The Big Gay Movie Thread

[Patrick R]

I spent the past two months exhaustively watching horror films for a special three part bonus episode of my former podcast and am now completely burnt out on my favorite genre.

 

So this month the plan is to watch almost nothing but LGBTQ films. I read Celluloid Closet several months ago (an incredible and entertaining read I'd recommend to anyone, not just those interested in film or gay culture) but never got around to watching many of the films it covered. 

 

What are some of your favorite LGBTQ films? What should I check out? What kind of LGBTQ films do you want to see more of?

 

The first film I'm going to watch is Victim (1961) directed by trailblazing English filmmaker Basil Dearden. It's not only the first mainstream English-language film to ever use the word "homosexual" but it's progressive far beyond it's time, with a plot about innocent gay men being caught up in a blackmail ring. It was widely reviled on it's release for being too progressive: the New York Times called the subject matter "disagreeable" and Time magazine said

 

"[it's] a coyly sensational exploitation of homosexuality as theme-and what's more offensive-an implicit approval of homosexuality as a practice...nowhere does the film suggest that homosexuality is a serious but often curable neurosis that attacks the biological basis of life itself."

 

Nonetheless it is said to have been an important factor in England eventually legalizing homosexuality, and as far as dated pleas for acceptance go (of which the world of gay cinema has all too many) it stands out by not only being the first English language film of it's kind but well-directed, with beautiful B&W photography and an intriguing mystery structure.

 

If you have Hulu Plus, it's one of the Criterion films available.

[TheLastBaron]

Wow I hadn't heard of Victim before but I'll definitely check it out now.

I really liked The Wedding Banquet, it might be my favorite Ang Lee film. Also I loved Philadelphia, though it's been a while since I watched it.

[Mangela Lansbury]

Weekend (not the Godard one, the other one) is a good LGBT movie that is also on Hulu! I'm not sure what's on streaming services, but I'll try to think of other good and readily available ones.

[Patrick R]

Victim is definitely a product of it's time in some ways, treating homosexuality more as an affliction than a valid lifestyle, and focusing on a saintly barely-gay man (who is redeemed because he has never acted on his impulses and still also loves his wife) as the protagonist.

 

But what I find really amazing about it is that, in couching it's plea for the legalization of homosexuality in a crime/mystery plot, it manages to avoid most problems I tend to have with victim narratives and their lack of forward movement. It basically has all the thrills of a crime film set in a seedy underworld while simultaneously making the argument that the underworld is not seedy and only exists to escape persecution. The gay culture depicted is way more rich and nuanced than you'd ever expect, and the gay men are distinct, from a wide variety of backgrounds, and neither all sinners nor saints. Definitely not a perfect movie, but fascinatingly ahead of it's time.

 

EDIT: Also in the plus column: the villain is NOT a self-loathing gay man. As someone who's sat through my share of queer killer movies from the 70's I kept waiting for that shoe to drop, and was pleased that it never did.

 

I think I'm going to watch Itty Bitty Titty Committee (2007) next.

 

EDIT #2: Itty Bitty Titty Committee is pretty lame. Like a Disney Channel version of radical feminism. Which was basically the vibe I got from But I'm A Cheerleader too, so maybe I just don't like Jamie Babbit.

 

Good soundtrack though. Wall to wall riot grrl. At one point my favorite Slant 6 song faded into my favorite Bikini Kill song and I realized I couldn't totally hate it.

[Mawd]

Hey if you're fine with watching the gay version of American Pie, the Eating Out series was a surprisingly solid set of movies. The Birdcage is another good gay comedy with Robin Williams and a few other stars in it. I really liked Kaboom! as a surreal queer movie about the end of the world.

My boyfriend rates Boy Culture really high but I haven't seen it. Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Hedwig and the Angry Inch are both classic cult gay movies for their own reasons. The History Boys touched on gay themes but was largely just a good movie about its own thing.

Summersturm was a decent gay movie from Germany. I'm being told the french film Just a Question of Love is good, and Les chansons d'amour aka Love Songs is a good queer musical about polyamory.

 

Personally I'd like to see more weird films like Kaboom!. We've also had a lot of tender coming out movies but maybe we need more films about forming an identity or just living in queer spaces or just being queer today. I want more movies that combine multiple sexualities and gender identities rather than most queer films neatly lining up into "that one about the gays/lesbians/transitioning people". While still recognising that there's fertile ground to have a movies solely about those experiences.

 

I think at the moment there's better work done in tv. Characters in shows like Looking, Hunting Season, even Shameless tend to come off more like real people than person analogues in many of the gay movies I've seen.

[Christopher]

It might be hard to find a physical copy, but you might want to consider Matsumoto Toshio's Funderal Parade of Roses. It's an experimental film from 1969 covering that era's underground gay culture in Tokyo. It's a classic of both Japanese experimental cinema and LGBTQ cinema. The link in this post is to a low quality youtube upload, but it does have English subtitles. The story is kind of a retelling of Oedipus, but the director also played with a lot of documentary techniques. It's been too long since I've seen it and it's kind of hard to classify, but it's worth a try and will give you a glimpse into a cultural moment you might not otherwise be able to experience.

[Patrick R]

Imitation Game is standard Oscar fluff, with Turing's sexual preferences so besides the point that the ending is almost insulting. Wasn't expecting much, didn't get much.

[Patrick R]

Stranger By The Lake is everything I want to see in gay movies. It's not just a queer flavored genre film but a well-crafted thriller in which homosexuality is down deep in it's bones. Languid long takes in a bucolic setting punctuated by graphic sex (and by graphic I mean multiple unsimulated sex acts, so be warned going in) that perfectly capture the stop start momentum of it's sex addict main character's (my diagnosis, not the film's) days and the ways he braids violence and danger into his sex life.

 

Mostly a character study but also a couple of incredibly tense and scary scenes. Totally rad movie. It's on Netflix Instant and if you think you can deal with explicit sex you should definitely watch it.

 

Actually, even if you're not sure you should probably watch it. Sometimes I think it'd do the world some good if images of male on male sex were as common-place in the culture as male on female or female on female. Even if it isn't your thing, becoming acclimated to images of gay sex can only serve to make it seem less scary and strange, right?

[marblize]

I didn't care for Concussion (2013) but it seems like a lot of people did so maybe it's worth a shot? I could've just been in the wrong mood. 

 

You saw Tangerine yeah?

[Patrick R]

Tangerine is the best!

My partner enjoyed Concussion, and wrote this piece on it and Nymphomaniac.

 

I rented Weekend, but the next one I watch should be Killing of Sister George.

[Patrick R]

After Stonewall isn't as fascinating as Before Stonewall, because stories of hidden worlds, cladestine meetings and coded messages are just always going to be more interesting than the meat and potatoes work of activism, as vital as it is.

 

Still, if you haven't seen either they're a good crash course on the history of homosexuality in America in the 20th century. Really great balance of personal stories and broader history of the movement.

[Patrick R]

Watched Tangerine again at work. It's now out on blu-ray and DVD and I can't stress enough how entertaining and funny it is. The conversation around it seemed to be all about it's identity politics (which are awesome and totally admirable) and the fact that it was shot on iPhones, but mostly it's just a fucking incredible and funny Christmas screwball comedy.

 

SEE IT.

[Patrick R]

The Killing of Sister George is an utterly bizarre movie. It's about this complete terror of a older butch lesbian actress who discovers the character she plays on a daytime soap opera is going to be killed off.

 

It tries to be farce, character study, earnest melodrama and scintillating exploitation all at once. It's never dull because it's too transgressive and strange, but it never really manages to be about anything. Worth seeing for the scenes shot in a real life 1968 London lesbian bar (where the camera leeringly lingers on women slow dancing together as if it's the most shocking thing anyone could imagine) and because Beryl Reid dials every scene to 11, chewing scenery and screeching at every character she runs into while still maintaining a real center.

 

It was directed by Robert Aldrich, who used his success with The Dirty Dozen to start his own production company and do this film, which promptly lost him a shedload of money when it's leering graphic lesbian sex scene and coarse language got it an X rating and he couldn't get theaters to screen it.

 

All the lesbians are damaged women or predators except for the extras at the gay bar, who seem to be genuine regulars who somehow got roped into being in the movie. Shrieking stereotypes abound.

[Patrick R]

Tongues Untied is more a curated selection of poetry about gay black men than an actual film. Given that I like films and have little tolerance for poetry, this made it pretty decidedly Not For Me. Which is fine.