This Weekend’s VOD Favorites
The Gay Cinema Video On Demand experience at TLAgay.com has your entertainment needs covered! We’re always working to expand selection of new and old gay-themed movies available for your viewing pleasure. Here’s just five of our current favorites, from various years, that you may have missed – ALL available to watch INSTANTLY! These aren’t our TOP 5, by any means – just a handful of flicks we want to highlight.
Monsters & Men
From award-winning directors Blake Mawson, Francis Luta and Dominic Poliquin comes a collection of edgy and suspenseful gay short films exploring the hidden monsters inside all of us. In PYOTR495, a 16-year-old Russian boy meets someone from a hook-up app and ends up in a dangerous situation. Attention of Men follows an aspiring writer who collects money for having sex with a complete stranger. Wolf concerns an unusual love triangle driven by uncontrollable urges. Forces focuses on the intense bromance between a gay football player and a straight military man. And finally Turbulence follows a young gay couple who face some difficult truths during a particularly intense flight. Watch all of these exceptional shorts in one collection with this new TLA Exclusive! We also make each of the films available individually if any particular one catches your eye.
Al Berto
It’s 1975 and the winds of change are blowing over post-revolutionary Portugal. Al Berto (Ricardo Teixera) returns to his small village after spending several years away in Brussels, where he trained as a painter. Settling illegally in a mansion that had been expropriated from his family during the revolution, young Al Berto begins to hang out with locals – who seem to share his interest in the arts and his dream of a different life. Among them is the handsome Joao Maria (Jose Pimentao), who quickly finds himself falling for Al Berto’s charm. Soon the young man begins forming his own counter-culture revolution – one that bewitches the town’s youth, but proves deeply threatening to the ideals of the conservative locals. Colorful, sexy, provocative and deeply political, Al Berto is an expertly-made period piece.
Speechless
A man (Pierre-Matthieu Vital) is found naked by the side of a river in China. His name is Luke, but he appears to be unable to speak, and is sent to a local hospital for diagnosis. Unable to determine the cause of Luke’s condition, the hospital decides that he must be sent elsewhere. Soon, Luke’s male nurse, Xiao Jiang (Qilun Gao), discovers that his superiors have decided to transfer Luke to a mental asylum. He then decides that he must rescue him and smuggle him out to his uncle’s village, where they will have to evade capture from the local police. Slowly, Xiao Jiang begins to be able to piece together the mystery of Luke’s inability to speak and discovers that Luke had previously had a romantic affair with a young male university student named Han Dong (Jian Jiang). During Xiao Jiang’s unravelling of this mystery, Luke suddenly disappears. As a result, Xiao Jiang must try to locate Luke before he finds himself in deeper around… and help resolve once and for all the central mystery of his silence.
I’ll Love You Forever… Tonight
Set in the late 1980s, this critically acclaimed indie classic from 1992 portrays a gritty side of gay life in Los Angeles. Ethan (Paul Marius), a 27-year-old photographer, believes he has no need for love or commitments, and is living his life amidst one-night stands. Ethan is coaxed by his “best buddy” Dennis (Jason Adams) into attending a reunion of college friends and lovers at a Palm Springs hideaway. What is supposed to be a restful vacation turns into a round of hard drinking and cruel sexual games. By the end of the “vacation,” Ethan feels a need for new friends and returns to Los Angeles. Confronting his troubled family life, he calls his father – who doesn’t want anything to do with him. In the end, Ethan realizes that he can make his own “family” with friends who will accept each other without judgments.
The Seminarian
Ryan (Mark Cirillo) is a closeted gay student in his final semester of seminary studies. Despite his school’s hostile stance towards homosexuality, Ryan has two gay classmates – Gerald and Anthony (Matthew Hannon and Javier Montoya) – in whom he secretly confides. He is also close to his religiously devout mother who, as things stand, is unaware of his sexual orientation. Ryan needs to complete a solid theological thesis in order to continue doctoral work at the university of his dreams. As he works on his thesis ‘The Divine Gift of Love,” he begins a relationship with Bradley (Eric Parker Bingham) – a man he has met on the Internet who seems perpetually unable to commit himself. Ryan confides in Gerald and Anthony, only to learn about their romantic struggles as well. Consequently, Ryan questions his views on God’s gift of love. During this volatile time, with the pain of unrequited love and his inability to share his fears with his mother deepening, Ryan struggles with finishing his thesis and holding on to his faith in love.
