We know just about all we need to know about PARIAH's main character right from the start - the title itself seemingly a one word summation of her entire character. Adepero Oduye's Alike is no victim, however. She is a girl assured of her identity but adrift in a world that isn't ready to accept her, not just as a black teenager, but as a lesbian. Unlike many coming of age dramas, Alike understands and accepts her sexuality. She isn't ashamed of who she is. She frequents gay bars, hits on pretty girls in the school hallway, and walks with a masculine swagger one would expect of a teenage male rather than a teenage girl.

There is something vibrant and immediate about Pariah that is hard to shake. From the pulsing opening to the wrenching poetry reading at its finale, Pariah is never anything less than piercing and incisive. Rees and Oduye are both blazing new talents to watch. So assured is the film and so true is Oduye's performance that it's hard to believe that both director and actor aren't already established artists. This is one of the most raw and powerful depictions of budding teenage sexuality I've ever…

The lonely landscape of the English countryside provides the backdrop for GOD'S OWN COUNTRY, the directorial debut of British actor, Francis Lee. It also becomes the catalyst for a budding relationship between two men; Johnny (Josh O'Connor) an inarticulate farmer predisposed to anonymous, casual sex, and Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu) a Romanian immigrant hired by Johnny's father facing prejudice and mistrust. At first, the two seem natural enemies. Johnny is withdrawn, rebellious, and suspicious of any outsiders. He would much rather have a quick encounter in a bathroom than carry on a conversation with a partner. Gheorghe is much more settled in who he is. He's more assertive, having faced many hardships in the past, and refuses to tolerate Johnny's casual racism.

Alone on the moors with their sheep, what begins as horseplay quickly turns sexual as carnal instincts take hold. Yet Gheorghe refuses to consent to Johnny's brand of quick and meaningless sex. Instead, he introduces him to intimacy, in the process teaching Johnny that there is more to love that just carnal pleasures. The two quickly become something Johnny never expected, but overcoming his old ways may prove impossible.

Lee has made an astonishing debut behind the camera. It…

It's hard to do justice to the exquisite longing that courses through the veins of Todd Haynes' CAROL. Haynes makes films that must be felt on a gut level, the kinds of films that causes chills that start in your very core and radiate out to the tips of your fingers. As he did in FAR FROM HEAVEN, Haynes takes the staid structures of the 1950s "women's pictures" and explores the unspoken emotional truths coursing beneath the surface. While Haynes isn't recreating the work of Douglas Sirk here, that same DNA runs deep in CAROL, as he explores the forbidden Eisenhower-era romance between an upper middle class housewife (Cate Blanchett) and a younger shop clerk (Rooney Mara).

Like those "women's pictures" that were so popular in the 1950s, Haynes' films are often filled with surface pleasures - immaculate period design, a haunting, Philip Glass-like score by Carter Burwell, but like Sirk before him, Haynes always takes it one step further, examining the deeper emotions emotions beneath the seemingly flawless veneer. Blanchett and Mara are both absolute perfection, channeling the deep, repressed emotion of two women whose true feelings can't be adequately expressed in the language of the time. It's a…

The spirit of Pier Paolo Pasolini hangs over João Pedro Rodrigues' gleefully blasphemous THE ORNITHOLOGIST, which turns religious iconography on its head in a journey of self-discovery and tribulation in the Portuguese wilderness. The film follows an Ornithologist who becomes hopelessly lost after a near-death experience on a river, through a series of harrowing and erotic trials that recall the Stations of the Cross. Kidnapped by Chinese pilgrims who seek to castrate him, the Ornithologist escapes, only to encounter a marauding band of circus performers, a deaf/mute Jesus with whom he has an unexpected sexual encounter, and topless female hunters on horseback resembling centaurs who may either help or hurt him.

It is a strange, erotic odyssey, after which our protagonist (a representation of St. Anthony) is literally and figuratively a different person. As a journey of spiritual self-discovery, it's an often abstract and obfuscating film; but what magic! What depth! As he did in the brilliant TO DIE LIKE A MAN, Rodrigues takes us on a haunting trip through the mind of a man in transition (occasionally played by Rodrigues himself), grappling with issues of sexuality and religion in powerful and deeply personal ways. Rodrigues' intentisn't always clear, but…

Director Patrick Wang stars as Joey, an Asian American gay man from Tennessee in a loving long term partnership with white high school teacher Cody (Trevor St. John). Together they are raising Cody's biological son, Chip. When Cody dies suddenly of an unexpected illness, Joey and Chip find themselves alone for the first time, trying to pick up the pieces of a shattered life. Things get complicated, however, when Joey discovers that Cody left sole custody of Chip to his sister, Sally, in a six year old will. Devastated, Joey is left to wonder what happened, and as he grows more and more estranged from a family that had once accepted him, he is left with nothing but his memories for company. When he decides to fight for his son, it becomes clear that even the law is against him. In a world that doesn't even recognize his relationship as legitimate, his entire family as he knows it is about to be torn apart.

At nearly three hours long, IN THE FAMILY may seem a bit daunting, and even self-indulgent for a first time writer/director. But the film never once feels like it's as long as it actually is. Wang…