All About MY Mother and Almodóvar

by Cláudio Alves

How did you get into Almodóvar? For me, it was a matter of maternal influence. Ever since catching Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown during its 1989 Portuguese release, she's been a devotee to the Spanish director. Even as her movie-going habits diminished, a new Almodóvar was always a reason to go to the theater, attend local festivals, and purchase physical media for re-watches down the road. Through those latter ones, I became acquainted with the filmmaker in my teens, learning to love his melodramas as much as my mom did. Though, of course, as a queer man, mine was a different connection to Almodóvar's cinema of complicated women and melodrama, bright colors and hot men.

To celebrate All About My Mother's 25th anniversary today, I revisited the film with the person responsible for turning young Cláudio into a fellow fan…

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The Matrix @25: Queering the Canon

by Cláudio Alves

Happy Easter! Happy Trans Day of Visibility!! Happy 25th anniversary to The Matrix!!! As luck would have it, these three occasions coincided this year, making for a lovely little cinematic celebration. After all, The Matrix is probably the most famous work by trans filmmakers – the Wachowski sisters – and Neo's journey can be seen as an allegory of gender identity. It was somewhat devised as such by its closeted auteurs who've reclaimed their work's intrinsic queerness after it became a powerful reference for the MRA movement and the alt-right. Like many misappropriated movies, The Matrix doesn't deserve its fans. Or, perhaps more accurately, a good portion of its fandom doesn't deserve The Matrix in all its glory.

But Neo isn't just a queer icon. He's also something of a Jesus figure, a Messiah for our cyber-noir future, bedecked in fetish fashions, armed with kung fu moves and impossible firepower. And like Christ, he is risen…

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Queering the Oscars: The Delicious Costumes of "The Talented Mr. Ripley"

Team Experience has been looking at LGBTQ+ related Oscar nominations. Tonight we're serving lewks!

By Christopher James

For a movie with iconic nude scenes, the costumes of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) are just as memorable and titillating. It’s fitting that the Oscars honored the incredible work of costume designers Ann Roth and Gary Jones for the film, which should’ve shown up in more categories than the five it was nominated for. Though the actual Oscar went to Lindy Hemming’s period-specific and gloriously gaudy work in Topsy-Turvy, we’re still cheering on the sidelines for Ripley.

Let's count down the 10 queerest looks from the movie...

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Almost There: Julianne Moore in "Magnolia"

by Cláudio Alves

Though the year is still relatively young, Julianne Moore has already staked her claim on 2023. She stars in two early releases, Jesse Eisenberg's When You Finish Saving the World and Benjamin Caron's Sharper and has some juicy upcoming projects lined up. For instance, Todd Haynes' May December has already wrapped filming and is in post-production, maybe headed towards a festival release later in the year. With all this in mind, it felt like a good time to shine the Almost There spotlight on the 2014 Best Actress champion. And so, let's think back to the afterglow of Moore's first brush with Hollywood's most coveted trophy.

In 1997, she was nominated for Boogie Nights, grasping mainstream acclaim. Two years later, Moore was back working with P.T. Anderson on another prestigious project - the Berlinale-winning hyperlink nightmare of Magnolia…

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Almost There: Cate Blanchett in "The Talented Mr. Ripley"

by Cláudio Alves

Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley is now in theaters, bringing Cate Blanchett back to the big screen where she belongs. Playing a manipulative psychologist who proves herself a femme fatale, the Australian actress is sure to bring glamour to the part, dazzling audiences as she's been doing for decades. To commemorate the occasion, this week's Almost There entry revisits one of Cate Blanchett's best performances. In fact. It might be her greatest. In any case, it's my favorite from her sterling filmography, a supporting part she injects with life and patrician heartbreak. The Academy ignored her in 1999, but Blanchett may have come close to a second nomination for her work as Meredith Logue in Anthony Minghella's adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley…

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