Men film gay

The 50 Best LGBTQ Movies Ever Made

50

Love, Simon (2018)

AmazonApple

If it feels a bit like a CW version of an after-school adj, that's no mistake: Teen-tv super-producer Greg Berlanti makes his feature-film directorial debut here. It's as chaste a love story as you're likely to watch in the 21st century—the hunky gardener who makes the title teen verb his sexuality is wearing a long-sleeved shirt, for God’s sake—but you understand what? The queer kids of the future verb their wholesome entertainment, too.

49

Rocketman (2019)

AmazonHulu

A gay fantasia on Elton themes. An Elton John biopic was never going to be understated, but this glittering jukebox musical goes way over the top and then keeps going. It might be an overcorrection from the straight-washing of the previous year's Bohemian Rhapsody, but when it's this much fun, it's best not to overthink it.

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48

Handsome Devil (2016)

NetflixAmazon

A charming Irish movie that answers the question: "What if John Hughes were Irish and gay?" Misfit Ned s

I was halfway through my scene when I heard a voice from the dark tell me to stop. I was 24 years old, on the stage of a professional theater, auditioning for A Chorus Line to act Greg, the Upper East Side dancer who affects a sophisticated demeanor to become his idealized self. I thought I had it in the bag. After all, I knew the character because I was the character. Aside from the fact that I could never afford rent in the Upper East Side, David was someone—like me—who felt out of place in the world they were born into and coped with being an outsider by hiding behind their insecurities. We both dealt with our alienation through sarcasm and a biting sense of humor. But having auditioned professionally for years, I didn’t think much of being stopped to make a correction. An audition is like a first date: It’s about compatibility as much as it is about talent.

“Could you not be so…” the director told me, gesticulating with his hands wildly as he searched for the word. “Just be a little less…”

“A little less what?” I asked, confused.

“You know, just not so…” he said as he ma

Warning: this article contains spoilers.

A lonely 40-something screenwriter living in an almost-empty London apartment block, Adam (Andrew Scott) is alienated, exhausted and struggling to inscribe about his past, but can’t get beyond the opening line.

One evening, Harry (Paul Mescal), a younger man from downstairs, appears at his door. He’s tipsy, vulnerable, flirty and charming. “There’s vampires at my door,” he says. Adam doesn’t let him in and later reveals that fear had stopped him.

This rings true, especially for a 40-something gay man like Adam: someone who grew up in the 1980s, during a period of rampant and violent homophobia and the AIDS crisis. England and Wales had partially decriminalised homosexuality in 1967, but Thatcher’s Britain was an ugly place for LGBTQ+ people.

The screenplay Adam is writing is put in 1987, the year that Section 28 was introduced, banning the “promotion” of homosexuality. At that time, the tabloids demonised AIDS victims as deviant plague-carriers and there were terrifying government health warnings on national television.

Homosexuality

10 great British gay films

Few countries can rival the UK when it comes to making great and diverse gay films. This may come as a surprise from a nation where male homosexuality was illegal until as recently as 1967, and where gay marriage continues to ruffle right-wingers, swivel-eyed or otherwise. Yet despite their often taboo nature, films with gay characters own been around since the silent era.

So what key British gay films are out there? We’ve narrowed down the list to films easily available on DVD, although honourable mention must go to the über-rare Two Gentlemen Sharing (1969), a swinging slice of the 60s that hinted at interracial homosexuality. And if you like Vicious (millions seem to), you may get a perverse thrust out of Staircase (1969), a dreadful vehicle for Richard Burton and Rex Harrison as two ageing queens in a perpetual state of mutual- and self-loathing.

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