Film

  The celebrated 78-year-old playwright Terrence McNally has enjoyed such a packed life with his roller-coaster career and a love life that itself could be the stuff that dramas are made off, so it was a tough challenge for filmmaker Jeff Kaufman to squeeze it all into 90 so minutes the length of his new profile.  The end result is an affectionate and flattering look at an iconic gay figure whose body of work and his actions that accompanied it have played a pivotal role in the LGBT movement in the past fifty years. The story starts in the town of Corpus Christi in Texas where McNally […]

LGBT movies made in Kosova are such a rarity  (if there are even others besides this one) it is inevitable that coming from a country still torn apart by strife, and culturally deeply homophobic, that any such films would never be allowed a happy ending. For once that is hardly a spoiler but the acceptance of reality in a society where it is not actually illegal to be homosexual, but it is nigh on impossible to be openly gay and survive. Kosovian filmmaker Blerta Zeqiri’s debut feature film combines a powerful indictment of her country’s troubling political climate with a most […]

  Disobedience is the first English language film for award-winning Chilean writer/director Sebastián Lelio, and with it, he continues his theme of stories that are centered around strong unique women.  First, there was ‘Gloria’ followed closely by his Oscar-winning A Fantastic Woman that starred Daniela Vega a trans actress, and now comes this tale of a lesbian love affair within London’s Orthodox Jewish community. Ronit (Rachel Weisz) is an ex-pat photographer based in NY who suddenly gets a call that her estranged father, a celebrated Rabbi in London, has died. Her initial reaction is to get drunk and then have anonymous sex in a bar bathroom, but […]

Calling a movie Funny Story is rather a brave move which can lead to unfulfilled expectations especially when your plot has its fair share of tragic incidents too. This feature from Michael J Gallagher whose work is usually created for the small screen. is full of good intentions and does at least start off on full of laughs, but then at the end gets way too muddled to be really funny It starts with Walter (Matthew Glave) an aging actor who has coasted a very comfortable living out of once playing an action hero who has now become something of a […]

This very prestigious all-boys boarding school in India which is the setting for The Noblemen is obviously a remnant of British colonial days and the children are still expected to practice the age-old rituals and codes which should have been banished years ago. Here in this very formal setting, the pupils are reluctantly bound by an outdated hierarchal system which too often allows the senior boys to use the younger sons as their slaves. This then is the story of 14-year-old-Shay (Ali Haji ) who, because he hates sports and prefers drama class, is labeled a sissy and gay by other boys.  […]

Ten years in the making this new excellent documentary from filmmaker Erin Palmquist is the engaging story of Ghazwan Alsharif an Iraqi refugee and former translator for the U.S. military.  After years of service helping the American invading forces, he was wrongfully accused of espionage and tortured by the military police in Iraq for some 75 days before being rescued by a US Colonel who he had served and who personally vouched for him. When the Iraqi militia learned of his work with the US Forces they first threatened his family and then bombed his home.  His parents who ironically had been […]