Queer Quickies: Random Short Reviews from The Slaughter Rule to Frida to Hell House
Hits and misses from the arthouse to the grindhouse
Category: Movies
Documentaries · DVD & Blu-ray · Music & Musicals · Reviews
The Sound of Jazz, the Sound of Gene: New DVDs offer rare TV appearances by jazz greats Billie Holiday, Gene Krupa, Coleman Hawkins, and Benny Goodman
New DVDs offer rare TV appearances by jazz greats Billie Holiday, Gene Krupa, Coleman Hawkins, and Benny Goodman. But where’s Thelonious?
What’s Rita in the Hay Worth?: Fred finds out in You’ll Never Get Rich
Fred finds out in You’ll Never Get Rich
Chicago: Hollywood Does Bollywood
No one can steal like America can steal Wish you could look like Leo, dance like Fred, and sing like Frank? Well, of course you do, but you can’t, and[…]
Composers · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Weill & Brecht: The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny on DVD
Show us the way to the next pretty boy Don’t know much about history? Well, don’t sweat it, because Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht didn’t either when they decided to[…]
“I Don’t Know Dick”: Heavy Metal 2000 on DVD
“The ‘key’ to the ‘chamber’ of immortality looks like a glowing white penis” Contrary to the title of this review, anyone who knows the prolific output – 92 B-movies since[…]
The Bowery: Raoul Walsh’s Gangs of New York
They spit! They swear! They smoke in bed! Back in 1933, The Bowery scored a big hit, introducing Darryl Zanuck’s new independent venture called Twentieth Century Pictures, yet this nostalgic[…]
Undisputed: Wesley Snipes vs. Ving Rhames
Cinema meets the sweet science at the multiplex, and nobody gets knocked out After a long hot summer of mismatches in 2002, we finally got to see a competitive heavyweight[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Reviews
Estela Bravo’s Fidel (2001), a Documentary
This documentary offers an affectionate, in-depth portrait of the enduring world leader who stood up to the U.S. Over the course of the last 40 years, the CIA has tried[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Come Back, Jack! Why Schmidt Is Shit
Payne capsized an actor and a novel in this misfire About Schmidt drives another nail in the coffin of irony. About Schmidt is as lacking in irony as its blatant[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Two Hour Movie (Starring Robin Williams in One Hour Photo)
Robin Williams morphs again, and still nobody’s laughing We all have met a man like Seymour Parrish at some point in our lives. Whether he was refilling our slurpies at[…]
Watch Me While I Die: Stephen Daldry’s The Hours
This “sensitive” film prefers its women dead – metaphorically or literally What happens when a film about women tries to force us to the conclusion that the thinking woman, or[…]
Ho-hum Intrigue in Barcelona: Gaudi Afternoon on DVD
It’s little wonder this yawner didn’t get a theatrical release Gaudi Afternoon, a 2001 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival entry, never got a theatrical distributor and has[…]
Sad, Angry Man: Basil Dearden’s Victim on DVD
A landmark work in the queer canon arrives on DVD Basil Dearden’s excellent thriller Victim was released in 1961, during roughly the same time as the ascension of Britain’s “angry[…]
Brainpower: Ken Russell’s Billion Dollar Brain Reassessed
“Into the 21st century, son. This is how wars are gonna be fought and life is gonna be lived.” 1967 was a fascinating year for thrillers. John Boorman sent Lee[…]
Daddy and Father in The Emerald Forest
On civilization and its discontents I recently saw a list of Luddite movies that listed Cameron’s The Terminator (1984), Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), and Lang’s Metropolis (1927), among others. Luddites[…]
Animation · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Treasures of Puppet Cinema: Pinocchio, Attack of the Puppet People, Black Devil Doll from Hell
Wooden bottom boyz, teensy teens, and a Satanic blackface Charlie McCarthy – these are just a few of the offerings from le cinema puppet! Pinocchio Walt Disney made horror movies[…]
Actors & Personalities · Essays · Reviews
Andy Kaufman, Tony Clifton, Mr. Ripley, and the Elisions of Identity
I had an opportunity to see a double feature a couple of years ago on a British Airways flight to Madrid. The size of the screen certainly reduced any desire[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred Astaire Meets Artie Shaw in Second Chorus
New DVD also includes Ezio Pinza, Lena Horne, and Duke Ellington “The worst picture I ever worked on.” That was Fred Astaire’s overly sour take on Second Chorus. It’s easy[…]
Brotherlove and Motherlove: Rocco and His Brothers on DVD
These brothers may be a little too close “Viscontiesque” doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, and hasn’t entered the language as “Felliniesque” has. But Visconti’s movies are at least as[…]
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