Brief Takes: Unsane and Pacific Rim Uprising

by Nathaniel R

Unsane (Steven Soderbergh)
Synopsis: A disturbed young woman, who is institutionalized against her will, is convinced that a former stalker is one of her nurses.

Capsule: The queer community got there first. Although to be fair when isn't that the case? Soderbergh's iPhone shot movie is no aesthetic relevation like the trans iPhone classic Tangerine. Still, more filmmakers ought to try to make something as fast and cheap and spirited as this thriller inbetween pricier or weightier projects...

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Stage Door: Glenda Jackson in "Three Tall Women"

by Eric Blume

The Broadway revival of Edward Albee’s 1994 play Three Tall Women opens on Thursday. It stars Alison Pill, freshly Oscar nominated Laurie Metcalf, and two-time Oscar winner Glenda Jackson, who hasn’t been on an American stage in 32 years.  

Director Joe Mantello builds a stunning production.  Albee’s play, which won the Pulitzer Prize when it debuted off-Broadway in 1994, holds up beautifully, as all of his major plays do.  Albee writes in a theatrical, controlled, but go-for-broke language that soars in the way only the best theater can. Three Tall Women is a major play, like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Seascape and The Zoo Story and A Delicate Balance and The Goat, Or Who is Sylvia?.  It’s mind-boggling when you think of this man’s contribution to the theater, and the deep and compelling issues and emotions he tackled during his long career.

rehearsing Three Tall Women

Act One of Three Tall Women deals with a rich, dying old woman (Jackson), her caretaker (Metcalf), and her legal representative (Pill)... 

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Review: Love Simon

Stepping in briefly from vacation to celebrate Love, Simon. This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad.

Vanilla is a delicious flavor. Especially if you’re in the right mood for it. Loving vanilla doesn’t mean you can’t love more daring or less common flavors. But you deserve a good scoop of vanilla on occasion. The best thing that can be said of Love, Simon — and this is stronger praise than it sounds — is that it’s very vanilla. Imagine a cross between classic rom-coms like Sleepless in Seattle and Never Been Kissed and then just flip it a teensy-tiny bit until it’s gay. Not queer, mind you; we’re going for vanilla.

Love, Simon, the new film directed by gay TV power-producer Greg Berlanti (Flash, Riverdale, Brothers & Sisters, etcetera), is based on the novel “Simon vs. The Homo-Sapiens Agenda”. Though the novel’s title (I haven’t read it) suggests something less pro-heteronormativity, the film version is quite happy with assimilation. The only thing about Simon (Jurassic World’s Nick Robinson) that “reads” as gay or at all discomfited by his suburban nuclear family life is his inner monologue in which he tells us about his “huge-ass secret”...

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Review: Thoroughbreds

By Spencer Coile

Thoroughbreds, written and directed by newcomer Cory Finley, was originally intended to be a play. The film follows the twisted relationship of two teens: Amanda (Olivia Cooke), who claims to feel no emotions whatsoever, and Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy), a spoiled rich girl with a history of lying. Friends back in grade school, the two drifted apart, but reconnect when Amanda’s mom asks Lily to be Amanda’s tutor. This all takes a turn for the bizarre when Lily enlists Amanda to help kill her stepfather. All hell begins to break loose.

The film’s rapid fire dialogue makes it very easy to envision a staged production. Fortunately, Finley has just as much skill with directing as he does writing, and so Thoroughbreds becomes a truly cinematic experience. It's absurd, gripping, and deeply uncomfortable...

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Review: Red Sparrow

by Eric Blume

The Russian Tourism Board won’t likely be sponsoring the film Red Sparrow, the new spy movie from Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence.  Other than featuring some very chic ushankas on a very attractive cast, this film makes Russians look very nasty, just like we’ve always imagined them to be for the movies.  Lawrence’s conception of the country illustrates his wonderfully corny, often thrilling, mysterious, and silly/serious approach into old-fashioned espionage that we don’t see much of nowadays.

Lawrence starts his film where he should:  firmly on the face of his leading lady, Jennifer Lawrence, sporting a bangs-heavy brown wig.  She’s a famous ballet dancer in Moscow, and the director steals a bit of the feverish tone of Black Swan in her early scenes.  The plot unravels in a series of crosses, double-crosses, and reverses that include her involvement with a US spy played by Joel Edgerton...

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