DELIVER US FROM EVIL (2006)
I always had a soft spot for the Catholic Church, as it seemed so fabulous and gothic compared to the drab Anglican services my Mother dragged me to on Sunday mornings during my glum boyhood in a farming town in rural New South Wales. Even out of church, the town's Catholics were uniformly wealthier than other townsfolk, sending their children to a private Catholic school and communing in exclusive social caches.

DELIVERANCE (1972)
Dialogue about asses, physical sensations, and genetic deformities cram the opening act, which brings a quartet of mates with a very set hierarchy of manliness into the backwoods for a rough-river weekend canoeing trip. Reynolds plays Lewis, the hairy and muscly leader of the pack, who knows no fear but carries a crossbow just in case.

ELEPHANT (2003)
Funny, isn’t it, how a deafening roar of gay activist outrage attended Matthew Shepard’s murder but nary a whisper was heard from gay circles less than a year later, when rumours of homosexuality swirled around the perpetrators of the Columbine school massacre.

FAREWELL, MY CONCUBINE (1993)
The film now takes on an extra dimension, an eerie and prismic sixth-sense, with the suicide in 2003 of star Leslie Cheung, who in this film played a tormented and suicidal actor who has trouble distinguishing between his realities and his most famous role – the tormented adorer of an indifferent man who takes his own life.

FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (1975)
This is an uncelebrated and relatively ancient wonder written, directed and performed by everyone’s favorite cokehead leatherqueen, Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

KISS KISS BANG BANG (2005)
The odd-couple outlaw duo has brought us all number of endearing character pairs such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Thelma and Louise, Lethal Weapon, Batman and Robin, Turner and Hooch.

LAW OF DESIRE (1987)
A secular prototype for Bad Education, Law of Desire is Almodóvar’s funniest and one of his warmest films. His seventh feature is also probably his first really slick endeavour, a well written and gimmick-free piece that has lost the humps and prickles of his more eccentric, low-budget earlier work.

LOVE IS THE DEVIL (1998)
It’s hard to concentrate on Derek Jacobi’s Francis Bacon, even though it’s a brilliant performance and even though he gets the best lines in the film, such as “Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends”. Beat that. Anyway, Daniel Craig is as least as good an actor as Derek Jacobi, and as George Dyer, he creates a gay film character for the times.

LUKAS' STORY (1994)
Lukas seems confused about his nascent sexuality, but it's fairly clear to the viewer that he has an unambiguous interest in cock from the film's first scene, where he spies through a keyhole on his brother (Willie Ridgeston, who looks a bit like Lukas - are they really brothers?) whacking off.

MACHO DANCER (1988)
Filipino censors hacked Macho Dancer to pieces before its domestic release, removing sexually explicit scenes. Since this must have left a very short film with at least two-thirds of its scenes missing, we can all be thankful that a print was smuggled out of the Philippines and is now housed in the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art.

MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (1978)
Surrounding Davis are casual references to every inmate “doing it” with each other every chance they get, and the apparently common practice of rival inmates stabbing each other in the buttocks with knives.

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (1985)
My Beautiful Laundrette is a film of great humour, deep regret, and an incisive view of Eighties London which never topples into polemic or left-wing sentiment.

NOTES ON A SCANDAL (2006)
Does anyone else note the multiplicity of similarity between Cate Blanchett and Kate Bush? Despite their same first names, (whose different first initials could stand for Comparable Kates), they physically resemble each other, remain aloof from the tabloid hoopla of their respective industries, and share the same kind of elysian artistic genius.

PARAGRAPH 175 (2000)
In Weimar Germany, when Berlin was known throughout the world as a "gay Eden" the law was rarely deployed, and there was expectations it would be reformed or just forgotten. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, however, Paragraph 175 began to be more strictly enforced.

PRICK UP YOUR EARS (1986)
One of the best gay biopics is this unflinching film that’s ostensibly about playwright Joe Orton (Gary Oldman), but which is really about his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, played in mesmerising style by the under rated Alfred Molina.

QUERELLE (1982)
When the titular hero of Jean Genet's "Querelle de Brest" allows himself to be fucked for the first time by Nono, the owner of the near-legendary brothel La Feria, he intends it as a sort of self-punishment, a metaphorical death that will allow him to be purged of guilt for his recent murder of a friend and fellow opium smuggler.

REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE (1967)
Claustrophobic bad marriages and sweaty, illicit desire torment the residents of a sleepy peacetime army post.

SHOWBOY (2002)
Absolutely fabulous mockumentary that treats us to everything from a spunky lead and a great script to dazzling Vegas vistas and a guest appearance by Siegfried and Roy. Maybe it's Christian Taylor's dry, tentative British essence, but there's an air of British television's "The Office" and "Little Britain" in the excellent, inventive Showboy.

SILVERLAKE LIFE (1993)
Silverlake Life began as a film diary by Tom Joslin, a man dying of AIDS along with his partner, Mark Massi. A student of Joslin’s, Peter Friedman, agreed to complete the project if Joslin became too ill to work, or died.

THE BOYS IN THE BAND (1970)
Straight from the stage, William Friedkin's adaptation of Matt Crowley’s The Boys In The Band is all character and dialogue and hit-the-marks emotion, and it sometimes gets a little hard to take.

THE FOURTH MAN (1983)
Paul Verhoeven is notorious for the pop-art/soft porn tilt of his Hollywood work, but this unique and perplexing classic from 1983 - Hollywood bound Verhoeven's last Dutch film - tops them all.

THE SUM OF US (1994)
A combination of melancholy, tenderness and knockabout Australians adds up to make The Sum Of Us the best Australian gay-oriented film.

TRICK (1999)
Christian Campbell is smart enough to play his ambitious young character, but no where near unnattractive enough for him to contrast with Pitoc. Campbell is a neat, prep-school hottie and it's no surprise that throughout the film, older queens and drag queens try to trick him into bed.

VICTIM (1961)
Apparently, at the time, 90% of blackmail cases in Britain were homosexuality related, hence the nicknaming of Britain’s anti-homosexuality laws as “the blackmailers charter”.

ZONA ROSA (2005)
The guys work hard, and take their work seriously. They do their work well, and are gifted erotic dancers who've carved themselves knockout bodies through precise and punishing gym workouts. It's heartbreaking to see them, gurgling baby in their lap and ex-wife chewing gum on the couch opposite, talking of their career plans when we know their potential for success is so close to zero.

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