Film

Stephen Cone has been building a pretty strong reputation as a writer/director with contemplative LGBT-themed films such as Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party and The Wise Kids. Indeed, New York’s prestigious Museum Of The Moving Image has just finished the ‘Talk About the Passion: Stephen Cone’s First Act’ season, which featured a selection of his film, including his latest, Princess Cyd. The titular Cyd (Jessie Pinnick) is a 16-year-old who lives with her depressed single father. For the summer she goes to visit her novelist aunt, Miranda (Rebecca Spence), which will both get her away from her dad for a few […]

For a couple of years duelling biopics of Tom Of Finland were in the works, but this is the one that finally made it to the screen. The life of Touko Laaksonen is certainly an interesting subject to take on, and there are many ways it could have been done. The route they’ve gone down is to make a fairly traditional, prestige biopic, which is perhaps an unexpected choice for a man who made his name for outsider homoerotic art that defied conventions of both sexuality and class. The film follows the life of Laaksonen, picking up his tale just […]

Watching Desert Hearts it’s difficult not to feel a little frustrated. That’s not because of anything in the movie itself. It’s because even 32 year later it still feels so exceptional. A film with a female director and screenwriter – and based on a novel by a woman – is still an unusual thing. A film that’s about the lives of women and not just how they relate to men, is still an unusual thing. A movie that treats lesbian love as a serious thing and isn’t framed by tragedy, is still an unusual thing. It shouldn’t be that way, […]

It’s been a great year for gay-themed movies at the Independent Spirit Awards – the gongs giving out shortly before the Oscars, which acnowledge and celebrate those film made by and released outside the Hollywood studio system. Leading the pack is the acclaimed Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino’s movie about two young men falling in love in italy in the early 1980s. It scored six nominations, including Best Feature, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Male Lead (Timothee Chalamet) and Best Supporting Male (Armie Hammer). The Independent Spirit Awards used to largely be a way to celebrate movies that […]

The Icelandic movie Heartstone arrives in the UK fresh from a very successful festival run, where it impressed audiences and picked up over 30 awards. That’s not bad for a movie from a country with a population of just 332,000 people. That’s about the same as the city of Coventry. Despite its size, it has a surprisingly thriving film industry, to the point where a large chunk of the population must spend at least part of their time making movies – and surprisingly good ones. The film follows a group of teenagers in a remote fishing community. It’s a place […]