The experience of watching Jen Rainin and Rivkah Beth Medow's feature documentary Ahead of the Curve, which just played Toronto's Inside Out film festival before heading on to New York's NewFest, is much like spending an hour and half getting lost in the pages of your favourite queer magazine; insightful, stimulating, empowering, with a deep-dive... Continue Reading →
One of the more esoteric films premiering this weekend at the digital Salem Horror Festival is director Ryan Glover’s debut The Strings. I’d call the film a slow-burn, except The Strings doesn’t burn at all. Instead, it’s a deeply unsettling film that sticks to your bones like a deadly winter chill, seeping under your skin... Continue Reading →
As a Jew, I had grown tired of Holocaust narratives in film. Can anyone make anything better or more definitive than Schindler’s List? I’d always been dubious until Son Of Saul proved me wrong. So, with a more open mind, I approached Antebellum, the debut feature by directing partners (and partners in life) Gerard Bush... Continue Reading →
My parents considered themselves cinephiles, but by the time they reached their 40s, they claimed they had seen every story told ever told. When I begged my father to take me to see Alien, he applied that same argument. Due to my persistence, he relented, thanking me afterwards for dragging him to see what he... Continue Reading →
This year’s Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival came to a close tonight with the world premiere of writer-director Travis Fine’s exceptional Two Eyes. Fine, who also serves as editor, effortlessly weaves an ambitious, rich cinematic tapestry with a triptych of narratives that explore and celebrate the spectrum of queerness and gender identity over more than... Continue Reading →
A gay Brooklyn teenager (The Inheritance’s Samuel H. Levine) charts his own sexual awakening and the complexities of his Russian Jewish family in documentarian Eric Steel’s narrative debut Minyan. The work of James Baldwin is certainly in the zeitgeist again as, much like Tomasz Jedrowski's brilliant debut novel Swimming in the Dark, Giovanni’s Room provides... Continue Reading →
“They always forget the ones who were first,” someone says in voiceover in Joe Castel’s remarkable documentary, Nelly Queen: The Life and Times of José Sarria. After watching this essential record of an important life in the LGBTQ+ community, I doubt anyone will forget him. Sarria’s list of accomplishments include establishing the Imperial Court System,... Continue Reading →
A few months ago, I reviewed Come And See, a masterful 1985 film which followed a young Soviet boy through the horrors of life during World War II. Clearly influenced by Jerzy Kosinki’s indelible yet discredited 1965 autobiography, the plot centered around a young Eastern European Jewish boy wandering from town to town towards the... Continue Reading →
Owing as much to the Italian giallo films of the 60s and 70s such as Suspiria as it does to Stanley Kubrick at his most arch with A Clockwork Orange, Peter Strickland’s In Fabric blazes out of the gates as one of the loopiest, most gorgeously shot thrillers I’ve seen in ages. Although set in... Continue Reading →
At the core of this three-part documentary series, Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia, are previously unheard FBI surveillance recordings and enlightening, often riveting interviews with the operatives who planted the bugs in homes, cars and restaurants and monitored the audio for incriminating evidence. There are some lavish, high production value visuals, including sweeping... Continue Reading →
