Before I’d seen any lesbian cinema, I watched movies about gay men. To watch two women kiss — to feel the desire to be them, to be with them — felt too confessional. I worried about getting caught, like my deep well of want would explode revealing too much of myself. But watching two men kiss in an art film? That was simply proof of my sophistication.

While my experience is filtered through the lens of being a trans woman cinephile, many other women have their own attachments to work about queer men. (Just look at how popular male romance novels are among lesbians… and straight women.) So us editors here at Autostraddle thought it would be fun to put together a list of our favorite gay and bisexual male movies of all time. We’re just a sample size of three, so I’m not sure we can make any vast claims about how our list differs from those made by gay men, but what I can promise is these 50 films (okay, fine, 53) are worth watching for queer people of any gender.

50 is not a lot — there’s a reason our lesbian film list is 100 and even that is incomplete — so feel free to share any of your favorites that we didn’t include!

---

50. Hellbent (2004)/Midnight Kiss (2019)

Both underrated, these two films introduce a friend group of gay dudes to the slasher format. In both, the dynamics of those friend groups elevate the story beyond just schlocky slasher fun. The relationships — romantic, platonic, complicated — lend stakes to the horror. Hellbent’s biggest flaw is its protagonist’s obsession with becoming a police officer, but the film still feels edgy in its sexual content and stylish for its low budget. Midnight Kiss, meanwhile, couples over-the-top horror with more grounded storytelling about toxic exes and codependent friendships to great success. It’s a perfect double feature. — Kayla

49. The Object of My Affection (1998)

Listen, sometimes gay movies are for gay people and sometimes they are for the girls who fall in love with them. With a cute, normie script by Wendy Wasserstein, a terrific showing by Paul Rudd as a gay schoolteacher who loves pajama pants, and Jennifer Anniston as Nina, a half-ponytailed social worker one cannot help but adore, this film really spoke to people in 1998. It was a cultural moment in which it was still okay to wish your gay best friend would go straight for you and not entirely chaotic to suggest raising a child together. — Riese

48. Spa Night (2016)

Before Andrew Ahn directed Fire Island and the upcoming remake of The Wedding Banquet, he made this beautiful low-budget drama. Following a Korean American man torn between his sexuality and his familial obligations, Ahn allows most of the film to sit in the fierce quiet of his protagonist. This is a film of setting — grounded deeply in Los Angeles and its Korean spas. There’s so much looking, so much longing. — Drew

47. The Opposite of Sex (1998)

The Opposite of Sex, carried by the snappy voiceover of a caustic adolescent Christina Ricci and an endearingly harpy Lisa Kudrow, is a very bitchy film. Everyone is either mean or naive, funny hotties racing through a list of negative gay tropes as if there are no repercussions for such things. Like many gay movies, The Opposite of Sex asks if we can protect ourselves from the pain of grief and loss by eschewing love, subverting expectations and being really witty. Like every good gay movie, the answer is no. — Riese

46. Milk (2008)

Sentimental, doggedly inspirational and beautifully constructed, Gus Van Sant’s moving portrait of the first openly gay man elected to a major important political office in the U.S. has just enough edge to qualify as “true” without alienating The Academy or a mainstream audience (A line Harvey Milk himself also aimed to walk.) One would struggle to find a dry eye in the movie house when this debuted in 2008, a few weeks before Prop 8 passed in California, or a heart unstirred to give ’em hope. Milk scored big at the Academy, with nominations across the board, ultimately winning Best Actor for Sean Penn as Milk and Best Original Screenplay for Dustin Lance Black. A great gay movie to watch with your mom. — Riese

45. Mutt (2023)

Structured around a 24-hour period, Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s Mutt follows trans guy Feña throughout a no good very bad day. But despite the stresses and mundane headaches, the film is also tender and sexy. Some of its best sequences are between Lio Mehiel as Feña and Cole Doman as John, Feña’s cis guy ex. The two actors have so much chemistry and hold their characters’ complicated history in every glance. — Drew

44. Edge of Seventeen (1998)

This sweet little arthouse gem set largely (much to my delight) at Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio, tells the incredibly common but largely-untold story of an insecure teenager in the ‘80s coming into his sexuality. He’s enchanted by every out queer he comes into contact with, crushing over his first boy kiss, wondering if he should just date his best girl friend who loves him, trying new haircuts, discovering rim jobs, and debating attending Ohio State. Lea Delaria is in her element as the mother hen of a close-knit group of midwestern queers and the bar they call home. — Riese

43. Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

This perfectly executed stage-to-screen adaptation is based on play by John Guare and inspired by the real-life story of a gay con man who pretended to be the son of actor Sidney Poitier. Six Degrees of Separation finds a Will Smith at the peak of Fresh Prince‘s popularity making a bid to be considered as a serious actor. His performance as a charismatic drifter is dazzling and dynamic, as are Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland as the wealthy couple he infiltrates for a night, easy marks as enchanted by his tales as they are by their own impressions of their own benevolence. While doing so, Ouisa (Channing) wrestles with the urge to turn him “into an anecdote to dine out on,” an exciting evening of danger supplied by the arrival of a gay Black man with a story. How meta, after all. — Riese

42. Zero Patience (1993)

A campy musical about the ghost of the AIDS crisis’ alleged “patient zero” is both a sharp cry of political anger and an incredible comedy. It’s also just a really, really good musical. Despite the strong association between gay men and musicals, there aren’t actually that many explicitly gay musicals. There certainly weren’t in 1993. This is one of the best films about the AIDS crisis and one of the best films made during the AIDS crisis. While the Oscars were awarding the maudlin Philadelphia, this film from the same year dared to be fun. — Drew

41. Death and Bowling (2021)

This is another gay movie about grief bursting with queer creativity. In fact, it’s a plea to allow queer death — trans death, specifically — to be given the weight it deserves on-screen. We do not simply need happy endings. We need complicated stories that allow for the entirety of our experiences. If we must die, let us mourn. — Drew

40. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

Now a queer cult favorite, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge was decisively rejected by audiences upon release — primarily ‘cause it seemed SUPER GAY. Mark Patton is now considered the first male scream queen for his career-torching role as Jesse Walsh. How much the filmmakers were aware or intentional about the film’s queer subtext remains up for debate, but its legacy is certain. — Riese

39. No Hard Feelings (2020)

At once a portrait of immigration in Germany and a sexy, stylish romance, Faraz Shariat’s debut is one of the best — and most underrated — queer films of recent years. It explores the differences between first and second generation immigrant experiences while allowing its young characters to be young. Even if the world around them is hostile, they still get to party, fall in friendship, fall in love, fuck, and fuck up. — Drew

38. Torch Song Trilogy (1988)

Based on his play of the same name, Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy remains one of the most poignant portrayals of a queer person’s relationship with their parent. The romantic and slice-of-gay-life storylines are good too, but it’s the final part with Fierstein’s Alan and Alan’s mother played by Anne Bancroft that makes this still resonate today. Due to his distinct voice and, you know, societal homophobia, I feel like Fierstein has been turned by some into a caricature. So if you’re not familiar with his immense talent as a performer and a writer, this is a great place to start. — Drew

37. Tom at the Farm (2013)

I am both a Xavier Dolan apologist and a Xavier Dolan contrarian. Fitting for a filmmaker as well known for his controversial statements as his prolific young career. So yes this list could have included his wonderful debut I Killed My Mother, but instead I’ve fought for my personal favorite: Tom at the Farm. Based on a play by Michel Marc Bouchard (who also wrote the play that inspired The Night Logan Woke Up, another of Dolan’s best works), Tom at the Farm is Dolan at his boldest and his most restrained. It’s a thriller grounded in queer experience that uses its genre in ways both satisfying and surprising. — Drew

36. Queer (2024)

Luca Guadagnino’s latest is a gorgeous fever dream of gay self-loathing. Led by career best work from Daniel Craig, this inventive William S. Burroughs adaptation explores the thin line between love and self-hate, destruction and desire. A long time passion project of Guadagnino’s, this feels like the rawest expression of his voice and style. — Drew

35. Punks (2000)

While it certainly shares DNA with writer/director Patrik-Ian Polk’s landmark series Noah’s Arc, his first feature is more than a test run. Punks is one of the best gay rom-coms of all time, because it finds that perfect line between romantic escapism and grounded realism. It’s also as much about friendship and community as it is about love. And shoutout to Jazzmun for stealing the show as the friend group’s resident drag queen/trans woman. — Drew

34. BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017)

This is one of the films on our list that also features lesbian characters, but it focuses on Nathan and Sean, gay men in a serodiscordant relationship, which the film explores beautifully. At times, watching BPM almost feels like watching a narrative documentary, stylized but very steeped in realism, too. Set in 1990s France and about a group of ACT UP Paris activists, the way the film moves between a broader, collective political scope and a more zoomed-in personal one through Nathan and Sean strikes an elegant balance. — Kayla

33. Monster (2023)

Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of cinema’s great humanists and this film is one of his best. It’s a drama structured like a mystery, each of its three parts revealing more layers to its tale of misunderstanding. It’s a romance between two boys whose innocent love is made impossible by homophobia and bullying, yes, but also by the inability of those who care about them to really listen, to really see. It’s a devastating movie that finds hope in the flawed goodness of people and in the assertion that these boys should never change. — Drew

32. Weekend (2011)

Before co-creating one of the 2010’s greatest TV shows Looking, Andrew Haigh rose to prominence with this understated romance. Contained to its titular timeframe, Haigh portrays the early stages of love in all its awkward excitement. Sometimes called “gay Before Sunrise,” this is a much quieter film than that hetero classic. There’s talking, but there’s also a lot of, well, looking. — Drew

31. Pain and Glory (2019)

Read my ranking of Pedro Almodóvar’s films and you’ll know several of his films could have made this list. We settled on two. The first is this semi-autobiographical film split between his youth and his struggles with illness and drug addiction in his later years. It’s a film filled with regret and beauty, a complicated tribute to his mother and to cinema itself. — Drew

30. Portrait of Jason (1967)/Jason and Shirley (2015)

Shirley Clarke’s interview with Jason Holliday is a documentary classic. It is, indeed, a portrait, but — like most portraits — it’s also heavy with the gaze of its artist. This line between art and exploitation is the subject of Stephen Winter’s phenomenal Jason and Shirley that aims to reveal the truth — or a truth — behind the filming of the documentary. With phenomenal performances by Jack Waters as Holliday and Sarah Schulman as Clarke, Winter’s film is not merely a companion piece but a masterpiece in its own right. — Drew

29. Crash (1996)

There are all kinds of sex scenes in this film in which pretty much everyone is bisexual, so labeling it a “gay guy” movie is perhaps limiting, but it still feels at home on this list. My favorite Cronenberg film, in the simplest of terms it’s about a group of people who are sexually aroused by car crashes. It’s erotic, thrilling, and like all the best Cronenberg tales is ultimately a story about the power of intimacy and deep, strange human connection. — Kayla

28. The Power of the Dog (2021)

Jane Campion is known for her films about women, but she’s also one of cinema’s most astute chroniclers of masculinity. Her triumphant return to feature films after twelve years is also her first to place men at its center. Following two very different queer men, Campion creates her own kind of western: masculinity as harsh and beautiful as their rugged terrain. — Drew

27. Teorema (1968)

Often imitated but never topped, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s nearly wordless tale follows a mysterious stranger who has sex with every member of a bourgeois family and ruins their fragile lives. Pasolini should be a north star for queer artists everywhere: anti-establishment, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist. A poet and philosopher as well as a filmmaker, his work is heavy with ideas and beauty. But he was also very funny! That’s obvious in his ribaldrous Trilogy of Life — it’s also present in the sexuality and madness of Teorema. — Drew

26. Gods and Monsters (1998)

The premise of this period piece isn’t riveting on its face, but it’s so rich in ideas and emotion that it becomes fascinating. Ian McKellan became the first out gay man nominated for playing a gay male role when the Academy gave him a nod for his portrayal of dying movie director James Whale, famous for Frankenstein, who develops an unlikely bond with his new gardener, an earnest, working-class local played by an extremely Brendan Fraser. Gods & Monsters was a rare beast for its time: directed and written by a gay man, starring a gay man, and based on a book by a gay man about a gay man. — Riese

25. Happy Together (1997)

No one does beauty, style, love, and longing quite like Wong Kar-wai, so of course his gay movie is one of his best. Following the tumultuous relationship between two men played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Leslie Cheung, Happy Together’s English title is pointedly misleading. This is not a happy film, but it is a beautiful film with two remarkable performances and a whole lot of heartbreak. — Drew

24. Black Is… Black Ain’t (1994)

While only making eight films before his death from AIDS-related causes in 1994, Marlon Riggs remains one of the most talented and important filmmakers to ever bless the art form. Riggs’ final film — which includes scenes of him in the hospital and directly includes his efforts to finish the film before his death — is a plea for solidarity within the Black community, a celebration of varied Black experiences, and a condemnation of homophobia. It’s a remarkable work from an artist taken far too soon. — Drew

23. Flesh and the Devil (1926)

The earliest film on this list — although certainly not the earliest gay film, shoutout to Vingarne (1916), Different from Others (1919), Mikaël (1924), and even The Kiss (1882) — is an ode to friendship that ends up a condemnation of heterosexuality. This gorgeous film follows the relationship of Leo (John Gilbert) and Ulrich (Lars Hanson) who are torn apart by a seductress played by Greta Garbo. While possible this was intended to simply critique promiscuity, the relationship between Leo and Ulrich is so deep and the chemistry so palpable theirs becomes the film’s true romance. I love a gay film that reclaims blasphemy, but there’s something striking about a film that elevates queerness to something pure and holy. — Drew

22. Fire Island (2022)

As fun, hot, and effervescent as a weekend trip to its eponymous gay party island, Andrew Ahn’s 2022 gay rom-com, delights in its portrayal of gay friendship. The friend group is extremely believable, and while it follows a rom-com formula with certain archetypes, it injects specificity into those devices. It doesn’t do the thing that sometimes frustrates me about other queer rom-coms by just making a straight rom-com with gay characters. The romance, the comedy, the storytelling — it all feels distinctly and specifically queer. — Kayla

21. Looking for Langston (1989)

Isaac Julien is a filmmaker and video artist who continues to create singular, awe-inspiring work. (His installation film Once Again… (Statues Never Die) was one of my favorite pieces at this year’s Whitney Biennial.) This inventive fantasia is a tribute to Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance that blurs the lines between documentary and fiction, film and poetry. It’s sexy and sensual, thought-provoking and beautiful.

20. Passages (2023)

I enjoy chaotic gays cut from every cloth, and while gay men have dominated film through the years, when it comes to portrayals of chaotic bisexuals, it’s almost always women. Enter: Passages, perhaps the finest filmic representation of the chaotic bisexual man! Tomas emotionally terrorizes his husband Martin and his lover Agathe. With great writing and great performances, Passages has more depth and thrills to it than your typical love triangle drama. — Kayla

19. Y Tu Mamá También (2001)

While Challengers didn’t quite make the list, we couldn’t resist another great movie also about two boys who discover possible latent sexual feelings for each other through their shared desire for the same woman. Y Tu Mamá También is a sexy, moody, and ultimately, in the end, quite sad film that leaves its male leads’ sexualities ambiguous and yet so well explored. — Kayla

18. Song of Love (1954)

No one does it like Jean Genet. The author and playwright’s only film is an experimental short about two prisoners who find ways to connect despite their isolation. With an era of assimilation coming to an end and a renewed increase in the criminalization of queerness, we should look to Genet and his art for inspiration. They can imprison us, but they cannot imprison our desires. — Drew

17. Poison (1991)

Inspired by Genet’s film, Todd Haynes’ debut is a triptych that intercuts a story of two prisoners with a B-movie style sci-fi take on a plague and a mockumentary look at suburban patricide. While it may lack the polish of work like Far from Heaven and Carol, from the beginning Haynes’ confident form and interest in genre were on full display. This is an angry film made at the height of the AIDS crisis and it remains one of the great triumphs of queer cinema. — Drew

16. A Single Man (2009)

Unsurprisingly, Tom Ford’s directorial debut has immense style. Set in the 1960s, it came out at the peak of my Mad Men obsession, and even my closeted-at-the-time self was titillated by the prospect of Mad Men with gays. For a movie so thoroughly about death and depression, it’s so romantic and lovely that watching it doesn’t feel like a slog. It isn’t some one-note gay tragedy, its characters complex and their interiorities richly rendered. Truly a gorgeous film on multiple levels. — Kayla

15. Blue (1993)

Derek Jarman’s work was always unique — just watch another favorite of mine, The Garden — but his final statement is wholly its own. Made after Jarman had already started to lose his eyesight and could only see in shades of blue, the film consists of a single image: the color blue. The rest is told in audio, Jarman reflecting on the color, his life, and the realities of living with AIDS while losing so many to the same disease. It’s a completely engrossing work, a final gift from another artist taken from us by the virus. — Drew

14. Tropical Malady (2004)

Apichatpong Weerasethakul has a reputation for being a serious auteur who makes very slow movies. But he’s also gay and the co-director of a drag musical spy parody called The Adventure of Iron Pussy. This is all to say, yes, his work is very beautiful and often slow-paced, but it’s far from humorless and never a slog. Tropical Malady is both his gayest film and one of his best. Split into two sections, it’s a strange and beautiful work that revels in the idiosyncrasies of human beings and the natural world. — Drew

13. Rope (1948)

This was one of the first Hitchcock films I ever saw and also one of the first times I understood what gay subtext really was. It was subtle enough to get by the censors at the time but completely unsubtle to any gay person. Brandon and Phillip’s relationship is clearly intimate and not just because they kill together. With a gay screenwriter (Arthur Laurents), not to mention star Farley Granger’s own queerness, its forced subtext is actually more interesting than many of the more explicit gay killers of cinema that would follow. — Kayla

12. Call Me By Your Name (2017)

This gorgeous, morally ambiguous romance set in 1983 is about the slings and arrows of being young and in love with a thing you don’t know how to touch, or if you can, or should. What can we do, young protagonists with noted and celebrated advanced intellectual capabilities, adrift in the relatively inchoate blur of desire that relies entirely on experience and can’t be overcome without it. Valid responses to Call Me By Your Name range from boredom to disgust to adoration. The most generous read is that this is a visually beautiful movie, intoxicating and moody and tense and full of wonder, capable of truly taking your breath away and breaking your heart, too. — Riese

11. The Wedding Banquet (1993)

If The Wedding Banquet came out now, it would feel subversive and bold, so imagine seeing it in 1993! (In fact, it is being remade this year, by Fire Island director Andrew Ahn, with some updates that include queer women as well.) It’s about Gao Wai-Tung, a bisexual Taiwanese immigrant living in New York with his Jewish partner Simon. Wanting to appeal to his parents, he agrees to marry a Chinese woman seeking a green card. Rom-com shenanigans ensue at the traditional wedding banquet hosted by his parents. With cultural specificity and a lot of heart and humor, the film makes every character feel fully realized and, like Fire Island, this film isn’t just gay characters mapping onto the straight rom-com structure but something original and distinctly queer while still satisfying certain tropes. — Kayla

10. The Boys in the Band (1970)/The Boys in the Band (2020)

We are, after all, so often mean to each other, just steam-cleaned bundles of trauma and nerves and internalized homophobia cut through with acerbic wit. This meanness plays out differently amongst different portions of the LGBTQ+ community, and has certainly taken many shapes over the years. The Boys in the Band, set at a tense and claustrophobic birthday party for a group of gay friends that is unexpectedly crashed by the host’s closeted college buddy, really captures a vibe that cuts deep. The Boys in the Band launched its theatrical run in 1968, one auspicious year prior to Stonewall, when it was still true that the only thing more shameful than being gay was having pride about it. The 1970 film thus ended up being the kind of thing many gay people didn’t want to feel, and certainly didn’t want straight people to see. There’s a comfortable distance in the 2020 remake (following a 2018 Broadway revival) with its stacked all-gay cast of out gay stars like Zachary Quinto, Jim Parsons, Matt Bomer, and Andrew Rannells, but the script’s power and humor, much of it due to its essential audacity and raw nerviness, endures. Only half of the 1970 film’s cast were gay, most of them theatrical actors primarily. By 1993, all had passed from complications of HIV/AIDS. — Riese

9. Fox and His Friends (1975)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed 29 features and four television series before his death at the age of 37. A Gemini on drugs is a powerful thing! Notorious for his bad behavior in life and on-set, Fassbinder is still an icon whose work remains remarkable and influential. My favorite of his films is Fox and His Friends, an angry film that uses a gay relationship to critique capitalism and upper middle class cruelty. A story of fake friends and cruel lovers where everything is transactional, it’s another painful reminder that queer “community” is often far from utopia. — Drew

8. The Birdcage (1996)

The most financially successful movie on this list, The Birdcage is arguably politically unforgivable but my god is it a wonderful time. Hilarious, heartfelt, and radiant with iconic performances — Robin Williams’ Armand, a restrained vision in a silk shirt; Nathan Lane’s histrionic drag queen Albert; Christine Baranski popping a champagne bottle with her thighs. Yes, it’s very of its time, and its worldview and compliance with projected shame is painful, but, as a terrific comedy that ultimately embraces queer positivity, it is timeless. — Riese

7. Chocolate Babies (1996)

When I saw the restoration of Chocolate Babies at Outfest in 2023, I felt the rush of discovery and the anger of deprivation. It so obviously struck me as one of the best movies of all time, a film that should’ve catapulted Stephen Winter into being an arthouse darling like fellow New Queer Cinema filmmakers Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant. Instead it took decades for it to be restored and available for proper appreciation. Well, thank God we’re here because few films are this funny and angry and sharp. It’s capital P Political while never favoring its messaging over the people at its center. It also has one of the great endings in cinema history. I love this film so much and I’m deeply grateful for its guidance as a filmmaker and as a queer person trying to survive and fight. — Drew

6. Brokeback Mountain (2005)

When we think of Westerns, the word “epic” often comes to mind, but when it comes to Brokeback Mountain, epic doesn’t refer to action and plot but rather to emotions. It’s a grand romance, a sweeping drama about the intensity and complexity of repressed queer love. And the thing I always love about rewatching this film is how it doesn’t diminish its female characters, allowing them complexity even when they aren’t the focus. — Kayla

5. Law of Desire (1987)

If you read my Almodóvar list, you knew this was coming. This is my favorite film from my favorite filmmaker. It’s sexy and confessional and anti-cop and features Carmen Maura in my favorite instance of a cis actress playing a trans woman character. Almodóvar often mixes sex and violence and this is his most successful exploration of their connection. Every time I watch this film — or even just a scene from it — I’m reminded of what queer cinema can be when we’re more interested in expression than assimilation. — Drew

4. Tongues Untied (1989)

Marlon Riggs’ masterpiece is an exploration of homophobia in the straight world and racism — including fetishization — in the gay world. It’s also a tribute to the love, sex, and solidarity shared between gay Black men. The film features poet Essex Hemphill and Riggs himself used editing like poetry. His work is rhythmic, finding power not only in the messages but in the repetition and representation of those messages. Many queer filmmakers have proven there is no dichotomy between political filmmaking and artful filmmaking — none more than Riggs. His ability to communicate through the assembly of sounds and images remains unmatched. — Drew

3. Mysterious Skin (2004)

Few films about childhood sexual abuse manage to be this explicit without being exploitative. But filmmaker Gregg Araki has always found beauty, humor, and tenderness within the difficult. There’s something generous about the film’s bluntness — for its characters, for the many people who have had experiences similar to the characters. Their trauma does not have to be diminished in order for their complexity to remain. And that includes its main character’s queerness. At a time when mainstream discourse around gay people often claimed that we were predators or that queerness was merely a product of abuse, this film eschews overcorrection to explore the ways a person’s queerness can complicate their trauma. It’s a beautiful film, a difficult film, even for some a comforting film. It’s a gift of cinema only Gregg Araki could give. — Drew

2. Moonlight (2016)

Shall I praise the acting, the writing, or the directing first? How about all of it, all at once, because Moonlight really is one of those films where all aspects of its artistry are perfectly married together. It’s the kind of movie you can watch over and over again and find something new to obsess over every time — whether it’s the silences or a shift in Chiron’s face or the lighting and colors. Most Best Picture winners don’t hold up, but this one sure does. — Kayla

1. My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Leave it to a bunch of lesbians to pick a film this filled with unrequited love and longing. Not to mention the mommy issues! Gus Van Sant’s Shakespeare-infused masterpiece follows two sex workers from Portland, Oregon to a smalltown in Idaho to Rome. River Phoenix plays Mike, a quiet boy with narcolepsy who yearns for his long lost mother and for his best friend played by Keanu Reeves. Maybe it’s the Shakespeare that lends the film its feeling of grandiosity, but it’s Phoenix and Reeves that give the film its intimacy. Love, desire, friendship, and family all blend together between these two in ways that deepen the heartache. This was one of the first gay films I ever watched and it remains one of my favorites. It showed me that queer creativity and queer feelings are one in the same. I really want to kiss you, man. — Drew