This short film follows Shaun J. Wright as he takes us through his roots in vogueing/ballroom culture and house music. “Sometimes I feel like I’m up against certain barriers, because when I look at who is given space to express themselves, it is people who don’t look like me. I feel like I come up against challenges that other people don’t, and that’s just the life of a black person. Queer on top of it.” —Shaun J. Wright
"The Platform" is horror and science fiction film doubling as a visual commentary on capitalism and economic inequality. The movie is not for the faint of heart nor the viewer hoping for political neutrality in their film's depth.
Ultimately the problem with The Bubble is that it plays everything for laughs to get around the audience’s defenses. But it comes off like a privileged white male thinking that ridiculing everyone else equally is the road to equality. And it’s not. And it's definitely not funny to pretend that it is.
Outer Banks (2020-) knows its audience: young adults in a country that can’t stop romanticizing good ole’ treasure hunts. Add a little of Riverdale’s (2017-) sex appeal, and no one can look away. Forty years after The Goonies (1985) America’s consciousness hasn’t strayed from the same tropes: treasure hunts, a vulnerable white male lead, and the whitewashing of a racially segregated setting.
Pressure is an unambiguously great movie, lead by convincing performances, a well-crafted script, good direction, and at least some social awareness.
Remakes. Reboots. Reinventions. Redundancy. It's the common practice in Hollywood of late, sometimes offering us victorious reimagining of what can be considered cinematic classics while also, more often, falling flat on their UN-imaginative faces in utter defeat and lackluster results. Admittedly, with this in mind, I went into the newest incarnation of "The War of the Roses" with typical trepidation and cautious optimism.
These openly gay Hollywood figures risked so much by being honest about their sexuality: judgment, loss of employment, hate – even violence and death.
