What to Stream: Max documentaries add to LGBTQ+ history in America
This week, there are a few notable new movies on streaming services to celebrate the end of Pride Month and to gear up for some of the new releases still to come this summer.
On Max, a trio of HBO documentary releases offer a variety of ways to learn the history of the LGBTQIA+ experience in America. First up, “The Stroll,” which premiered on June 21 on Max, takes a look at the lives of the transgender sex workers in New York City’s Meatpacking District pre-gentrification. The documentary is co-directed by Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker, who are both trans women. Lovell is a previous subject of a documentary on the same topic, while Drucker is a filmmaker who directed the docuseries “The Lady and the Dale” and the recent Hulu documentary “Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl.” This insider perspective brings a sensitivity and intimacy to the interviews that make for an entirely unique point of view on the depiction of these lives. Stream “The Stroll” now on Max.
Tune into Max for the raucous concert film “Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History of Popular Music,” directed by filmmaking duo Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (“The Celluloid Closet,” “The
Times of Harvey Milk,” “Linda Rondstadt: The Sound of My Voice”). The film follows the 24-hour concert performed by theater artist and musician Taylor Mac that travels through American history through song from 1776 to 2016. Mac performed the concert only once in 2016, singing 246 songs and stopping only for short breaks and costume changes. Epstein and Friedman’s film captures the concert along with interviews with Mac and collaborators on the show.
And for another nonfiction look at queer history, watch Stephen Kijak’s documentary “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed,” also on Max. This illuminating film depicts the life of matinee idol and silver screen heartthrob Rock Hudson, one of the last superstars crafted by the Hollywood studio system, who lived deeply in the closet as a gay man. Hudson died of AIDS in 1985, and his death shifted the cultural narrative around the disease and inspired friends such as Elizabeth Taylor to take up the cause.
In a different direction, now that “Succession” is off the air, you might be missing the inimitable Aussie actor Sarah Snook, who played Shiv Roy.
She’s in two streaming films debuting this week: the Sundance horror thriller “Run Rabbit Run,” written by Hannah Kent and directed by Daina Reid, playing a fertility doctor who notices strange behavior in her own daughter. Stream it on Netflix.
She’s also in the Apple TV+ corporate comedy “The Beanie Bubble,” playing the wife of eccentric Beanie Babies mogul Ty Warner, as portrayed by a clean-shaven, and therefore unrecognizable, Zach Galifianakis. “The Beanie Bubble,” is written by Kristin Gore and Zac Bissonnette, directed by Gore and Damian Kulash, and it falls into that 2023 “brand dramedy” genre that also encompasses films such as “Air,” “Tetris,” Blackberry” and “Flamin’ Hot.” Elizabeth Banks and Geraldine Viswanathan also co-star. Stream it on Apple TV+.
And if you’re bursting with excitement for Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” arriving in theaters on July 21, check out the rerelease of the 1998 cult doc “Barbie Nation: An Unauthorized
Turn” by Susan Stern, which is available on digital platforms. The film has a lo-fi late ’90s aesthetic, but it takes a look at the history of Barbie, as invented by Ruth Handler, and looks at some of the (often sordid) ways in which Barbie has functioned as a symbol of play, fantasy and sexuality for generations.