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.

Jess celebrates a milestone in her life in this short, very serious film.
Highlighting the many ways in which AFF 2023 illustrated that the queer experience is not a monolithic one.
Michael Shanks’ Together is a queasy, hilarious, and surprisingly heartfelt body-horror trip that fuses love and terror in the most literal sense. Starring real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie, this midnight gem twists Plato’s soulmate myth into a gory, darkly funny tale of codependency, cults, and chainsaws — equal parts romance and nightmare.
Netflix's new thriller Apex, starring Charlize Theron, puts a twist on survival horror. Despite its setting in the beautiful- yet-dangerous Australian wilderness, Apex is not a movie about man vs. nature. Instead, it’s woman vs. man. While checking out the title card and its unpretentious Netflix release might lead viewers to believe Apex is just another celebrity project churned out of the streaming machine, Apex - whether by luck or by intention - is a consistently harrowing film about the reality of being a woman in a public space.
Its predictability shouldn’t distract from the enjoyment that the pure cinematic imagination behind the camera elicits. It is a movie of crises both moral and mortal, oozing with CGI, and thoroughly enjoyable.
Disney movies have taken a bit of a downward turn recently. How come?
While the director didn't set out to make a feminist film, "A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night" reads as a reclamation of female power in a patriarchal society.