Check It follows several members of the inspiring gay and transgender teen gang Check It through their struggles on the harsh streets of Washington, D.C.
LGBTQ
Vogueing at Berlinale: Kiki and Strike a Pose
Despite being a rather niche subject, two films about vogueing competed in the Panorama Documentary section at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.
Sandy Powell’s costumes in Carol tell what words can’t
Costume designer Sandy Powell showed how two starkly different women refashion one another into a perfect match.
Being 17 is more Sciamma’s than Techiné’s film
Berlinale correspondent Elena Lazic reviews Being 17. Although it was written by Céline Sciamma and directed by André Techiné, it’s got Sciamma’s fingerprints all over it.
Nasty Baby is a half-baked bougie satire
The film gleefully sends up bourgeois attitudes as ridiculous before suggesting they’re harmful. Yet we’re not meant to dislike the characters causing harm. It’s an interesting premise that hasn’t been fully fleshed out. Likewise, Silva’s choice to shoot the film handheld, in all its clumsiness, prevents the film from ever being a beautiful work of art. It’s an aesthetic designed to be cheap and adaptable to an improvised script, but it doesn’t allow for much formal rigour. It lulls us into a kind of complacency, setting up a story of middle-class liberalism, before subverting the genre’s expectations.
Please Like Me gets even better in season 3
Here in the third season, we get the sense that everything’s going to be OK — Josh, Tom, and Alan even repeat this mantra in unison — even if there are more storms to weather. Josh is finally in a loving, stable relationship in which he’s the rock. Tom is slowly figuring out how to grow up, as he plays third wheel to Josh and Arnold. Rose is living independently with her twenty-something friend Hannah, whom she met at the psychiatric facility last season, and their storylines are often independent of Josh. Josh still spends time with both of his parents, but he actually gets support from them rather than merely putting out their fires.