Big Gay Movie Roundup: 13 Notable Films from 2024

Moviegoers like spectacle in their big-screen entertainment. Big fights, big explosions, big romance... it's all at home in the 1.85:1 format (or, if you like to go IMAX like Christopher Nolan, 1.43:1).

Queer moviegoers, like everyone else, appreciate it when Hollywood stories take notice of their lives. Hence, James Bond's bisexual teasing in "Skyfall" (2012), the same-sex marriage that pops out of the background and into the main narrative briefly in Marvel's "The Eternals" (2021), and the gay couple who redecorate Michael Meyers' childhood home, much to the killer's displeasure, in "Halloween Kills" (2021).

But queer representation in cinema isn't simply a sideshow or afterthought in heteronormative moviemaking; it is its own vibrant and increasingly sophisticated genre of film craft. If we have gay marriage, then we ought to be honest about the inevitability of gay divorce ("Our Son," 2023); if we're going to go in for a gay spin on rom-coms ("Bros," 2022), then we should also look at gay bereavement ("Good Grief," 2023).

Moreover, LGBTQ+ cinema isn't just a matter of substance; style plays into it as well. Queer filmmakers are establishing themselves as the same sort of auteurs that certain straight directors have been seen to be; Pedro Almodóvar's new film "The Room Next Door" may not be queer, but it is certainly queer-adjacent. With "Misericorida," Alain Guiraudie - the director behind "Stranger by the Lake" -reconfirmed his mastery, while Ferzan Özpetek made the voluptuous "Diamanti" and François Ozon gave us "When Fall is Coming."

Still, there's nothing quite as satisfying as a straight-up, in your face gay good time at the movies. So, what stood out in 2024, whether for story, tone, performances, or steamy queer loving? Here's a totally subjective grab bag of thirteen candidates for your viewing pleasure.

Queer

The champion of queer movies in 2024 is, well, "Queer." The film marks prolific out director Luca Guadagnino's second feature in a year, following the bi-curious frisson of "Challengers," but the sex in "Queer" is out-and-out gay (although the character Drew Starkey plays, Eugene Allerton, is depicted as swinging both ways).

Set in Mexico in the early 1950s among a community of gay American expats, the film – based on the William S. Burroughs book of the same name – delves deep into questions of love, attraction, homophobia, and queer culture, as the Burroughs-like William Lee (Daniel Craig) falls for and pursues Allerton, a younger ex-serviceman.

Craig was happy to play gay roles before he was James Bond, and now, in his post-Bond career, he's getting back into it. Between "Queer" and his work as gay detective Benoit Blanc in the "Knives Out" movies, Craig might just be one our best gay-adjacent actors.

"Queer" is currently in theaters. Read the interview with Luca Guadagnino and Daniel Craig.

Wicked

Speaking of queer-adjacent... it's a shame that pundits and publicists tried to pair "Wicked" and "Gladiator II" into the next "Barbenheimer," because a double feature of "Queer" and "Wicked" – "Quicked?" – would have worked so much better. After all, what is love but the most potent form of magic? And isn't a psychedelic trip in the jungle as close to "Defying Gravity" as many of us will ever get?

Joh M. Chu's powerhouse adaptation of the iconic stage musical (a prequel to Frank L. Baum's classic novel "The Wizard of Oz") essentially puts Act One of the epic play on film, with Cynthia Erivo starring as Elphaba (a younger version of The Wicked Witch of the West) and Ariana Grande playing her frenemy, Galinda (destined to grow up to become Glinda the Good Witch).

But is "Wicked" truly queer-adjacent? Or is it downright queer? The movie investigates the gap between reality and prejudicial perception, and calls into question assumptions about who, in this world or any other, truly is a hero and who is a villain. That's surely a story anyone in the LGBTQ+ community can hold space for. (Besides, Ariana herself has taken note of the film's queer vibes.)

"Wicked" is currently in theaters.

Emilia Pérez

One of the year's most surprising films is based on an opera that, in turn, is based on a novel. The story is boldly refreshing: A Mexican drug lord named Juan "Manitas" Del Monte fakes his own death in order to transition in secret and adopt a new identity as a woman. Even more of stunner: It's a musical!

Zoe Saldaña plays Rita, the lawyer that Del Monte employs to scout out potential gender affirmation clinics for the covert surgery, and she proves her chops as a singer (as she has proven talents in so many other ways, from sci-fi fantasy in the "Avatar" films to action heroine in the series "Lioness"). Meantime, transgender actress Karla Sofía Gascón does amazing work both as Del Monte and the title character.

The film has won accolades across the board, with the exception of some in the LGBTQ+ community who have voiced criticism of Emilia's depiction. Controversies notwithstanding, "Emilia Pérez" is a cinematic achievement, and one of the year's standouts.

"Emilia Pérez" is streaming at Netflix.

High Tide

Director Marco Calvani and his husband, actor Marco Pigossi, bring Provincetown to the big screen with "High Tide," a drama that comments simultaneously on the gay demimonde and the immigrant experience. After being dumped by his American boyfriend during a vacation to P-Town, Brazilian hottie Lourenço (Pigossi) casts around for a job that will get him legal permission to remain in the country even as he yearns for a reconciliation. Charming, handsome, and hopeful, he's irresistible to the people he meets, including his widowered landlord. When he meets a new love interest named Maurice (James Bland) who's in town for a week, new love begins to blossom and Lourenço has to decide whether holding on to the past really is a safer option than seizing the moment and jumping into the unknown.

Funny and poignant, "High Tide" feels like an even gayer "Tales of the City" crossed with your typical summer excursion to the beloved gay mecca. Iconic locales play a role here, making Provincetown a character in its own right.

"High Tide" is available on VOD platforms. Read the EDGE interview with Marco Calvani and Marco Pigossi.

I Saw the TV Glow

Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun follows up on "We're All Going to the World's Fair" with a film that's part fantasy, part trans metaphor, and part love letter to genre TV fandom. High school besties Maddy (Bigette Lundy-Paine) and Owen (Justice Smith) are an unlikely pair: She's street smart and a little jaded, while he's shy and a bit awkward. They bond over stealthy midnight viewings of a sci-fi series called "The Pink Opaque," a "Buffy"-esque drama about two telepathically linked youngsters fighting off a menacing entity called Mr. Melancholy.

The teenagers' lives are melancholy enough, with Maddy being battered by her stepfather and the anxious Owen feeling restricted by his own parents, but "The Pink Opaque" helps them navigate the pains and perils of high school. Years later, when they reconnect, things are not the same between them any longer, and that includes "The Pink Opaque," which Owen has started rewatching – and into which Maddy has somehow been transported, spending decades trapped in its fictional universe. Anyone who's been enraptured by a TV show ("The X Files," "Firefly," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") will recognize the blend of affection and exasperation that goes with finding a sympathetic vibe in genre fiction, but Schoenbrun elevates the movie from coming-of-age territory to supernatural thriller with the help of two talented leads.

"I Saw the TV Glow" is streaming at Peacock.

Inside Out 2

Pixar suits reportedly insisted on stripping out any queer elements from this delightful sequel to the 2015 hit, absurdly blaming a fleeting same-sex kiss for the failure of an earlier Pixar film, the needless and uninspired "Lightyear." Their meddling utterly fails to remove a sensational lesbian vibe from a story in which the uncomplicated emotions of childhood give way to a cast of more grown up, nuanced, and utterly confusing feelings like Embarrassment, Ennui, Envy, and Anxiety. Attraction isn't personified here, but it hangs in the air every time main character Riley (Kensington Tallman) is around her crush, Valentine (Lilimar).

Yes, Riley is growing up, and "Inside Out 2" manages to address the intense, confounding, and revelatory process of adolescence with compassion, exiling Shame in the process. Riley may or may not be bringing home a same-sex date at some not-too-distant point in the future, but the film's queer viewers will remember all too vividly what it was like to be in the same room as a teenage crush.

"Inside Out 2" is streaming at Disney+.

Will & Harper

This combination of road trip movie and documentary by filmmaker Josh Greenbaum finds funnyman Will Ferrell meeting an old friend all over again when former "Saturday Night Live" writer Harper Steele reaches out to him with news of her gender transition. Filmed over two weeks in 2023, "Will & Harper" follows the pair as they amble from place to place (including some viciously transphobic locales), even as trans lives and gender-affirming care become one more political football for cynical policymakers. The people they meet seem accepting, even in a bar with a "Fuck Biden" flag – but a glance at the social media response after Ferrell makes a display of eating a huge steak at a Texas restaurant, with Harper sitting across the table from him, paints a very different picture of hatred and viciousness.

Will Ferrell may be more the household name of the two, but the doc doesn't shy away from witnessing his missteps and his tentativeness, as well as his unwavering acceptance and support. Harper, for her part, is honest about her apprehensions, but unfailingly courageous – and inspiringly gracious.

"Will & Harper" is streaming at Netflix.

Femme

London drag queen Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) runs afoul of a gang of tough guys and ends up being badly beaten in an impressive first feature from Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping. The leader of the pack is Preston (George MacKay), who is leading a double life: He's a hyper-masculine hoodlum when among his pals, but Preston pursues his deeper desires on the down-low when he has a chance. Spotting Preston at a gay sauna, Jules seeks revenge by plotting to video a sexual encounter with Preston and post it online. What he doesn't count on is starting to empathize with the wounded, frightened man he finds under Preston's rough exterior. Will love banish hate, or will the need for revenge overshadow all else?

MacKay has been on our radar at least since his international breakthrough in 2016's "Captain Fantastic," where he played the son of an eccentric genius living of the grid. He also starred, along with Saorise Ronan and Tom Holland, in 2013's "How I Live Now." His range and depth have been proven ever since, in films like "1917," but his work here leaves no doubt of his star quality. Co-star Sewart-Jarrett, likewise, has been a pro actor since the aughts, and this role feels like it should bring his career to a whole new level.

"Femme" is streaming at Apple TV+. Read the EDGE interview with Stewart-Jarrett and MacKay.

National Anthem

Not that there's anything wrong with coming-of-age dramas. They may be a dime a dozen in the queer cinema niche, but Luke Gilford's "National Anthem" is something special. Set in the world of queer rodeos – that's a real thing! – the film (inspired by Gilford's monograph) features bucking broncs and big belt buckles, but it also introduces its young lead character, Dylan (Charlie Plummer), to life on a ranch that's populated by a rainbow of people, including Sky (Eve Lindley), a trans woman who catches his eye from the first. Complicating matters, Sky is already in a relationship with the ranch's owner, the charismatic Pepe (Rene Rosado), who is clearly attracted to Dylan.

By and large, the characters in "National Anthem" don't fit neatly into narrow boxes; Dylan is mocked as gay by fellow workers at a gravel pit, but it's Sky's effortless ability to live as the woman she truly is that captures him. Pepe, meantime, is as smitten with Sky as he is taken with Dylan, and the film dips into threesome territory before flirting with the idea of a throuple, or maybe a polyamorous (and possibly pansexual) long-term arrangement between the trio.

We don't quite know everything about these characters by the end, and they may not know everything about themselves. What emerges from "National Anthem" is the message that people need the space to figure such things out for themselves. (And if they can do it on a joyfully queer ranch in a remote corner of New Mexico, so much the better!)

"National Anthem" is streaming on VOD platforms. Read the EDGE interview with Luke Gilford.

The Critic

Why is Ian McKellen so good at playing bad? As Jimmy Erskine in Anand Tucker's "The Critic," the out icon serves all flavors of evil, from desperately duplicitous to calculatingly ruthless to a strain of merely mortal and mendacious, with a streak of genuine compassion that's smothered by the darkness in his life and in his soul.

There's darkness in the England of 1937, too, where fascism is on the rise and queer men like Erskine are targets for harassment, arrest, and public humiliation. A monster of a homophobic society's making, Erskine gives us pause and forces us to ask what we might do in his situation. We surely wouldn't stoop to the schemes Erskine attempts in this atmospheric noir... would we?

"The Critic" is far from a perfect movie, but why carp? It's perfect for what it is: A sturdy-enough vehicle for a crackling Sir Ian.

"The Critic" is available on VOD platforms. Read the EDGE interview with Tucker Anand.

Close to You

Elliot Page brings a powerful sense of deep authenticity to Dominic Savage's trans drama "Close to You," which Page co-wrote together with the director.

The film's improvisational style gives a sense of loose-jointedness to the movie, and the cast make full use of it. Sam (Page) hasn't been home in years – since before he transitioned, in fact – but now he's ready to give it a try by attending his father's birthday party. Typical family frictions – sibling rivalries, a bigoted brother-in-law – are magnified by Sam's still-unresolved traumas, and the occasion is less than happy.

But Sam also has the chance to reconnect with Katherine (Hillary Baack), a former best friend from high school, and what begins as a subplot in a family drama makes its way to the forefront of the film, bringing hope along with it.

"Close to You" is streaming at Netflix. Read the EDGE interview with Dominic Savage, Elliot Page, and Hillary Baack.

Glitter & Doom

Married couple and filmmaking partners Cory Krueckeberg and Tom Gustafson found a measure of mainstream success with 2008's "Were the World Mine," and made waves with queer audiences with films like "Mariachi Gringo" (2012) and "Getting Go, The Go Doc Project" (2013). This year they unleashed their frothiest concoction yet, "Glitter & Doom." The former (Alex Diaz) is an aspiring circus performer pushing back against the career expectations imposed on him by his corporate leader mom (Ming-Na, in an eyepatch); the latter (Alan Cammish) is an emo-tinged musician with a British accent who's scraping by while dealing with his substance-abusing ex-con mother. Like all rom-coms, this one combines love, desire, conflict, and pain to create a feel-good journey, but with a big difference: This trip reinvents some classic queer songs.

A jukebox musical drawn entirely from the catalogue of queer sister act The Indigo Girls, "Glitter & Doom" is a candy-colored rom-com with a fantastical edge. If Julio Torres and David Lynch had a love child, and that love child decided to make their own movie along the lines of "Across the Universe," this might well be the result.

"Glitter& Doom" is available on VOD platforms. Read the EDGE interview with Corey Krueckeberg and Tom Gustafson.

The Summer with Carmen

Greek director Zacharias Mavroeidis and his co-writer Fondas Chalatsis go nuts with "The Summer with Carmen," a thoroughly meta, absolutely cinephilic, and appealingly sexy trifle that's got layers and layers of jokey, witty fun wrapped around a compassionate core... not to mention a winking, celebratory love of the nude male form.

Two gay buddies, Demosthenes (Yorgos Tsiantoulas) and Nikitas (Andreas Labropoulos) hang out at a nude beach, spinning ideas for a movie that will be a surefire hit. Their over-active imaginations cast others at the beach (a lurker, a showboating couple, a guy whose photo should appear in the dictionary under "Beefcake") as players in the movie notions they come up with. Interleaved with their musings are flashbacks that recount Demosthenes' breakup with Panos (Nikolaos Mihas), a parting of ways that led to Demosthenes' titular summer with Panos' dog. A complete success in its comic and dramatic ambitions, "The Summer with Carmen" is the gay movie equivalent of an everything bagel: It's so extra, and yet so perfectly balanced.

"The Summer with Carmen" is available on VOD platforms.