Ma Belle, My Beauty is a lovingly realized and mature look at polyamory, but it fails to probe its emotional core sufficiently. Polyamory is a subject that’s not often explored in mainstream films. While other films have touched on it — Christophe Honoré’s Love Songs…
Free Guy is the rare tentpole based on an original idea rather than existing IP, and supplements that present-day novelty with a game cast and genuine emotion. Shawn Levy has mostly built a career out of innocuous action comedies that, while not exactly critical darlings,…
Miller is a talent to watch, but Joe Bell is profoundly tone-deaf, little more than queer cinema for straight people. Joe Bell is the kind of movie that seems designed to make straight people feel better about themselves but does very little for the LGBT…
The Holocaust has provided the backdrop for so many films that it’s a rather bracing experience to discover one that handles the subject and setting in a way that’s unique. That’s certainly the case with A Radiant Girl, the debut feature by actress Sandrine…
Kid Candidate doesn’t have as inclusive an eye as you’d like, but it still manages a cutting depiction of the institutional rot deep in the core of American politics. Modern American politics are, needless to say, a raging dumpster fire; bad news for the…
The Water Man is a slight film that gets bogged down under the weight of its heavy themes and nondescript myth-making. Let’s just be blunt for a moment: if The Water Man weren’t the directorial debut of actor David Oyelowo, it’s doubtful we would…
Hope is an emotionally brutal, bruising film about the tricky territory that comes between love and loss. Hope is the kind of film that, on paper at least, sounds like made-for-TV melodrama, its material ripe for big emotions and rampant sentimentality; and in the…
Wojnarowicz is a powerful docu-bio that looks to celebrate the life and radical ethos of its eponymous trailblazer. At a time when queer art is more mainstream than ever, it’s a good exercise to look back and reflect on its radical roots. While it’s obviously…
In 2017, former NSA contractor Reality Winner was arrested by the FBI and charged under the Espionage Act for leaking documents pertaining to Russia’s attempts to hack into American voting machines during the 2016 election. The resulting court battle, waged during President Donald Trump’s…
The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a tonal misfire that fails to ever find the fascinating, complex story at its core. Lee Daniels has an almost unparalleled knack for turning serious subject matter into cartoon, an approach that works when it flirts with…
