It’s Unstreamable! Where Jas Keimig and Chase Burns recommend movies and TV shows you can't watch on major streaming services in the United States. We post on Wednesdays unless we’re tired or busy 😊
Got a recommendation for Unstreamable? Give us the scoop at unstreamablemovies@gmail.com.
United States, 1982, 113 min, Dir. Arthur Hiller
Director Bruce La Bruce championed this sappy, groundbreaking, pre-AIDS melodrama for his former column “Academy of the Underrated,” which first tipped us off to watching it. It stars Lisa Rinna's husband as another husband’s hunky side piece (see above). Directed by Arthur Hiller (not Miller), Making Love casts Kate Jackson (Charlie's Angels) as a TV executive in love with Greek tragedies and Michael Ontkean (Twin Peaks) as her doctor-husband who is not-so-tragically gay, plus Hamlin. The whole thing is glossy with made-for-TV vibes—but it knows what it is. While there are meta-references to it being a cheap drama, it's also something very rare: a self-possessed, generous film about a couple navigating their relationship as one of them comes out of the closet. It’s hard to find anything like it from this period.
The opening of Bruce La Bruce's column for Talkhouse:
“One of my film mentors, the late, great pioneering gay critic Robin Wood, used to tell his students that he didn’t understand the concept of ‘guilty pleasures’ in cinema: you either like the film or you don’t, and you shouldn’t feel guilty about the pleasure it gives you. Revisiting Making Love, the 1982 Hollywood film directed by Arthur Hiller, I can gladly confess that it pleasures me in a multitude of ways – as a melodrama, a tear-jerker, a social issue film, an event film, and even, in my own mind, proxy porn. The movie also reads now, unavoidably, as camp (which I take great pleasure in), but it also remains an accurate and significant document of pre-AIDS gay life in the liberation era, and a reminder of how difficult it was, before the plague years, for people to come to terms with their homosexuality.” CHASE BURNS
Find it in the Drama section under LGBT or rent it by mail.
United Kingdom, 1989, 45 min, Dir. Isaac Julien
Isaac Julien's Looking for Langston lasts under an hour but feels like it expertly encompasses an entire lifetime. I attribute that feeling to the film's dreamlike logic: its mish-mash of archival footage and staged scenes; narration composed of works by the titular Langston Hughes and other Black thinkers like Essex Hemphill and Stuart Hall; the fuzzy and elegant black and white film used to shoot the entire movie. It's Julien's impressionistic and surreal ode to the life and legacy of Hughes, centering and reclaiming the celebrated Black poet as a queer figure.
Using Hughes as a jumping-off point, Julien thoughtfully explores desire, the nature of being a Black artist, the cultural legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, and his own experiences as a gay man. He turns scenes that seemingly take place within a '20s speakeasy in Harlem into gay raves in London. Hemphill's explicit poetry—"I could throw my legs up/like satellites, but I knew/I was fucking fallen angels"—is layered over scenes of dapper Black men dressed in tails cruising each other. It's hot and melancholic and fantastical all at once. The openly gay nature of Looking for Langston caused an uproar during the film's release, with the Hughes estate demanding that some scenes be censored. Regardless, the film is a wonderous monument to the gay history of Harlem, as well as its most famous poet. JAS KEIMIG
Find it in the LGBT section. Or rent it by mail!
Looking for more? Browse our big list of 350+ hard-to-find movies over on The Stranger.
*The fine print: Unstreamable means we couldn’t find it on Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Disney+, or any of the other hundreds of streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn’t find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. We don’t consider films on sites that interrupt with commercial breaks, like Tubi, to be streamable. Tubi is like Neu Cable. And yes, we know you can find many things online illegally, but we don’t consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.
