“And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime. Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning” — Wilfred Owen, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” The lives of World War I English poets Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden (“Dunkirk”) and Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson, “Making Noise Quietly”)…
Like the more prominent “It: Chapter Two,” Spiral opens with a homophobic attack, one that is shown in all its distressing viciousness. From there, events spiral (sorry) into an eerie, menacing folk horror of cult, prejudice and scapegoating, in a manner that combines the best elements of “Get Out” and “Hereditary.” The film exposes prejudice…
The most dramatic sequences of 2018’s Best Picture, “Green Book,” involved the piano playing of Doctor Don Shirley. In another recent awards winner, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the recreations of Freddy Mercury’s performances proved to be a high point. These sequences, well-rendered by directors Peter Farrelly and Bryan Singer, respectively, are put into the shade of the…
“It get me down sometime. It get me down but only, a little look around and I find that I am not so lonely. We in the same boat brother! We in the same boat brother!” — Don Cooper, from the song “My Images Come” In his 1948 study “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,”…
Based on the memoir by Garrard Conley and set in rural Arkansas, Australian director Joel Edgerton`s (“The Gift”) Boy Erased tells the moving story of Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges, “Lady Bird”), an 18-year-old gay college student and his struggle for self-acceptance in the face of rejection by those whose support he desperately needs. Raised in…
“And if the earthly no longer knows your name, whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing. To the flashing water say: I am” — Rilke, “Sonnette an Orpheus” (II, 29) Chiron, in Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning film “Moonlight,” in addition to being gay and black, has to deal with drug abuse, bullying, and the lack of…
As spectators flock to see Billie Jean King defeat Bobby Riggs in straight sets in “Battle of the Sexes,” there is another tennis match currently playing on the silver screen. This battle of sexuality that airs before the full-length feature Beach Rats is a surprising cartoon short, in which a defending champion is struggling to…
