Best Male homosexuality Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of male homosexuality cinema — measured across 2,084 indexed frames from 33 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Male homosexuality films over-index on tank top, cigarette and lamp — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Mysterious Skin (2004)
Gregg ArakiDP Steve GainerIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →
Joseph Gordon-Levittas Neil McCormick
Brady Corbetas Brian Lackey
Michelle Trachtenbergas Wendy Peterson
A gay teenage prostitute and another teen, both from the same small town in Kansas, narrate separate stories from their childhoods. The prostitute's story is about a disturbing homosexual encounter with his pedophile baseball coach, and the other teen's story revolves around an amnesia blackout during which he thinks he may have been abducted by aliens. Later, the second teen finds clues linking the gay prostitute (now living in New York City) to his possible alien abduction, so he tracks him down to finally seek out the truth.
- 2
Paris Is Burning (1990)
Jennie LivingstonDP Paul GibsonIMDb 8.2TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →
Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.
- 3
Beach Rats (2017)
Eliza HittmanDP Hélène LouvartIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.0See in full on FrameThrower →
An aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn struggles to escape his bleak home life and navigate questions of self-identity, as he balances his time between his delinquent friends, a potential new girlfriend, and older men he meets online.
- 4
Xavier DolanDP Stéphanie Weber BironIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Teenager Hubert haughtily regards his mother with contempt, and only sees her tacky sweaters and kitsch decorations. In addition to these irritating surface details, there is also his parent's cherished mechanisms of manipulation and guilt. Confused by this love/hate relationship that obsesses him more and more each day, Hubert drifts through the mysteries of adolescence - artistic discoveries, illicit experiences, the opening-up to friendship, and ostracism. The turbulent relationship between mother and son unfolds with a compelling combination of savage fury and melting affection. The stunning, semi-autobiographical directing debut of 20-year-old actor Xavier Dolan.
- 5
Far From Heaven (2002)
Todd HaynesDP Edward LachmanIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →
Cathy is the perfect 50s housewife, living the perfect 50s life: healthy kids, successful husband, social prominence. Then one night she stumbles in on her husband Frank, kissing another man, and her tidy world starts spinning out of control. In her confusion and grief, she finds consolation in the friendship of their African-American gardener, Raymond - a socially taboo relationship that leads to the further disintegration of life as she knew it. Despite Cathy and Frank's struggle to keep their marriage afloat, the reality of his homosexuality and her feelings for Raymond open a painful, if more honest, chapter in their lives.
- 6
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Anthony MinghellaDP John SealeIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →
The 1950s. Manhattan lavatory attendant, Tom Ripley, borrows a Princeton jacket to play piano at a garden party. When the wealthy father of a recent Princeton grad chats Tom up, Tom pretends to know the son and is soon offered $1,000 to go to Italy to convince Dickie Greenleaf to return home. In Italy, Tom attaches himself to Dickie and to Marge, Dickie's cultured fiancée, pretending to love jazz and harboring homoerotic hopes as he soaks in luxury. Besides lying, Tom's talents include impressions and forgery, so when the handsome and confident Dickie tires of Tom, dismissing him as a bore, Tom goes to extreme lengths to make Greenleaf's privileges his own.
- 7
Death In Venice (1971)
Luchino ViscontiDP Pasqualino De SantisIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →
In this adaptation of the Thomas Mann novel, avant-garde composer Gustav von Aschenbach (Sir Dirk Bogarde) travels to a Venetian seaside resort seeking repose after a period of artistic and personal stress. But he finds no peace there, for he soon develops a troubling attraction to Tadzio (Björn Andrésen), an adolescent on vacation with his family. The boy embodies an ideal of beauty that Aschenbach has long sought and he becomes infatuated. However, the onset of a deadly pestilence threatens them physically and represents the corruption that compromises and threatens all ideals.
- 8
Milk (2008)
Gus Van SantDP Harris SavidesIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →
Using flashbacks from a statement recorded late in life and archival footage for atmosphere, this film traces Harvey Milk's career from his 40th birthday to his death. He leaves the closet and New York, opens a camera shop that becomes the salon for San Francisco's growing gay community, and organizes gays' purchasing power to build political alliances. He runs for office with lover Scott Smith as his campaign manager. Victory finally comes on the same day Dan White wins in the city's conservative district. The rest of the film sketches Milk's relationship with White and the 1978 fight against a statewide initiative to bar gays and their supporters from public school jobs.
- 9
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
John SchlesingerDP Adam HolenderIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Texas greenhorn Joe Buck arrives in New York City for the first time. Preening himself as a real "hustler", he finds that he is the one getting "hustled" until he teams up with down-and-out but resilient outcast Ratso Rizzo. The initial "country cousin meets city cousin" relationship deepens. In their efforts to bilk a hostile world rebuffing them at every turn, this unlikely pair progress from partners in shady business to comrades. Each has found his first real friend.
- 10
Moonlight (2016)
Barry JenkinsDP James LaxtonIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
Three time periods - young adolescence, mid-teen and young adult - in the life of black-American Chiron is presented. When a child, Chiron lives with his single, crack addict mother Paula in a crime ridden neighborhood in Miami. Chiron is a shy, withdrawn child largely due to his small size and being neglected by his mother, who is more concerned about getting her fixes and satisfying her carnal needs than taking care of him. Because of these issues, Chiron is bullied, the slurs hurled at him which he doesn't understand beyond knowing that they are meant to be hurtful. Besides his same aged Cuban-American friend Kevin, Chiron is given what little guidance he has in life from a neighborhood drug dealer named Juan, who can see that he is neglected, and Juan's caring girlfriend Teresa, whose home acts as a sanctuary away from the bullies and away from Paula's abuse. With this childhood as a foundation, Chiron may have a predetermined path in life, one that will only be magnified in terms of its problems when he reaches his difficult teen years when peer pressure affects what he and many of his peers do, unless he follows Juan's advice of truly making his own decisions for himself.
What male homosexuality films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a male homosexuality frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — tank top is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- tank top3.1×
- cigarette2.3×
- lamp2.3×
- mustache2.1×
- mirror2.1×
- fedora2.0×
- bed1.9×
- stone wall1.8×
How male homosexuality films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate male homosexuality from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 88%eye levelvs 69% baseline
- 25%closeupvs 21% baseline
What breaks the pattern
It’s Only The End Of The World (2016) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 2,084 frames from 33 films carrying the male homosexuality label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/male-homosexuality
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