Thank queer nerds for the significant decline in the number of gay and lesbian characters who meet untimely ends on recent TV shows.  The other consequences of these nerds’ activism is part of the story of Gabrielle Zilkha’s entertainingly rousing
Read More »

Despite the title, there are no schizophrenic mutants to be found within the running time of Casey Beck’s short documentary “Legion.”   Instead, viewers will see Storm Troopers, Darth Vader, and Tie Fighter pilots in this film. That’s because the organization
Read More »

Brava Opening Night film “Cassandro The Exotico!” delivers a portrait of an openly gay lucha libre wrestler whose quarter century career has brought both honors and severe bodily injuries.  Marie Losier’s home movie-like look at this luchador Jackie Chan captures
Read More »

Are there Beyond Chron readers who remember The Church of the Subgenius, Second and Third Wave ska, Candida Royalle, or even the early days of MTV?  For those readers whose memories are a bit hazy, this year’s edition of the
Read More »

Cai Chengjie’s Rotterdam Film Festival award-winner “The Widowed Witch” shows that  computer graphics aren’t necessary to make a film intriguing. All that’s needed is a mix of entertaining ambiguity married to some tart insights about human nature. Er Hao, the
Read More »

Legendary director Ernst Lubitsch shows in his silent satirical slapstick comedy “The Oyster Princess” that the follies of the rich make for excellent comic fodder. Insanely rich heiress Ossi is the spoiled titular princess.  Her father Quaker is the incredibly
Read More »

What does it mean on an everyday level that America has gone from being the world’s greatest manufacturer to being yet another source of cheap labor?  Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s documentary “American Factory” offers some disconcerting answers.               The new
Read More »

Bay Area filmgoers who caught the Pacific Film Archive’s “1968 And Global Cinema” film series may have seen and enjoyed the anti-colonialism satire “How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman.”  However, those attendees could not have personally asked the film’s director
Read More »