image courtesy of sbiff.org If every movie had a title sequence this good, cinema would be in much better shape. The film positions itself as a story about the gay experience in Thatcher’s England, but it’s really an immigrant story first and foremost. The movie says it best itself: for Pakistanis in England, you’re “nothing without money.” That line is the engine of everything that follows, and it’s the most honest thing the script has to say. Unfortunately, it takes its tim

image courtesy of behindthelensonline.net I don't like when a film is too manipulative. It feels artificial, and instead of tapping into my emotional core, it turns me off - that's the moment I start noticing the machinery instead of feeling anything. I can sense the gears turning, the swell of the score cued exactly where the script needs me to break, and once I'm aware of the apparatus, I'm gone, watching from the outside instead of living it from the inside. There's a real

Tilda Swinton is a female Nicolas Cage with a better batting average. She is almost always the most interesting character in any film she's in, whether she's playing a witch, a lawyer, or a social services worker who may or may not be human. In Orlando, Sally Potter's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's genre-defying novel, Swinton is asked to carry something even stranger than usual: a single character who lives for four centuries and switches sexes halfway through, all while bar

Pride Month has turned into something of a film festival for me this year, and watching these movies back to back has left me sitting with a question I can't quite resolve: how honest are they? I don't really know how true to the lived experience of these people any of this is.

image courtesy of thecinemaarchives.com I love a project movie - a group of people from different backgrounds coming together to achieve a common goal. The format works across every genre, as long as you have compelling performers and a script that earns its emotional beats. In its purest form, you make a film about a genuine collection of people who share the screen and blur the notion of a single lead until the question becomes irrelevant. That is precisely what director Ro