The Fifty Greatest Gay Movies!

6. Trick (1999)

How hard can it be to find a place to have sex? For hapless Gabriel and his gorgeous one-night stand Mark, it’s pretty hard. But this movie isn’t really about having sex; the real “trick” is to somehow find love. Is Trick the best gay romantic comedy ever made?

AfterElton.com readers and staff members think so. There’s so much to praise about this movie, whether it’s Tori Spelling’s utterly fearless performance as a clueless, no-talent wannabe, Steve Hayes delightful turn as the wonderful and wise Perry, or Coco Peru’s delightfully surreal cameo in the men’s restroom. But ultimately, the night belongs to that freshest of all fresh faces, Christian Campbell as the aptly named Gabriel, and smoldering John Paul Pitoc as Mark. The evening may not end in sex, but when Gabriel emerges into the sunlight of a new morning, he finally figures out the missing lyric to his song and the whole city seems to sing. We do too.

7. Get Real (1998)

“School’s out,” reads the tagline to the 1998 film Get Real. “So is Steven Carter.” Many observers noted this movie’s similarities with Beautiful Thing, which bowed a few years before it; like Beautiful Thing, Get Real is a U.K. movie, based on a play, about a bookish teenager in love with a closeted jock while being given advice from a best female friend. But in keeping with its title, Get Real goes places that Beautiful Thing definitely does not.

When Steven is caught by the police in a park where gay men are known to cruise, his father warns him that “perverts” hang out there. “Well, where else are we supposed to go?” Steven says angrily. The climax of the movie, when Steven gets a standing ovation after reading his essay, is as rousing and satisfying as movie endings get. And here’s to a movie that dares to end its love story on a complicated, bittersweet note.

8. Big Eden (2000)

What if Frank Capra were gay? He might have made 2000’s Big Eden, a charming crowd-pleaser about Henry, a big city artist, who returns to Big Eden, his Montana hometown, to care for a sick family member. Before long, he’s dealing with feelings of unrequited love for his best friend from high school while missing a potential new love, a Native American man named Pike, that’s right in front of his face. Would the members of a small Montana town really be so free from homophobia, even conspiring to get Henry and Pike to fall in love? Big Eden says they would, and it’s a testament to this movie’s particular magic that we never doubt for a minute that it is true. And a special shout-out to filmmakers who understand that gay people come in every color that humans do.

9. The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy (2000)

Greg Berlanti is now one of Hollywood’s top movers-and-shakers, boldly producing gay-inclusive shows like Brothers & Sisters and Dirty Sexy Money. But in 2000, he wrote and directed a feel-good romantic comedy called The Broken Hearts Club, based, in part, on Berlanti’s own motley group of West Hollywood friends. With a killer cast that includes a pre-Scrubs Zach Braff, as well as Dean Cain, Justin Theroux, and John Mahoney, Berlanti made a movie in exactly the style that has since become his hallmark: a little broad, more than a tad sentimental, and thoroughly entertaining.

10. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

Coming on the heels of a decade of devastation from AIDS, it’s almost impossible to overstate the impact of 1994’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a gay “road trip” movie from Australia that proved that drag is anything but a drag. Everything about this movie says “classic,” from those oh-so-memorable costumes and dance numbers to the utterly astounding performances by Terence Stamp and Guy Pearce (and a less flashy, more grounded performance by Hugo Weaving that was the heart of the whole movie). Not many movies can say they reignited a whole phenomenon, but that’s exactly what Priscilla did with the music of ABBA. Mostly, though, this movie made it fun to be gay again — which, at the time, was exactly what we so desperately needed.