Jonas Poher Rasmussen's remarkable Flee, which I first saw when it world premiered at Sundance 2021 where it took the festival's World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, closes NewFest's 33rd New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival on Sunday October 24th at the SVA Theatre at 7pm. As the film opens a caption tells us that... Continue Reading →
Friday night saw the opening of NewFest's 33rd New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival with Jesse Moss' up close and personal chronicle of LGBTQ+ history in the making, Mayor Pete, at Manhattan's SVA Theatre. Before Pete Buttigieg had officially thrown his hat into the ring as a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, Moss began capturing footage of... Continue Reading →
New Queer Cinema pioneer Todd Haynes' The Velvet Underground, which had its world premiere at Cannes and recently played the New York Film Festival, is an exquisitely crafted, invigorating time capsule which uses music, contemporary film, archive interviews, and present day commentary from those who were there, to immerse us in New York's avant-garde culture... Continue Reading →
Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer's riveting feature documentary Cured, which opens the fall season of PBS' Independent Lens on Monday October 11th, examines the fascinating chapter in queer history that saw gay liberation activists successfully overturn the US psychiatric profession's classification of homosexuality as a mental illness. Using archive photographs and video footage, recently discovered... Continue Reading →
For me, good art is pretty, but great art is confrontational, forcing the viewer to reflect upon the human condition and reveal truths, however inspiring or ugly. The 2021 Cannes Palme d’Or winner, Titane, writer-director Julia Ducournau’s sophomore effort, definitely veers towards the latter type of confrontation. With enough brutal violence to fill all of... Continue Reading →
Paul Verhoeven's Benedetta, which receives its North American premiere at the 59th New York Film Festival this weekend, is a delectable cloak-and-dagger queer period drama. Inspired by real events and based on the 1986 book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy by Judith C. Brown, David Birke (Elle) and Verhoeven's... Continue Reading →
One of most poignant, moving sequences in Everybody's Talking About Jamie, the screen adaptation of the hit West End musical now streaming globally on Amazon Prime Video, features a bittersweet, rousing new song, This Was Me, written specifically for the film by Dan Gillespie Sells with lyrics by Tom MacRae, the original show's co-creators. As... Continue Reading →
Ahead of today's global launch of Everybody's Talking About Jamie on Prime Video, The Queer Review's editor James Kleinmann spoke exclusively with the film's breakout star Max Harwood. Based on the hit West End show, which was inspired by a true story—or as the opening titles put it, “this really happened, then we added the... Continue Reading →
Tony-nominee, or "one-time Tony-loser" as his husband Gerold apparently likes to playfully tease him, Rory O'Malley recently returned to the role he took over from Jonathan Groff on Broadway, King George III in Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles. While the nation's theatres were dark, one of the things that helped... Continue Reading →
At Tuesday night's New York premiere of The Eyes of Tammy Faye, The Queer Review's editor James Kleinmann was on the hot pink carpet to speak with the film's producer and star Jessica Chastain, her co-stars Cherry Jones and Mark Wystrach, director Michael Showalter, and screenwriter Abe Sylvia, along with World of Wonder founders Fenton... Continue Reading →
