Hello and welcome once again to a weekend. I hope you have fun summery plans (or cozy wintry ones if you live in the mysterious lands of the southern hemisphere). Me, I’m heading to the mountains of North Carolina for a brief vacation, so this recommendations column is going to be a little different. I’ll be offering some suggestions mostly for next weekend, and then on Monday, I’ll have a writeup of Disclosure Day, the movie in which Steven Spielberg finally comes out of the closet. Go see that over the next few days and then we’ll talk about it back here. The other two posts next week will be a little more evergreen: Yes, it’s time for “best movies/TV of the year so far” lists! Stay tuned. 

Leviticus (in limited theaters June 19)

Just in time for Pride (and without any AI special effects, ahem ahem) comes this sad, frightening film that turns gay conversion therapy into a sort of demon curse. The film, from debut feature writer-director Adrian Chiarella, concerns two teenage boys in a dreary town in Victoria, Australia who undergo a religious cleansing meant to rid them of their homosexuality. What instead ensues is that they are stalked by some kind of malevolent entity that takes the form of that which they desire the most—meaning, each other. 

The allegory is certainly on the nose, and not all the logic of the curse adds up. But for the most part, Leviticus is a stirring, thoughtful, and perhaps grimly necessary—even in 2026—evocation of what it is to be persecuted for a basic part of one’s self. Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen, as the young lovers at the center of the film, effectively communicate the heartbreak and terror of these boys’ miserable circumstances, made all the more looming and terrible by Chiarella’s deft, economical filmmaking. 

I saw this movie ahead of Sundance back in January and thought it was good but not great. But then I got to Utah and just about every movie there was awful, and suddenly Leviticus felt like one of the best things I’d seen in years. So my affection for the movie might be a little skewed. But I don’t think I’m wrong in finding something vital and worthy in the film. I’m especially taken by its ending, which dares to suggest to its audience—especially the younger people—that sometimes home can’t be fixed, that there is no moral campaign to be won. Get thee to a faraway city instead, as so many generations of queer people have before.