by Nathaniel R
JOYLAND
This pronouncement is two weeks late for Pride Month but 2023 is shaping up to be a good year for queer films. Not that people have noticed, exactly. The first new challenge for audiences in the brave new world of cinematic distribution is actually knowing that any particular movie exists. The second is knowing where to find it once you do (distribution is so messy in the 21st century!). Between the streaming wars, teensy theatrical runs, and the still rarely discussed / under reported wilderness of "VOD" many titles slip by unnoticed. The artists who made them and the lucky audiences who discover them can only hope they pick up steam through word of mouth or with the passage of time. The best LGBTQ title of the year is Pakistan's 2022 Oscar submission Joyland (reviewed by Cláudio) which is currently in the gap between a theatrical run and various ways to screen it at home and you already heard me rave about last November. When you get a chance to see it you absolutely must. Another unmissable is the Taylor Mac documentary on HBO (reviewed by Glenn).
After the jump some gems you can currently rent or stream that were released theatrically already and some to look forward to...
OF AN AGE (Goran Stolevski, Australia) - streaming on Peacock
The Macedonian-born Australian director Goran Stolevski's debut film, the disturbing witchy horror flick You Won't Be Alone was Australia's Oscar submission last season. As a quick follow up, he delivers the gay romantic/sexual awakening drama, Of An Age about a young man (Elias Anton) who falls for his best friend's older brother (Thom Green) on a road trip. The first ten minutes are weirdly rough, pitched hysterically at eleven (or twelve, thirteen?) for reasons we couldn't quite fathom but afterwards it's a marvel. Smartly concise, taking place over just a couple of days (albeit years apart), Of an Age manages to be stirring and evocative, filling in the gaps between those days with a decade of complicated melancholic feeling. Stolevski already announced himself as a promising talent and now we know he's a versatile (!) filmmaker, too.
PUNCH (Welby Ings, New Zealand) - streaming on Paramount+/Showtime
It's true that Punch won't win points for originality as dramas go, but it's heartfelt and effective all the same. That's particularly true when it focuses on the budding oil/water friendship and quasi-romance of two young men, Jim (Jordan Oosterhof) an amateur boxer and Whetu (Conan Hayes) a queer Maori musician, a loner who hangs out in his treasured shack by the beach. Their story and character arcs are involving even if you wish wish Punch would jettison its overly familiar other half, the adjacent father/son drama wherein Jim struggles with his perpetually drunk father (Tim Roth). Still, the movie's heart is in the right place and it ends with a scene of Whetu singing, which suggests that the movie agrees with us about where the focus should have been all along. Bonus points for the evocative production design and sets of Iain Aitken.
SWALLOWED (Carter Smith, US) - available to rent from Amazon and Apple
And now for something totally different. Fashion/celebrity photographer turned writer/director Carter Smith brings us a squicky entertaining queer horror feature Swallowed. The film won the US Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize at NewFest last fall before its 2023 releases. The low budget feature centers on best friends who are thisclose to having benefits (played well by Jose Colon and Cooper Koch) if they would only admit their feelings. They stupidly agree to transport illegal cargo across the border for a quick payday. The cargo is unfortunately right out of a sci-fi nightmare. Cue body horror in tighty whities and a memorable evil queen and his henchwoman in the woods (Mark Patton of gay camp horror classic Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge and the always welcome Jena Malone) terrorizing the handsome leads.
If those three titles don't do it for you you can always enjoy the double feature docs on Wham! and Rock Hudson that we've already discussed.
STILL TO COME IN 2023
Some title of queer interest that have yet to open are...
Tilda Swinton stars in the indie art world comedy Problemista from writer/director/comedian/star Julio Torres (of Los Espookys and My Favourite Shapes fame). The comedy about a young artist from Salvador with visa problems, arrives in theaters in early August.
In September Amazon will release the gay Mexican wrestler biopic Cassandro. We get way too many biopics each year but Oscar winning documentarian Roger Ross Williams has delivered a stellar entry in the abundant field of true life portraits. Gael García Bernal knows he has his best role in years and delivers in a big way. He's fiercely committed and endearing as the provocative celebrity at the center. Highly recommended!
In December Searchlight is looking to release the Sundance hit Magazine Dreams starring Jonathan Majors as an obsessive bodybuilder. Elijah Bynum's sophomore directorial feature received good reviews at the festival but I'm not personally a fan. The movie tries to have its cake and devour it, too, in regards to its violent protagonist (especially in the final act). It positions itself like a modern and provocative Taxi Driver but it also wants you to like and sympathize with the troubled protagonist which Martin Scorsese wisely never asked of us when it came to Travis Bickle.
Late in the year we'll hopefully get to see Pedro Almodóvar's short western Strange Way of Life, starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke. In presumably sexy support are younger cast members like Manu Ríos (Netflix's Elite), Jason Fernández (Netflix's Welcome to Eden), and José Condessa who just starred in a TV version of the story we saw on film in the Oscar nominated Gael Garcia Bernal vehicle The Crime of Padre Amaro. Elisa reviewed the short at Cannes and Sony Pictures Classic will unveil at some point... we presume with an Oscar push for Best Live Action Short.
We'll obviously have more LGBTQ titles as the year progresses (festival season come through!) but we've seen two others already (via Sundance) though they don't currently have distribution. The Native American drama Fancy Dance stars Lily Gladstone (soon to be seen stealing the show in Martin Scosese's Killers of the Flower Moon) as a lesbian auntie with a total indifference to the law (in multiple ways). When her sister goes missing, she ends up "kidnapping" her niece -- consensually, mind you -- to search for her sister while the police drag their feet. The great band The Indigo Girls get the documentary treatment in It's Only Life After All. The film has some problems in focus and construction but there's a large nostalgia factor if you grew up loving the band as I did. There's also some stirring hindsight relevation about how clear the media's homophobia was in reaction to the band in the early 1990s.
Have you seen any good LGBTQ movies lately?