Life in the bad old days
Bay Area Reporter, December 13, 2012
Any Day Now is a moving, funny account of a gay couple's attempt to rescue a developmentally challenged child from the clutches of a California judicial system whose mindless cruelty could make Charles Dickens weep.

"Any Day Now" makes injustice risible
Village Voice, December 12, 2012
Gay-male weepies have left a long trail of tears, stretching back to the sobbing, self-loathing queens of The Boys in the Band, and including high-prestige pictures like Philadelphia (1993) and Brokeback Mountain (2005). The shameless heartstring-tugging of "Any Day Now" begins immediately, as mentally disabled Marco, clutching a blond-haired doll, is seen—mostly from behind—roaming the streets of Los Angeles at night.

The Enduring Erotic Life Cycle of an Unpromising Relationship
New York Times, September 7, 2012
Ira Sachs’s sensitive, knowing new film, "Keep the Lights On," follows Erik and Paul for more than a decade, during which their relationship blossoms, withers and renews itself like a perennial flower with a peculiar and unpredictable life cycle.

Cloudburst -- Film treats lesbians with respect, but patronizes seniors
WinnipegFreePress.com, August 3, 2012
Emotion Pictures Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker play a couple who run off to Canada to get married when one of them is put in a home.

"Farewell My Queen" -- Another kind of queen
Dallas Voice, August 3, 2012
Marie Antoinette indulges in something other than cake in ‘Farewell, My Queen.’ Director Benoit Jacquot wastes no time in portraying the queen as flirtatious toward her handmaid, Sidonie. It’s not 10 minutes in before Marie has snuggled up next to her, their breath heating each other so much even the frigid aristocrats who see them are scandalized by the sexual tension.

"Private Romeo" -- Shirtless cadets as Shakespeare's ill-fated young lovers
New York Times, February 12, 2012
Whose curiosity wouldn’t be piqued by the opportunity to see a clutch of high school cadets re-enact Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” as a modern-day gay tragedy? Even the playwright himself would spring for a ticket to Alan Brown’s “Private Romeo,” an earnest experiment in don’t-ask-don’t-tell drama as indebted to shirtlessness as to iambic pentameter.

"Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same"
New York Times, January 6, 2012
In “Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same,” Madeleine Olnek’s witty ode to urban love and shoestring sci-fi, a lonely Manhattanite and an exiled extraterrestrial find interspecies contentment.

"Pariah"' a gay coming-of-age story that's come of age
Reuters, December 28, 2011
First-time writer-director Dee Rees avoids all the usual clichés with the powerful “Pariah,” a moving story that’s told with intelligence, heart and a working knowledge of the real world we live in. Even coming in at a lean 86 minutes, the film paints a fully formed picture not only of its budding protagonist but also of the family and friends around her.

"Albert Nobbs" -- Finding a safe harbor in male identity
New York Times, December 27, 2011
Glenn Close’s portrayal of Albert Nobbs, a woman disguised as a man in early-20th-century Ireland, is both charming and sad.

"The Skin I Live In" -- A Beautiful Prisoner Lost in Almodóvar’s Labyrinth
New York Times, October 13, 2011
There are several genres nimbly folded into “The Skin I Live In,” which might also be described as an existential mystery, a melodramatic thriller, a medical horror film or just a polymorphous extravaganza. In other words, it’s an Almodóvar movie with all the attendant gifts that implies: lapidary technique, calculated perversity, intelligent wit. There’s also beauty and spectacle.

"Tomboy" -- A summer of freedoms in boyhood
New York Times, November 22, 2011
If you didn’t know the title of the French movie “Tomboy,” an intimately scaled film about a 10-year-old girl who wants to be a boy, or at least enjoy some boyish freedoms, you might not know the sex of the pretty child in the opener. And you might not think it mattered.

"J. Edgar" -- Finding humanity in the F.B.I.’s feared enforcer
New York Times, November 9, 2011
Even with all the surprises that have characterized Clint Eastwood’s twilight film years, with their crepuscular tales of good and evil, the tenderness of the love story in “J. Edgar” comes as a shock. Anchored by a forceful, vulnerable Leonardo DiCaprio, who lays bare J. Edgar Hoover’s humanity, despite the odds and an impasto of old-coot movie makeup, this latest jolt from Mr. Eastwood is a look back at a man divided and of the ties that bind private bodies with public politics and policies.

Leo and Armie on the Hoover Love Story
Advocate.com, November 11, 2011
Armie Hammer says it was the love story at the center of J.Edgar that drew him to the project, while Leonardo DiCaprio suggests that it was being emotionally repressed and an insatiable need for power that compromised his feelings for Clyde Tolson.

Sizing up the 20th century with the cross-dressing head of the FBI
San Antonio Current, November 11, 2011
It's no secret these days that J. Edgar Hoover was a real bastard. But back in the day he was a paragon of American idealism and fortitude. As director of the FBI from 1935 to 1972, he built and ran the organization as the nation's premier protector, champion, and defender of old-fashioned values. He served under eight presidents, scaring the shit out of almost all of them. He kept files on enemies. He kept files on friends. He spied on U.S. citizens. He hated the Kennedys. And he liked to dress up in women's clothing from time to time.

"Weekend" -- Morning after turns into dance of discovery
New York Times, October 21, 2011
“Weekend,” Andrew Haigh’s astonishingly self-assured, unassumingly profound second feature is a matter-of-fact, tightly focused observation of two young men who find their one-night stand growing into something more serious. It is about the paradoxes and puzzlements of gay identity in a post-identity-politics era, and also about the enduring mystery of sexual attraction and its consequences.

"We Were Here" -- In a City’s Plague Years, Caring for Their Own
New York Times, September 9, 2011
“We Were Here” is an unblinking chronology of the AIDS epidemic, recounted by five people who lived through it and watched countless friends and lovers die. The humility, wisdom and cumulative sorrow expressed lend the film a glow of spirituality and infuse it with grace.