Orlando, My Political Biography

Transgender philosopher-filmmaker Paul B. Preciado’s “Orlando, My Political Biography” starts with footage of the filmmaker on a city street at night, wheatpasting posters with slogans, questions, and cryptic statements, and only becomes more playfully abstruse from there. The film is “political” in that…

Max’s Rapsh!t Returns for a Moody Second Season

When writer, actor, and director Issa Rae’s sophomore Max show “Rapsh!t” first premiered last summer, it was quickly, and correctly, branded a triumph for the multihyphenate creator. The new series shared some DNA with Rae’s brilliant first TV project “Insecure”—a…

Short Films in Focus: Troy

We’ve all had that one neighbor you can hear through the walls of your apartment. The one who makes no apologies for their loudness or their peculiar habits. The one where you have to muster up the courage to knock on…

Sly

Sylvester Stallone has always been known for his physicality, but Thom Zimny’s documentary “Sly” confirms that it was his voice that made him a star.  Actually, as the movie makes clear, there are two voices, intertwined. One is the New York-accented baritone croak that Stallone speaks…

Beyond Utopia

We live in a world of abundant beauty and unspeakable horror. We can perceive its myriad features to a certain extent partly because we are permitted to. One of the locales of horror on our sphere is the country of…