A Restless Spirit on an Endless Flight: Canadian Filmmaker Avalon Fast’s Enchanting CAMP

CAMP 

(Avalon Fast, 2025, Canada, 111 minutes)

Echoed voices in the night 

She's a restless spirit on an endless flight.

--Don Henley and Bernie Leadon, "Witchy Woman" (1972) 

Throughout the current decade, the under-30 set has been making a hell of a mark on horror, led this year by 21-year-old Kane Parsons' mindbending Backrooms--released before he was legally able to consume alcohol--and 26-year-old Curry Barker's pitch-black Obsession, both of which topped the US box office before making significant inroads in other territories. 

There are other examples, but that one-two punch left the industry reeling--and eager, no doubt, to sign more talented boy wonders with fresh ideas.

By contrast, their female counterparts have made more of an impact at film festivals and indie cinemas with work that's overtly queer, remarkably collaborative, and reminiscent of riot grrrl in both attitude and approach--none of which is intended as a knock on Parsons or Barker, who established their DIY bonafides by way of YouTube before savvy studios came calling.   

Right: Fast and Alexandra McVicker in The Serpent's Skin

Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay, 21, is currently in production on her seventh feature, and Canadian actor/director Avalon Fast, 26, appeared in her film The Serpent’s Skin, in addition to 32-year-old Canadian filmmaker Louise Weard's Castration Movie Anthology. More recently, Fast appeared in and has been working on a documentary about New York filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which opens in Seattle in August (Mackay and Schoenbrun, an elder stateswoman at 39, also appear in Weard's sprawling anthology). 

Fast was all of 19 when they shot their directorial debut, Honeycomb, and 22 when it premiered in 2022 (it's available on Blu-ray and streaming exclusively through their website). Their dreamy, surrealistic followup, CAMP, premiered at last year's Fantastic Fest, where it won the Next Wave Best Feature, and in the end credits, they thank every one of the trans filmmakers listed above. I missed the film when it premiered at this year's SIFF, so I was happy to see that it plays Northwest Film Forum in July. 

CAMP, which is anything but campy, begins with its protagonist in a terrible place, which gets worse before it gets better--or does it? Not everything is what it seems, and nor does Fast provide a definitive answer to that question. "Worse" is indisputable, but "better" is in the eye of the beholder.

Emily (newcomer Zola Grimmer, low-key in an Aubrey Plaza kind of way), a college dropout, is having a less-than-stellar time at a house party when a few partygoers suggest a game of truth or dare. When Emily shares her biggest regret--that she accidentally killed a four-year-old when she was 16--it really brings the temperature down. It also helps to explain why she's been flailing and failing ever since.

The rest of the party isn't any more fun. Except for her best friend, Charlie (Giselle Morison), Emily finds the people--and even the drinks--boring. With her deadpan affect, Emily seems like someone who finds most things boring, though excitement, of the least desirable kind, has a way of finding her. 

On the ride home, Charlie, the passenger, takes a snort of Emily's coke--and promptly dies. Emily is horrified. (Later in the film, she explains that the coke appeared to be laced with something lethal.) She isn't a murderer, but it's the second time her actions have inadvertently led to a casualty.

Right: Fast as seen by Fast

These are fictional characters in a fictional scenario, and Emily isn't a stand-in for the filmmaker, though the sense of loss is rooted in reality, since Fast took inspiration from a close friend with whom she grew up on Vancouver Island (much like Blue Heron's Sophy Romvari). Maia died in an automobile accident when she was 19, leaving Fast spiralling. As she told Letterboxd's Katie Rife, "Honeycomb's not about me. CAMP isn't about me. There are parts of me in there, but both films are about watching the world around me."

Afterward, Emily tells her dad (Mike Tan) that she isn't necessarily suicidal, but she worries, with some justification, that she's a danger to others. He suggests she become a counselor at a camp for troubled kids. Maybe she can do them some good. With no other options, she takes his advice, though she's concerned that it's a "God camp," and she isn't a believer. 

It isn't, exactly. The train lets her off in the middle of nowhere. She walks through a field until she finds a sign that says CAMP, which seems foreboding, though the other counselors, like her pot-smoking roommate Sophie (Cherry Moore), are welcoming (Fast shot on location at Camp Horizon in Alberta). Camp leader Dan (Austyn Van De Camp) is all about God, but the others, with the exception of Jo (Sophie Bawks-Smith, who appeared in Honeycomb), don't seem to care, and the non-believers accept Jo into their fold. They just want to party as soon as the campers go to bed. 

Things seem normal at times, but at other times, they don't. 

Emily loses time, can't tell the difference between waking life and dreams, and sees visions of people who may or may not be there. It's as if the train brought her to a place suspended between the physical and spiritual realms, not least since the ride itself was pretty bizarre. Enhanced by composer Max Graham's rumbling score, Fast and cinematographer Eily Sprungman, in her first feature, encourage the confusion through mists from petroleum jelly-smeared lenses, slowed-down motion, and light sources that glow like sparkling stars.

Sensing a kindred spirit, Emily offers support to Eden (Izza Jarvis, another newcomer), a morose girl with a punk vibe, but the mercurial child, who possibly represents a version of her younger self, alternates between grateful and resentful. There's also the sense that the other counselors, including Sophie and Clara (Alice Wordsworth), aren't telling her everything. 

When the women meet in the forest at night and make wishes, for instance, they proceed to come true. Does that make them witches? Does it make their wishes spells? Yes, as it turns out, it does, though Fast avoids much of the stereotypical black-robe-and-broomstick iconography around witchcraft. 

Emily goes with the flow until she realizes there's a cost to the spells, though not as bad as the price Bear pays when he makes a monkey's paw-like wish in Obsession, a truly horrifying film that leaves a sadistic aftertaste. CAMP has elements of horror, but Fast doesn't fully embrace the gorier end of the spectrum. 

To Emily, the other women are a little vampiric, even if she genuinely enjoys their company, especially Clara, a romantic foil who started out as a camper before she grew into a counselor. The others, who have also known each other for years, include Nev (Lea Rose Sebastianis) and Hope (Ella Reece). 

Though some critics, women especially, have described the ending as happy, I wouldn't go that far, and that isn't intended as criticism of the film or its admirers. It's great to find your tribe, and to be accepted for who you are, but when your happiness involves the misery of others, it isn't exactly a happy ending for them. I also read that realization as a metaphor for adulthood, since it's nearly impossible to live life on your own terms without hurting other people along the way, no matter how hard you try not to.

I would have liked to learn more about their varied backgrounds, since the actresses are all so compelling, especially Moore and Wordsworth, though we do learn that Sophie had a baby, and appears to have given it up for adoption. Grimmer, by contrast, plays a more recessive character, though she's never less than fully engaging, especially relative to her inexperience. 

Like Emily, I was confused at times, and I couldn't always tell when this was intentional on Fast's part and when they were just throwing bizarre--if visually intriguing--ingredients into the mix simply because they could. 

Both CAMP and Honeycomb have been compared to Sofia Coppola's directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides, an impressively faithful adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' haunting 1993 novel, and Fast hasn't disavowed the comparison, citing both Coppola and Greta Gerwig as inspirations.  

I get the Virgin Suicides comparison, since Fast's features revolve around groups of girls, but I was reminded more of the the dreamy, surrealistic coming-into-female-power films of French directors Lucile Hadžihalilović (Innocence) and Léa Mysius (The Five Devils). If Avalon Fast conjures up more questions than answers, CAMP casts a captivating spell all its own. 

To quote actor/director Vera Drew, another friend and collaborator, "This movie feels like a smear of time and space in a way that so few movies do."

   

Editor's note (that's me, I'm the editor): Avalon Fast appears to have switched from she/her to they/them between the release of Honeycomb and CAMP, though several recent reviews and interviews use the former. 

CAMP is now playing in limited release at IFC Film Center in NYC, Laemmle Glendale in Los Angeles, and all Alamo Drafthouse locations, and opens in Seattle at the Beacon Cinema on July 24 and Northwest Film Forum on July 25. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma opens at the Uptown on Aug 13. In the years to come, maybe the two films will screen together. 

Images from Dark Star Films (Zola Grimmer and Alice Wordsworth and the coven in their element), Film Threat (Alexandra McVicker and Avalon Fast in The Serpent's Skin), and Fast's Twitter/X profile picture (self portrait).

Silas Howard and Harry Dodge Put a Queer Spin on the Buddy Comedy in Charming San Francisco Picaresque By Hook or by Crook

BY HOOK OR BY CROOK
(Silas Howard and Harry Dodge, 2001, USA, 100 minutes)

"I'm a special; a two for one."
--Valentine (Harry Dodge)

Co-directors Silas Howard and Harry Dodge's By Hook or by Crook opens with home-movie footage of a father playing with a boyish tyke in a Superman cape. In voice-over, Shy (Silas Howard, who also co-produced) explains that he was that kid, and that he just wanted to jump, to fly. 

In the present, things haven't quite worked out that way. His loving father recently passed away--he never really knew his mother--and he has just received notice that their Hoxie, Kansas home is being repossessed. Shy, a loner who likes to smoke, lift weights in a "Simply the Best" muscle tee, and "jam out to Sabbath," as he puts it, has 48 hours to find new digs. 

Though Shy's neighborhood seems more downmarket than not, Go Fish cinematographer Ann T. Rossetti, shooting in MiniDV, shows it to its best advantage. It isn't so much about glamorizing an un-pretty place, but finding the beauty in the quotidian, like a freight train glowing in the sun.

Left: Guinevere Turner and V.S. Brodie in Go Fish

Silas earns his keep by washing dishes, and he's barely scraping by. While watching a news report one night about a heist involving an attractive, dark-haired thief (Joan Jett!), he comes up with a solution. Soon, he puts on a suit, packs a bag, and hitchhikes to San Francisco, where he aims to put his plan into action. I'm not sure where the suit, which he pairs with a glittery shirt, comes in, but it's a good look.

Shy meets Valentine (Dodge, an author and visual artist who uses he/him pronouns in real life), a butch dyke with an odd little beard, when he steps in to stop a bully from beating her up. Val, who has been on her own since she was 13, starts following Shy around, talking a mile a minute, fueled by a combination of gratitude and the recognition that he's also a gender outlaw, to borrow a term from trans elder Kate Bornstein. When a little girl asks Shy, "Are you a boy or a girl?," he smiles and says, "Both," without hesitation.  

If the actor/directors have an instant rapport, it could be down to acting, but they had also been friends for 15 years by the time they made their feature, even running a tiny Bay Area café and performance space called Red Dora's The Bearded Lady where cabaret duo Kiki and Herb frequently performed.

Right: Harry Dodge and Silas Howard at the Bearded Lady

Shy and Val proceed to spend a night on the town, eating crullers and visiting lesbian bar The Lexington, also long gone, filled with every kind of person. 

There's a neat montage in which customer after customer poses for the characters or for Rossetti's camcorder--both, really--and it's clear that the new friends fit right in. 

Shy, however, still has money--or the lack thereof--on his mind, and ghosts Val while she's dancing up a storm, making sure to pick a customer's pocket on the way out, but he reconnects with Val and his girlfriend, Billie (Stanya Kahn, Dodge's longtime artistic collaborator), the next day. The first thing they do is to run a scam on a clerk at a hardware store after which they enjoy a rather unusual homemade dinner. 

While planning and plotting other ways to make money, they get to know each other better. Though Val's motormouth, physically-expressive affect is amusing, and somewhat reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy--also made by a queer filmmaker--she isn't simply cute and quirky, but mentally imbalanced, and admits she's spent time in a mental institute. Val appears to be schizophrenic; I wasn’t sure, but she can be sad and weird in ways that don't/aren't meant to make complete sense.

When Shy finds out that Val is committed to finding her birth mother, he decides to help, which proves personally advantageous. If Val starts out as the one with a lady love, Shy hits it off with a no-bullshit Vital Records staffer (Carina Gia). While mainstream 1990s films with queer characters tended to be rather skittish about sex, Howard and Dodge give the people what they want, which is satisfying sexual experiences for their characters. 

Billie also joins in on some of their schemes, but it's Shy and Val who attract the wrong kind of attention, leading them to put the planning and plotting on hold as the narrative briefly enters One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest territory before ending on a considerably more positive note. 

If anything, the ending is especially touching for keeping things understated after a few sequences that felt overstated. 

Beyond the chemistry between the leads and the sensitive cinematography from Rosetti, the film has an absolutely kick-ass soundtrack, filled by music from composer Carla Bozulich of the Geraldine Fibbers featuring the ace guitar-playing of Nels Cline, who would join Wilco just three years later. 

Bozulich also served as music supervisor, and she did an incredible job. I swear I'm not biased, though I've met a few of these musicians, since she includes Pacific Northwest acts Jessamine and the Mono Men, in addition to Tom Robinson, the Make Up, Low, Blonde Redhead, and of course, Tribe 8, the Geraldine Fibbers, and Joan Jett--you can guess what song she covers.  

By letting Shy and Val be who they are, rather than trying to define them, By Hook or by Crook feels not necessarily timeless, but less frozen-in-amber than I would have expected. Even the terms I've mentioned, like queer, trans, and bull dyke, don't appear in the film (unless I missed them). 

Nonetheless, Dave Kehr, in his New York Times review, wrote, "It is, indeed, hard to keep track of the fluid genders in this independent feature shot on digital video, which proclaims itself ''a movie about butches by butches'."

For my money, there's nothing confusing about that fluidity. It helps that the film hews to a certain 1970s aesthetic, though I couldn't say whether that was intentional or not, but I was reminded of Jerry Schatzberg's Scarecrow, in addition to Barbara Loden's Wanda and John Huston's latter-period literary adaptations, like Fat City and Wise Blood, more in terms of the working-class milieu than the hetero characters or downbeat narratives.

Right: Al Pacino and Gene Hackman in Scarecrow also smoking up a storm

Other latter-period films that came to mind include Allan Moyle's Times Square--which also boasts a kick-ass soundtrack--and Annette Haywood-Carter's Joyce Carol Oates adaptation Foxfire. 

Significantly though, both films had to tone down the queer content due to studio pressure. Berkeley filmmaker Jenni Olson, who served as a consulting producer on By Hook or by Crook, has done some of the best writing on Times Square as a queer text, so I was happy to see that she lent her expertise to a film, made outside of the studio system and largely funded by friends, that doesn't play things quite so safe. 

Until this year, I hadn't heard of the film, though I'm familiar with some of the projects on which the principals have worked, like Transparent and Pose for which Howard served as a director, so I kept my expectations in check, though I took the number of prestigious entities behind the 4K restoration, especially the UCLA Film & Television Archive, as a promising sign.  

By Hook or by Crook also won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at 2002's Sundance Film Festival--and has received praise from discerning critics, like Willow Maclay, coauthor of Corpses, Fools and Monsters--so I'm even more surprised that I hadn't heard of it, but Altered Innocence, which specializes in LGBTQ films both new and old, has been getting the word out in a big way, and the filmmakers have been doing all they can to support the re-release. Mostly though, it’s just really good. 

Though the filmmakers would part ways geographically when Silas Howard moved to New York and Harry Dodge moved to Los Angeles, they remain connected--Howard is godfather to Dodge and Maggie Nelson's son Iggy.  

Unstreamable presents By Hook or by Crook at Northwest Film Forum from June 17 through June 21. A DVD, Blu-ray, and digital release will follow later this summer. Images from Altered Innocence, The Guardian (Go Fish), Lost Womyn's Space (Bearded Lady friends), and the IMDb (Scarecrow).     

I'm Tense and Nervous, and I Can't Relax: On Cindy Sherman's Underappreciated Office Killer

OFFICE KILLER 

(Cindy Sherman, USA, 1997, 

82 minutes) 

Cindy Sherman has been photographing herself in various cinematic modes since the 1970s, so it only seemed fitting when she turned to directing in the 1990s, but Office Killer, her first and only feature film, defied expectations in ways that weren't especially welcome at the time. 

 

First of all, she turned to horror, and instead of something hip and arty, like Michael Almereyda's Nadja from just a few years before, she made a smart, if lurid B picture, the kind that might have played on a grindhouse bill in the 1960s or '70s--and that's hardly a knock. In retrospect, the lack of pretension seems refreshing, but that isn't how critics saw it in the 1990s. 

 

As a film critic, I'd rather evaluate films than criticism, but whether you consider hers a smashing success or not, 25/100 ("splat!") at Rotten Tomatoes and 5.2/10 at the Internet Movie Database just seems mean. 

 

Right: portrait of the artist 

as a younger woman
 

Fortunately, the tide has been turning over the past 30 years, and screenings of the new 4K restoration have expanded from the art house to arts venues, like the Museum of Modern Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art--in addition to the expected theatrical suspects--the same institutions that have displayed Sherman's photography in the past. 

 

Unlike those photographs, though, she cast someone other than herself in the lead. In light of Carol Kane’s filmography, especially Joan Micklin Silver's Abraham Cahan adaptation Hester Street--for which she received an Oscar nomination--it seemed wise to cast an experienced actor, unlike the director, who has never attributed her varied characterizations to "acting." It could be seen as a step in that direction, though the expressions in her work tend to be ambiguous, the better to let observers decide for themselves what she's saying and what her characters might be thinking. 

 

Granted, Office Killer, like some of her photographs, is as much satire as horror, though critics responded more to the blood and guts than to the perceptive take on office politics. On the other hand, if she had released the film after Office Space or the original UK version of The Office, she might have also been dinged for unoriginality. Instead, she beat them to the punch, though something similar could be said of Jill Sprecher's 1997 non-horror Clockwatchers, which also focused on female office workers and garnered more respect on the festival circuit than in regular release. 

Just as Sherman didn't cast herself, she didn't write the screenplay, but hired notable talents to transform her story idea into a feature. Tom Kalin, who made a splash with the Leopold and Loeb-inspired Swoon in 1992, co-wrote the screenplay with journalist Elise MacAdam and Todd Haynes, another architect of the New Queer Cinema, though only Kalin and MacAdam receive on-screen attribution; Haynes is credited with "additional dialogue," even as several reviews and film listings describe him as a co-writer.

 

Left: the killers of Swoon

 

By 1997, Haynes had already directed two full-length features, Poison and Safe, while Kalin wouldn't direct another until Savage Grace, another deadly drama, with Safe lead Julianne Moore. 

 

Christine Vachon--and Pamela Koffler--who named Killer Films after Office Killer, produced all four features. If I wouldn't describe Office Killer as a queer film, it absolutely would not exist without these queer collaborators. 

Sherman's debut begins as Constant Consumer magazine, beset by declining ad sales, cuts costs by reducing full-time jobs to part-time and distributing computers for remote work. Kane's Dorine, caretaker for her mobility-impaired mother (Alice Drummond), isn't exactly thrilled about spending even more time at home–"I hate her!," she declares in voice-over. 

This part of the film reminded me of Daniel Mann's Willard in which Bruce Davison also plays a bright, hard-working loner with a demanding, bedridden mother (Elsa Lanchester!) and an asshole of a boss. Like Dorine, he's a ticking time bomb, but while she's a cat person, he's…a rat person. 

 

Though valued for her dedication and intelligence, Dorine doesn't socialize with her colleagues, who find her weird. They have no idea. 

 

While some, like Norah (Jeanne Tripplehorn, who had recently appeared in Waterworld), the office manager, treat her with respect, others, like Kim (Molly Ringwald, relishing her bitchy role) and Virginia (Fassbinder ensemble player Barbara Sukowa), the publisher, make little effort to disguise their contempt. 

Dorine proceeds to divide her time between home and office. She's working after hours one night when Gary (Cyndi Lauper's guy David Thornton), another of her more condescending colleagues, is accidentally electrocuted while trying to stop her new computer from buzzing. Anyone else would be horrified, but Dorine isn't anyone else. "You are not a very pleasant man!" she upbraids the newly-minted stiff. Though she does call 911, she hangs up without saying a word, shoves his body onto a cart, takes it down to the garage, puts it in her car, and drives away, presumably to dispose of it. 

Unlike her gossipy, bed-hopping colleagues, Dorine masters email in a flash–to the extent that she can imitate other people. They express concern when Gary stops coming into the office, so she finishes his assignments and sends updates from his address, assuring them that he's just working from home.

Though she inadvertently contributed to his demise, it emboldens her to take a more direct approach going forward, and she proceeds to eliminate most everyone who has ever done her or the magazine founded by her late father wrong. 

Granted, Dorine gets so fired up, she even takes out a few innocent bystanders. Sherman handles this in a way I found more humorous than not, but it might have been a bridge too far for some 1990s viewers.

There's also a victim that doesn't fit any of these categories, and it's his interest in pornography that appears to set her off. In flashbacks, Sherman introduces Dorine's problematic father (played in a persuasively lascivious manner by Eric Bogosian). He has everything to do with her skittishness around men, women, and even the most innocuous physical contact, since she visibly flinches when anyone touches her on the arm or shoulder. 

In taking charge of her environment, after a lifetime of ill treatment from colleagues and family members, Dorine changes both inside and out. At first, she sports dorky buns on each side of her head and crookedly drawn-on eyebrows--Sherman, who drew them on each day, expresses regret in the exclusive Vinegar Syndrome interview that she didn't do a better job. 

With each kill, Dorine's confidence grows, and she incorporates items from each female victim's wardrobe, like a pair of chunky gold earrings and a pearl necklace. She even lets her hair down in all senses of the term, while wearing her new acquisitions brazenly. The fact that no one notices proves just how invisible she has been to her coworkers for the past 16 years. 

If you've seen J. Lee Thompson's Happy Birthday to Me, you can guess what she does with all of the corpses. I won't give the game away, other than to say that, as Covid-19 proved: some people aren't meant to work from home, which wasn't common in 1997, but now makes the film seem prescient, especially in conjunction with a dying print publication, an overburdened caretaker spending more time on a relative than herself, and the replacement of phone calls and in-person conversations with email. Just add Slack, Zoom, smart phones, and laptops, and this could be today. 

If Office Killer were a different kind of film, cops might come sniffing around, but before things get to that point, Dorine comes up with a solution. Granted, Kim suspects her from the start, but she can't prove it, not least when Dorine finds a way to keep her as far from the action as possible. 

The epilogue borrows a trope from 1944's Double Indemnity–though it could be coincidental–except Billy Wilder was limited by the production code. Even Daniel Mann, in Willard, provided the kind of ending with which the censors would approve, but Sherman, by way of her collaborators, provides an ending for a new era, specifically the one that gave us Cypress Hill's "How I Could Just Kill a Man," Nick Cave's Murder Ballads, and Sonic Youth's Goo with its Raymond Pettibon-designed spree-killers cover. 

Another 1990s phenomenon: Sherman's shift from fine art to commercial filmmaking around the same time as several other NYC gallery stars. Robert Longo, her former partner, adapted William Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic in 1995, David Salle adapted the play Search and Destroy the same year, and Julian Schnabel wrote and directed Basquiat, a portrait of the late graffiti artist-turned-painter, in 1996. Coincidentally enough, Longo and Barbara Sukowa--though now divorced--were married during the Office Killer shoot.

All four attracted experienced actors, producers, and distributors, but poor reviews and box office results doomed three, whereas the Oscar-nominated Schnabel, a better filmmaker than fine artist, kept going, and his new Netflix film with Oscar Isaac, The Hand of Dante, opened in Seattle on Friday. 

Right: two exes and ex-directors in 2014

I don't believe it benefited Sherman, the only woman in the group, to be associated with other feature films that were described variously as "trash," "shabby," "desultory," "off-putting," "slack and derivative," "undramatic and unexciting," "breathtakingly derivative," and "a disaster in every way," but that's what happened. 

Thirty years on, it's easier to appreciate her film for what it is rather than what it isn't, and it bears closer comparison with other chillers about lethal loners, like Willard, George Romero's Martin, and especially Lucky McKee's May than anything with pretensions towards grand artistic statements.  

Not everything works perfectly, but a talented, game-for-anything cast goes a long way. Kane, Tripplehorn, Ringwald, Sukowa, and Michael Imperioli as a kindly computer tech all deserve credit for taking chances on an inexperienced director, especially after working with heavy hitters, like Hal Ashby and Martin Scorsese, though Tripplehorn, in her open-hearted interview, acknowledges that she approached Sherman to let her know she would do literally anything to be able to work on her film. She says she loved working on it, and has maintained a friendship with her ever since. 

Left: Barbara Sukowa as, essentially, Arianna Huffington

The other extra features include a freewheeling conversation between Sherman and Ringwald, a detail-rich interview with cultural critic Dahlia Schweitzer (Cindy Sherman's Office Killer: Another Kind of Monster), a superfan like Tripplehorn--who once wrote to the artist for career advice and proceeded to take it--and a commentary track from programmer and film historian Heidi Honeycutt (I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies). 

 

It's a great package, well worth your time and money, though I regret that none of the other principal players got involved. I hope it's because they were too busy, and not because they regret their participation in the film. 

Carol Kane, above all, really delivers, since it's always clear through her body language and vocal inflections what Dorine's thinking, a quality she's brought to such diverse roles as the sweet, timid Gitl in Hester Street--who also loosens her hairstyle by the end--and the sensual, forthright Carla in Between the Temples. She's also consistently entertaining, frequently quite funny, and among few performers able to master a character who so fully transitions from a "freaky little mouse," to quote Kim, into something else entirely--and if you really want to see Kane get freaky, Kier-La Janisse favorite The Mafu Cage, also directed by a woman, is the film for you.  

Though I knew Cindy Sherman by reputation, I had seen a few of the bad reviews, and took a pass when Office Killer came to Seattle's Grand Illusion during its original run, even though I lived just down the street. I wasn't particularly interested in horror cinema then either, but times have changed and so have I. 

 

In Sherman's conversation with Ringwald, with whom she appears to have forged another long-term friendship, she lets it slip that she might finally be open to directing another feature. Whether she does or not, I'm glad she's finally getting the accolades she deserves. Not all one-shot directors have been so lucky, and if you've ever worked in an office, you're likely to relate to Dorine on some level, whether you care to admit it or not--and it's probably for the best that you don't. At least not on the company Slack. 

 

Office Killer is out now on Blu-ray/UHD via Vinegar Syndrome. Additional features include an interview with cinematographer Russell Lee Fine (Pamela Koffler's husband) and video from Jeanne Tripplehorn's personal archives. 

Images from the IMDb (Carol Kane in closeup and with Alice Drummond plus Eric Bogosian, Molly Ringwald, and Barbara Sukowa), International Center of Photography (Cindy Sherman; no photographer credited, but presumably a self portrait), Jonathan Rosenbaum (Daniel Schlachet and Craig Chester in Swoon), Stephanie Berger / The Hollywood Reporter (Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo at the Kitchen), and R.L. Terry ReelReview (guess who).   

Lost and Found Film Reviews: Gus Van Sant's Milk and Malcolm Ingram's Small Town Gay Bar

Pride Month seemed like the ideal time to revive these Amazon reviews that dropped off the site over the years, since both queer-oriented films are well worth watching.

Milk is one of Gus Van Sant's best films, and I'm still amazed that the counterintuitive casting of Sean Penn pays such dividends. He isn't the first actor who would've come to my mind to play Harvey Milk--and not because Penn is straight, but because his vibe is completely different, whereas his uber-macho posturing in P.T. Anderson's One Battle After Another proved less surprising and led to his third Oscar after Mystic River and Milk.  

Lightly revised from the original text.

MILK 

(Gus Van Sant, USA, 2008, 128 minutes) 

When a famous person, like the nation's first openly gay male city supervisor, inspires an acclaimed book (The Mayor of Castro Street) and an Oscar-winning documentary (The Times of Harvey Milk), a biopic can seem superfluous at best. Taking over from Oliver Stone and Bryan Singer--who were attached to the project at various points--Gus Van Sant, whose previous motion picture was 2007's lower-budget, more experimental Paranoid Park, directs with such grace, he renders the concern moot. 

Unlike Randy Shilts' Milk biography, which begins at the beginning of his life, Dustin Lance Black's Oscar-winning screenplay starts in 1972, just as Milk (Sean Penn, in a finely-wrought performance) and his boyfriend, Scott (James Franco, equally good), move from New York to San Francisco. Milk opens a camera shop on Castro that becomes a safe haven for victims of discrimination, an experience that convinces him to enter politics.

With each race he runs, Harvey's relationship with Scott unravels further. Finally, he wins, and the real battle begins as Milk takes on Proposition 6, which denies equal rights to homosexuals. He does everything he can to rally local politicians, like George Moscone (Victor Garber) and Dan White (Josh Brolin). 

While Mayor Moscone is willing, conservative board member White has serious reservations, and after Milk fails to back one of White's pet projects, the die is cast, leading to the murder of two beloved Bay Area figures. 

If Van Sant captures Milk in all his complexities--he was, for instance, a very funny man--Milk also serves as an enticement to grassroots activism, showing how one regular guy elevated everyone around him, notably Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), the ex-street hustler who created the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial. Released in the wake of Proposition 8, California's anti-gay marriage amendment, Milk is inspirational in the best of ways: one person can and did make a difference, though the struggle is far from over. 

SMALL TOWN GAY BAR

(Malcolm Ingram, USA, 2006, 76 minutes)

It's easy for city dwellers to take gay bars for granted, but Bear Nation filmmaker Malcolm Ingram presents the other side of the picture. Social opportunities are considerably more limited for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals in rural America. With production assistance from Kevin Smith, Ingram focuses on several communities in Mississippi. 

While some gay-themed documentaries are depressing and others inspiring, Small Town Gay Bar is a bit of both. Rick Gladish, for instance, owner of Rumors nightclub in Shannon, created an oasis for the local LGBTQ community, but remains closeted from his Pentecostal parents. Scotty Weaver, on the other hand, was open about his sexual orientation. And brutally murdered because of it (Ingram speaks with Weaver's family).

As Gladish notes, "As far as being gay in Mississippi, it's hard, it's very hard." Proof comes in the form of Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, who states categorically, "God hates fags." Other subjects include patrons, bartenders, drag performers, and strippers. In addition, Ingram looks back on bars that have closed over the years, which lends his debut documentary a nostalgic air, though he concludes with new beginnings for two of them. 

Small Town Gay Bar isn't as heart-wrenching as Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning or Daniel G. Karslake's For the Bible Tells Me So, which cover similar territory, but that doesn't make its voices any less valuable--and a soundtrack filled with Canadian alternative acts like the Hidden Cameras and Broken Social Scene is a nice touch. Extra features include unbridled commentary from Ingram and chats with Smith and editor Scott Mosier.

Milk is on Prime Video; Small Town Gay Bar is unavailable to stream.

Images from the IMDb (Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, and James Franco in Milk), Netflix (Small Town Gay Bar), and Filthy Dreams (Rumors, R.I.P.).