Reading →
With such films as Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and One Night In Miami, 2020 has given us some expert adaptations of plays. Add The Father alongside these titles as a case study in making something so stage-bound feel so beautifully cinematic. It also rises to the top of the heap of another trend, the dementia... Continue Reading →
When you think about a Canadian sitcom set in a small rural town with a surprisingly welcoming attitude towards its queer citizens, your mind might automatically zero in on a certain Emmy-winning juggernaut. While true, you’d be overlooking Letterkenny, which I consider a far more accepting and outrageous haven for so many queer characters across... Continue Reading →
With so many queer spaces, bars, clubs, live venues, theatres, and cinemas closed for much of the year, and festivals cancelled or reimagined as virtual editions, we asked some of friends, including prominent culture makers and performers, to tell us their favourite LGBTQ+ art or events of 2020. Get in touch via social media using... Continue Reading →
Ron Howard, for me, has always been a journeyman director. He has navigated through a wide variety of genres, always putting the camera in the right place, getting good performances out of his actors, and producing slick, commercial Hollywood product. He hasn’t accomplished, however, a recognizable voice. Face it, we all can spot a Tarantino,... Continue Reading →
The late great film critic Roger Ebert famously said, “The movies are like a machine that generates empathy.” No other film I’ve seen this year has evoked such empathetic feelings in me than Nomadland. I knew within the first ten minutes of watching Chloé Zhao’s followup to her fantastic feature, The Rider, that I would... 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 →
