From now until Friday, our customers can get an extra 25% OFF a whole bunch of select gay movies! Click here to visit us at TLAgay.com and see the full selection. There are over 100 movies to choose from. We know that’s a lot, so we’re highlighting ten recent favorites below that you can snag while they’re on sale!
Boys
Following one man through two timelines, Boys, the newest feature from director Christophe Charrier, is a gripping and compassionate study of first love and the lingering sting of loss. We first meet Jonas (Felix Maritaud) in the present, where he’s having a rough go of it. He’s prone to starting fights at the local gay bar, and his boyfriend has had enough of his infidelity and alcohol-soaked antics. His volatile behavior may stem from a traumatic incident in his past. The film flashes back to 1997, where Jonas (played as a high school kid by Nicolas Bauwens) meets Nathan (Tommy Lee Baik), the rebellious new student who will become his crush. The boys venture into the night on their first date unaware that it’s about to change their lives forever. Don’t miss this searing mystery.
BPM (Beats Per Minute)
In Paris in the early 1990s, a group of activists goes to battle for those stricken with HIV/AIDS, taking on sluggish government agencies and major pharmaceutical companies in bold, invasive actions. The organization is ACT UP, and its members, many of them gay and HIV-postive, embrace their mission with a literal life-or-death urgency. Amid rallies, protests, fierce debates and ecstatic dance parties, the newcomer Nathan (Arnaud Valois) falls in love with Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), the group’s radical firebrand, and their passion sparks against the shadow of mortality as the activists fight for a breakthrough. Winner of the coveted Queer Palm award the Cannes Film Festival, BPM (Beats Per Minute) is one of the most acclaimed gay films of the last several year. It also earned spots on countless critical “Top Ten” lists when it came out.
Departure
Beatrice (Juliet Stevenson) and her teen son Elliot (Alex Lawther) are preparing for the sale of their vacation home in the south of France. Elliot struggles with his dawning sexuality and an increasing alienation from his mother. Beatrice is upset over her crumbling marriage. When Clement (Phenix Brossard), an enigmatic local teenager, enters their lives, both mother and son are compelled to confront their desires and, finally, each other. Taking place over the course of six eventful days, Departure is an intimate story that charts the end of a summer and the end of a childhood. Lead actor Alex Lawther, a star on the rise who made a huge impact in Freak Show and series like “Black Mirror” and “The End of the F***ing World,” gives a tremendous performance. The film won several awards at film festivals and earned critical acclaim. The Upcoming said it is “certain to become an LGBT classic.”
Esteros
Sexy and heartfelt, Esteros tells the story of two men who get a second chance at love. Childhood friends Matías and Jerónimo (played as kids by Joaquin Parada and Blas Finardi Niz and as adults by Ignacio Rogers and Renata Calmon) reunite in their hometown on the banks of the Uruguay River. The summer before high school, their friendship transformed into something deeper, but their mutual attraction never came to fruition. More than a decade later they meet again, and the chemistry between them is palpable, but now Matías has a girlfriend who has traveled to his hometown for Carnival. Seeing his old friend, now so comfortable and confident, reawakens Matías’ feelings. This unexpected opportunity forces him to reassess his choices and to figure out whether he can turn his back on marriage in favor of the man he’s always loved. A powerful film that elicits feelings of nostalgia for the forgotten romances from our past, Esteros offers a satisfying glimpse into what might have been (and what might still be).
Mario
Get ready to swoon over this sexy and deeply romantic gay sports drama from Swiss filmmaker Marcel Gisler, the director behind The Blue Hour and Fogi is a Bastard. There’s a ripple of disquiet in the locker-room when Leon (Aaron Altaras), a new striker, joins the soccer team. Sharing a flat with a keen rival named Mario (Max Hubacher, the up-and-coming star of the WWII thriller The Captain) sets the scene for an unexpected love affair. But when gossip about their romantic affections, along with threats of blackmail, begins to unbalance the team’s morale, their love affair hits a major snag. Mario is a heart-warming roller coaster of a film, set on and off the field, that offers a dynamic and realistic picture of how openly gay professional athletes deserve to be celebrated.
Martyr
Shot in Beirut and Italy with Arabic dialogue, Martyr is probably the sexiest cinematic meditation on grief that we’ve ever seen. The film follows the intimate friendship between Hassane (Hamza Mekdad) and his three closest male companions. The boys meet up regularly at a popular Mediterranean beach to swim, drive and show off their firm, bronzed young bodies. When death strikes one of them, the three others must literally grapple with their friend’s passing, carrying the body back to the man’s family and ritually washing it before his funeral. Director Mazen Khaled tackles weighty themes with a voyeuristic eye, subverting expectations with ample homoeroticism – nudity, masturbation, longing glances – and keeping tensions at a low simmer. This is a thinking man’s erotic drama.
Postcards from London
Beautiful Essex boy Jim (Beach Rats star Harris Dickinson), having traveled from the suburbs, finds himself in Soho searching for fame, fortune and cultural stimulation. Down on his luck, he meets with a gang of unusual high-class male escorts – The Raconteurs – who specialize in post-coital conversation. What follows is Jim’s comic descent from unsuccessful escort, to artist’s muse and art authenticator – a journey complicated by a rare psychosomatic condition called ‘Stendhal Syndrome’. Rendering him painfully oversensitive to art, the condition threatens to bring about is downfall whilst opening him up to new opportunities – but is Jim willing to grab them? Relentlessly sexy, this vibrant, neon-lit morality tale offers up a celebration of homoeroticism through art history.
A Prayer Before Dawn
This searing drama tells the remarkable true story of Billy Moore, a young English boxer incarcerated in two of Thailand’s most notorious prisons. He is quickly thrown into a terrifying world of drugs and gang violence, but when the prison authorities allow him to take part in several Muay Thai boxing tournaments, he realizes he may have a chance to get out of jail for good. Billy embarks on a relentless, action-packed journey from one savage fight to the next, stopping at nothing to do whatever he must to preserve his life and regain his freedom. Shot in an actual Thai prison with a cast of real inmates, A Prayer Before Dawn is visceral, homoerotic and thrilling. “Peaky Blinders” star Joe Cole gives an astonishing performance – and it doesn’t hurt that he’s so damn sexy.
Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution
Started in the 1980s as a fabricated movement intended to punk the punk scene, “Queercore” quickly became a real-life cultural community of LGBTQ music and movie-making revolutionaries. From the start of the pseudo-movement to the widespread rise of pop artists who used queer identity to push back against gay assimilation and homophobic punk culture, Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution is just that: a how-to-do-it guide for the next generation of queer radicals. The extensive participant list includes Bruce LaBruce, G.B. Jones, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, John Waters, Justin Vivian Bond, Lynn Breedlove, Silas Howard, Pansy Division, Penny Arcade, Kathleen Hanna, Kim Gordon, Deke Elash, Tom Jennings, Team Dresch, and many more.
The Wild Boys
The debut feature from director Bertrand Mandico, The Wild Boys tells the tale of five adolescent boys (all played by brilliantly and subversively by young women) who are mysteriously drawn to lives crime and transgression. After the ground collectively commits a brutal crime – aided by “Trevor,” a strange deity of chaos they can’t seem to control – the boys are punished to board a boat with a lecherous sea captain hell-bent on taming their ferocious appetites. They soon arrive on a lush island where dangers and pleasures abound… and the boys start to transform in both mind and body. Shot in gorgeous 16mm and brimming with homoeroticism, genderfluidity, and humor, The Wild Boys will take you on journey you won’t soon forget. It’s a colorful, unique and strangely funny underground queer masterpiece.
