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LGBT films have been a subgenre of film for far too long. For years, they’ve existed underground, almost like foreign films, as relics of an outside culture. With San Francisco’s Frameline film festival, these voices can finally find an audience. An Internet celebrity, an Iranian transgender and a drug-addicted lawyer
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The week of March 17, 1939, was fairly active in terms of news. On Monday of that week, a new pope, Pius XII, entered the Vatican. On Wednesday, German troops occupied the remaining portions of Bohemia and Moravia and Czechoslovakia ceased to exist as a united state. By Friday, British
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Time travel can go horribly, frightfully wrong. The merest alteration in the fabric of time could result in catastrophic results. Riskier than time travel is the time travel movie. With classics like “Back to the Future”, “Terminator” and “Donnie Darko” figuring prominently in the American canon, time travel pictures have
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What is it about tentacles that is so horrifying? There are a hell of a lot of them in “Prometheus,” director Ridley Scott’s sorta prequel to the “Alien” series. In fact, much of “Prometheus” is writhing tentacles and people looking incredulous at computer monitors. People say things like “It’s us!”
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The second of this year’s Snow White-themed releases, “Snow White and the Huntsman,” is a far cry from March’s “Mirror Mirror,” a happy family comedy. “Snow White and the Huntsman” is a decidedly darker, aesthetically richer and more thrilling retelling of the classic tale. Or at least, so it was
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It is the mixed blessing of films premiered at the Cannes Film Festival that by the time they reach our shores they have already amassed a small corpus of criticism to shape our opinions of them. “Polisse,” from French director Maïwenn, which will begin its wide release in San Francisco
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The summer feel-good film need not be riddled with bombast or inundated with rarely refreshing movie cliches. Wes Anderson’s newest film, “Moonrise Kingdom,” is a welcome departure from productions that aim to entertain the lowest common denominator. It is a fresh Rhode Island breeze that braces rather than buffets the
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To say that no one was clamoring for a “Men in Black 3” would be an understatement. The announcement of the franchise’s third installment came with a sense of impending flop. Director Barry Sonnefeld and writer Etan Cohen were handed the difficult task of finding a new, smart way to
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The sexuality of women has been a trope of storytelling, medical science and entertainment since the times of Ancient Greece when Hippocrates first defined “hysteria” as a disorder of the wandering womb. Up until 1952, in fact, the condition was largely thought to plague nearly all women with symptoms the
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Let’s be honest. Last summer was a sore disappointment. Out of the many blockbusters to be released — “Thor,” “X-Men: First Class” and the laughably awful “Green Lantern” — no film stood out as the centerpiece of the summer season (except maybe “Harry Potter”). There was no “Inception” or “Dark
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