There was a special mix of shame and liberation when you visited a gay bookstore that contained adult material. When I ventured into my first one in the Nineties, you might start out flipping through an Edmund White or Andrew Holleran novel before slowly making your way to the magazines: …
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The run-up to Justin Bieber‘s fifth studio album has been an emotional Bieber-coaster. First, he tried to galvanize his fanbase to stream his comeback single, “Yummy,” as it fell to the second spot the Rolling Stone Top 100 Songs chart and the Billboard Hot 100 thanks to the viral success …
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1969 was a year of groundbreaking change in the United States: not only was it the year of the moon landing and Woodstock, but it was also the year of the Stonewall riots and anti-war protests, a time when young people looked around and saw the sorry state of world …
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If you want the truth about Greek-American opera star Maria Callas, why not get it straight from the diva’s mouth. That’s the refreshing premise of Maria by Callas, a dazzling documentary from Tom Volf that draws from letters, unpublished memoirs, home movies, family photos, performances (far from audio perfection), journals …
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The Toronto International Film Festival is a grab-bag — all fests are, of course — but the 43rd annual edition of what’s arguably the major North American film event of any given year felt like an especially whiplash-inducing, something-for-every-film-nerd get-together this year. You could walk out of a prestige-seeking, Oscar-courting …
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In a year of stellar documentaries (Won’t You Be My Neighbor, RBG, McQueen), Minding the Gap takes its place with the cream of the crop. In his debut feature, filmmaker Bing Liu started with 12 years of footage that he shot in his hometown of Rockford, Illinois, to trace the …
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We know what you’re thinking: Why see a movie about a posh Manhattan hotel that most of us could never afford to stay in even for one night? It’s not just the fascination of watching how the one-percent lives; it’s because this storied 88-year-old hotel, filled with impossibly glamorous ghosts …
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In October 2015, David Bowie decided to end his cancer treatments after learning the disease had spread too far to recover from. The very same week, he traveled to a Brooklyn soundstage to shoot a video for his new song “Lazarus,” the name of a biblical figure that Jesus brought …
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