Now Streaming: Paul Bettany is "Uncle Frank"

by Christopher James

Everybody wants a happy ending. Especially with gay-themed movies, we’re so used to seeing LGBTQ+ characters go through trauma, abuse or end up killed by the time the credits roll. It’s always nice when movies about the queer experience can be positive or uplifting. However, they also have to be genuine. Uncle Frank wears its heart on its sleeve, and that works for a while. Yet, as the movie goes on, it becomes so sweet and saccharine, you just wind up with a toothache.

It’s 1969, Elizabeth Bledsoe (Sophia Lillis) doesn’t fit in with her South Carolina family. Her parents (Steve Zahn and Judy Greer) fade to the background in traditional gendered roles. Meanwhile, her Grandpa, Daddy Mac (Stephen Root), spews orders and hate at every turn, while Mammaw (Margo Martindale) and Aunt Butch (Lois Smith) gab in the kitchen. She feels the greatest kinship with her Uncle Frank (Paul Bettany), who seldom comes down from New York...

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Tribeca 2019: "Buffaloed"

Reporting from Tribeca once more here is Jason Adams...

I am not from Buffalo. I am from Rochester, which is one hour or so east of Buffalo. But I'm from close enough to Buffalo to know that Buffaloed -- a new comedy starring Zoey Deutch and Judy Greer -- knows Buffalo. So much so I had to spend some time googling the people that made it. Director Tanya Wexlermight be from Chicago (the Buffalo of the mid-west) but, sure enough, writer Brian Sacca is a ranch-soaked Buffalonian good ol' boy. And so Buffaloed knows its Anchor Bar versus Duffs chicken wing rivalries, and it knows "Go Bills" is how one expresses a goodbye. Its arteries are clogged with verifiable Upstate-isms. 

This might all seem trivial at the outset, but Buffaloed gets its sense of place, and what's so funny about its sense of place, so right that it builds its own little magical world out of it...

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Would you rather?

It's time to play our favourite time wasting Instagram game (an elaborate excuse to share 10-12 fav celebrity social media posts of the week). So, WOULD YOU RATHER...

• do the can-can in Paris with Jessica Chastain and Sophie Turner?
• do research on Elvis with Baz Luhrmann?
• take a hot ride with Zoe Saldana?
• test perfume mixes with Michelle Pfeiffer? (It's called "layering")
• sip on Shah Rukh Khan in Dubai?
• kiss a llama with Daryl Hannah?
• go plant shopping with Jake Choi?
• have lunch with Marvel's superwomen? 
• count it down with Madonna & Meluma? 
• get beautiful with Judy Greer? 
• eat skittles with Carrie Preston? 
• shower with Channing Tatum? 

Pictures are after the jump to help you decide.

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The Plane! The Plane! The Link! The Link!

As your host begins his final busy day at the Middleburg festival, here are some news tidbits and amusements to enjoy elsewhere...

• Variety Highlights from the Jane Fonda Masterclass at the Lumiere festival
• EW Peter Dinklage on playing Hervé Villechaize on HBO and disputing the claims of whitewashing 
• Vulture amazingly accurate collection of faux headlines about 'how the media would have covered the events of A Star is Born'
• New Now Next cute interview with Judy Greer about her gay fans and Jawbreaker
• Variety our hearts go out to Selma Blair who has announced that she has multiple sclerosis
• Out Cate Blanchett adamantly defends straight actors playing queer characters. I totally understand her reasoning and I think identity politics can sometimes feel anti-art and anti-creativity BUT actual gay actors are discriminated against so this is kind of tacky to be so aggressive about
• The Playlist Cannes and Netflix meet... perhaps 2019 will have a different outcome?
• MNPP Glen Powell photoshoot worth gawking at
• /Film Netflix seems to be on a cancellation spree. Now it's Luke Cage getting the chop
• io9 Turns out Disney wouldn't let Wreck-It Ralph make a joke about Kylo Ren from Star Wars. Or as Gerry Canavan so wisely stated on twitter...

maybe we should have more than one entertainment company

Review: "Halloween"

by Chris Feil

After being reinterpreted by Rob Zombie in two grittier takes, Michael Myers returns to Haddonfield and to his storytelling roots in David Gordon Green’s Halloween. And even more importantly, so is his first survivor Laurie Strode and the indomitable woman that plays her: Jamie Lee Curtis.

This take unfurls the fortieth anniversary of the original John Carpenter film (dispensing with the narrative of all other installments) as the septuagenarian Michael escapes his asylum confines to return home and kill again. But this time Laurie is ready, perhaps too ready. She’s been waiting actually, devoting her life to preparing for his inevitable return by outfitting her home with intricate safety mechanisms and a cache of guns. The fallout has been isolating herself in a constant thrum of anxiety and becoming estranged from her daughter, played by Judy Greer. Michael’s return puts him and Laurie on their fated trajectory, this time with Laurie’s granddaughter (and the fate of her family’s survival) in the middle.

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