When a hard-living model suddenly has to care for a baby, his chaotic existence takes an unexpected turn. Poland’s Proud follows Filip, played by the striking Ignacy Liss, as he moves from drugs, parties and a constantly changing string of partners toward an uncertain and increasingly tender experience of fatherhood.
An abandoned waterfront site links the contrasting lives of two New York neighbors in Arch Brown’s adult film Pier Groups. Joe (John Kovacs), who is straight, is assigned to inspect the area as part of a demolition project, while Rik (Keith Anthoni), who is gay, unexpectedly receives the day off and heads there because it is one of the city’s leading cruising spots. Their mornings have already established the difference between them: Rik wakes passionately beside the mustached man with whom he spent the night, whereas Joe lies quietly and without passion next to his partner. After separate phone calls send both men toward the same location, Joe’s professional mission brings him face to face with Rik’s pursuit of pleasure.
Paolo Strippoli’s THE HOLY BOY combines drama with genre cinema through the encounter between Sergio, a depressed teacher, and Matteo, a gay teenager whose mysterious powers transform suffering. Strange, imperfect, and often mesmerizing, the Italian film follows Sergio after he reaches a small town where the locals greet him with an unsettling happiness. He is…
Karim Aïnouz follows Praia do futuro and Motel Destino with ROSEBUSH PRUNING, a fierce and deeply divisive dark comedy about an immensely wealthy family trapped inside its own twisted world. With a very sexy international cast and a polished pop sensibility, the film takes aim at privilege, trauma and a family whose elegance conceals something much darker. We…
Across six years, Tiger and Nao move from an awkward first meeting to a shared home, a university life and, eventually, a relationship. Their story begins at football tryouts, where the two fail to make an immediate connection, but the distance between them gradually gives way to a friendship neither of them expects. Tiger is the lonely son of a wealthy and powerful mafia family. His relatives are rarely present, leaving him with plenty of privilege but very little emotional support. Nao's circumstances are different. He is cheerful and optimistic, lives with his hardworking mother and caring twin brother, and seems to bring warmth wherever he goes. Beneath that brightness, however, are family pressures and emotional burdens that make him considerably more complex than he first appears. Tiger begins spending more time at Nao's home, joining the family for meals before eventually staying there regularly. Their friendship deepens as they share secrets, past experiences and insecurities. Tiger becomes part of Nao's world, remaining beside him through their university years with a quiet smile and feelings he cannot bring himself to confess. Nao, meanwhile, understands him only as his best friend. Tiger's love is visible in every look, touch and moment of attention, yet Nao remains entirely unaware. Even Nao's brother notices what is happening and advises Tiger to wait patiently. After graduation, the pair enter university together, live under the same roof and make new friends. Some of those friends recognize how deeply Tiger cares for Nao, but Nao is still oblivious. Tiger's eventual confession catches him completely by surprise.…
By the time The Nance reaches its final image, Chauncey Miles is almost entirely alone. The theater around him is closing, the ceiling begins to give way, and he remains beneath a damaged spotlight, singing the number audiences know as his signature. It is an ending that captures the contradiction at the heart of the Lincoln Center Theater production: Chauncey can perform defiance in public, yet he remains unable to escape the self-hatred that governs his private life. That role is played by Nathan Lane, who carries the filmed production as a Depression-era comedian specializing in burlesque's “nance” character. Lane is outstanding, and his performance gives Chauncey both comic authority and painful vulnerability. Still, watching a stage production from a couch is not the same experience as seeing it in person, particularly when the running time approaches two and a half hours. My reaction to The Nance is therefore a personal one, and other viewers may respond to its rhythm and structure very differently. A performer trapped inside the joke The story takes place in 1930s New York City, when homosexuality was not merely condemned socially but treated as a crime. Burlesque theaters offered inexpensive, disreputable entertainment built around women dancing in revealing costumes and a steady supply of crude adult humor. Among the familiar figures was the nance, a caricature of a gay man. The joke depended on an uncomfortable fact: the part was generally played by a straight actor. Chauncey Miles breaks that pattern. He performs the nance onstage, but he is gay offstage as well. His life…
The strongest joke in Stop! That! Train! may simply be the sight of RuPaul as US president Judy Gagwell. It was the one gag that genuinely made me laugh in a movie otherwise determined to bombard its audience with knowing absurdity. For 90 minutes, the mugging, Gen Z slang, glaring colors and exaggerated visuals barely pause. Plenty of online critics appear delighted by the result, but despite its obvious ambition to be a nonstop comedy, it never clicked for me. At least the calamity powering all that noise is appropriately ridiculous. Low-level stewardesses Tess and DeeDee secretly board the luxurious Glamazonian Express on the very day it is due to meet the enormous Stormaganza. The brakes inevitably fail, leaving the train hurtling out of control while the storm closes in. Its path takes it toward an extraordinary patch of land occupied by a nuclear reactor, a dog shelter and actress Laurie Metcalf's home. The people who might prevent disaster are rapidly compromised. A rogue scorpion incapacitates the only crew member who knows what to do, while President Gagwell's old PTSD resurfaces at precisely the wrong moment. Whether the president can rescue everyone remains uncertain, so Tess and DeeDee are forced to take responsibility themselves. Tess occupies and reassures the passengers as DeeDee joins Cal in an attempt to repair the controls. Cal is also the conductor DeeDee is wildly attracted to, and apparently the kind of man worthy of appearing in a publication called Conductors We Want to See the Dick Of. He is played by English Teacher's Jordan Alvarez,…
The central problem with this experimental indie is not merely that its two leads are difficult to like; it is that the film gives their destructive behavior no meaningful dramatic purpose. Beto and August spend the entire movie together, yet the story never develops beyond a series of reckless episodes, leaving little reason for an audience to remain invested. The pair meet at a skate park in LA and immediately seem drawn to one another. Their bond is built around skateboarding, intensely destructive habits, and conversations about life and death. Before long, they agree to end their lives together. The film then tracks their last day as they move through the city, stealing a car and, at one point, threatening to kill a young woman. That outline is essentially the entire film: two men wandering around and creating chaos. Their actions feel random rather than revealing, and the movie offers no substantial explanation for either man's decision to die. It suggests unresolved trauma but never examines it, leaving the premise without the emotional or psychological foundation it needs. The execution is just as thin. The leads never leave the screen for a single scene, but their performances generate no convincing chemistry, and both characters remain thoroughly unlikeable and difficult to watch. The direction feels less like the construction of a story than the recording of two people being allowed to roam around for a day and do whatever they want. Nothing that happens seems worth discussing afterward, while much of their conduct is simply repulsive. The film also provides no…
The strongest part of this twelve-episode drama is not its publishing plot or even its romance. It is the family at its center: a grandfather, his grandson, the relatives sharing their home, and the orphanage children who depend on them. Their household gradually becomes more than a familiar four-generation arrangement. Its kindness, disagreements, compromises, and private wounds emerge little by little, creating a warm story about people caring for one another when money and circumstances make life difficult. Grandpa was once a respected writer, but his work no longer matches current tastes. Publishers reject his new manuscripts, while the orphanage he runs struggles financially. He also has unpaid loan installments on his home. Selling the property would solve some of the pressure, and others repeatedly advise him to do exactly that, but he refuses. His own grandfather founded the orphanage, and he will not abandon the children or pass that responsibility on to them. With few alternatives, he investigates the most profitable direction in publishing and discovers that BL novels are currently bringing in money. The problem is that he knows nothing about writing them. His grandson Save becomes his guide. Save helps with the first manuscript, but the publisher turns it down because it lacks sufficient heat. At around the same time, Save’s close friend and classmate Guy confesses that he is in love with him. Save is initially unsure how to respond, then realizes that Guy’s real experiences might provide the material Grandpa needs. He begins using those moments to help shape the novel, turning Guy’s feelings into…
Five Short Films About Boys Trying to Find Their Place NQV Media's short film series brings together stories about boys caught in difficult, often confusing stages of their lives. Across the collection, they are trying to work out who they are while dealing with fear, change, rejection, rebirth and the need to belong. The films approach those experiences from sharply different directions, so these are not routine coming-of-age stories. Some of the strongest moments come when identity becomes impossible to avoid, especially in situations that force strangers or friends to confront what they believe about themselves and one another. Flush (Brazil) A law student enters a bathroom while arguing with his father on the phone, only to encounter a young trans woman emerging from a stall. His immediate reaction is visible disgust, followed by an attempt to leave. The problem is that it is already 10:40 at night, and the college doors will remain locked until morning. Trapped together, the two young people appear to have little reason to understand each other. They would normally pass without a glance, yet the long night gradually reveals more in common than either expects. That connection does not come easily: their opposing views on life and sexuality lead to repeated, harsh and blunt confrontations before any common ground can emerge. Waking Up in Vegas (Switzerland) Yael is drawn to his older brother, a weightlifter who repeatedly tries to bring him into training, although Yael is unsure that this is the life he wants. His uncertainty becomes more complicated through Aaron, his best friend…
Akira and Kanata seem unlikely to become close. They move through school in completely different ways, yet a staircase leading to the terrace gradually becomes the one place where they can drop the roles everyone else expects them to play. Over eight episodes of roughly 25 to 30 minutes each, their relationship develops with very little melodrama or added fluff. There are occasional moments of tension, but the series remains remarkably direct. They had recognized each other long before they ever exchanged names. Kanata was the well-liked student who was rarely alone, although something about him kept people from getting truly close. A football injury ended his playing days, and his withdrawal deepened after his younger brother joined a professional soccer team. Akira, meanwhile, is reserved and prefers to stay out of the spotlight. Their meetings on the terrace staircase give both of them room to speak honestly, and the friendship formed there slowly begins to carry feelings neither is ready to acknowledge. Akira has good reason to fear saying too much. He once confessed to his best friend, only to be met with silence and rejection, leaving him devastated. His connection with his brother's best friend offers a different kind of support. That person is also gay, and their physical and emotional relationship grows from a shared loneliness rather than feeling arbitrary. When Akira talks about Kanata, he is encouraged to stop hiding and be honest, especially since the relationship he currently has is unlikely to continue. While Akira struggles with the possibility of being hurt again, Kanata is…
I usually try to at least skim reviews before starting these BL shows, just so I don't sink my time into a dud. I really should've listened to myself this time, because this series turned out to be eight hours I'll never get back. The premise had some genuine potential, but the acting and direction did absolutely nothing with it. Making it through all eight episodes, each roughly forty five minutes long, felt like work. A young man named Kim moves to an island city to live with his uncle. There's supposedly a reason for the move, but honestly, it barely matters. After arriving, he meets a chef named Tao Sor. When Kim sees him again the next day, something has changed: Tao Sor doesn't recognize him at all. We soon learn that the mysterious chef has a condition that erases his memory every morning, so someone has to repeatedly remind him who he is. Kim begins falling for Tao Sor and proposes a plan to the hotel where Tao Sor works: they can attract tourists by offering cooking experiences with the chef, helping bring more business to the hotel. They agree to it. Tao Sor may forget everything every morning, but he's also a gifted painter, and he keeps experiencing recurring visions of Kim that he paints. Those visions lead him to believe that the two of them share some deeper connection. Near the end, we discover that Tao Sor isn't actually related to the family he's been living with. Years earlier, the family lost their biological son. When…
