I’m in the mood for a queer movie…

Some queer movie recs to enjoy this weekend.

Got no plans for the weekend? Want to just chill? In the mood to stay inside with the windows open, the sun streaming in, and a fun queer movie on whilst you bedazzle your jeans and stud your sunglasses in preparation for Pride?

Here are some recs to get you going. 

Note that I’m not going to include recommendations I’ve made in the past for I’m just in the mood for a movie with gay (or bi!) dudes or the follow-up, so if you go through this list and it doesn’t feel sufficient, those recs have a good 70 or so more films and TV shows to have a look at. 

Here’s the Letterboxd list for easy browsing!

1. A Nice Indian Boy (2024, dir. Roland Sethi)

A Nice Indian Boy was such a joyful affair — I’ll be honest, I hadn’t really heard much about it, and only really realised it was a thing enjoying Zarna Garg’s comedy and interviews in various social spheres, who plays Megha Gavaskar, the protagonist’s mother. 

This is a really fun flick, and I feel it turns a few expected romcom tropes on their head, particularly in that we see the main character, Naveen, as being less likable than his love interest and having to work to earn Jay’s love and affection rather than the other way around. It was wonderful seeing him grow and evolve and work to be worthy not only of Jay’s love but also to connect more with his family.

In general, this was a really beautiful exploration of a marriage as an expression not just of love between two people but also a connection between and growth of families, and it passionately delves into the whole of Naveen’s family’s feelings, duties, and dynamics with one another and with the world. 

Just a gorgeous film, can’t recommend it enough.

It’s of a different genre — very much character study in a dramatic setting — but a film with similar themes about one’s queerness when caught between cultures and grappling with the expected individualism of one’s queer identity versus the more collectivist expectations of one’s cultural identity is Minyan (2020, dir. Eric Steele). This is a favourite of mine both from a Jewish and a queer perspective, and it’s such an excellent period piece as well.

2. To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar (1995, dir. Beeban Kidron)

I had the pleasure of watching To Wong Foo one random Friday with a transfem friend of mine and we cracked up the whole time, because honestly, gay people have always and will always be the same, and transgender people have always and will always be the same. 

This flick absolutely has elements that wouldn’t make it to screen today — the casting of cisgender men in the primary roles, various of the interracial and racist snipes the girls make at one another, et cetera — but honestly, I think it’s worth coming to this one on the basis of its message and the performance given. 

Better people than I have made beautiful analysis of Patrick Swayze’s performance in this film and how he marks the subtleties of Vida’s transfemininity in contrast to Noxeema and Chi-Chi’s relationship to gender, which are respectively more casual and fluid, and simply less polished in their performance: the way that this work presents three people, each of whom have different relationships and dynamics with labels like Man, Woman, Gender, and Sex, is just glorious in its light-heartedness, its playfulness, and most of all, its care and respect for those it’s presenting, and those it’s made for. 

This is one of my absolute favourite of Wesley Snipe’s performances, but there’s so much goodness in this film — so many good jokes, so many really sweet moments. I think it’s very of its time, but also for ’95 was extraordinarily loving and forward-thinking. 

Another older flick that has a surprisingly loving exploration of transfemininity is Car Wash (1976, dir. Michael Schultz) — Lindy is depicted as flamboyantly homosexual, and all the language around his style is “crossdressing” and linked to being gay rather than being trans, but Antonio Fargas gives a great performance, and while there’s homophobia in the script between characters, by no means does it feel like Lindy is a member of the main cast in order to put down queer people in general. Car Wash is ultimately a snapshot of all the people working in this one business, so it’s got a lot of slice-of-life and basic character study elements, and Lindy is just one member of the diverse and complex cast. 

Pride (2014, dir. Matthew Warchus) is a newer film that similarly to To Wong Foo features a road trip of a queer envoy into an unexpected and unfamiliar environs where they’re met with love and acceptance and solidarity — this is a period piece set during the Miners’ Strikes in the UK, and tells the true story of gay and lesbian activists who worked to raise money to support the miners and their families in ’84. My grandfather tells me about the film in detail every time he watches it, and while I don’t like it as much as he does, it is a fun little film. 

3. Yentl (1983, dir. Barbra Streisand)

A lot of the time when I talk about Yentl as a transmasculine film, some cisgender women inevitably get very upset and try to explain to me that it’s not transmasculine, it’s just feminist. As we all know, transgender men and masculinity have never existed, and are just a trick cisgender women have come up with to get up close and personal with a naked Mandy Patinkin between yeshiva debates.

Anyway, Yentl is very transmasc and gay, and it’s a great little film, it’s really sexy and really fun — I’ve written in the past comparing Yentl to the original short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, which is much more transmasculine than the film adaptation, but the film is nonetheless a delightful watch. 

The fervent and passionate exploration of what it means to be a Jew and particularly to be a Jewish man and a Jewish son of a Jewish father, to study, to honour one’s people, one’s parents, one’s own life, by living as authentically as one knows how, is so deeply meaningful to me, and the ways in which the film depicts the chemistry between Anshel and Avigdor are sooo hot and horny, cannot recommend enough. 

Speaking of accidentally very transgender films, Swiss Army Man (2016, dir. Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert) was originally recommended to me as an M/M film, and, may I just say, LOL, and even LMFAO. She’s a girl, I don’t know what to tell ya. 

Here is a film where, stranded in the middle of nowhere with only a dead man to impress, Hank Thompson (Paul Dano) dresses as femininely as possible, moves smoothly, gracefully, and embraces all manner of things whilst apparently trying to impersonate and mirror one particular woman, and it’s like… Okay, babe. I get you. Hope you get to this conclusion whilst among other people soon. 

In much the same way many trans people came to the understanding and realisation that they were trans all along whilst isolated in the pandemic, Thompson comes much closer to that realisation whilst in the wilderness with a corpse, and it’s genuinely surprisingly lovely. 

4. Billy Budd (1962, dir. Peter Ustinov)

What a film is Billy Budd. 

Imagine. It’s 1797 and you’re one of the prettiest twinks who just got drafted into His Majesty’s Navy. Everybody falls in love with you on SIGHT, including the incredibly sadistic master at arms, but you’re such an open-hearted and ultimately chill guy that you just can’t comprehend that this bitch enjoys causing others pain. 

This film is just as gloriously homoerotic as you would expect any film adapted from a short novel by Herman Melville to be, and it’s a great portrait of naval life. 

Obviously, if you’re interested in a naval twink who every officer falls in love with, the Horatio Hornblower film series is a great start, starting with The Even Chance for the Ioan Gruffudd portrayal. 

In terms of unexpected 60s homoeroticism, Cool Hand Luke (1967, dir. Stuart Rosenberg) is a stand out. Apart from the natural homoeroticism of Paul Newman in jail getting his shirt off because of the heat, there is an absurd amount of fetish content in this film for the gays. There’s guns, there’s stuffing with so many fucking eggs, there’s wrestling, there’s everything. Give it a watch. 

Midnight Cowboy (1969, dir. John Schlesinger), like Cool Hand Luke and Billy Budd, is also a homosexual tragedy, but it’s also got some dark humour and drama going on as well, and Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of an exhausted and chronically ill con artist is such a mood, honestly. 

5. Saint Maud (2019, dir. Rose Glass)

So, this one is not on the list as an example of Good Representation — as with many female-focused thrillers, this is one of somewhat homoerotic obsession and mental illness, but it’s just so good. What if you were mentally ill as a result of probably being a lesbian and your fucked-up religious upbringing and Meryl Streep was dying of cancer and you couldn’t do much about it except go a bit crazy?

Anyway, this is a sublime film, Morfydd Clark delivers a phenomenal performance, and whenever the devil speaks he speaks in Welsh, and I really loved that as a way of playing with like… the literal voice of one’s past trauma, in one’s mother tongue, and the intimacy of it? 

It’s just great. 

Only Lovers Left Alive (2012, dir. Jim Jarmusch) is a flick that has some great immortal androgyny going on, if you’re in the mood for more supernatural queer stuff.

If you’re in the mood for fucked-up homoeroticism that’s agonisingly and painfully true-to-life with no supernatural elements at all, Apt Pupil (1998, dir. Brian Singer) is a real watch. This film is fucked up, honestly —the director Bryan Singer is famously a child rapist who now lives in Israel because of the Israeli policy of offering sanctuary and citizenship to American sex criminals — but I think that’s part of what makes it so impactful, that it explores such difficult topics with such depth.

The film as a thriller is basically all about a white middle class American boy and his sexual power fantasies showing through when he’s able to exploit and blackmail an ex-Nazi officer, but his sadism is not just depicted through his direct violence on the officer or another man, but also through his use of antisemitism to punish and harm a Jewish teacher at his school. In the original short story by Stephen King, the main character ends up going on a violent murder spree, but in this film, there’s much subtler commentary on the fabric of white middle class society and how it permits a boy like this one to utilise white supremacy and appearances whilst still getting to act out his sadistic and psychosexual power fantasies on various victims. 

6. Poor Things (2023, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

Lanthimos of course came out with The Favourite in 2018, which is an excellent fucked-up lesbian period piece, but Poor Things shares a lot in terms of visual extravagance and excellent dialogue, but less in terms of concrete themes and vibes. This piece has period elements but also futuristic ones as it’s ultimately a bizarre and very surreal world in part because of the POV of its protagonist, but that only serves to elevate the delight the whole film offers. 

It’s openly and passionately bisexual whilst exploring some of the usual considerations of any adaptation of Shelley’s Frankenstein — personhood, bodily autonomy, familial dynamics, the soul, identity, revulsion and desire — but still feels like such a fresh take on the premise.

I love this movie’s open hunger for desire and sex and sexuality and its complete lack of shame — and its rejection of shame! And the costuming is sublime.

If you want a weird slightly surreal thriller that’s less good, Saltburn (2023, dir. Emerald Fennell) exists. Emerald Fennell hasn’t figured out how to end a movie yet, but as usual with her flicks, the first two acts are quite good!

If you want good fucked-up surrealism with a slice of body horror, American Mary (2012, dir. Jen & Sylvia Soska) is TREMENDOUS. It delves deeply into the body and the lines of bodily autonomy, body horror, and identity, and of course there’s a lot of kink and sexuality as well as some fun explorations of androgyny and genderfuckery in the process.