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Stop! That! Train!

By Golu
Coming out of the same studio that gave us RuPaul's Drag Race, and stacked with a whole crew of former contestants, Stop! That! Train! plays like RuPaul basically taking a bow for the entire franchise she's built. It's not really a gay film in the traditional sense, but with so many drag stars from Ru's shows popping up alongside a few cameos from well known out gay actors, I figured it earns a spot on this blog anyway. The whole thing is completely over the top, packed with GenZ slang, loud flashy visuals, and humor that's constantly winking at you knowing how ridiculous it is. Going in you'd assume it's meant to be a laugh riot, and a lot of critics online seem to be eating it up, but I just couldn't get into it at all. I've never really been someone who vibes with campy silly stuff like this, so honestly my reaction doesn't surprise me one bit. The setup follows Tess and DeeDee, two low level stewardesses who sneak onto the fancy Glamazonian E...
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Before We Move (French/Russian) (Documentary)

By Golu
I may not be much of a dancer myself, but I have always always enjoyed dancing and watching people dance and dance shows and stuff. So naturally when I heard about this documentary queer Tango dancing, I was very excited. Tango is one of those dance forms that has always attracted me and I have told myself plenty of times, that if I could be an expert on any dance form, it would be Tango. So with all these feelings, naturally I went in watching this documentary with a lot of expectations. Big mistake!

The film documents two years of a gay couple Misha and Otar before their immigration to Israel. The images of the documentary preserved their lives and emotions in the decision making process. While organizing queer tango events and giving tango classes, they are feeling lost about the upcoming departure. Tango is a pair dance that originated in the poor port areas of Argentina at the end of the 19th century. It was danced by men, emigrants from Southern Europe, Africa, South America. The dance expressed their suffering about the abandoned homeland, family and loved ones. As society changes, how we dance changes too. In the modern time the international queer community reinvented it as Queer Tango. It's a different way to dance, where nobody takes your gender, sexual orientation or choice of role for granted. Like any other popular dance, it is a mirror of the society in which it was developed and from which it emerges. It reflects life and helps people express their complex feelings through dance. People have always moved in search of better living conditions and escaping dramatic political environment in their homeland. The rising level of homophobia in Russia forces many gays and lesbians to leave their country and seek refuge abroad. When narrow-minded traditionalism and xenophobia are rife in the country, tango leads you forward move by move, no matter what gender, sexual orientation or nationality you have.

Even though some of the dance performances were good, just something was not right in the doucmnetry. It just failed to help my attention right from the beginning, and I am struggling to understand what it really was. The lead gay couple was handsome, charming. They were good dancers as well. So I think th basic ingredients were right, but somehow the overall recipe failed. The way the story was brought together somehow felt, not confusing, but more like "what's the point you are trying to make". It just felt disconnected at multiple points, and its a shame because with a subject like this, which personally I would have enjoyed, just became so drab and boring at a certain point that I just couldn't believe and kept asking myself "Why Am I still watching this?". Maybe I was not in the right frame of mind and someone other me can educate me a little more on what was I missing, but as it stands now, I did not enjoy watching this doc even one bit and would not recommend. (2/10)
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