To the point
Whatever you think Disobedience is, it’s going to surprise you. Like the body of an old lover, under your hands again after many years, it’s familiar, yet surpassingly strange. It makes use of some of queer cinema’s most shopworn tropes, but brings them to adulthood, stripped of their fairytale illusions about themselves. (That’s not a…
She comes in peace, but she means business: Last week, Janelle Monáe dropped two new music videos, and an album release date, and all queers have ascended to a heretofore unexplored level of heaven. The glorious era of Janelle’s next album is almost upon us: Dirty Computer drops on April, 27. Thrillingly soon, and yet…
This week, Entertainment Weekly released an interview with David Yates, director of Fantastic Besats and Where to Find Them, and its upcoming sequel, The Crimes of Grindelwald, in which he revealed how his next film planned to address Albus Dumbledore’s sexuality. This kind of coy, “not explicitly” language is a reminder that when it comes to…
For the past several days, every time I get on the internet, I am assaulted by advertisements encouraging me to see two films: Forever My Girl, and Phantom Thread. One is a schmaltzy Hallmark Channel reject that looks like The Notebook with erectile dysfunction, and the other is being widely hailed as a masterpiece, starring the greatest…
As every queer woman who has ever logged on to Netflix knows, lesbians are rich in tragedy. The typical story arc for women who love women in film and television goes something like this: Girl painfully comes to terms with feelings for other girl. The exploration of these feelings costs girl her job/children/parental approval, and…
Hello and welcome to a special Halloween installment of Sapphic Cinema. Today we’ll be discussing The Carmilla Movie, which is newly available on demand! As you may know, I generally only use this column to review queer films that have been released for at least five years, but since Carmilla itself has broken nearly every…
Friends, last night I sat down to watch Gerald’s Game, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1992 novel of the same name. You may have noticed the title appearing on your Netflix home screen next to The Documentary About Hasidic People (which is worth watching on the strength of its subject matter, though not its cinematic…
On your first day of your first creative writing class, they tell you there are only two stories. A stranger comes to town Or Somebody goes on a trip. (Obviously, some literary smartasses heard about this and just had to deconstruct the whole concept of “story,” and write shit like Waiting for Godot, in which…
Hello dear friends and welcome back to Sapphic Cinema, the column series where if you can’t say something nice, fast forward to the sex scene. This week we are discussing 2016’s The Handmaiden, a film which enjoyed universal acclaim prior to this review, but which will now have to get by with universal minus one.…
I walked in fifteen seconds late to La La Land, but I think I must have missed the good part. Surely there was something about this movie that captivated critics and awards-givers the world over, but I didn’t see it. I was warned, of course, by friends on social media, but I blamed their cynicism…