Madison Hayes 
If you watched Lifetime’s 2021 holiday film and need the ending of Under the Christmas Tree explained, you’re in the right place. This breakdown covers what happens in the final scenes, how Charlie and Alma’s story resolves, and what the tree lighting ceremony ending means for the characters. The movie was a milestone as Lifetime’s … Read more
Lez Bomb is a 2018 indie comedy-drama that turns a Thanksgiving family gathering into a masterclass in awkward timing. Written, directed by, and starring Jenna Laurenzo, the film follows Lauren, a closeted woman whose plan to come out to her family goes sideways when her male roommate Austin shows up uninvited. The result is a … Read more
If you’ve ever sat at a family holiday table wondering whether today is the day you finally say the thing you’ve been holding inside, then Lez Bomb was made for you. Released in , writer-director Jenna Laurenzo’s film takes one of cinema’s most familiar setups, the family holiday dinner, and puts a queer woman at … Read more
Some films wear their genre on their sleeve. Lez Bomb, writer-director Jenna Laurenzo’s 2018 feature debut, does exactly that with a title that doubles as a mission statement. It is a queer holiday comedy built on a foundation that audiences have recognized for centuries. But understanding how Lez Bomb uses the coming-out comedy formula means … Read more
If you have ever watched a TV show where the one LGBTQ+ character dies right after finding happiness, you have encountered the Bury Your Gays trope. It is one of the most discussed and criticized storytelling patterns in modern media, and it has a history stretching back over a century. Our team has spent months … Read more
If you’ve ever watched a beloved queer couple on television only to see one of them killed off before the season finale, you’ve witnessed the bury your gays trope in action. Across more than a decade of fandom conversations and academic study, this pattern has become impossible to ignore. From Tara on Buffy the Vampire … Read more
How the Hays Code shaped the way queer characters were written is one of the most important questions in film history. For nearly four decades, the Motion Picture Production Code dictated what Hollywood could show on screen, and LGBTQ+ characters were among its most heavily restricted subjects. From 1930 to 1968, filmmakers could not depict … Read more
If you grew up watching Disney movies, you probably noticed something about the villains. They moved differently than the heroes. They had a certain flourish, a theatricality, an eye makeup situation that the princesses never rocked. Maybe you felt drawn to them without knowing why. I know I did. The question of why so many … Read more
Think back to the first time you watched The Little Mermaid as a kid. Ursula probably terrified you with her cackling laugh and theatrical hand gestures. Years later, you might have realized something about her that went completely over your head at the time. She was inspired by a drag queen named Divine, moved with … Read more
New Queer Cinema is a term coined by critic B. Ruby Rich in 1992 to describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking that erupted in the early 1990s. In the pages of Sight and Sound, Rich named a wave of low-budget, politically urgent films that refused to apologize for their sexuality and refused to play … Read more