Film Reviews: Catching Up on Oscar Buzzy Films Like the Heartbreaking Family Drama, “Hard Truths”; the Political Religious Drama “Conclave”; the Soap Opera Trans Drama, “Emilia Pérez”; and a Shameful Chapter in the Jim Crow South Drama, “Nickel Boys”

Hard Truths (c) Bleecker Street

Film: Hard Truths 
In Cinemas 

There is a brilliant scene in Mike Leigh’s 1996 breakthrough film Secrets & Lies in which a white working-class woman named Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) agrees to meet with the daughter she gave up at birth, but when an upper-class black woman played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, shows up. Cynthia thinks it’s a joke or a clerical mistake. But as she amiably explains the impossibility of it all, a darkness comes over her face as it dawns on her how she could be this woman’s mother, and she starts to cry hysterically with her newfound daughter helpless to console her. In Leigh’s latest film, Hard Truths, a similar scene is playing out on Mother’s Day, but this time it’s Jean-Baptiste as the mother Patsy, who, up to this point an angry, impossible, paranoid, misanthropic pill, is informed that her socially awkward son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) has done something unexpected, and she starts to laugh (the first time in the movie) until it turns into an almost primal roar of grief and sorrow. It is an amazing moment of maternal symmetry and is the most memorable moment of hard truths and pain in both films, almost 30 years apart. Jean-Baptiste is a revelation as Patsy, who is one of the most unlikeable persons ever put to screen, even if, as she explains to anyone who hadn’t already tuned her out, she has a (unnamed) medical condition as a way to gain sympathy, something she is unwilling to reciprocate to anyone who crosses her path. The only person who understands, tolerates and throws it back in her face is Patsy’s younger sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), who is as positive and fun as Patsy is negative and perpetually scowling. Their relationship is the heart of the film, and even as we await every bile-filled rant from Patsy, Leigh shows in the Mother’s Day scene that there is real pain beneath it all. Yes, it might be a chore to some to spend ninety minutes with such a character, but in Jean-Baptiste’s hands with a much-needed assist from Austin, Hard Truths is a cathartic and painful look at how just living life can really be a daunting task. 

The Interested Bystander’s Oscar Predictions: November 2024

Emilia Pérez (c) Netflix

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and I bet you are here because you’re secretly scrolling around your phone during the interminable __________ (fill in: football game, parade, lunch, Thanksgiving dinner. And for that, you’re welcome. 

Film Review: Daniel Craig Is a Revelation as a Young William S. Burroughs Lost in Mexico in Luca Guadagnino’s Bold Vision of “Queer”

Queer (c) Yannis Drakoulidis

Film: Queer 
In Cinemas Nov 22 

Premise: William S. Burroughs is mostly associated with the Beat Generation of 1950s writers along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and mostly known for his novel, Naked Lunch, which followed his debut novel, Junky. Junky centers around Burroughs’ autobiographical protagonist William Lee and his heroin addiction. Queer was a sequel to Junky but was abandoned and not released until 1985. While the novel still deals with Lee’s addiction to heroin, the main focus is his obsession with young Eugene Allerton (loosely based on Burroughs’ friend Adelbert Lewis Marker) and their on-again off-again relationship. Luca Guadagnino’s new film has Daniel Craig as Lee, in one of his most significant non-Benoit Blanc role after putting James Bond behind him, and Lee is a jittery, obnoxious snob living in Mexico with a small group of queers, including fellow writer Joe (an unrecognizable Jason Schwartzman), when he notices the clean and confidant Allerton (Drew Starkey) who seems to hang out with women (playing a lot of chess) but keeps all the gay men in his orbit curious about how straight he is. Lee is persistent in his pursuit of Allerton, and they become a couple of a sort, with Lee trying to let Allerton have his straight freedom while pining for him by drowning himself with liquor and drugs. On a trip to South America with Allerton, Lee is searching for a new drug called ayahuasca that he hears makes people clairvoyant. His excursion in the jungle leads him to the doorstep of a hippie botanist, Dr. Cotter (an even more unrecognizable Lesley Manville), who has obviously sampled what she’s researching. Cotter warns the two men that ayahuasca is not a trippy drug like heroin, but it will open their minds and consciousness. 

Broadway Reviews: “Death Becomes Her” Is a Camp Sensation; “Maybe Happy Ending” Is a Lovely New Musical; and Bless Your Heart, “Tammy Faye”

Death Becomes Her (c) Matthew Murphy + Evan Zimmerman

Broadway: Death Becomes Her 
At the Lunt-Fontaine Theatre 

Gay men and musical theater have always had a symbiotic relationship, but this season producers are baldly courting this “disposable income” demographic with shows that are not even queer-coded but proudly shouting the quiet gay parts out loud. To the list of shows like The Big Gay Jamboree, DRAG: The Musical, "Oh, Mary!" and Sunset Blvd, you can now add “Death Becomes Her,” the deliriously funny new musical based on the 1992 Meryl Streep-Goldie Hawn film, where two enormously talented and game actresses are essentially drag queening these memorable characters on stage. Once only known for her role in the TV series Smash, Megan Hilty has cemented a new “known for” role as a vain, two-time Oscar-nominated actress Madeline (the Streep character), eschewing traditional musical comic line readings with deliciously sassy lines “reads” worthy of RuPaul herself. Not to be outdone, Jennifer Simard’s aspiring novelist Helen Sharp (the Hawn role) may start out meek but is soon delivering acid-filled asides with the skill and vocal register-dropping accuracy of a Charles Busch. These two frenemies also have a tug-of-war over the hapless plastic surgeon Ernest Menville (the straight-lace, but always funny Christopher Sieber). And as if the show couldn’t be any gayer, there’s also the divine Michelle Williams (formerly of Destiny’s Child) as the mysterious Viola Van Horn (played in the movie by Isabella Rossellini), who tempts Madeline with a Fountain of Youth elixir. Williams starts the show dressed (in one of invaluable costume designer Paul Tazewell’s many jaw-dropping creations) like a couture perfume bottle ready-made for the Met Gala, but not necessarily for walking. Williams also gets a rare, thunderous second (!) burst of applause when she re-enters the story about 45 minutes into the first act, as if to remind the audience there are no small roles in musical theater for a diva. 

Theater Reviews: Capsule Reviews of “DRAG: The Musical” (Doesn’t Drag), “Mama I’m a Big Girl Now” (Is All About the Mamas), “The Devil’s Disciple” (Is Heavenly), “Sunset Blvd” (Has Fun U-Turns) and “What A Wonderful World” (About a Complicated Life)

DRAG: The Musical (c) Matthew Murphy

Theater: DRAG: The Musical 
At New World Stages 

When we first hear the Queen of Drag Queens herself, Liza Minelli, in voice-over, to set up the scene for DRAG: The Musical, I thought all was right in this messed-up world we currently find ourselves in. I am certainly not a connoisseur of the drag scene (I watched the first season of RuPaul’s Drag Race when the prize was like a hundred-dollar gift card), but the first shock of the evening wasn’t Liza, but the fact that the musical (written by Tomas Costanza, Justin Andrew Honard and Ashley Gordon) had rock-and-roll, almost grudge-style songs over what I would consider more of a drag milieu: show tunes (we are Off-Broadway) or at least club music. I got accustomed to the songs as the show proceeded (they were catchy), but it was a surprising choice. Otherwise, everything else about this show was the hoot I knew it would be. The story (as told by Liza) is about two drag queens/former besties who now own competing drag bar establishments across the block from each other and their ongoing…snatch games (again, not a watcher). It gives every member of the Fish Tank, headed by Alexis Gillmore (Broadway vet Nick Adams), as well as the ones from the Cat House, headed by Kitty Galloway (Alaska Thunderfuck), enough stage time to strut their stuff and read each other with finger-snapping regularity. These talented performers, many alums from reality TV like Lagoona Bloo, Jan Sport and Jujubee, are only vaguely familiar to me, but it was obvious by the cheers and the guffaws from the rest of the audience that they were fan favorites. Also in the show is Tom, Alexis’ estranged brother, who is, amusingly, the token “straight man” played by Joey McIntyre (finally someone from the Block I do know) and will be played by Rent star Adam Pascal starting on December 11. This is all to say that DRAG: The Musical, nimbly directed and choreographed by Spencer Liff, is one of the most unabashedly enjoyable shows in New York right now for acolytes and neophytes alike.