Sally El Hosaini’s directorial debut, My Brother the Devil, is a touching and sensitive story of two Arab brothers in Hackney, London. During her sojourn in San Francisco as the San Francisco Film Society’s Artist-in-Residence, I sat down with El Hosaini to discuss her writing process, working with non-actors, her shoot, and her approach to the film’s aesthetic. […]
LGBTQ
Sundance Review: Take Me to the River is creepy, unsettling, and a tad thin
Perhaps the most polarizing film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, writer-director Matt Sobel’s Take Me To The River has left some critics grossed out and others fascinated with this evocative, probing mood piece that winds up a bit thin.
Sundance 2015 Review: Larry Kramer in Love and Anger captures both the man and the LGBT movement
By laying bare the horrors of dealing with AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, Carlomusto infuses us with the same anger and impatience that Kramer felt.
The best non-film posts of 2014 at The Seventh Row
Although I mostly dedicated my time to reviewing films in 2014, I still dabbled in theatre, television, and music reviews — my other passions. Here’s a look at my best writing of 2014 for The Seventh Row that’s not about film. 1. Theatre Review: Sam Mendes delivers a lucid, dark, and funny “King Lear” for NTLive One of […]
The Imitation Game: cracking the Nazi code and the human one
Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, an engaging but often silly look at the team who cracked the Enigma code.
Best of TIFF14: ‘The New Girlfriend’ is François Ozon in top form – whimsical, funny, thoughtful about gender and sexuality
The list of generally accepted labels may have expanded in the last thirty years, to comfortably include gay and trans, but the need to label hasn’t become obsolete yet. With “The New Girlfriend,” Ozon reminds us that defying labels isn’t something we outgrow, but often a natural part of a person’s identity, of any age.