Atomic Blonde
BBB.5 (out of 5) A British superspy (Charlize Theron) is sent to divided Berlin on the eve of the wall coming down, charged with recovering that age-old (and quite frankly worn out) MacGuffin… Continue reading
Tag Archive: LGBT Cinema
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Norman…Is That You?
BB.5 (out of 5) Redd Foxx leaves Tucson and shows up at his son’s Los Angeles apartment unannounced, shocked by what he finds: a man in his boy’s bed! Grappling with the news that… Continue reading
Like You Mean It
BB.5 (out of 5) Philipp Karner, who also writes and directs, plays a struggling actor in Los Angeles whose stressful professional life is weighing heavily on his private one. He has been with… Continue reading
Rough Night
B (out of 5) All the elements should combine into something that works and yet very little in this comedy does. Take the common plot of a Boys Will Be Boys indulgence (bachelor… Continue reading
Wasp (2015)
BB (out of 5) Olivier and James are going on for a minibreak to Olivier’s summer home in the south of France and have brought along a last minute addition: James ran into… Continue reading
The Surface
BB (out of 5) Evan is finishing school and living with his boyfriend and, judging by the waifish manner with which he carries himself in every situation, is uncertain of his goals or… Continue reading
A Very Sordid Wedding
BBB (out of 5) Del Shores has been treating audiences to the lives and loves of his quirky, campy characters for so long that he has their details down pat , and this… Continue reading
Center of My World (Die Mitte der Welt)
BBB.5 (out of 5) Phil has been raised in the German countryside since his mother (whom he calls “Glass”) gave birth to him and his twin sister after running away from their father in America.… Continue reading
Handsome Devil
BBB (out of 5) With his father and stepmother living in Dubai, Ned has been left behind to attend a posh boarding school in his native Ireland and couldn’t possibly be more miserable:… Continue reading
I Dream In Another Language (Sueno en Otro Idioma)
BBBB (out of 5) A mesmerizing experience that casts a spell from its opening shot. Martin, a Mexico City university student studying linguistics, heads to a rural village looking to speak to the last two living… Continue reading
Mapplethorpe: Look At The Pictures
BBB.5 (out of 5) This film is reviewed at Magenta Magazine. Click here to be redirected. Film Manufacturers, HBO Documentary Films, World of Wonder Productions USA/Germany, 2016 Directed by Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato Cinematography… Continue reading
People You May Know
BB.5 (out of 5) Four friends are tossed around by life’s uncertainties in this comedy-drama that never finds its footing. Joe is obsessed with a man he met online but has never seen in person,… Continue reading
Lazy Eye
BBB (out of 5) A graphic artist who designs posters for Hollywood movies reaches the limits of patience when a client orders that he redo a project. Having just learned from his eye doctor that he… Continue reading
All The Others Were Practice
0 (out of 5) Jorge works a dull office job and spends most of his time gossiping with his lonely best friend. He tries to navigate the world of dating men, while she… Continue reading
I Am Not Your Negro
BBBBB (out of 5) Celebrated author and civil rights activist James Baldwin worked on a book meant to cover the lives and deaths of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.,… Continue reading
Chicks Dig Gay Guys
0 (out of 5) Tired of striking out with girls at clubs, Scooter overhears a group of pretty ladies chatting with their gay friend and realizes the foolproof way for getting close with the ladies. He… Continue reading
Other People
BBBB (out of 5) Aspiring television writer Jesse Plemons has returned home to be with his mother (Molly Shannon) for what will turn out to be the last year of her life after she has… Continue reading
King Cobra
BBBB (out of 5) Handsome young Sean Paul Lockhart (Garrett Clayton) shows up at the house of an independent porn producer (Christian Slater) and after filming a few scenes very quickly becomes an internet sensation. Slater quickly… Continue reading
X Y & Zee (Zee And Co.)
BBB (out of 5) Trash should always be this fun. Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Caine have no end of fun camping it up in this melodrama, in which they play a married couple who have their… Continue reading
Of Time And The City
BBBB (out of 5) Terence Davies’ fictional films have often had a deep, resonant preoccupation with his beloved birthplace of Liverpool and the post-war era that he witnessed in his childhood. Coming after… Continue reading
Staircase
BB (out of 5) Richard Burton and Rex Harrison have been living together for over twenty years, running a barbershop downstairs and bickering constantly upstairs, with Burton taking care of his aging and infirm… Continue reading
The Lady In The Van
BBBB (out of 5) Having newly found his footing as a playwright on the London stage, Alan Bennett (portrayed with effortless delight by Alex Jennings) moves into a fashionable house in Camden and immediately… Continue reading
Carol
BBBBB (out of 5) A department store clerk (Rooney Mara) catches the eye of a beautiful, wealthy housewife (Cate Blanchett), which leads very quickly to lunches together and, before long, evenings in front of the… Continue reading
Nymphomaniac: Vol. II
BBB.5 (out of 5) Warning, this review contains spoilers for Volume I. Picking up her tale where it left off at the end of the first chapter, with Charlotte Gainsbourg‘s modern-day Moll Flanders… Continue reading
Polyester
BB (out of 5) Divine is hilarious as a prim 1950s suburban housewife whose world falls apart when her porn-theatre owning husband (fifties heartthrob Tab Hunter) admits to having an affair with his secretary,… Continue reading
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
BBBB (out of 5) There couldn’t possibly be a better way to spend Hallowe’en, or the odd Saturday night for that matter, or any night come to think of it, than cramming into… Continue reading
Myra Breckenridge
BB (out of 5) Based on the popular, scandalous book by Gore Vidal, this film was disowned by the author the moment he saw it. Future film critic Rex Reed stars as a… Continue reading
Philomena
BBBB.5 (out of 5) Judi Dench scores another home run as Philomena Lee, the truth-life tragedy documented by Martin Sixsmith in a book published in 2009. Lee was a pregnant teen in the… Continue reading
Saturn In Opposition (Saturno Contro)
BB (out of 5) Ferzan Ozpetek makes another melancholy film about life and friendship, though this time he forgets to include much of a story. A group of close friends are enjoying one… Continue reading
Madonna: Truth Or Dare
BBBB.5 (out of 5) This fascinating documentary takes you behind the scenes of pop icon Madonna‘s 1990 Blond Ambition tour: her dancers are interviewed, her family is examined, and the icon herself does… Continue reading
Amor De Hombre
BBB (out of 5) Adorable romantic comedy that examines a year in the life, from birthday to birthday, of a lonely single woman whose friends are all gay men. While she looks for… Continue reading
Kissing Jessica Stein
BBBB (out of 5) Art gallery manager Helen (Heather Juergensen) decides that she’s tired of the run-of-the-mill boyfriends she’s been seeing and puts out an ad to cross the last frontier of sexuality… Continue reading
Factory Girl
BBB.5 (out of 5) God, I miss the good old days when I could sip a cocktail, snort cocaine, get a blowjob, discuss Proust with a beatnik and swap lipsticks with the latest… Continue reading
Were The World Mine
BBB.5 (out of 5) A lonely gay teenager at an all-boys’ prep school is encouraged by his enchanting English teacher to audition for their annual theatrical production and lands the role of Puck… Continue reading
Best In Show
BBBB (out of 5) Christopher Guest outdoes his Waiting For Guffman with this absolutely hysterical film about dog competitions and the people who compete in them with their pets. A perfect cast, from Parker… Continue reading
I Am Love (Io Sono L’Amore)
BBBB (out of 5) Socialist propaganda is rarely this fun. Tilda Swinton is stunning as a Russian émigré living in Milan as the wife of an aristocratically wealthy fashion house. Her husband and son… Continue reading
The Deep End Of The Ocean
BB.5 (out of 5) Based on the bestseller (and Oprah Book the Month selection) by Jacquelyn Mitchard, this film is so adequate and appropriate in all the right spots that some audience members… Continue reading
Zero Patience
BBB.5 (out of 5) To hear someone say that they just saw a great musical comedy about AIDS might sound like the rock bottom of taste, but this adorable Canadian film is actually… Continue reading
Uncut
0 (out of 5) Up there with the worst films ever made. It’s a little piece of junk that inanely links together the topics of circumcision, copyright infringement and Pierre Trudeau’s fame, and… Continue reading
Proteus
BBB.5 (out of 5) A black South African cattle herder named Claas Blank (Rouxnet Brown) in 1785 tries to take back livestock that was seized by white settlers. For this, he is sentenced… Continue reading
The Fourth Man (De Vierde Man)
BBB.5 (out of 5) In this highly enjoyable, overwhelmingly stylish film, Jeroen Krabbé plays a successful writer who accepts a gig giving a lecture to a book society in a small town outside… Continue reading
Sebastiane
BBBB (out of 5) Derek Jarman’s first film (as co-director), and certainly one of the sexiest films ever made about ancient times. Taking place in 300 A.D., a Roman subject named Sebastianus (more… Continue reading
Paragraph 175
BBB.5 (out of 5) Touching documentary by the creators of Common Threads: Stories From The Quilt and The Celluloid Closet that interviews survivors of the Holocaust who were interred in concentration camps for… Continue reading
The Times Of Harvey Milk
BBBBB (out of 5) Superb documentary about the assassination of two politicians and the subsequent joke of a murder trial that followed. Harvey Milk was a San Francisco councilman on the city’s board… Continue reading
I’m So Excited (Los Amantes Pasajeros)
BBB.5 (out of 5) A careless mistake by two airport employees (goofily funny cameos by Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas) results in a flight from Spain to Mexico needing to make an emergency… Continue reading
Kinsey
BBBB (out of 5) This film reminds me of the line that Ben Kingsley delivers in Merchant Ivory’s adaptation of E.M. Forster’s Maurice: “England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.” Substitute… Continue reading
An Awfully Big Adventure
BB (out of 5) Georgina Cates plays an actress in 1947 Liverpool who auditions and gets work in a local theatrical production company. She finds herself working with a has-been great actor (Alan… Continue reading
Blow Dry
BBB (out of 5) Natasha Richardson discovers she’s dying of a terminal illness and wants to make up for past relationship problems. Her ex-husband (Alan Rickman), still bitter over her leaving him for… Continue reading
Torch Song Trilogy
BBBB (out of 5) Harvey Fierstein‘s celebrated play has been adapted into a film whose story is often uneven but whose characters are so likable you’ll never care. The raspy-voiced author himself appears as a constantly… Continue reading