Joseph Graham and a dream cast-Richard Sheppard, Colman Domingo, Zack Ryan, Matthew F. Gay men in Philadelphia coming to terms with their compulsive sex drive. The heroine, a woman (Agness Deyn) who feels her ethnic heritage and empathizes with male anxieties, recalls Scarlett O’Hara seen through a gay man’s sensibility. Pouring his troubled romantic soul into the Grassic’s novel-the novel of Terence Davies’ life-results in a new cinematic classic. Only Andre Techine has the breezy cinematic mastery to make a story about high school frenemies (one French, the other Algerian) reflect geopolitical tension and simultaneously reveal the models for gay alienation and human connection in family and social dynamics-the roots of desire and self-confidence. The very best of them-by Techine, Davies, Thomas, Jarman, Greenaway, and Solondz-aren’t just good, they’re the best movies of the year. The cultural and media elite only praise what’s hyped their agenda is to promote films that perpetuate the status quo stereotyping of everyone. This was also the year when mainstream media, which typically marginalizes gay movies, suddenly pretended to find a rare gem (see the last slide). But this extraordinary turn in the history of movies and gay culture never made it to the mainstream media, which always distorts sex, politics, morality, and art. No question about it, 2016 offered an unprecedented bounty of good films that dealt with queer experiences.
