By John Corrado Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland is the third film in a trilogy of sorts following 2013’s Ida and 2018’s exceptional Cold War, offering a triptych of portraits exploring post-WWII Europe. This film is set in 1949, and follows the writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller) on a… Read More Movie Review: Fatherland
By John Corrado In Coward, his third and most ambitious feature yet, Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont (Girl, Close) takes us back to World War I. Dhont’s works all explore gender identity and burgeoning sexuality, and those themes get fine-tuned here as he explores the homoerotic tensions between young Belgian soldiers who arrive on the front… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Coward (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the third film from director Jane Schoenbrun, is a tribute to 1980s slasher movies channeled through a meta, queer lens. In this way, Camp Miasma serves as an interesting companion piece to Schoenbrun’s haunting 2023 sophomore film I Saw the TV Glow, which also operated… Read More Movie Review: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
By John Corrado In his latest film, the triptych anthology movie Father Mother Sister Brother which was awarded the Golden Lion at Venice, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch offers another collection of observations on human nature and interaction. The film itself unfolds in three separate chapters that aren’t connected, per se, but all share narrative beats and… Read More Movie Review: Father Mother Sister Brother
By John Corrado It’s funny that, in the decade since the blockbuster YA franchises that made them both movie stars wrapped up, the long-awaited big screen pairing of Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence and Twilight’s Robert Pattinson, is an arthouse movie. It speaks to the genuine credibility they have both built for themselves within the… Read More Movie Review: Die My Love
By John Corrado The winners of the 16th Dorian Film Awards were announced this morning, voted on by the members of GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance was triumphant in the top category, winning Film of the Year, along with Demi Moore winning for Performance of the Year, and Fargeat… Read More Winners of the 16th Dorian Film Awards
By John Corrado Today, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (of which I am a member) has announced the nominations for their 16th annual Dorian Film Awards, voted on by the group’s over five hundred members. In a bit of a surprise, but a welcome one, Jane Schoenbrun’s A24-backed film I Saw the TV… Read More Nominations for the 16th Dorian Film Awards
By John Corrado Swedish director Magnus von Horn’s highly disturbing but artfully crafted new film The Girl with the Needle is a period piece set in Copenhagen in the direct aftermath of World War I. The timeline is set early on when a town crier shouts out news of the armistice, right after we see… Read More Movie Review: The Girl with the Needle
By John Corrado The third entry in Pablo Larraín’s unofficial trilogy depicting the interior lives of famous women (following the one-two punch of Jackie and Spencer), Maria is the Chilean filmmaker’s portrait of the Italian opera singer Maria Callas. Larraín aims to do for Callas what he did for Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana in his previous films, which boasted… Read More Movie Review: Maria
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The new English-language short film from writer-director Pedro Almodóvar, Strange Way of Life is an enjoyable queer Western starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal that serves as the Spanish filmmaker’s “answer” to Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, which he was offered to direct but declined. The short, which premiered… Read More Review: Strange Way of Life
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest from American indie film director Ira Sachs (Love is Strange, Little Men), which premiered at Sundance and was the opening night film at the Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival in Toronto, Passages charts the sexually charged and emotionally messy dynamics between three people in modern Paris. The… Read More Review: Passages