“Strong Island” is as much about the search for truth as the impossibility of finding it. With unimaginable grace, Ford interrogates the painful history of race in America and its indelible hold on him and his family. Through unembellished interviews with family and friends, we learn that no charges were ever brought for his brother’s murder, and that William and Ford never spoke about his evolving gender identity. Guided by the filmmaker’s narration, “Strong Island” follows Ford on a labyrinthine search for answers as he exposes his raw emotions in front of the camera.
Tracing his family’s journey from the Jim Crow South to the illusory safety of a predominantly black Long Island suburb, Ford attempts to make sense of his transformative loss. In the tradition of “My Architect” and “Stories We Tell,” filmmaker Yance Ford opens the wounds of his own family tragedy in “Strong Island,” a stunning magnum opus about the 1992 murder of his 24-year-old brother, William. Although the tennis took a backseat to the story of how King battled her inner demons to win equality for all women, the central love story between King and hairdresser Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough) unfolds so tenderly and satisfyingly that it gives new meaning to the term “lesbian haircut.” 7.
#TOP GAY MOVIES WITH BOLD SCENES MOVIE#
Somehow, the movie came and went with virtually no discussion about an A-lister like Emma Stone playing a lesbian icon without any fear of how it might affect her career that it’s no longer news is news itself. In “Battle of the Sexes,” we get a fast-talking Sarah Silverman doing her best impression of an old-school Hollywood agent, a husband and a girlfriend (both neglected but doting), and an emotional locker room scene that only arrives once victory has as well. The term “sports biopic” conjures up images of tough-talking coaches, neglected wives, and heads hung in locker rooms.
But the choice to place her life’s story, or its most defining chapter, in the hands of “Little Miss Sunshine” directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton would suggest otherwise.
#TOP GAY MOVIES WITH BOLD SCENES TV#
“I have terrible taste,” tennis legend Billie Jean King recently told IndieWire as she rattled off her favorite TV shows (“NCIS,” “Blue Bloods,” and “Riverdale”). Throw in a wry Alicia Silverstone as Heche’s disgruntled girlfriend, not to mention nary a gratuitous sex scene in sight, and “Catfight” sets the bar high for wildly entertaining, irreverently feminist, and queer-leaning films made by men.
They’re out for blood and glory, and their desires have nothing to do with the opposite sex. Had they actually seen the movie, they would have recognized that “Catfight” is in fact quite the feminist work - it’s just the kind of feminism that sees women as just as flawed, broken, and disgusting as men. Giving Anne Heche and Sandra Oh the juiciest roles of their recent careers, Brooklyn-based filmmaker Onur Tukel managed to make a deeply pro-woman film that pissed off a lot of feminists with its title alone. Delightfully subversive and alive with a distinctly contemporary absurdism, “Catfight” is about two women who hate each other.
If a few gay sex scenes are enough to count a film as queer, then a few lesbian fights should suffice-and that’s not even counting the epic takedowns that give this wild ride its title.