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 Hellcats are an all-female gang bent on bucking authority at their high school. New student Joyce moves into the neighborhood and quickly draws their attention. Desperate for acceptance and unhappy with her home life, she becomes close to the Hellcats and begins drinking, dancing and meeting boys. Can Joyce's parents stop her descent into depravity?
Highlighting the many ways in which AFF 2023 illustrated that the queer experience is not a monolithic one.
The Suicide Squad's Polka-Dot Man aka Abner Krill, played by David Dastmalchian, helped me come to terms with my own issues of anxiety.
Perhaps the most amazing and groundbreaking quality about The Birdcage is how removed it is from both illness and insensitivity. Whereas films preceding it were often somber stories about the tribulations of being gay in a conservatively straight world, Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May expose the fallacies of conservatism as traditional values are thrown into a more open-minded space. They don’t care how far the community has fallen so much as how high they can rebuild themselves.
Knives Out doesn’t just defy the whodunit narrative, it uses the weaknesses to its advantage. It’s well aware of the genre’s faults and tropes
Miles Morales learns to be his own hero as he takes on the well loved mantle of Spider-Man in a multiverse of Spider-People.
In addition to the cast being delightfully diverse this time around, the film was just loosely-plotted and action-packed enough to keep a casual fan like myself entertained. While I do agree that the writing of Cole left much to be desired for an original character thrust into a preconceived universe, none of the characters seemed particularly fleshed out in terms of personality; however, I think that's to be expected when you're watching a film literally inspired by a video game.