Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Friendly Christians, bitter rent boys, and South Africa’s liberated queens are part of this year’s queer reality parade To some jaundiced eyes, documentaries have an inherent fascination and gravitas lacking[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Wilde’s infamous letter from prison becomes a springboard for a surreal queer experience De Profundis was the closest Oscar Wilde ever came to a queer apologia and defense, written as a[…]
LGBT & Queer · Reviews · Uncategorized
The 1960s brought back Hellman’s lesbian who vanished three decades earlier. But why does she die? “She found the lie with the ounce of truth.” – The Children’s Hour, film[…]
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Liberated porn queen or psychological wreck? You be the judge. In a demimonde as duplicitous as the porn world, it shouldn’t be too surprising to find that some of its players[…]
In spite of what you’ve heard, abortion was not an option in that decade’s mainstream Hollywood cinema Ah, movie magic. Hollywood always manages to make difficult situations turn out well after two[…]
Fred and Ginger get continental on your ass The Gay Divorcee1 is the quintessential Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. It’s not their best – largely because Ginger’s dancing skills[…]
Going down in San Francisco’s street-kid heroin underground Behind the image of San Francisco as a creative epicenter and ultimate party town drawing talented, disaffected kids from around the country[…]
Activist & Political · Asian · Reviews
An acclaimed auteur’s new film gets caught in the cultural crossfire. Author’s Statement In February this year I traveled to India to work as a camera assistant on the film[…]
“All right, which one of you took the lesbian?” In 1935, the movie producer Samuel Goldwyn bought the rights to Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour, intending to turn the[…]
It’s really a courtly epic in ’60s drag. It was a coup that Columbia Pictures had banked on: the one 007 property that got away from Broccoli and Saltzman’s cash[…]
Hitch’s – and by now the whole damn culture’s – seminal Oedipal nightmare revisited Read the companion photo essay “Alfred Hitchcock: A Hank of Hair and a Piece of Bone”[…]
From the land of Kierkegaard and crullers, the newest New Wavers resuscitate – and reform – an artform ready for last rites. “The time to make up your mind about[…]
The cruelty and clarity of life in a sand pit in Japan, circa 1964 Revisiting past pleasures – long-past pleasures in this case – has its particular perils. In the[…]
Dykes in distress in Robert Aldrich’s late ‘60s masterpiece Robert Aldrich ranks with Samuel Fuller and Nicholas Ray as one of the “golden boys” of postwar commercial cinema whose formal[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Can your heart stand it? More Radley Metzger! The title of Metzger’s “second film” (second by his own reckoning; other sources list it as his fourth, after Dark Odyssey, The[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews
What do Sasquatch droppings and flying saucers have in common? George Kuchar, of course. Underground film impresario Jack Stevenson tells the story of how George Kuchar dealt with a problem[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Reviews
The eminent Swiss documentarian looks at saints and sinners of history – without saying which are which “My films revolve around absence,” Swiss documentarian Richard Dindo has said, but the[…]
Making art in the most unlikely circumstances Edgar G. Ulmer (1904-1972) was one of many beneficiaries of the wave of auteurism that galvanized critics in France in the 1950s and[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Plan 9 from Outer Space; Glen or Glenda; Jail Bait; Bride of the Monster One of my fondest memories of a communal movie experience is seeing my first Ed Wood[…]
The kids are not all right! Riot girls have a long and noble history that extends far back beyond Hole and Courtney Love. No doubt the experts in this realm[…]
