Sex Positive

Superb new documentary.

In his illuminating, timelessly timely Sex Positive documentary, Daryl Wein calls attention both to unjustly neglected pioneering AIDS activist Richard Berkowitz and his still widely ignored groundbreaking promotion of safe sex.

It helps that Wein's subject is such a fascinating, garrulous paradox.

Daryl Wein's engrossing portrait of Richard Berkowitz is freshly engaging largely due to the subject himself.

For gays who remember the nightmare, Sex Positive may be too depressing to watch. But the movie strikes a cautionary tone for a younger generation that, it says, isn't taking the HIV threat seriously.

The movie jolts you with the realization that the AIDS epidemic and the public debate about such issues have retreated so far under the news radar as to be half-forgotten.

Intermittently compelling biography.