The incredible thing about Local Heroes, the series of short films made by local artists at the Toronto Inside Out Film Festival, is when you start to see the influence artists, actors, and organizations have on each other’s work. New Zealand–born drag queen and certifiable local hero Judy Virago...
By Michael Lyons The Blue Hour is a hard film to sort into a genre. There’s a level of romance, but it’s certainly not a romantic movie. Maybe a very slow thriller, or a mostly pleasant horror? Actually, the closest thing to a genre that this feature from Thailand falls into is a Murakami...
“I recently read The Young in One Another’s Arms for the first time, a Little Sister’s Classic published by Arsenal Pulp Press. The nice thing about this edition is that it includes not only an introduction but contemporaneous reviews. You can see how the reviewers ‘deal with’...
BY MICHAEL LYONS Think about a movie that is non-stop action: explosions, guns blazing, with a trademark wisecracking, beefcake, invariably white hetero leading man—I guess what I’m saying is, think of Age of Ultron. Then think of a film that is the exact opposite of that, one that is so...
Of all the incredible films in Transplanetarium, the shorts series focusing on trans stories and creators, Iris Moore’s The Dancer and the Crow stands out because it’s the only animated film in the series, one of very few in the entire festival. Film review contributor Michael Lyons got in touch...
BY MICHAEL LYONS This documentary should be shown in every school as a prerequisite for becoming an adult. This statement may be showing my hand early in a review, but it’s not hyperbole. From the moment the film starts, depicting recent protests against regressive policies that limit women’s...
