Portside

American movies and TV are making major strides in LGBTQ representation, but storytellers abroad are in many ways ahead of the curve, exploring sexuality and relationships with groundbreaking technique, in ways often coded and ahead of their time.

The new film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway show relegated its Black Latinx community to the background and sparked a debate about colorism.

Lizzie Borden’s restored and rereleased radical feminist movie is as scrappy and smart as it was in 1983. It's a fantasy about how 10 years after peaceful revolution a supposedly socialist state rules.

So exuberant and full of life that it would convince you movies were back even if they hadn’t gone anywhere, “In the Heights” is the kind of electrifying theatrical experience that people have been waxing nostalgic about since the pandemic began.

Filmed in the 1950s, Vittorio De Seta's luminous shorts depicting the hardscrabble lives of fishermen, shepherds, peasants, and miners in rural Italy turn documentary into art film.

'Pritty', a 20-minute animated short, reimagines the typical queer coming of age story by replacing Black trauma with Black joy and discovery through the lens of an intentional Black experience.

In 1978 body snatchers really did dig up and try to ransom the corpse of the legendary actor Charlie Chaplin shortly after his death. 'Stealing Chaplin' uses this fact-based bit of skullduggery as a mere launching pad for its fact-free comedy.

The Vietnam War ended, but the fight against the use of the chemical compound Agent Orange is far from over. Two women from opposite ends of the globe are united in their battle to hold the manufacturers of the toxic defoliant accountable.

The quiet drama 'Nomadland' makes a lot of sense for this strange Oscars year.

Minari is a gentle, universal story about a resilient South Korean family trying to make it in 1980s America. You should watch it.