A Queer Review of the Austin Film Festival (2023)
Highlighting the many ways in which AFF 2023 illustrated that the queer experience is not a monolithic one.

The first part of a historical film dilogy based on the story “Emshan” by Maurice Simashko. XIII century. Equal to God, Sultan Beybars — the ruler of Egypt, who has the largest fleet in the Mediterranean, crushed the Crusader troops and countless hordes of Genghis Khan’s descendant – recalls the life path he passed before ascending to the throne of the ruler.
Highlighting the many ways in which AFF 2023 illustrated that the queer experience is not a monolithic one.
For those tranquil houses with white fences, what is happening behind every closed door?
These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.
Is Parasite a Horror Movie? Bong Joon-ho, one of South Korea’s parasite horror movies and most prolific filmmakers, decided to grace the world with one of the bizarre and fascinating movies of 2019.
"Beef" is a new dark comedy with a near entire Asian-American cast
I highly recommend Kill Bill: Volume 2. In classic Tarantino fashion, specific sections of the film are a tad too long, but overall, it’s a wonderful piece of escapist fiction.