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Directors · Experimental & Underground
Jordan’s collage films are “moving” in two senses “Animation” connotes many things to us jaded moderns – Bugs Bunny and variants, the dreaded Disney and its hellspawn, Spike and Mike[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
The work of an avant-garde master restored I had the privilege of sitting with Warren Sonbert (1947-1995) at some of San Francisco’s press screenings in the several years that preceded[…]
A bar in a provincial town. A strange dance is underway, with three drunken patrons enacting an eclipse, sun, moon, and earth circling and interposing. The dance is choreographed by[…]
Monsters are bad enough, but how about all those relatives? For cinema, the postwar period – particularly the 1950s when atomic consciousness became a permanent part of America’s psychic landscape[…]
“What distinguishes A Scandal in Paris is its additional air of evanescence, as if the Old Europe of charming woodland merry-go-rounds and dowagers in castles and romantic criminals was now a[…]
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[…]
Documentaries · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Literal commodity fetishism in the far fringes of New York’s S&M scene In the mid-’70s, I spent some time in Los Angeles in the hetero s&m subculture. My best friend[…]
Experimental & Underground · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Punks hail Britannia in their own peculiar way in this little-seen gem by the late queer auteur Jubilee (1978), Britain’s only decent punk film, still isn’t respected at home as[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Reviews
Post-apartheid South Africa’s rituals of admission and absolution Civilized societies, an oxymoronic phrase to some observers, choose to deal with the aftermath of large-scale violence in different ways. Sometimes there[…]
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[…]
Asian · Music & Musicals · Reviews
If “Asian face” isn’t bad enough, how about names like Nanki-Poo and Yum Yum? Mike Leigh’s 1999 film Topsy-Turvy reenacts Gilbert and Sullivan’s staging of The Mikado, the 1885 comic[…]
Gay werewolves, the Marquis De Sade, and a mean one-legged nun: The tortured queens and killer dykes of yesteryear make way for more rarified queer types this season. Queer and[…]
Historical & Epic · Reviews · SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
Who knew that Crusoe and Friday would be resurrected daily for service to western culture’s nefarious needs? While we are waiting for Dreamworks’ The Legend of Bagger Vance (starring Matt[…]
Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film, by Greg Merritt. Thunder’s Mouth Press. Paperback. Suggested list price: $18.95. There are plenty of film histories, but not so many of[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Rock’s aging bad boys finally give it up The 25-year hissy fit between Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols continues to rage in Julian Temple’s engaging documentary about everybody’s favorite[…]
European dubbing gives Hong Kong subtitling a run for its money in the Utter Weirdness department, according to this insider report Among the true lovers of cinema these days, there[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
“Heaven rest us, I’m not asbestos” Roberta is one of the least known,1 and one of the very best, of the films that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers did together. It features some of[…]
