Weekend Watch: Whirlwind twink romance, a campy conversion camp, & a catch-up binge

Welcome to your weekend streaming recommendations, a.k.a. the Weekend Watch, a handy guide to the queerest film and TV content that’s just a click away!

Well, fellow queers, we made it to the end of another week. And if you’re like us (eager to become a couch potato and log onto your streaming network of choice) you need recommendations on what to watch—the gayer, the better! Read on for the film and television that belongs on your radar this weekend.

Of An Age

Of an Age joins the ranks of nuanced dramas centered on whirlwind romance—think Before Sunrise, but less hetero—within mere seconds of introducing its two star-crossed leads.

From the moment Adam (Thom Green) catches Kol (Elias Anton) risking a sidelong glance his way, their chemistry practically scorches the screen. Buckle up for a road movie that infuses a coming-of-age journey with the kind of melancholy romance that stays with you long after the credits roll. The last line of dialogue in Of An Age, in fact, is what may cause your aching heart to skip a beat—a cathartic culmination of every finely observed moment before it. 

What we’re trying to say is you shouldn’t miss 2023’s first bona fide hit queer film, which won festival awards, critical praise and a Focus Features release.

But if you’re in more of a sexy mood than a prestige-drama one, fret not because Of an Age has that covered too. How did Macedonian Australian auteur Goran Stolevski find two co-stars with such a palpable connection? Green, breezily confident as the comfortably out Adam, coaxes out the vulnerability from the younger and closeted Kol, whose dawning realization of the undeniable power of attraction Anton plays to perfection.

Whether you’ve been the Adam or the Kol in such a flirtation-turned-fling, their every scintillating interaction will resonate. You may find yourself dreaming of your own personal “one who got away.” 

Providing comedic relief is Hattie Hook as Ebony, Adam’s sister and Kol’s ballroom dance partner, whose party-animal ways kick off the two young men hitting the road together. (Her hysterical opinion on Nicole Kidman alone is worth the price of admission.)

Do yourself a favor and turn on the subtitles for this one—Stolevski impeccably captures early 1990s Australia including all its idiosyncratic dialect. It’s a tour de force of world-building, with that world being the inexplicable magic between two people caught in each other’s orbit.

Streaming exclusively on Peacock.

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But I’m A Cheerleader

Almost 25 years on, But I’m A Cheerleader remains one of a kind.

Would today’s Hollywood have the guts to produce a campy queer rom-com centered on a conversion therapy camp? How on earth did the Hollywood of 1999 pull it off? Thanks to the tenacity of screenwriter Brian Wayne Peterson and derring-do of director Jamie Babbit, that’s how. 

Queer icon Natasha Lyonne plays Megan, a high school senior who objects to her family and friends’ assertion that she’s attracted to girls; cheerleading, surely, is the activity that’s furthest from lesbian stereotypes! It’s those stereotypes with which the filmmakers of But I’m A Cheerleader are playing, sending up the notion that you can boil anyone’s identity down to their sexual orientation.

And under the film’s bubbly tone are pointed messages that will resonate as long as conversion “therapy” continues to abuse and confuse young people. Seeing, for example, none other than mother herself RuPaul play an “ex-gay” counselor openly salivating over a sexy, shirtless Eddie Cibrian is amusing. But it can also serve a sobering reminder that many vocal anti-queer legislators or activists are themselves denying who they are, to detrimental effect. 

That this essential piece of queer cinema history is available now on streaming is a gift. Lyonne’s sweet chemistry opposite queer trailblazer Clea DuVall highlights the “rom” part of this rom-com, and if you’re a Melanie Lynskey fan—which is to say, if a purveyor of film and television with a pulse—catch the Yellowjackets star here in a scene-stealing supporting role.

Bonus: Check out MUNA and Phoebe Bridgers’ homage to the film, their “Silk Chiffon” music video, and see for yourself the impact But I’m A Cheerleader has had on pop culture.

Now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, The Roku Channel, and Plex.

Related:

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The Other Two, Seasons 1 & 2

Give Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider the Kennedy Center Honors, the Pulitzer Prize and, for God’s sake, an Emmy for The Other Two, the Comedy Central-turned-HBO Max series about a tween sensation’s less famous siblings.

Few comedies today can skewer Hollywood’s elite better—and with such a distinctly queer sensibility. So specifically engineered for LGBTQ+ audiences are the pop culture references and plotlines on this show, it’s possible some of its jokes go over straight viewers’ heads… we honestly wouldn’t know. 

The gist: Drew Tarver and Heléne Yorke play Cary and Brooke Dubek, older siblings to overnight pop star ChaseDreams (Case Walker). They’re caught in the often humiliating slipstream of his and eventually their mother Pat’s (the always iconic Molly Shannon) stratospheric rise to fame. Among the hilarious supporting players in the Dubeks’ orbit are Josh Segarra, Ken Marino, Wanda Sykes, Brandon Scott James, Gideon Glick, and more.

How to pinpoint just one favorite joke on The Other Two’s brilliant first two seasons? The saga of Carey’s accidental notoriety due to, er, inappropriate use of a live photo is laugh-out-loud funny.

And the look of dread of Brooke’s face as she intones the line “In this economy?” is what first made this series an instant classic. (A close second: Kate Berlant’s “I’m gagging for you, fa****!”)

For us, it’s the throwaway bits—a vapid gay influencer’s assertion that his occupation is “I used to be fat but now I have two nieces,” for example—that prove Kelly and Schneider’s ability to crank up the laughs-per-minute ratio of a series that truly deserves to be among HBO Max’s crown jewels. If you start watching—or, for diehard fans like us, rewatching—now, you’ll time it perfectly before the May 4 premiere of their highly anticipated third season. 

Streaming exclusively on HBO Max.

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