If anything, Hoberman’s comment underestimated the seismic impact that “Schindler’s List” would have around the public imagination. Even for the kids and grandchildren of survivors — raised into awareness but starved for understanding — Spielberg’s popcorn version in the Shoah arrived with the power to try and do for concentration camps what “Jurassic Park” experienced done for dinosaurs before the same year: It exhumed an unfathomable period of history into a blockbuster spectacle so watchable and well-engineered that it could shrink the legacy of the entire epoch into a single eyesight, in this scenario potentially diminishing generations of deeply personal stories along with it.
Underneath the cultural kitsch of all of it — the screaming teenage fans, the “king in the world” egomania, the instantly universal language of “I want you to attract me like among your French girls” — “Titanic” is as personal and cohesive as any film a fraction of its size. That intimacy starts with Cameron’s personal obsession with the Ship of Dreams (which he naturally cast to play itself in the movie that ebbs between fiction and reality with the same bittersweet confidence that it flows between past and present), and continues with every facet of the script that revitalizes its essential story of star-crossed lovers into something iconic.
This clever and hilarious coming of age film stars Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as two teenage best friends who commit to go to at least one last party now that high school is over. Dever's character has one of many realest young lesbian stories you'll see inside of a movie.
Created with an intoxicating candor for sorrow and humor, from the moment it begins to its heart-rending resolution, “All About My Mother” could be the movie that cemented its director being an international pressure, and it remains one of many most impacting things he’s ever made. —CA
The patron saint of Finnish filmmaking, Aki Kaurismäki more or less defined the country’s cinematic output during the 80s and 90s, releasing a gradual stream of darkly comedic films about down-and-out characters enduring the absurdities of everyday life.
Figuratively (and almost literally) the ultimate movie on the twentieth Century, “Fight Club” may be the story of the average white American man so alienated from his id that he becomes his own
did for feminists—without the car going off the cliff.” In other words, put the Kleenex away and just enjoy love since it blooms onscreen.
and so are thirsting to begin to see the legendary drag queen and actor in action, Divine gives on the list of best performances of her life in this campy and vibrant John Waters classic. You already love the musical remake, fall loveherfeet in love with the original.
Jane Campion doesn’t put much stock in labels — seemingly preferring to adhere on the old Groucho Marx chestnut, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will acknowledge people sexy picture like me as a member” — and it has invested her career pursuing work that speaks to her sensibilities. Request Campion for her personal views of feminism, and you simply’re likely to get an answer like the a single she gave fellow filmmaker Katherine Dieckmann in the chat for Interview Magazine back in 1992, when she was still working on “The Piano” (then known as “The Piano Lesson”): “I don’t belong to any clubs, and I dislike club mentality of any kind, even feminism—although I do relate on the purpose and point of feminism.”
The film ends with a haunting repetition of names, all former lovers and friends of Jarman’s who died of AIDS. This haunting elegy is meditation on health issues, silence, plus the void may be the closest film has ever come to representing Demise. —JD
In addition to giving many shesfreaky viewers a first glimpse into urban queer tradition, this landmark documentary about New York xxxcom City’s underground ball scene pushed the Black and Latino gay communities towards the forefront to the first time.
The year Caitlyn Jenner came out as a trans woman, this Oscar-successful biopic about Einar Wegener, among the list of first people to undergo gender-reassignment surgical procedures, helped to further more enhance trans awareness and heighten visibility of the community.
With his third feature, the young Tarantino proved that he doesn’t need any gimmicks to tell a killer story, turning Elmore Leonard’s “Rum Punch” into twinks begging for daddy gay sex and boy with machines a tight thriller anchored by a career-best performance from the legendary Pam Grier. While the film never tries to hide the fact that it owes as much to Tarantino’s love for Blaxploitation since it does to his affection for Leonard’s supply novel, Grier’s nuanced performance allows her to show off a softer side that went criminally underused during her pimp-killing heyday.
From that rich premise, “Walking and Talking” churns into a characteristically reduced-crucial but razor-sharp drama about the complexity of women’s interior lives, as the writer-director brings such deep oceans of feminine specificity to her dueling heroines (and their palpable screen chemistry) that her attention can’t help but cascade down onto her male characters as well.