Category: Comedy
Rated: R
Time: 119 minutes
Released: 1996 - Color - US
Cast: Robin Williams, Tom McGowan, Grant Heslov, Kirby Mitchell
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Critic:
Category: Comedy
Rated: R
Time: 119 minutes
Released: 1996 - Color - US
Cast: Robin Williams, Tom McGowan, Grant Heslov, Kirby Mitchell
Polished if obvious remake of La Cage Aux Folles will please anyone who hasn’t seen or doesn’t remember the original. Robin Williams is fairly subdued as a South Beach, Miami nightclub owner who’s forced to ask his high-strung, drag-queen performer/partner (Lane) to hide away while his son brings his prospective in-laws – an ultra-conservative couple – to dinner. Screenplay by Elaine May, who added fresh lines to the foolproof blueprint of the original.
Critic:
Category: Drama
Rated: R
Time: 118 minutes
Released: 1999 - Color - US
Director: Kimberly Peirce
Cast: Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard, Brendan Sexton III, Alicia Goranson, Alison Folland, Jeanetta Arnette, Rob Campbell, Matt McGrath, Cheyenne Rushing, Robert Prentiss, Josh Ridgway, Craig Erickson, Stephanie Sechrist, Jerry Haynes
This is a poignant and powerful film. It is based on the true story of Teena Brandon, a young woman who is in the throes of a sexual identity crisis. She cuts her hair and dresses like a man to see if she can pass for one. What starts out as an experiment turns into a full fledged alter ego as she is accepted as a man by a group she meets in a bar. The story follows the group’s escapades, including Brandon’s love affair with Lana, who falls in love with Brandon, thinking she’s a man. It culminates with the discovery that Brandon is actually a woman with a dramatic confrontation in the finale. This is film noir at it’s finest. A lot of people think that this is a story about courage and lesbianism but it is really about neither. It is about the search for identity; not just sexual identity but the search for a deeper self . All the characters in this film were lost and confused, but Brandon was the only one who realized it of herself. The rest were basically playing out their despondent lives trying not to think of who or what they were. Here was a person they loved and accepted, but who turned out to be the most heinous of deviants as defined by their own prejudices and fears. This is why they were so fundamentally shaken upon the revelation of Brandon’s true identity. It left them to confront their own flimsy identities. They were left with no respite from the emotional vortex. Brandon presented a terrifying threat to the way they viewed themselves. They were compelled to change who they were or hate someone they had grown to love. Won several awards, including Golden Globe and Oscar award for Best Actress.
Critic:
Category: Docurama
Rated: NR
Time: 88 minutes
Released: 1998 - Color - US
Director: Susan Muska, Gréta Olafsdóttir
Cast: Kate Bornstein, JoAnne Brandon, John Lotter, Tom Nissen, Brandon Teena
Brandon was a handsome boy who had tremendous success with women because he always seemed to know exactly what they wanted. Perhaps it helped that Brandon Teena was born Teena Brandon, a young woman who desperately wanted to be a man. But Brandon lived in a small Midwestern town, where his sexual identity crisis wasn’t tolerated, inciting two so-called friends to brutally rape and murder him and two other innocents. This true story, which was the basis for the feature film Boys Don’t Cry, is recounted in this award-winning (Best Documentary at both the Vancouver and Berlin film festivals) documentary. To his girlfriends, Brandon was the perfect boyfriend. To his killers, he was a gender-bending freak. To the law, he got what he deserved. Ultimately, Brandon Teena is an American tragedy.
Critic:
Category: Biography
Rated: R
Time: 89 minutes
Released: 1970 - Color - US
Director: Irving Rapper
Cast: John Hansen, Joan Tompkins, Quinn Redeker, John W. Hines, Ellen Clark
Ludicrous biography of world’s most famous male-to-female sex change story is not exactly an in-depth study; one problem is that actor Hansen looks more masculine as female Christine and vice versa.
Critic:
Category: Drama
Rated: R
Time: 112 minutes
Released: 1992 - Color - UK
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Stephen Rea, Miranda Richardson, Forest Whitaker, Jim Broadbent, Ralph Brown, Adrian Dunbar, Jaye Davidson
Strikingly original and adult story with Rea as an IRA volunteer who helps capture a British soldier (Whitaker) only to befriend him and later become involved with his lover. What begins as a thriller unexpectedly turns into a poignant and ironic love story, with plot twists that deepen the film’s almost dreamlike power. Stunningly acted by Rea, Richardson, and Whitaker, with an amazing debut by Davidson, as Dil. A unique, seductive film that writer/director Jordan pulls off with poetic ease; he earned an Oscar for his screenplay. It was nominated for 5 other Oscars, including Best Actor (Stephen Rea) and Best Supporting Actor (Jaye Davidson).
Critic:
Category: Crime
Rated: R
Time: 130 minutes
Released: 1975 - Color - US
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon, Sully Boyar, Penny Allen, James Broderick, Carol Kane, Lance Henriksen, Philip Charles Mackenzie, Dick Anthony Williams
Incredible-but-true story of a loser (Pacino) who holds up a Brooklyn bank to raise money for his lover’s sex-change operation, and sees simple heist snowball into a citywide incident. Pacino’s performance and Lumet’s flavorful NYC atmosphere obscure the fact that this is much ado about nothing. Frank Pierson won an Oscar for his screenplay (based on an article by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore).
Critic:
Category: Horror / Comedy
Rated: PG-13
Time: 89 minutes
Released: 1995 - Color - US
Director: David Price
Cast: Sean Young, Tim Daly, Lysette Anthony, Stephen Tobolowsky, Harvey Fierstein, Thea Vidale, Jeremy Piven, Polly Bergen, Stephen Shellen, Jane Connell, Julie Cobb, Robert Wuhl
Did we need another retread of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson tale, with Jekyll’s great-grandson (Daly) morphing into seductress Helen Hyde (Young)? If so, it should have been a lot better than this.
Critic:
Category: Horror
Rated: PG
Time: 94 minutes
Released: 1972 - Color - UK
Director: Roy Ward Baker
Cast: Ralph Bates, Martine Beswick, Gerald Sim, Lewis Fiander, Susan Broderick
Interesting twist to classic tale finds the good doctor discovering that his evil life is brought out in the form of a beautiful but dangerous woman. No thrills but fun; resemblance between Bates and Beswick is remarkable.
Time: 47 minutes
Released: 1978 - West Germany
Events in the life of a young man, told mostly in flashback, as he and those around him slowly discover that he really wants to become a woman.
Critic:
Category: Biography / Comedy / Drama
Rated: R
Time: 124 minutes
Released: 1994 - B&W - US
Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, G.D. Spradlin, Vincent D’Onofrio, Bill Murray, Mike Starr
A loving look at Edward D. Wood, Jr. (crossdresser), a man of boundless enthusiasm and no talent who made some of the worst movies of all time (including Glen or Glenda? and Plan 9 From Outer Space). Cast to perfection, with Depp ideal in the title role, and Landau (in Rick Baker makeup) positively astonishing as the aged and impoverished Bela Lugosi, whom Wood befriended. There isn’t much story thrust here, but the vivid re-creation of time and place makes this a must for any old-movie buff.
Category: Documentary
Time: 40 minutes
Released: 1991 - UK
Director: Michael Yorke
A made-for-BBC look at some of the more than half a million eunuchs – or hijiras – in India today. This film captures the pleasures and contradictions of a living alternative to Western ideas about gender.
Critic:
Category: Drama
Rated: NR
Time: 61 minutes
Released: 1953 - B&W - US
Director: Edward D. Wood, Jr.
Cast: Bela Lugosi, Dolores Fuller, Daniel Davis (a.k.a. Ed Wood), Lyle Talbot, Timothy Farrell, “Tommy” Haynes, Charles Crafts, Conrad Brooks, Henry Bederski, George Weiss
Sensational but sincere “docu-fantasy” about transvestism could well be the worst movie ever made. Legendarily awful director Wood stars (under the name Daniel Davis) as Glen, who can’t decide how to tell his fiancee he wants to wear her clothes. Dizzying hodgepodge of stock footage, demented dream sequences, and heartfelt plea for tolerance linked by campy Lugosi narrating from haunted house. “Bevare!” Even more inept and hilarious than Wood’s infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space. Also released as I Changed My Sex, I Led Two Lives, and He or She.
Category: Biographical Drama
Time: 90 minutes
Released: 1992 - Germany
Director: Rosa von Praunheim
True life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, the best known transvestite in East Germany; a symbol of bravery and idealism for today’s Germany.
Critic:
Category: Drama
Rated: NR
Time: 91 minutes
Released: 1972 - Color - UK
Director: John Dexter
Cast: Anne Heywood, Harry Andrews, Jill Bennett, Paul Rogers, Nigel Flatley
Interesting little piece about sexual crisis in the life of man who wants a sex-change operation.
Critic:
Category: Comedy
Rated: R
Time: 91 minutes
Released: 1978 - Color - Italy, France
Director: Edouard Molinaro
Cast: Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Serrault, Michel Galabru, Claire Maurier, Remy Laurent, Benny Luke
A gay couple tries to act straight for the sake of Tognazzi’s son, who’s bringing home his fiancee and her parents. Entertaining adaptation of French stage farce, with some hilarious moments and a wonderful performance by Serrault as the more feminine half of the middle-aged twosome – but why this became such a raging success is a mystery.
Critic:
Category: Comedy
Rated: R
Time: 101 minutes
Released: 1980 - Color - France
Director: Edouard Molinaro
Cast: Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Serrault, Benny Luke, Marcel Bozzuffi, Michel Galabru, Paola Borboni
St. Tropez nightclub owner (Tognazzi) and his female-impersonator housemate (Serrault) become involved with a spy ring in this mild sequel.
Critic:
Category: Comedy
Rated: PG
Time: 87 minutes
Released: 1985 - Color - Italy, France
Director: Georges Lautner
Cast: Michel Serrault, Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Galabru, Benny Luke, Stephane Audran, Antonella Interlenghi
Pointless sequel has drag queen Albin (Serrault) in line for big inhertance – if he marries and produces a son. This farce has been milked dry by now.
Released: 1992 - UK, US
Cast: Virginia McKenna, Rodney Hudson
Prim English spinster housekeeper Miss Scarlet, played by Virginia McKenna, and outrageous Black drag-queen Miss Peaches, played by Rodney Hudson, are flung together in a lift during the 1977 black-out and settle their differences. Nominated for Best Short Live Action Film in 1993 Academy Awards.
Critic:
Category: Comedy
Rated: NR
Time: 100 minutes
Released: 1987 - Color - Spain
Director: Pedro Almodovar
Cast: Eusebio Poncela, Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas, Miguel Molina, Manuela Velasco, Bibi Andersen, Nacho Martinez
Surreal, hedonistic, and hilarious comedy focusing on a gay love triangle, with equal doses of passion, sex, fantasy, and tragedy. Maura is a standout as a free-spirited transsexual; Almodovar is one of the brightest talents to emerge on the international filmmaking scene during the 1980s.
Category: Biographical Drama
Time: 92 minutes
Released: 1983 - West Germany
Director: Radu Gabrea
During the shooting of a Fassbinder movie, gender-bending star Eva ditches an ex-lover, marries the leading lady, and seduces the leading man.
Critic:
Category: Comedy / Drama
Rated: PG-13
Time: 125 minutes
Released: 1993 - Color - US
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Robin Williams, Sally Field, Pierce Brosnan, Harvey Fierstein, Polly Holliday, Lisa Jakub, Matthew Lawrence, Mara Wilson, Robert Prosky, Anne Haney, Scott Capurro
Crowd-pleasing comedy (with serious overtones) about a free spirit whose wife divorces him after fourteen years; he can’t bear being separated from his three kids, so he disguises himself as a dowdy British housekeeper (under an Oscar-winning makeup job) and gets himself hired to look after them. Williams is in peak form, and director Columbus keeps his story and characters reasonably realistic—in order to drive home a humanistic message. Based on the book Alias Madame Doubtfire by Anne Fine. Williams and his wife Marsha Garces Williams also produced.
Critic:
Category: Comedy / Drama
Rated: R
Time: 90 minutes
Released: 1997 - France/Belgium/UK (Sony Classics)
Director: Alain Berliner
Cast: Georges du Fresne, Michele Laroque, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Helene Vincent, Julien Riviere, Cristina Barget, Gregory Diallo, Erik Cazals de Fabel, Daniel Hanssens, Laurence Bibot, Jean-Francois Gallotte, Caroline Baehr, Anne Cossens, Raphaelle Santini, Marie Bunel
Winner of top awards at several film festivals, insightful and compassionate is this brightly colored bonbon told in surreal, fairy-tale fashion. Cute little Ludovic is a 7-year-old boy convinced he should be a 7-year-old girl. His penchant for dressing in his older sister’s clothes is causing his suburbanite parents lots of sleepless nights. The neighbors are beginning to talk and Papa’s job may be at stake too. Ludovic is so determined that he mugs a female classmate so he can be Snow White in the school play. Directed with just the right light touch and sense of humor, while adorable Georges DuFresne, as Ludo, gives the kid performance of the year.
Critic:
Category: Comedy / Drama
Rated: R
Time: 100 minutes
Released: 1977 - Color - Canada
Director: Richard Benner
Cast: Craig Russell, Hollis McLaren, Richert Easley, Allan Moyle, Helen Shaver
Excellent comedy-drama about a very odd couple: gay hairdresser and a pregnant mental patient. McLaren’s effective emoting is outshone by female impersonator Russell’s flamboyant playing and imitations of Garland, Davis, Bankhead, etc. Followed ten years later by Too Outrageous.
Critic:
Category: Documentary
Rated: NR
Time: 78 minutes
Released: 1990 - Color - US
Director: Jennie Livingston
Funny, revealing, and compact documentary about NYC “drag balls” – in which black and Latino men don “vogue-ing” disguises as everything from flamboyant queens to coat-and-tie businessmen or members of the military. Fresh and uncondescending, with a powerful element of tragedy near the end; an art-house smash, and among the most critically praised movies of its year.
Category: Documentary
Released: 1968
Outlandish documentary of the 1967 Drag Miss All American Beauty Queen Contest.
Critic:
Category: Comedy
Rated: R
Time: 133 minutes
Released: 1994 - Color - US
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Stephen Rea, Lauren Bacall, Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, Anouk Aimee, Lili Taylor, Kim Basinger, Sally Kellerman, Tracey Ullman, Linda Hunt, Rupert Everett, Forest Whitaker, Richard E. Grant, Danny Aiello, Teri Garr, Lyle Lovett, Jean Rochefort, Michel Blanc, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Francois Cluzet, Ute Lemper, Tara Leon, Chiara Mastroianni, Sam Robards, Georgianna Robertson, Harry Belafonte, Cher, Jean-Paul Gaulthier
Mind-numbingly awful Altman collage about the fashion industry as it descends on Paris for the annual runway shows. No plot, no momentum, no point to any of this; a particularly egregious waste of Loren and Mastroianni (who reprise the striptease scene from Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow). Most telling comment about the film is made within itself: characters keep stepping in dog poop.
Critic:
Category: Comedy / Dance / Horror / Musical
Rated: R
Time: 95 minutes
Released: 1975 - Color - UK
Director: Jim Sharman
Cast: Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O’Brien, Jonathan Adams, Pat Quinn, Meatloaf, Charles Gray
Outrageously kinky horror movie spoof, spiced with sex, transvestism, and rock music, about a straight couple, Janet and Brad (Sarandon, Bostwick), stranded in an old dark house full of weirdos from Transylvania. Music and lyrics by O’Brien; songs include “Time Warp,” “Dammit Janet,” and “Wild and Untamed Thing.”
Released: 1990
A group of homeless, urban, Hispanic drag queen prostitutes on crack live in a junk yard in a secluded area alongside the Hudson River known as the Salt Mines. Powerful and grim.
Time: 80 minutes
Released: 1992
Director: Marc Huestis
Radical, graphically illustrated dialogue on gay male sexuality, including – but not limited to – oral sex, anal sex, S&M, B&D, crossdressing, masturbation, phone sex, home-video porn, nipple stimulation, smooching and fondling, slow dancing, and the finer points of eroticized, comdom-equipped “safer sex.”
Time: 58 minutes
Released: 1992
Director: Andrew Weeks and Ellen Fisher Turk
Witty and tender portrait of a New York Pre-Op TS, a companion of Salvador Dali, who recreated herself as various stars and danced and stripped from seedy joints to glamorous nightclubs.
Time: 21 minutes
Released: 1987
Director: Michelle Parkerson
Intimate profile of Storme DeLaverie, former emcee and male impersonator of the celebrated Jewel Box Revue – America’s first integrated female impersonation show.
Time: 90 minutes
Released: 1988 - Japan
Director: Shusuke Kaneko
In a school in Hokkaido, three boys have to stay during summer vacation. The summer before also three boys stayed and one of them died. One of the remaining boys was in love with the one who died. A guy who looks like the dead boy appears. All the characters are played by female actors.
Time: 40 minutes
Released: 1991 - UK
Director: Marc Munden
Campy and erotic answers to the ever pervasive questions about sex and gender.
Critic:
Category: Comedy
Rated: PG-13
Time: 109 minutes
Released: 1995 - Color - US
Director: Beeban Kidron
Cast: Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, John Leguizamo, Stockard Channing, Blythe Danner, Arliss Howard, Chris Penn, Beth Grant, Naomi Campbell, RuPaul, Melinda Dillon, Robin Williams, Julie Newmar
Tale of three self-proclaimed drag queens heading for Hollywood whose car breaks down in a small rural town. The adventure focuses mainly upon the perils of crossdressing within American society, instead of being gay.
Critic:
Category: Comedy / Drama
Rated: R
Time: 100 minutes
Released: 1987 - Color - Canada
Director: Richard Benner
Cast: Craig Russell, Hollis McLaren, David McIlwraith, Ron White, Lynne Cormack, Michael J. Reynolds
Russell shines in this disappointing sequel to Outrageous! as female impersonator Robin Turner, who’s become a smash in NYC – but will he go mainstream? Unfortunately, the scenario is too hackneyed to make you care. Best moments are his impersonations of Streisand, Mae West, etc.
Critic:
Category: Comedy / Romance
Rated: PG
Time: 116 minutes
Released: 1982 - Color - US
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, Charles Durning, Bill Murray, Sydney Pollack, George Gaynes, Geena Davis, Estelle Getty, Christine Ebersole
Smashing comedy about an obnoxious NY actor who finally lands a job – disguised as a woman – and soon finds himself a better person female than he ever was male! Farcical premise becomes totally credible thanks to razor-sharp script (credited to Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal, from Gelbart and Don McGuire’s story), fine direction, and superlative performances all around – including director Pollack’s as Hoffman’s harried agent. Lange won Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Bill Murray’s performance was unbilled in film. Film debut of Geena Davis. Panavision.
Critic:
Category: Drama
Rated: R
Time: 117 minutes
Released: 1988 - Color - US
Director: Paul Bogart
Cast: Anne Bancroft, Matthew Broderick, Harvey Fierstein, Brian Kerwin, Karen Young, Charles Pierce
Fierstein rewrote (and considerably compressed) his landmark Broadway play about a drag queen, and lost something in the process. Changing sensibilities in the AIDS era also affect the original material, though there are still fine moments. Fierstein reprises his stage performance as Arnold Beckoff, and Bancroft scores strongly as his mother.
Category: Documentary
Time: 23 minutes
Released: 1991
Director: Lori Levy, Gretchen Vogel, Michel Beauchemin
Charts Native American beliefs about sexual orientation and gender.
Time: 85 minutes
Released: 1991
Director: Phillip R. Ford
The four-man crew of the U.S.S. Intercourse races on a secret mission to the planet Clitoris, a 23rd-century all-female (all played by men pleasure planet where men are forbidden to touch down. Ordered by the Empress of Earth to swallow gender-reversal pills, the spacemen swap their sexes to go undercover as 20th-century showgirls and are propelled into a dizzying caper to capture the perpetrator of a heinous crime that has hurled the orbiting resort on its path to doom.
Critic:
Category: Comedy / Musical
Rated: PG
Time: 133 minutes
Released: 1982 - Color - US
Director: Blake Edwards
Cast: Julie Andrews, James Garner, Robert Preston, Lesley Ann Warren, Alex Karras, John Rhys-Davies, Graham Stark, Peter Arne
Down-and-out singer Andrews masquerades as a man and becomes the toast of Paris cabarets in the 1930s, to the delight of her gay mentor (Preston) and the confusion of an American admirer (Garner). Sophisticated, often hilarious comedy, with Henry Mancini and Leslie Bricusse earning Oscars for their song score and adaptation. Edwards’ screenplay is based on Viktor Und Viktoria, a 1933 German film (remade in 1936 as First a Girl with Jessie Matthews). Panavision.
