Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

This one's another Hindi BL coming out of Last Leaf, and credit where it's due, they keep churning out gay series after gay series on their YouTube channel, which counts for something. That said, I've got some notes for them that I'll get into later. This particular story feels a bit different from their usual stuff, it's got that vibe you'd get from a Bollywood movie where the female lead ends up reforming a thug and turning him into a better man. 8 episodes here, each around 35 minutes, and overall it was a fine watch, nothing more. Ayush is living with his mom, grinding away to prepare for his medical entrance exam, and his dad had already been killed by local goons before this story even starts. On exam day itself, a local goon named Luv kidnaps him and forces him to take the entrance test in place of a politician's son, which costs Ayush his shot at becoming a doctor. We learn he's got a boyfriend he's been with for years who's already off i...

This is basically a high school BL where two guys who have nothing going on in common somehow end up getting really close to each other, and that's kind of the whole point of the title too. There's barely any drama or fluff packed in here, it stays pretty straightforward the whole way through. A little bit of friction pops up here and there, but it's nothing compared to what you'd normally get in this kind of show. Runtime wise you're looking at 8 episodes, each one sitting around 25-30 minutes. The two guys carrying the story are Akira and Kanata, and funny enough they knew each other's faces way before they ever knew each other's names. Kanata's the type everyone likes, always got people around him, popular guy, but there's this distance to him that people can't quite place. Turns out he had an injury that ended his football days, and that's what pushed him into being more withdrawn, and it only got worse once his younger brother got picked...

Honestly kind of surprised this one flew under my radar for so long, I'm just now catching wind of it. This is a crowdfunded comedy drama following three gay best friends dealing with life, love, and letdowns as they hit their late fifties and early sixties. What do you actually do once it hits you that time's running out, that you've got more road behind you than ahead, and that your career, your relationship, where you're living, basically your whole life, didn't turn out anything like you pictured when you were younger? It runs eleven episodes, each clocking in around ten minutes. A re-edited Director's cut version was recently released this year with 5 episodes. Ray, Gary, and James have been friends for what feels like forever, and now they're all in what should be their golden years. Ray's a screenwriter who's been struggling financially since work just isn't coming his way, though he's got a younger, attractive boyfriend who's a li...

This documentary pulls together oral history to trace a very specific New York chapter of gay life in America. Back in 2014, someone found a box stuffed with hundreds of letters sitting in a storage unit in LA. These letters went all the way back to the 1950s and were written to a young guy named Reno Martin, who'd later become known in Hollywood as agent Ed Limato. When Martin left home to chase a radio career, his closest gay and queer friends kept writing to him just to stay in touch. Every letter's signed with a fake name and ends with a warning to burn it after reading, which tells you everything about an era when just being gay, or dressing in drag, could get you thrown in jail. The filmmakers actually tracked down the surviving writers, now in their eighties and nineties, and turned what could've been dry historical digging into something genuinely personal and intimate. The people behind this doc found the original letter writers themselves, several of whom are stil...

Sadly this series ends up falling into the same trap most GMM shows do. I really wanted this one to be good, the setup genuinely had potential. And honestly it does start off strong, playful, funny, with this fun little love scam angle running through it. But once you hit around episode four or five, it slides right back into the same tired formula every other show like this follows, leaving barely anything memorable behind. Twelve episodes, each around fifty five to sixty minutes, so it's asking for a real time commitment, but it doesn't really deliver enough charm to justify all that. The story revolves around cousins Pai and North, both heirs to a wealthy, influential family. Pai's thriving in business, while North keeps burning through family money on failed ventures. First we meet Tim, whose chance encounter with Pai slowly develops into a slow burn romance. Except pretty quickly it's revealed Tim's been targeting Pai from the start, hoping to make him fall in ...

I've got a whole new respect for actual vertical series after sitting through a couple of AI generated ones lately. This one especially caught me off guard, no underworld or gang subplot in sight, the girlfriend isn't some evil scheming villain out for revenge, love actually gets prioritized, and there's not that constant cycle of dumb misunderstandings either. On top of all that, we get two new lead actors, and one of them's rocking a pretty hot beard. Story wise though, it's clear at this point everyone's pulling inspiration from the Heated Rivalry formula and putting their own twist on it, and here that twist lands in the world of rugby. Colby Stryker is the golden boy captain of the Los Angeles Stallions, heading into the season determined to hold onto his title, his reputation, and the picture perfect life he's built for himself. His biggest problem shows up in the form of Ridge Maddox, an intense player out of Kansas whose sheer talent and fearless ene...

Season 4 just dropped for Single Out, and it's the last one, 8 episodes running about 20 minutes a pop, closing out the story for Adam and everyone around him. I'll admit I was pretty much ready to walk away after season three, but it seems like the people behind this wanted one more round to tie everything off properly. This time around the whole thing centers on Adam trying to figure out his next move after Single Out magazine shuts down, and how that ripple effect plays out for him and the people in his orbit becomes the season's real throughline. Every familiar face from the first three seasons shows back up, and honestly it's still a little disorienting because so many of these guys blend together visually. Adam and Gabe are engaged now, but between their job situations and money being tight, an actual wedding plus finding a place to live both feel out of reach. That's where their friends and family step in. Gabe pulls off a surprise wedding, small and intimate...

This is a pretty straightforward BL about an openly gay guy and what's likely a bi or closeted guy who are best friends. Brazil's given us a handful of these low budget BL projects before, and honestly most of them come with a lot of problems. This one though felt different to me, easygoing, light, not dragged out at all, and it stayed focused on simple stuff, which honestly worked in its favor. Having a genuinely attractive lead definitely doesn't hurt either. It's a short one too, just 4 episodes at 20 minutes each. Kawe and Henrique have been close friends forever. Henrique's openly gay and finds real comfort in his straight friend Kawe, who's always there for him no matter what. When Henrique breaks up with Jorge and seems down about it, Kawe keeps trying to lift his spirits but nothing's really working. So he comes up with an idea, signing up on Grindr hoping to find someone decent to set Henrique up with. He ends up finding Mike and introduces the two ...

2021 was the year the world was still knee deep in covid, and it felt like the right moment to circle back to another pandemic that's honestly still just as relevant today as it was forty years back. This documentary walks us through four decades of HIV and AIDS, hearing directly from survivors about what it's actually like living with HIV and how stigma around it looks today, pulling in perspectives from different communities, organizations, and people across race, gender, and sexual orientation. Over the last forty years, seventy five million people have been diagnosed with HIV or AIDS, and in America alone nearly three quarters of a million of those people have died. With numbers like that, the film tries to give the whole thing some real context. Jonathan van Ness from Queer Eye narrates, and the film does a solid job reminding people that while this disease is still very much active, millions of people are also living with it and thriving despite the diagnosis. It kicks of...

This rom com had real potential but just doesn't cash in on it. The idea on paper sounds fun and had the makings of a genuinely funny film, but it just never gets there. It settles for doing just enough to keep you watching without ever really going for anything bold or memorable. Even the central romance ends up feeling pretty flat. Harry's a chef living in London who gets left at the altar on his own wedding day. Devastated, his best friend Yaiza, who's originally from the Canary Islands, whisks him away there for a getaway. Once they land, Yaiza discovers her friends have committed to hosting a wedding event that could really boost their business, except they don't have anyone lined up to cook for it. Harry offers to step in as the chef, figuring it'll help distract him from thinking about his ex. One night he gets pretty drunk and nearly drowns in the ocean, only to get rescued by this incredibly good looking stranger. The two of them kiss right there, and then ...

Regional Indian cinema rarely ventures into gay love stories, so a Gujarati film taking that on already feels significant, and this one genuinely wants to say something meaningful about self-acceptance in a world that makes it so hard. The Narmada river villages it is shot across are visually stunning, and you can feel the care that went into capturing that world. Where things fall apart is in the telling. Scenes drag on without purpose, and a sharper edit that kept the camera focused on how these two men actually fall for each other would have done this story a lot more justice. Raaymal is a fisherman who pulls Ratan out of the water when he is drowning. Ratan is gentle and withdrawn, someone who has not had much of a chance to learn about life, and Raaymal takes it upon himself to change that, teaching him to cook, to row, to find his footing, and a genuine friendship grows between them. Ratan does not eat meat and Raaymal is devoted to his fish curry, which turns out to matter more ...

When I came across this documentary I was genuinely curious because I really had no idea what life is like for gay people in the former Yugoslavia region. The film gives Kosovo's homosexual community a platform to speak about their experiences and the discrimination they face, while also bringing in voices from religious leaders, psychologists, analysts and everyday citizens. It came out in 2007 so it's almost 19 years old now and things may well have changed since then, but the whole point of this documentary at the time was to look at the harsh realities of gay life in Kosovo and ask how much longer people should have to stay hidden, living in fear of their own identities. A big chunk of the film is given over to four gay men who sit on stools, silhouetted in shadow to protect who they are, and talk about their feelings, their fears, the humiliations they've faced and what they hope for. There's also a lesbian and a bisexual man. A lot of the story actually gets told ...

Vertical BL dramas have been a rough ride for me so far, toxic dynamics, humiliating tropes, the whole package. This one was a breath of fresh air compared to that, even though the story has been done to death at this point. Every production company seems to be muscling into vertical drama content right now, and LGBTQ+ is a big enough market that they're all going all in. Kit and River come from completely different worlds but were friends as kids. Kit was the son of River's family's helper. They lost touch and ended up in totally separate social circles in high school. Kit is openly gay, creative, and pretty much an outsider in the school's social order. River plays the confident popular athlete. River is about to fail his guitar class and can't afford that, so he goes to Kit and asks for tutoring, offering protection from bullies in exchange. The more time they spend together the clearer it gets that River has genuine feelings for Kit and starts flirting. Kit does...

This is a film from the early 90s and that context really does matter when you sit down to watch it. For its time, it was probably pretty talked about. It's a murder mystery erotic thriller that manages to be dramatic and completely ridiculous at the same time, and the absurdity of it genuinely made me laugh a few times before I had to remind myself that logic wasn't exactly a priority for filmmakers back then. The main character David is seriously messed up and genuinely mean, but you still end up feeling sorry for him because he's clearly a victim of sexual abuse who never dealt with any of it and just takes all that pain out on everyone around him in the worst ways imaginable. The film opens with a naked man being murdered in pretty brutal fashion. Then we meet David, a young guy who's just left boarding school following a teacher's death, which is almost certainly the killing we just watched. He shows up at his wealthy mother's gorgeous oceanfront house to s...

This Indian series is being sold as a story about a gay man falling for his straight best friend but honestly, at its heart, it's really about friendship and what friendship can look like when it gets complicated and messy and emotionally loaded. It's available on the YouTube channel of Last Leaf Pictures, seven episodes of about 30 minutes each. I had mixed feelings throughout and a big part of that comes down to how I felt about one of the lead characters, but more on that in a bit. Anshul and Kavith are the two men at the centre of everything. They first meet on a train heading to Delhi, both of them not really ready to go back to their hometowns. They get off midway, turn around and head back to Mumbai to give themselves one more shot at the life they want there. Anshul is an aspiring actor with a young son back in Delhi living with his grandmother. Kavith is gay, freshly out of yet another relationship, his 17th by his own count over the years. The two strike up this unusu...

The story behind this show is absolutely wild and would make an amazing, gritty TV drama—I really hope someone makes that happen soon. However, as a documentary, it left me scratching my head more than once. It’s about a gay couple who have two completely different stories regarding a gruesome murder that took place in Louisville. This two-part series on HBO takes over two hours to dive into a "he-said, he-said" mystery where nobody can agree on what actually happened. The whole thing focuses on Jeffrey Mundt and Joey Banis and a famous murder on 4th Street. Back in 2009, Jamie Carroll was killed in a way that sounds like something out of a movie. In a neighborhood called Old Louisville, the couple invited Carroll over for a night of drugs and a threesome, but it ended up being fatal for Carroll. To make things even crazier, the couple buried his body right in their own basement. The big question is: who actually did it? The documentary looks at how either man could have been...

You can always count on OUTtv to give us something cheeky, campy, and totally steamy. This new series is just pure, unserious fun. Hosted by the one and only Willam Belli, it features a group of talented male strippers who are battling it out to see who can be named Pride.com’s King of the Dark Room. Willam isn't alone, though; she’s got a panel of judges who actually know their stuff. You’ve got the hilarious Meatball from  Dragula , the legendary adult star Rhyheim Shabazz, a professional stripping manager named Yony, and Mama Mamba, who won  Slag Wars  and knows everything about burlesque. It’s a great mix of personalities that keeps the energy high. The way the show works is pretty straightforward. For the first four episodes, two strippers go head-to-head. They start off with a quick one-minute lap dance and then move into a full stripping performance. Each episode has its own vibe—everything from sexy glow-in-the-dark routines and technical pole dancing to performan...

Vietnamese shows can really be a hit or a miss, and this one was no exception. The plot definitely had some good ideas, but it felt like they dragged it out way longer than necessary. Honestly, they could have finished the whole thing in eight episodes, but instead, we had to sit through fourteen installments that were 35 minutes each—and the finale was almost an hour long! Also, I’ve got to say, the "amnesia" trope is getting so old in the BL world. Writers really need to find some fresh ideas. The story is about Viet, a young artist who is going through a really rough time. He’s lost his parents, gets picked on by his boss, and eventually quits his job. To make things worse, his boyfriend has been ghosting him, and when Viet finally goes to see him, he finds out the guy has moved on to someone else without even bothering to break up with him. His only support is a female friend who sticks by him through everything. To clear his head, Viet heads to a quiet mountain village a...

This documentary is basically a love letter to a super specific and mostly forgotten slice of queer history—the world of all-male magazines between 1955 and 1973. It’s a really interesting guide that shows how these images changed over the years, eventually moving from still photos into the world of film. Before 1966, these gay magazines were all about musclemen in jockstraps posing like Greek Gods. But then, everything flipped. In this "golden window" from 1966 to 1973, the pages started featuring young guys between 18 and 22 who had boyish faces and totally normal bodies. They weren't gym rats; they were just ordinary kids, often drifters or runaways, who modeled for unknown photographers for just a few bucks. They’d show up in a magazine for a minute and then just disappear. After 1973, the "hardcore revolution" happened, and these softcore magazines became old news almost overnight. Just like that, the whole era was gone. The movie mixes together old photos,...

Marco Berger has come out with another movie that’s really beautiful and sexy, but it’s definitely not like the ones he usually makes where guys are just full of sexual tension. This one is filmed in black-and-white and looks amazing. The director found a really weird way to show how humans connect and how sexuality works by using a "man as a dog" idea. It’s a pretty strange but interesting movie that makes you think. The story takes place in a world that’s parallel to ours, where two straight couples are on vacation on an island. You see two guys on a boat calling out to someone, and then this naked, lonely, and really good-looking guy shows up. In this dreamy kind of world, the group calls him a "man," but he basically acts like a pet dog. In this setup, the word "men" refers to naked male humans that people own as pets, just like we own dogs. People are scared of stray men just like they're scared of stray dogs. There are also "women" who ...