Movie Reviews and Other Writings

Lingua Franca is a film about a Filipina immigrant, Olivia, who is a caretaker for a woman, Olga, with a disease that is affecting her memory. Olivia is undocumented as well as a transgender woman and she lives in constant fear that ICE will come to her door as she's seen happen for so many she knows. Alex is Olga's grandson and a recovering addict who comes to live with her. Alex and Olivia's mutual attraction upends Olivia's life in ways she hoped to avoid. The film stars I

Margarita with a Straw is a film about a young woman, Laila, exploring her sexuality while away at college. It also happens that she has cerebral palsy, which means she often uses an electric wheelchair for mobility. After experiencing heartbreak at her university in Dehli, she petitions to study abroad in New York. While there she meets a young activist, Khanum, and the two women start a relationship. Their bond frays as Laila struggles with how to come out to her parents an

Luca is about a young sea monster who dreams of a life that's not so ordinary. He has a healthy fascination with the world above the water and one day he runs into another young sea monster who shows him the joy and excitement of surface life. The two embark on an adventure to try and win enough money for a vespa so they can ride away and explore the surface world. Of course, if they get one drop of water on them, though, their secret is revealed and they may be hunted by the

Saving Face is about young doctor, Wilhelmina Pang, Wil for short, who is comfortable in her living arrangements when two things happen to rock her world at the foundations. The first is that she has a crush on the beautiful Vivian, the second that her 48 year old, unmarried mother is pregnant and refuses to tell anyone who the baby's father is. Their small Chinese-American community is abuzz with all of the hot gossip, but Wil is desperate to just go back under the radar so

In the Heights is a musical set in the heavily Latinx, Manhattan neighborhood, Washington Heights. The story centers around Usnavi, who dreams of reopening his father's bar down in the Dominican Republic. He's joined by Vanessa who wants her fashions to be the talk of the town. As well as Nina who is facing challenges at Stanford after the weight of the neighborhood is on her shoulders for being one of the only ones to "get out." As well as Benny who wants to run his own busi

My Own Private Idaho is about Mike, a narcoleptic street hustler, and his best friend (and crush) Scott, a trust fund brat who lives on the streets because he chooses to, who travel the Pacific Northwest looking for that next score. As Mike has strange visions of his mother that bring on his bouts of narcolepsy, he starts to yearn to reconnect with her. Scott is game to go along as he rejects his father's way of life until he can't anymore. The men range from Idaho to Rome an

Raya and the Last Dragon is about a world that used to have grand and beautiful magic to it, but a horrible plague of awful beings, the Druun, came. The dragons helped defend humanity and defeated the Druun, humanity fractured itself into factions and ultimately broke apart the gem that the dragons left behind to protect humanity, releasing the Druun yet again. Raya is on a quest to reunite the pieces of the gem and defeat the Druun, but to do that, she must first find the wh

Please note: This film is nearly 30 years old and I may be writing about major plot points with abandon, so if you are a movie purist, please watch The Living End and come back to this page after. The Living End is about Jon, a writer and want to be filmmaker, and Luke, a nihilist drifter. The two men are thrown together and are compelled to stay with each other as they commiserate about their shared HIV positive status. Many odd circumstances propel them away from responsibi

Often when one hears of this month, or the LGBTQ+ community, we're treated as a monolith. Just as other minority communities are spoken of as if they have one mind, the queer community is often stifled by the lack of recognition of our diversity of thought and belief. When a mainstream audience sees a queer story on screen, it's more often than not a tragedy. These stories skip the nuance and the joy for the struggle as if all our lives are lived waiting for the majority's pi