The strongest joke in Stop! That! Train! may simply be the sight of RuPaul as US president Judy Gagwell. It was the one gag that genuinely made me laugh in a movie otherwise determined to bombard its audience with knowing absurdity. For 90 minutes, the mugging, Gen Z slang, glaring colors and exaggerated visuals barely pause. Plenty of online critics appear delighted by the result, but despite its obvious ambition to be a nonstop comedy, it never clicked for me. At least the calamity powering all that noise is appropriately ridiculous. Low-level stewardesses Tess and DeeDee secretly board the luxurious Glamazonian Express on the very day it is due to meet the enormous Stormaganza. The brakes inevitably fail, leaving the train hurtling out of control while the storm closes in. Its path takes it toward an extraordinary patch of land occupied by a nuclear reactor, a dog shelter and actress Laurie Metcalf's home. The people who might prevent disaster are rapidly compromised. A rogue scorpion incapacitates the only crew member who knows what to do, while President Gagwell's old PTSD resurfaces at precisely the wrong moment. Whether the president can rescue everyone remains uncertain, so Tess and DeeDee are forced to take responsibility themselves. Tess occupies and reassures the passengers as DeeDee joins Cal in an attempt to repair the controls. Cal is also the conductor DeeDee is wildly attracted to, and apparently the kind of man worthy of appearing in a publication called Conductors We Want to See the Dick Of. He is played by English Teacher's Jordan Alvarez,…

It is hard to wrap my head around the fact that in 2026, we are still being served BL series of this low quality. This mini series consists of roughly 7 to 8 episodes with a total runtime of approximately one hour, and it is so tedious that I am at a loss for words. Between the awkward acting and a story that couldn't be more basic, there is almost nothing worth saving here. Even when the makers attempt to inject drama, the effort falls completely flat.After spotting a man sitting by himself at a gay bar, 23 year old university student Ho Won feels an immediate attraction. The man, Min U, is 33 years old and dismisses Ho Won right away, claiming he is too young. Ho Won decides to lie about his age; having made a bet with the bartender that he could get the man home before the night ends, he changes his approach. This tactic works, and the two eventually sleep together at Min U's place. Although they are complete opposites, a certain pull brings them together for a few dates. However, once Min U discovers the bet, things shift. He offers Ho Won a chance to explain, but Ho Won shuts down, admitting to the lie without mentioning his feelings, largely due to intense guilt. Three months later, Min U arrives at Ho Won's university as a new professor, at which point he learns Ho Won's actual age. This time, Ho Won is able to open up and explain the situation properly, leading to a…

I felt a sense of curiosity after reading a summary about anonymous figures roaming streets in search of hookups, specifically the part where one person slips through a locked city park gate to wander the trails; I expected an erotic mystery to unfold. Instead, that single premise essentially covers the entire runtime. The movie consists of one single night of gay cruising within an amusement park, defined entirely by bodies meeting and exchanged glances. After one guy locks eyes with another on a path, they are soon tangled together amidst the fences and trees. The film moves between roughly fifteen or twenty different men, but with almost nobody speaking a word, the runtime is basically just these guys hooking up and cruising around the park. As expected from the subject matter, the film gets explicit. I found myself wondering—and I am still wondering—if this is intended to be a legitimate art film or actual porn, though I cannot tell you which. There is a sense of sensuality and mystery hanging over the cruising sequences, as if an outsider might crash the scene or someone might get caught at any moment, yet that never happens; it is just pleasure throughout. It functions as an observational piece, with the camera drifting between wider shots and tight close-ups without ever passing judgment, watching everything with discretion and honesty. No one is treated badly here. Strange little connections form, sometimes via sex and sometimes through unexpected conversations. One of the film's best moments involves a detailed retelling of a hookup between two strangers, spoken…

Going into this series, I expected almost nothing, which proved to be the correct mindset. The show simply fell short. The plot is incredibly thin—the sort of narrative that belongs in a short piece rather than being stretched into a full series. Instead, the creators padded the story out into eight episodes of approximately twenty four minutes each. Most frustratingly, the story clearly reaches its conclusion by episode six, leaving seven and eight feeling like they were tacked on without any real purpose. The story is driven by three central characters. One is a music producer facing a stalled career, and the other is a gifted young singer whose extreme shyness and fear of people mean he only performs live online while wearing a mask. When the singer joins the producer's company, the producer is floored to discover this is the same masked artist he has spent years trying to track down—the creator of a song that has haunted him since he first heard it. The singer lives with a roommate who grew up with him in an orphanage; while this roommate looks after him, he clearly harbors feelings that he never expresses out loud. It turns out the producer and singer share a deep history as childhood friends who lost touch completely after the singer was sent to the orphanage. To help the singer come out of his shell, the producer puts in the effort to push him toward a singing competition, slowly drawing him out through patience and care. As feelings develop between the two, the roommate experiences…

I am somewhat unsure if this should be classified as a film or a documentary, but because it has appeared at several doc festivals, I will label it a documentary for the time being. The premise follows a filmmaker who moves to Chicago after his older boyfriend loses interest in him; once there, he uses dating apps to find new men for a loose, undefined project investigating attachment, compatibility, and attraction—a concept his mother apparently cannot stand. After sitting through the seventy something minutes, I found the experience to be completely aimless, a sentiment that even the creators themselves seem to acknowledge. While the work does pose some genuinely hard questions, they feel less like intentional inquiries and more like natural byproducts of attempting to navigate intimacy without anyone ever setting clear boundaries. After splitting from his older boyfriend, Bethel moves to Chicago to start a new life. He has a vague desire to launch a film project, though he lacks any actual concept for it. To begin, he filters through his Grindr matches and invites roughly twelve men to meet him in person. These discussions, which take place in Bethel's studio, cover a vast range of topics, from how Grindr has altered their dating methods and the way their libidos fade over time to their sexual preferences, their specific subcultures, and general views on art. The vibe of these meetings mirrors a first date almost perfectly—flirtatious and disjointed, occasionally awkward, before abruptly becoming sharp and overtly sexual. The film grows even more experimental as each man is given a…