Viggo Mortensen’s ‘Falling’ Binds Art and Life
Viggo Mortensen's first directorial feature, Falling -- a mix of hope and existentialist despair -- is rooted in the story of his family.
homosexuality
Horrors in the Closet: Horrifying Heteronormative Scapegoating
The artificial connection between homosexuality and communism created the popular myth of evil and undetectable gay subversives living inside 1950s American society. Film both reflected and refracted the homophobia.
How Kenneth Anger Created Camp Cinema with His Short Film, ‘Puce Moment’
With his 1949 avant-garde short film, Puce Moment, Kenneth Anger is vomiting glamour into our face, objectifying objects, sexualizing what cannot, in a vacuum, be sexualized: silk, velvet, cotton, glitter -- and we cannot get enough of it.
Brian Selznick Communicates Wordlessly with Walt Whitman in Abram’s ‘Live Oak, with Moss’
Language and image never combine in Abrams' Live Oak, with Moss; they are distant lovers, if you will, as divided as Walt Whitman and Brian Selznick are as collaborators.
Michael Donkor Brings Forth the Power of Women in ‘Housegirl’
Michael Donkor's Housegirl, a PopMatters' pick, is a strong debut novel about traditional changes and personal awakenings.
Disobedience Is Essential: Interview with Filmmaker Sebastián Lelio
Sebastián Lelio reflects on his first English language feature, Disobedience, and how art, the individual, and society benefits from one's rebellion against one's own worldview.
On Mishima, and Feeling That One Exists
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a singular portrait of an artist's life lived so fiercely as to have left an indelible mark on an alienated world seeking affirmation for its own existence.
‘Boy Erased’ Is an Easy-to-Swallow Capsule of Sexual Repression
Director Joel Edgerton's well-intentioned drama about gay conversion therapy fails to deliver any new insight or even a good cry.
All the Right Intentions Can’t Bring ‘Boy Erased’ to Life
The tragedy of conversion therapy is confronted in Boy Erased, a well-meaning but perfectly conventional message movie.
Gay Conversion Therapy Onscreen: Joel Edgerton On ‘Boy Erased’
Actor-director Joel Edgerton details the sensitive process of making Boy Erased and how the film could act as a lifeline for families who have experienced gay conversion therapy.
The Limits of Hospitality in Fred Rogers Documentary, ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor?’
Our work on this Earth, Rogers insists, is Tikkun Olam (repairing the world). So why does Morgan Neville shut down the possibility of queerness in his documentary?