Anyone who thinks women have equality can look to continued the lawsuits and struggles for acceptance for equal pay in the sports world. It can be really depressing. Those who need a jolt of positivity can watch the new documentary Skate Dreams, the first film ever made about the rise of women’s skateboarding. It features profiles …
Australian writer/directors Hanna Barlow and Kane Senes bring mean girls, social media savagery, fear of being cancelled, the repercussions of childhood trauma, and gore, gore, gore to their comedy horror mashup Sissy. Aisha Dee is both luminescent and looney tunes as the title character Sissy, or as she has calls herself to her 200,000 IG followers, …
As a hybrid documentary, Sell/Buy/Date is one freaky little non-movie, or what ‘I-can-do-it-all’ poster gal, writer/director/producer/performer Sarah Jones calls an ‘unorthodoc’. Sell/Buy/Date considers how the sex industry is at the intersection of race, feminism, power, and money, through the lens of one Black woman with many voices seeking to better understand sex work. The Tony Award-winning playwright and performer …
If you’ve ever been to a Pride march, a rally for Human Rights Watch, or some other LGBTQ-centered public gathering, you’ve probably seen them: women of a certain age with tees that say “Free Mom Hugs”. If you’re gay, there’s a good chance at some point they actively tried to restrict your rights. They are …
Shown first at the Angoulême Film Festival in 2020, My Best Part (Garçon Chiffon in French) is finally opening in New York, LA, and on streaming services on February 25th. This film, which toured the fest circuit including TIFF, Newfest, and OUTshine, is the directorial debut of actor Nicolas Maury, best known in the US for his role …
The new documentary release The Automat teaches many things about the power of nostalgia, the history of New York City, the benevolence of companies long gone, and the egalitarianism of a 5 cent cup of coffee, but before all else, it teaches audiences that Mel Brooks has been and always will be a force. He’s the guy …
Hello, my name is Leslie, and I’m addicted to disaster movies. I have literally seen every incarnation of Airport, both Poseidon Adventures. I’ve even seen Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. For me, watching them offers the perfect cinematic mixture of schadenfreude, catharsis, and hope. So regardless of the fact that my chosen beat is to amplify the independent works …
There are some very smart filmmakers who would rather gnaw off their own hand than risk remaking a lauded classic, and then there are the filmmakers of Living. Director Oliver Hermanus and writer Kazuo Ishiguro have that rare mix of hubris, knowledge of film history, and love of subject that have led to adapting the screenplay …
In director and co-writer Chase Joynt’s uniquely structured, hybrid documentary Framing Agnes, he uses the framework of a black and white 60s talk show to bring case file transcripts from a 1950s gender clinic to life. Expanding on the award-winning 2018 short film of the same name, Joynt plays the part of the interviewer and is …
Early on in the absorbing new documentary Nothing Compares, the film’s subject Sinéad O’Connor, recorded in a recent interview, is heard saying, “I didn’t want to be a pop star. I just wanted to scream.” It’s probably just as well, since her brand of brutal, often divisive honesty led to an exile from the mainstream almost …
