Screen Queen

Justin Long is the cisgender male version of a Scream Queen. In movies such as “Jeepers Creepers,” “Drag Me To Hell,” “Tusk,” and “Barbarian,” he’s established himself as one of modern horror’s go-to actors. His latest twisted turn, “It’s A Wonderful Knife” (RJLE/Shudder), is a horror/slasher reimagining of perennial winter holiday favorite “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

There’s little doubt that actress/screenwriter/filmmaker Emerald Fennell established herself as an unstoppable force after her 2020 full-length feature debut masterpiece “Promising Young Woman.” Especially after she took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay at the 93rd Academy Awards. So, what did Fennell do for an encore?

The ongoing biopic craze shows no signs of slowing down or stopping. In 2023, movies about Bayard Rustin, Diana Nyad, and Leonard Bernstein, are among the offerings (and of special interest to LGBTQ viewers). 

It’s possible to dismiss the problems with “Down Low" (Sony) by saying it’s gay actor-turned-director Rightor Doyle’s feature-length directorial debut and he’s just inexperienced. Or maybe that it’s hot gay actor Lukas Gage’s (“The White Lotus,” season one) first screenplay co-write on what is essentially a vanity project. But because of the dedication of the lead and supporting actors, the problems aren’t insurmountable.

In just a matter of days, Halloween 2023 will be a thing of the past. Until that time, there are still plenty of horror movies to watch to put you in the mood to be sufficiently scared, as well as amused. In keeping with the currently popular horror comedy trend, consider queer filmmaker Nahnatchka Khan’s “Totally Killer” (Amazon Studios).

Halloween will be here before you know it. Fortunately, we have movies such as “My Animal” (Paramount) to put us in the (f)right mood. While there are some vague elements such as the time period (could be any time between the 1990s and present day) and the location (some of the accents scream New England), there’s nothing ambiguous about the way it equates queerness with supernatural otherness.

From the first time many of us saw Gael García Bernal onscreen, in “Amores Perros” or “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” we knew he had something special. A little spark they used to call “star quality.” In Almodóvar’s “Bad Education,” Iñárritu’s “Babel,” and more recently, Larraín’s “Ema,” Bernal was never anything less than riveting.

“Strange Way of Life” (Sony Pictures Classics) is gay, Spanish, filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s second English-language short feature following 2020's “The Human Voice.” It’s so thoroughly different from anything that Almodóvar has done previously that, even though it’s only 31 minutes long, it may take viewers longer to process than anything else in his oeuvre.

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