Paul Rudd’s first film after breaking out in Clueless was this stunningly good comedy about the friendship between a gay man (Rudd) and his straight girlfriend, played by a pre-superstar Jennifer Aniston. Directed by the great Nicholas Hytner and written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein based on Stephen McCauley’s wonderful novel, the film…
The bittersweet comedy about a down-on-his-luck wrestling coach (Paul Giamatti) is not as wrenching and beautiful as writer-director Thomas McCarthy’s last film, The Visitor, or as revelatory as his first, The Station Agent, but Win Win is still a pleasure. While he works without studio money, McCarthy is still creating populist entertainment, but in that…
EPIX Tuesday, Aug. 23, 3:15 a.m. Both Ian McKellen and Lynn Redgrave were nominated for Oscars (and McKellen was robbed) for Bill Condon’s brilliant adaptation of Christopher Bram’s novel about the great and gay schlock director James Whale. Moving, artful and intense, the film is the last time Brendan Fraser did any good work. (He’s…
As I wrote when the movie opened, “Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre is smartly taut, with Moira Buffini’s screenplay restructuring the telling of the plot without losing any of its themes or power. Fukunaga also retains the beauty of Charlotte Bronte’s prose, not by using voice-over but by shooting the movie with literary precision: exquisitely detailed…
The Film and the Series: To date, the best mash-up of sci-fi adventure and the Western is Firefly, Joss Whedon’s short-lived TV series and subsequent feature film about a rag-tag group of fugitives and smugglers in the far frontier of a galactic federation. Instead of focusing on the simple conceit – cowboys in space –…
Open for a split second in San Diego this winter, you now have no excuse not to see this gorgeous and moving story about a young gay man and his best girlfriend, who fall in love with the same beautiful boy. As I wrote in my review, “You might expect that Heartbeats, a film about…
There are few gay movies that are so joyful that I’d want to watch while getting ready for a Pride parade. So many are just too depressing. Or bad. But Priscilla is all glitter, glee and gowns, and – bonus! – a fine screenplay is met with stellar acting. Two drag queens (Hugo Weaving and…
By no means the greatest movie ever made, Stonewall is still the only one about the events leading up to the Stonewall Riots that features a drag queen Greek chorus, In Plain Sight’s Frederick Weller as a burgeoning activist and minor bear icon Guillermo Diaz as the fabulous La Miranda. The film is trying to…
Of course, if you’re less enamored with patriotism on July 4, Soldier’s Girl may be for you. The acclaimed 2003 film is about the events that led to the murder of Pfc. Barry Winchell (Troy Garity) on the July 4 weekend of 1999. He was killed following intense harassment about his relationship with transgender performer…
The acclaimed recent BBC adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s memoir features pre-Nazi Berlin seediness, glamorous friends and the kind of hot gay sex American networks only dare show on late night cable. While Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories was what was adapted into Cabaret, this is the story of the part of Isherwood’s life that inspired that…
