by Mattie Lucas
Cinema from a Decidedly Queer Perspective
I Saw the TV Glow | 2024
Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow is ostensibly a film about the bonds created by the communal act of watching favorite TV shows. These are the kinds of deeply personal cult hits that feel as though they're made just for you; like a secret shared amongst friends that not only defines you but gives you an identity as a member of an exclusive club in which minutiae and trivia become a kind of language only the initiated can understand.
Challengers | 2024
One need not be particularly interested in sports to find Luca Guadagnino's new tennis drama, Challengers, compelling. Guadagnino frames his tennis matches as either gladiatorial blood sports or sex, and sometimes both at the same time. Tennis is a relationship, Zendaya's Tashi Donaldson explains; and indeed, the tennis matches here are often thinly veiled stand-ins for dialogue the characters are either unwilling or unable to have.
Love Lies Bleeding | 2024
Love Lies Bleeding is perhaps the horniest, most aesthetically electrifying film I've seen in a multiplex in very long time. It's a sweaty, sweltering, heady mix of queer eroticism, crime thriller, magical realism, and dark comedy that feels genuinely rebellious in a way films rarely do anymore.