Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
The DVDs of these two rare gay pink films could use some extras and better source prints, but at least they’re here! Sluggishly but steadily, one segment of once-inaccessible Asian[…]
This love letter to San Francisco’s tranny community is a little too loving Gendernauts (1999) opens with a curious and none too appetizing image – a mangy old spotted hyena.[…]
What’s going on in that tent? At a time when the Boy Scouts of America is reeling from the backlash,1 and the backlash to the backlash,2 to the Supreme Court’s[…]
Ozpetek’s queer melodrama excites and disappoints in equal measure Italian cinema is finally discovering that films with gay and lesbian characters can do extremely well at the box-office, in spite[…]
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
A treasure trove of short queer cinema – and one feature – from cultures where creating it can be a criminal act Despite its status as one of the world’s[…]
A French angst-fest mostly redeemed by Charlotte Rampling’s nuanced portrait of a woman unhinged François Ozon’s latest film will come as a bit of a shock to seasoned Ozon watchers,[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
A bumper crop of docs scale the heights and trawl the depths of queer culture “There was nothing to come out to. We never heard the word homosexual. The media[…]
Asian · Historical & Epic · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Truly subversive or mere cinematic “seasoning,” in the director’s own phrase? I am the first to admit that Oshima Nagisa’s Gohatto (1999, more literally “Against the Law,” but titillatingly translated[…]
A beachhouse, no parents, and the fleeting pleasures of “krampach” Coming-of-age dramas are dicey material at best, ever in danger of succumbing to John Hughes-style clichés about bourgeois brats, or[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
These boys mix it up, sort of, in India’s first gay indie Writer-director Kaizad Gustad’s Bombay Boys (1998) is, of course, not the first Indian film to deal “seriously” with[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Two HK classics blur – make that erase – gender boundaries with thrilling results Films from Hong Kong have emerged to mainstream non–Chinese-speaking film audiences in the United States. Last[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
A grim intersection of homophobia and hysteria ruins two men’s lives America’s criminal justice system has been under increasing attack in the past few years, and it’s hardly surprising. The[…]
The latest attempt at a “gay crossover date movie” almost succeeds Just One Time will trigger déjà vu in some viewers. This feature-length comedy is an expanded version of a popular[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Like the macho dancers it portrays, this uneasy mix of melodrama and realism never quite gets it up With Macho Dancer (1988), the late Filipino director Lino Brocka (1940-1991) pioneered a[…]
Soldier by day, tranny slut by night Giorgios Katakouzinos’s 1982 feature Angel (Aggelos) is one of the most acclaimed and popular Greek films ever, allegedly having been seen by one Greek[…]
LGBT & Queer · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
A modern-day Hansel and Gretel take on love, sex, and death with rapturous results A recent selection at the 24th San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, François Ozon’s[…]
The first of the Canadian-Indian auteur’s controversial attacks on the privileges of patriarchy Fire is a fascinating anomaly. It’s an Indian feature written and directed by a woman, Deepa Mehta;[…]
Couldn’t they have just sent us a postcard? Following in the footsteps of those overrated paeans to teenage male angst, Hate and Trainspotting (with a dash of My Own Private[…]
A stylized look at one of the colder corners of gay petit bourgeois life Water Drops on Burning Rocks was Fassbinder’s first play, written at age 19. Shelved and apparently[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Stereotypes and social critique spar in this culture-clash dramedy East Is East, based on Ayub Khan-Din’s play and directed by Damien O’Donnell, is a huge hit in England but has[…]
