Channing Tatum Foxcatcher

Oscar Race: The Uphill Battle of the Physical Genius

I first stumbled on the theory of multiple intelligences around a decade ago while training at a boxing gym in London. I was a competitive swimmer as a youth, then into “power yoga” as it was called when the craze first hit these shores, then weight lifting, all solitary sports that requite little interaction with anyone else. Learning how to box was transformative, empowering; fighting other men in a rather primal sport forces you to overcome the innate resistance to violence that most people are born with as a survival instinct. Contact sports like boxing teach your body that fight is as viable as flight.

Matthew McConaughey

REVIEW: Struggling to Survive a Plague in ‘Dallas Buyers Club’

I will never forget the first time I heard about HIV/AIDS. I don’t think any gay man who was sexually active in the 80s can. For the generation before mine, it’s on a par with remembering where you were when you heard Kennedy was assassinated.

I was nineteen. It was a sunny autumn day in Paris, and I was lounging around naked with a French lover in my impossibly glamorous and charming duplex garret in the Marais, one of those weekends when you get stoned, have sex, eat, smoke, drink, have sex some more, lather, rinse, repeat. A friend call from New York in a panic and shattered the hedonistic bliss. “Have you heard about this gay cancer thing? They say everyone has it.”

Tye Sheridan Mud

REVIEW: Coming of Age with the Madness of Love in ‘Mud’

When the credits rolled at the end of Mud and I saw “written and directed by Jeff Nichols,” I said to myself—more like hissed to myself—This better have been adapted from a book. It isn’t. It’s Nichols’ original story and script, apparently a follow-up to his Take Shelter from 2011, which starred Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain and won several awards at the Cannes sidebars. I have that film on order, but I suspect I should get this review out first before seeing it or I might be too hampered by resentment for Nichols’ talent to talk about him.

I have nothing to negative to say about Mud. Nada. Zip. Oh, wait,