Film Reviews: “Blue Film” Is a Sweet, Gay Drama With a Vibe of Salaciousness; “The Sheep Detective” Is a Pretty Good Benoit Baaaaa Mystery; “The Wizard of the Kremlin” Is a Dry Tale of Putin’s Ascent in Russia

Blue Film (c) Strand Releasing

Review: Blue Film 
In Cinemas 

Ever since Elliot Tuttle’s Blue Film opened at the Edinburgh Film Festival last summer, it has carried an aura of naughty gay sexual content, sharing the same trajectory as the BDSM-themed “Pillion” during the same time frame. Pillion opened earlier this year and got decent reviews—now it’s time to see if Blue Film will get a similar reception or better. Aaron Eagle (Kieron Moore, from Boots) is an L.A. sex worker who, at the start of the film, is livestreaming (a la OnlyFans) to his many followers, receiving their adulation while verbally degrading them for it. He boasts that he is seeing one of them tonight for a date for a crazy amount of money. That date/hookup turns out to be with Hank (Reed Birney, of The Humans), an older man who insists on keeping a ski mask on. But as the evening proceeds, the two wear each other’s defenses down, and when the masks are (literally and metaphorically) finally taken off, they soon realize that both are using fake names and they actually know each other from a long-ago chapter in their lives. While the promised blueness of sex and sexual acts are indeed peppered throughout the movie, I was more disturbed by the excessive amount of a casual vaping (which, unlike gay sex, is totally unhealthy). If you’ve seen any episode of Heated Rivalry, you’ve seen more than what’s shown here. But what’s dangerous is the circumstances that the two men find themselves in, making the sex a bit more taboo or psychologically fraught. That the story becomes an understanding (maybe even love) between the two men is thanks to the two actors, the only people in the film. Moore is very charismatic once the rent boy persona is done away with (although there is a moment of Aaron metaphorically shedding his past that is unnecessarily on-the-nose) as his swagger turns to empathy. Birney has the harder role as Hank is (whether self-admitted or not) a sexual predator whose shame has led him to this odd redemption arc; the veteran stage actor is able to find shades of grace in this broken man. Blue Film is a more modest film than Pillion, but its sexual nature, when it arrives, is not sugar-coated for straight audience members, and rather par-for-the-course for gay ones. Ultimately, it is a nicely told character study that will be remembered more than just the physical acts depicted. 

The 79th Tony Award Nominations

Schmigadoon (c) Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

Here are the nominations for the 79th Tony Award, which will be handed out on Sunday, June 7, 2026. The host is P!nk. 

The Interested Bystander: Final 2025-26 Tony Award Nomination Predictions

The Lost Boys (c) Matthew Murphy

Most of the precursors have been announced. The Tony committee made their final rulings on category eligibility. It’s time for my final predictions for the 79th Tony Award Nominations, which will announced on Tuesday, May 5. There are questions in some categories as to how many nominees will be allowed, but I will make my best educated guess. 

Enjoy. 

Broadway Reviews: August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” Gets a Respectable Revival, While “The Balusters” and “Fallen Angels” Are Both Funny Shows Focusing on Bad Behavior

Joe Turner's Come and Gone (c) Julieta Cervantes

Broadway: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone 
At the Barrymore Theatre 

I consider August Wilson’s 1988 Joe Turner’s Come and Gone his best play in his series on the African American experience, set across each decade of the 20th century. It’s his best use of magical realism, perfectly integrated in the fabric of the post-slavery lives of these characters. The play is set in 1911 in a Pittsburgh boarding house run by Seth and Bertha Holly (Cedric “The Entertainer” and Taraji P. Henson), where people come and go paying $2 a week, and that includes meals. Currently, the tenants are a young, construction worker who wants to be a blues guitarist, Jeremy (Tripp Taylor); a jilted woman, Mattie (Nimene Sierra Wureh), lost without her boyfriend; Molly Cunningham (Maya Boyd), a more confident single woman who relishes her independence (and hysterically likes to talk about herself in the third person); and Bynum (Ruben Santiago-Hudson) who is more or less a full-time resident. Bynum is a conjuring man, who people go to when they have problems, but he also claims that when he was at his lowest he met someone he calls the Shining Man, who gave him back his spirit and song. Entering into their midst are Herald Loomis (Joshua Boone) and his young daughter Zonia (played in alternated performances by Savannah Commodore and Dominique Skye Turner), renting a room while Loomis searches for his missing wife. (Director Debbie Allen doesn’t want the audience to miss the huge symbolism that Wilson intends for a character named Herald instead of Harold by giving us ominous music as he enters the house.) Seth is suspicious of the stranger, but he agrees to let him stay as Loomis hires Selig (Bradley Stryker), a door-to-door salesman, who is known to find people. 

Broadway Review: “Beaches” Outlook Is Mostly Schmaltzy With a Good Chance of Wind (Beneath My Wings), “Becky Shaw” Is Fun and Mean (in Equal Measures), and a Noble “The Fear of 13” Muddies the True Story of a Death Row Inmate

Beaches (c) Marc J. Franklin

Broadway: Beaches 
At the Majestic Theatre 

I will always remember the 1988 film Beaches as the end of a trio of enjoyable Bette Midler female friends-centric films, starting with the comedies Outrageous Fortune with Shelley Long and Big Business with Lily Tomlin. I was a big fan of the first two, and while I certainly enjoyed Beaches, the more serious one with Barbara Hershey, its overly sincere and weepy elements weren’t to my taste. However, they were exactly what made it popular with its fans, and there was certainly no doubt the musical adaptation would embrace them. But having Iris Rainer Dart, the original author of the book the movie based on, as the writer here (with the late Thom Thomas) may have doomed the stage version as the show kept too many extraneous plot points that bog down the emotional bond between two lifelong friends. The flashier and brasher Cee Cee Bloom is played by the talented Jessica Vosk, who is fighting to find her own voice in the role, while the production won’t let the audience forget the Midler of it all. Kelli Barrett has an easier job playing the more sedate and fussy Bertie, and the two leads feel comfortable and lived in together, although they occasionally fall into a more Mary Richards-Rhoda Morgenstern rhythm instead of creating a unique vibe of their own.