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Explore this list on Letterboxd.
Challengers, Luca Guadagnino's 2024 magnum opus, changed many people's worlds. It paved the way for fresh-faced icons like Heated Rivalry. It raised confusing questions about male friendship. It riffed off of Lexi's play in Euphoria, where the sheer gay-ness of muscular men loudly tackling each other become a major cultural talking point for about a whole month. It glared a spotlight straight into the eyes of the sports world, where humans become players become bank for their shareholder overlords.b
Lots of people moved on after watching Challengers, recalling only how unnecessarily freaky it was for a sports movie; arguably, most people did. But in honor of this masterpiece's birthday, this list is for the rest of us, with whom it resonated maybe a little too much.
1. Heated Rivalry (unironically)
Okay, this first one is a show, and availalble only through one specific small streaming service at that, but it's literally the closest approximation we have to Challengers. It's literally another gay sports erotica, based this time on a YA novel, a genre many of us have passionately yet semi-ironically incited ourselves upon. There are petty conflicts, cocky male leads, antagonistic nicknames, and charmingly gendered dynamics. There are buff shirtless men sometimes. There's a lot of heart behind each scene, and you can always frantically skip past all the parts that distract from it.
2. Saltburn
Directed by the queen of queer-as-in-weird, Emerald Fennell's 2023 release put her on enough radars to secure a more recent, deeply divisive Wuthering Heights adaptation. It was also her first time out of two working with actor Jacob Elordi, which isn't much, but it's weird that it happened twice.
Saltburn is a tale of obsession and deceit and terror, a reflection on loneliness, a hundred lies we tell ourselves. It's a muddy, gluey mixture of Challengers with the dark-academia energy of The Secret History. It's... not the kind of thing you want to watch in front of your family. But, seriously, it's worth at least one watch.
3. Chuck & Buck
Come for the psychosexual horror, stay for the friendship between the twitchy, unhinged male lead and his well-adjusted g̶i̶r̶l̶b̶o̶s̶s̶ creative co-partner. Chuck and Buck, starring White Lotus director Mike White, is a zany misadventure that just gets weirder and weirder, gayer and gayer, with every blink of an eye, and has lots of lovable female side characters that absolutely steal the show sometimes, even if they never pass the Bechdel test.
The film is thick with awkwardness that makes even a viewer feel like someone's watching them through a window.
4. Design for Living
It's Challengers' great-grandparent, in a sense, a direct precursor with too many similarities to deny inspiration. This 1933 classic features an independent young woman — uncannily alike to Tashi Duncan, right down to the wavy bob — who falls for two best friends at the same time, proposing that they move in together and maintain their jumbled love triangle.
Design for Living is a fun, quirky watch, and above all, its raunch and wit will change how you view the 1930s.
5. The Talented Mr. Ripley
Tell me if you've heard this one before: An innocuous friendship between a nerd and a jock spirals into something much darker as their differences become more and more apparent, ending in not-so-mysterious tragedy. Like Saltburn, this insidious thriller follows a main character with tendencies towards obsession and identity theft who finds himself a bit too deeply enamored with the only one who gives him the time. Despite taking place in the '50s, this idyllic piece feels entirely resonant and relatably modern.
Give these a watch when you have time, and check the longer, ever-updating version of this list on Letterboxd when you've latched on to this oddly specific film genre.
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