50th Anniversary: "Harold and Maude" is as necessary as ever.

by Brent Calderwood

It might be time to stop calling Harold and Maude a cult film. Yes, it’s true that when it came out fifty years ago (December 20, 1971), many critics and audiences greeted it with a mix of bewilderment, indifference, and even hostility—Variety, for example, claimed it had “all the fun and gaiety of a burning orphanage.” And yes, it's also true that Harold and Maude has been a staple of midnight art-house screenings almost since its release and has topped “best cult films” lists for as long as “cult film” has been a recognizable term.  

But 50 years on, Harold and Maude is so widely beloved by critics and new generations of film lovers that what was faintly hailed as an exquisite but slightly rarefied document of post-’60s counterculture is now firmly a part of our culture...

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• Vulture Every Kirsten Dunst role ranked. Wonderful piece by Matthew Jacobs though crazy/beautiful is too low!
• Letterboxd The Writers Guild of America's 101 best screenplays of the 21st century (thus far)
• Interview Colman Domingo interviews Zendaya
• IMDb top 100 stars of 2021 (by their STARmeter rankings) topped by Elisabeth Olsen (WandaVision). The lsit leans heavily into stars from popular shows or movies like everyone from Bridgerton, Ted Lasso, Mare of Easttown, the MCU, and even the star of Squid Game (though the list is heavy on blonde American women). Surprisingly high ranking for Alexander Skarsgård given that he had a mostly quiet year and Kathleen Turner somehow made the list, too, not that we're complaining as longtime fans.

More after the jump including a Shang-Chi sequel, West Side Story plus Steven Spielberg's next film, a big Alessandro Nivola get,  the teaser to Across the Spider-Verse, and the top ten list seasonal kickoff...

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Thankful for... Deborah Lipp

This year for our "thankful for" column we're mixing it up a bit and interviewing our team to share our gratitude for them. I first met DEBORAH LIPP through a mutual obsession with Mad Men. I'm proud to call her a friend and had the pleasure of attending her wedding several years back.

Deborah has a busy life (new books out!) so we dont see her around these parts much but she began popping in on occasion way back in 2012. As a James Bond fan she's written about her 007 favourite 007 films (and lots of other Bond posts). She's also wondered if Notorious is Hitchcock's only feminist film and since she loves romoms she's sung the praises of several here including Kissing Jessica Stein, Moonstruck, and and Four Weddings and a Funeral. She most recently popped in to review the final Daniel Craig Bond film No Time To Die.

Our short interview follows...

When did you first fall in love with the movies?

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NewFest: Two very different international lesbian romances

By Abe Friedtanzer

Part of the appeal of the programming at NewFest is that it spotlights multiple perspectives slightly outside mainstream society, suggesting a universality to the way in which so many feel like they’re not accepted by society. The grouping of these two films in one review has a little to do with their subject matter but much more to do with the fact that I happened to screen them back-to-back and found some unexpected connections and contrasts. Let’s look briefly at Bliss and Sweetheart…

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Gay Best Friend: Peter Steinberg (Oliver Platt) in "Three To Tango" (1999)

A series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope

Oliver Platt's boredom-induced hairstyle is far from the worst part of "Three to Tango."

Why did every member of Friends want to do a gay themed movie as their attempted jump to film stardom? Lisa Kudrow earned awards attention in the sublimely tart The Opposite of Sex, while Jennifer Aniston’s charm and chemistry with Paul Rudd nearly made The Object of My Affection work (okay, maybe not). Matthew Perry’s dreadful vehicle Three To Tango feels like the nadir of the Friends theatrical launching pads, gay-themed or otherwise. With a script forged in gay panic, the instantly dated comedy is short on charm and laughs. However, it has casts a bizarre spell as a hate-watch. It’s an insensitive film that is a strange reflection of 1998 attitudes towards the LGBTQ community and what types of vehicles could launch a film career.

For the purposes of this column, our entryway into this movie is through Oliver Platt’s Peter Steinberg. He’s the openly gay architect partner of Oscar Novak (Perry). Through a series of bizarre miscommunications that would’ve been vetoed by the Friends writer’s room, everyone starts to think Oscar is the gay partner and Peter is the straight one...

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