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Jun '01
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Not in Kansas Anymore
By: Michael Bronski
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Surrender Dorothy's protagonist isn't well-endowed in the brain, heart, or courage departments. By film's end, he's also missing something between his legs. |
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May '01
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Cult of the Boy
By: Michael Bronski
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Every generation deserves the cult film that it gets. Remember in the mid-1960s when Bogie was the rage and
The African Queen was considered hip? And then the unwatchable
Reefer Madness was the cool midnight flick?
Only to be replaced by Night of the Living
Dead, a film which jolted the pot-heads back to some alternate reality. These, of course, were replaced by
The Rocky Horror Picture Show which at least had energy. |
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Apr '01
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Fucked to Kingdom Come
By: Michael Bronski
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The fantasy is always there: sex is so wonderful, so liberating, so ecstatic that it changes the world. Or at least the people having sex. One of the joys of About Adam is that it tells the simple story-- with wit, grace, and narrative economy-- of what happens when sex
is this good. |
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Mar '01
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Golden Sunset
By: Michael Bronski
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There is no surprise that Javier Bardem's exquisite performance as
the late gay Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas in Julian Schnabel's
Before Night Falls is worthy of endless praise. |
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Feb '01
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Gay & Stoned
By: Michael Bronski
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As George W. Bush's government is shaping up to be more and more conservative (big surprise), there's little doubt that homosexuality-- indeed any sexual deviancy-- is going to be targeted. |
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Jan '01
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Biff! Kapow!
By: Michael Bronski
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Unbreakable-- the new film released last month by M. Night Shyamalan-- is one of 2000's most interesting. |
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Dec '00
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Count Sheep
By: Michael Bronski
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Could there be anything more boring than another coming-out movie? Sure, they're popular. And it's true, people do keep on coming-out, so there's always fresh audience for this important experience to be validated by yet another second-rate, simplistic,
self-congratulatory movie. |
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Nov '00
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Those Wacky Xians
By: Michael Bronski
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The past 20 years of gay life in the US have been dominated by the enormous threat posed by the religious
right. With the exception of a few independent
documentaries, these issues have not been represented
in movies. Now there are two films that do tackle the topic-- and we would have been better off without them. |
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Oct '00
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Has Waters Run Dry?
By: Michael Bronski
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There is no doubt that John Waters has an incredible knack for hitting that queer, ironic cultural nerve. From
Pink Flamingo, with its scornfully celebratory vision of white trash life, to
Polyester's skewering of middle-class norms, to
Serial Mom's dissection of female maternal perfection, he had his finger on the ever weakening pulse of US culture. |
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Sep '00
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Hollow Redux
By: Michael Bronski
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As a coming attraction, Paul Verhoeven's Hollow
Man looked great. Sleek and techno-smart, it glistened on the screen as we saw Kevin Bacon's elegant and smartly-buffed body swirl and tumble from corporeality
to invisibility and then back again. |
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Aug '00
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Mutant Homosexuals!
By: Michael Bronski
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At first it looks like film-at-six footage of another Jesse Helms rant on the floor of Congress as Senator Robert Jefferson Kelly (R-KS) (Bruce Davison) thunders away: "Do we want these people teaching our children
in schools?" |
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Jul '00
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Lotsa Dicks
By: Michael Bronski
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The great-great grandson of Animal
House and Porky's, Road Trip is far more sophisticated version of those late-teen boys gross-out films. It is closer to
American Pie in both sensibility and sexual politics... |
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Jun '00
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Cinema Horriblus
By: Michael Bronski
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Oh, the cruelties of Ancient Rome. How horrible, how delightful! |
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May '00
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Straight Rights Now!
By: Michael Bronski
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Gay critics and audiences have long debated how queers should be represented on stage and screen. Fights about "good" vs. "negative" images have raged. |
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Apr '00
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Next Best?
By: Michael Bronski
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What's more trendy in Holly- wood movies than nice, pretty gay boys who have great relationships with straight female friends? |
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Mar '00
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Roman Bash
By: Michael Bronski
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In our post-Mad Max beyond The
Matrix, just on plot alone Julie
Taymor's
Titus should be a fabulous
hit. |
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Feb '00
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Made Mod
By: Michael Bronski
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The director softens Tom Ripley, makes him less of a psychopath and more of a confused gay man who is at a
social disadvantage in a world peopled with folk who are not his equals and who are mean to him. |
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Jan '00
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A Golden Age?
By: Michael Bronski
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What we have been calling
gay films all too often are overly-simplistic, pre-packaged, pre-sold commodities
fashioned to appeal to the lowest common denominator. |
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Dec '99
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Dogma
By: Michael Bronski
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Dogma's potentially quirky take on religion is curtailed by its obsession
with theological detail and an essentially sentimental view of God. |
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Nov '99
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Bourgeois Bashing
By: Michael Bronski
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The problem with Sam Mendes's film American Beauty is that it subscribes to the American notion that a work of art attains importance by attacking the middle class. |
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Oct '99
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Gay Ghosts
By: Michael Bronski
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In a poor summer for queer movies, a thoroughly un-queer live-action Dudley Do-Right betrays its subversive cartoon source, while The Sixth Sense delineates outsiderness with feeling and precision. |
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Sep '99
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One-Trick Pony
By: Michael Bronski
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Trick is an entertaining but shallow comedy that sticks to a plastic, commercialized vision of gay life. |
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Aug '99
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Urinal Action
By: Michael Bronski
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An Ideal Husband is a pretentious alteration of Oscar Wilde's play; Big Daddy is startling, edgy, and gay. |
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Jul '99
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Beach Bully
By: Michael Bronski
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Though charming on its face, Get Real misses the real complications of what it means to come out, while Notting Hill, with its female viewpoint, is a bit more original. |
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Jun '99
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Tea & Death Camps
By: Michael Bronski
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By failing to take fascism seriously, director Zeffirelli squanders a strong cast. |
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Apr '99
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Sensitive Guy
By: Michael Bronski
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Brendan Fraser stands out as a bolt of
emotional realism the way that James Dean and Montgomery Clift did in the 1950s. |
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Mar '99
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Armed in Paradise
By: Michael Bronski
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When Another Day works it's because Clark has borrowed well from other films, and because James Woods and Melanie Griffith turn in terrific performances. |
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Feb '99
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Merrie, Gay (not!) England
By: Michael Bronski
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Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love avoid-- rather than convey-- the era's sexual and gender anarchy. |
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Jan '99
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Art's Queer Power
By: Michael Bronski
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While 1998 was brimming with queer images-- many of them complicated, troubling, and challenging-- the major trend in the year's films was an
ongoing investigation of what it means to be gay or lesbian in a society that does not always persecute queers, but hardly supports them. |
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Dec '98
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Queer 'n' Creepy
By: Michael Bronski
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The stomach does a little flip, the skin on the back of the hands gets itchy, and then there's a tightening in the head: getting creeped-out is always enjoyable. |
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