Film

At this point, the success of a gay coming-of-age story can be measured most acutely by its tendency to fall into tropes, or its ability to transcend them. In the canon of gay films, the coming out tale has been told ad nauseam. Some of the most trite, straight-palatable representation has come in this form,…

OF MICE AND PENS It’s in the name: comics are supposed to be comical. The funny pages are a place for lasagna-craving kitties, pet pilots and friendly tigers — certainly not the stage on which to unpack heavy emotions or examine brutal histories. Right? Well, Art Spiegelman would beg to differ. And while the name…

YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED More than 20 years ago, a young teenager from Boca Raton, Florida, became the first person in the United States to receive an implanted microchip made by Applied Digital Solutions, a radio identification (RFID) chip like those long used in pets. The “VeriChip” contained a tiny radio transmitter and bits of…

Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story, which premiered on Hallmark on November 30, blends the warmth of the holiday season with the passionate sports culture of Kansas City. The film celebrates both romance and the deep-rooted connection the city has with the Kansas City Chiefs, offering a unique narrative for Chiefs fans and holiday movie…

MAKE ROOM FOR ROOM TAKEN New to Ireland, a young Nigerian man named Isaac (endearing Gabriel Adewusi) is down on his luck in present day Dublin. Unable to find steady housing, he ends up at a shelter that cannot help him. After another uncomfortable night on the streets, he has a chance encounter at a…

VIRTUAL VIRTUOSITY: HAMLET FOR THE GAMERS Jokes thrive on bringing together the incongruous, and perhaps that’s why Grand Theft Hamlet is, at its best, fucking hilarious. The premise is simple yet audacious: what if the bizarre, glitchy bodies and hyper-violent, sensory-releasing spectacle of a video game like Grand Theft Auto (GTA) were used to stage…

AN EVERY LITTLE THING OF BEAUTY The most amazing thing about the recurring slow-motion sequences of hovering hummingbirds in Every Little Thing is the stillness of their tiny heads, even as their wings flap and their little bodies shift in air. As Terry Masear tells us, among other remarkable things, the wings of a hummingbird…

All I can do is be me, whoever that is. — Bob Dylan A great old adage puts it this way: “All that is truly original appears ugly at first.” That’s been proven true for every new form of art and music, most appropriately during  the meteoric rise of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, whose early career is…

A Cannes Palme d’Or winner that trades plot for character, with Mikey Madison and a stellar ensemble stealing the spotlight Writer/director Sean Baker’s Anora is a uniquely different film that stands apart for its commitment to character-driven storytelling over plot — a choice that earned it the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival….

An $8,000 budget, but  Found delivers more chills and substance than Hollywood’s multimillion-dollar nightmares In order to cleanse my horror palate after the shitstain that  Terrifier 3  was, I decided to find the cheapest, dirtiest little horror film I could dig up. The winner? An $8,000 indie gem called  Found, streaming on Tubi and more. And let me tell…

HIGH TIDE IS A QUIET STUNNER Lourenço, a handsome, thirtysomething, Brazilian man, is deeply in love with his boyfriend Joe. But in a surprise move, Joe dumps Lourenço while the two are on vacation in Provincetown, MA. Lourenço is devastated and stranded in P-Town at the end of the season. With only a tourist visa,…