Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Queer activism circa 1978 showed a diverse optimistic community moving ever closer to unity — before the body blow of AIDS. Porn directors aren’t usually known for their political consciousness;[…]
In a cinema crowded with self-conscious transgressions, Kim offers the real article when she strips to show her straight boyfriend the thrilling secrets of the altered body. Transsexual imagery has typically[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Hong Kong’s gender-benders are the stuff of legend; director Patrick Chan adds two key works to the canon in these 1996 bookend satires of fame, pop music, and forbidden kisses.[…]
Roeg drags us into a nightmare of sophisticated sadomasochism – and we don’t object Nicholas Roeg’s new film opens with images of disconnected body parts – a man’s leg washed[…]
“His Finzi-Continis, set in the years 1938 to 1943, is an autumnal work in two senses – the subject is the last golden flash of freedom before one of history’s major tragedies,[…]
“What is most disturbing about all of this is the straight, uninflected manner in which Walsh visualizes the story.” Writers on film rarely discuss the combat genre and, when they do, they[…]
“On one level, Vertigo bewitches us with eerie fascination; on another, it leads us on a wild goose chase in search of Scottie’s character. But could the latter really have been Hitchcock’s[…]
“The Blade is the director’s paean to the muscular, exposed male body and a virtual catalog of ways to assault it – pummeling, whipping, biting, beating, and hacking . . .” Tsui Hark’s[…]
“Her mechanistic thinking precludes her from pursuing the noodle vendor in the usual ways; she can only see him after she has killed, and her sudden appearances and disappearances in[…]
African American · Historical & Epic · Reviews
“America consistently countered the growing concepts of black pride and power with a virtual army of self-sacrificing mammy figures (both male and female), pimps, whores, ‘great black hopes,’ and the[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews
After seeing this film that features everything from body and mind modifications to cryogenics to the fresh hell of cyberspace, you may want to go eat some dirt. At the[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Historical & Epic · Reviews
This epic set in the 16th century deals with war, honor, courage, and yes, that homo subtext ever present in male bonding movies – punctuated by Toshiro Mifune’s bold butt-baring[…]
See Val Kilmer feed psychedelic mushrooms to the crazed beast-people! See Aissa’s forbidden jungle dance! See the terrible white monster who lumbers across the sets in pancake makeup and Bea[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
John Waters, Zsa Zsa Gabor, The Bad Seed, Supermarionation – the late Doris Fish trawled through the lowest depths of culture for her homemade camp fairy tale. Drag queen diva Doris Fish[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Barbara Hammer continues the groundbreaking investigations into gender that started with Nitrate Kisses – this time using autobiography to tell her truths. Barbara Hammer is best known for her groundbreaking[…]
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
This grimy, exciting artifact from the ’60s shows how important beauty contests were to the queens who ruthlessly – and kind of sadly – mimicked their straight counterparts. The rank[…]
Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
The U.S. must eventually come to its senses and leave this little island and its vital citizens alone. Americans’ view of Cuba is based more on the right wing’s mythmaking (a process[…]
Actors & Personalities · Pre-Code · Producers & Studios · Reviews
Nobody “did” the Depression, or sexual excess, or populist uprisings, better than the Brothers Warner. Conventional wisdom says that before the taboo-busting ’60s, all deviance in American filmmaking was suppressed.[…]
Harlow, Bankhead, yes, even patrician Norma Shearer “strayed” before the Hays Code ended their fun. Feminist film historians usually focus on Warners and RKO as the prime exponents of the “bad girl” genre[…]
Jackie’s almost eclipsed by the great Michelle Khan. Watch out for that building! Supercop is the second crucial step, after Rumble in the Bronx, in the repackaging of Asian superstar Jackie Chan for American[…]
