Defending Your Life Provides an Imaginative and Thoughtful Rendering of the Afterlife

You gotta begin your movie with a bang and Defending Your Life certainly starts off its story with a whopper of a development. Before the opening credits even begin, the protagonist, Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks), has died. On his birthday no less! Yes, while driving around in a new car and loudly singing along to a tune on the radio, Daniel didn't see that bus headed straight for him until it was too late. Just as he's about to collide with the vehicle, Daniel awakens in another place entirely. The now-deceased Daniel is in the afterlife, though he's in neither Heaven or Hell. Turns out he's in Judgement City, a place of purgatory where Daniel learns that humans are not the only beings in the universe.

Paris Is Burning Intertwines Movement With Intimate Interviews To An Astonishingly Powerful Effect

You ever watch a movie and know in your heart of hearts that you're watching something special? That's how I felt while experiencing Paris Is Burning for the first time. I was well aware of this 1991 documentary from director Jennie Livingston being a highly acclaimed motion picture and also being considered one of the all-time great pieces of queer cinema, but prior to watching it for the first time, I was otherwise totally in the dark on what exactly kind of plot or subject matter it covered. That turned out to be an ideal way to enter Paris Is Burning, whose many virtues unfolded before with a glorious sense of newness, it was like managing to open a wonderful gift on Christmas morning without managing to be spoiled on what it is.