With the launch of the brand-new TLAgay.com, the Gay Cinema Video On Demand experience we have been offering for a long, long time was upgraded and improved. We have expanded (and continue to expand) our 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.
The Happy Sad (c) Ariztical Entertainment
2013, United States
This critically acclaimed drama from director Rodney Evans (the same filmmaker behind Brother To Brother) focuses on two young New York City couples – one black and gay, one white and straight – whose lives become intertwined. Tired of dating Stan (Cameron Scoggins), Annie (Sorel Carradine) pretends to be seeing her female coworker, Mandy (Maria Dizzia). Heartbroken, Stan finds himself hooking up with Marcus (LeRoy McClain), who just started having an open relationship with his long-term boyfriend, Aaron (Charlie Barnett). As they explore new relationships and redefine monogamy, a chance encounter on a subway platform makes each of them reevaluate their sense of who they are and what they want. The Happy Sad is a thoroughly entertaining drama about redefining one’s sexuality and the desperate search for elusive happiness.
Del Shores: My Sordid Life (c) Breaking Glass Pictures
2011, United States
Del Shores is best known for his 2001 cult-classic film turned TV series Sordid Lives. Shores’ other works include his GLAAD award-winning play Southern Baptist Sissies; Ovation & Lost Angeles Drama Critics Circle award-winning play turned film The Trials and Tribulations Of A Trailer Trash Housewife; the 1990 comedy-drama Daddy’s Dyin’ (Who’s Got The Will?); and his 2010 hit play Yellow (which won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award in 2011 for Best Production of the Year). With My Sordid Life, he turns the table, sharing real-life stories that have inspired his writing and more. Yes, there was a man with two wooden legs, but did his grandmother trip over them and die while having a sordid affair? Did his mother really ask, “What exactly do you do. . . when you’re gay?” Were prayers really answered and a matching vein found in a vein bank in Baton Rouge to replace his Uncle Humpty’s collapsed one? What relative really shot a policeman in the “saliva gland” and shoulder? What was his aunt’s reaction to seeing herself as the multi-married bar-singer Evalita in Daddy’s Dyin’? Truth and fiction are separated and the result is absolute, side-splitting hilarity.
Rift (c) Breaking Glass Pictures
2017, Iceland
Paying homage to classic art-house horror films like Robert Wise’s The Haunting and Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, Rift is an enticing, well-acted and expertly-directed mystery-thriller from Iceland that will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Gunnar receives a strange phone call from his ex-boyfriend, Einar, months after they parted ways. Einar sounds distraught, like he’s about to do something terrible to himself, so Gunnar drives to the secluded cabin where Einar is holed up and soon discovers there is more going on than he imagined. As the two come to terms with their broken relationship, some other person seems to be lurking outside the cabin, wanting to get inside. Eerie and stylishly crafted, Rift has proven a big hit at film fests – not just LGBT festivals, but general horror film festivals as well, where it has earned rave reviews.
S&M Sally (c) Ariztical Entertainment
2015, United States
When Jamie finds out her girlfriend Jill has spent time exploring BDSM, her insecurities about falling behind in the bedroom push her to propose that they start going to underground clubs. Identifying as the butch one in a traditional butch/femme couple, Jamie assumes she will take the dominant role in their escapades, with Jill as her submissive, but Jill has ideas of her own. Meanwhile, their friends Lola and David start dating the polyamorous bisexual Sebastian, who proposes to have a threesome. They quickly agree without planning to follow through, expecting the other one to back out first. A provocative and hilarious ride from deeply underrated indie filmmaker Michelle Ehlen, S&M Sally details the unexpected journey that happens when your insecurities push you outside of your comfort zone, leading you down a path for which there is no going back.
Wild Awakening (c) TLA Releasing
2016, Spain
While it’s certainly not a masterpiece (or what most would consider a ‘good’ movie at all), Wild Awakening is trashy fun. A fabulous and delicious, totally erotic new forbidden love story, the movies is equal part drama and gay soap opera! Siblings Emma and Toni inherit their family’s horse riding school – a place where men are seemingly forever running around shirtless. Though they’re the rightful owners, neither Emma nor Toni seem well equipped to keep the business going. Emma is still young and Toni has an uncontrolled and promiscuous gay sex life – which is the subject of much gossip within their close-knit community. Leadership responsibilities fall to Ramon, the capable foreman. Things get tricky, though, when both Emma and Toni fall in love with his smoking hot, sexually fluid son Aaron. Stacked full of the hottest Latino men you’ve ever laid eyes on, and dripping with sensuality, Wild Awakening is about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on!
