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To put it bluntly, Valentine’s Day is perhaps the most awkward national holiday. On the one hand you have lovely and joyful romantic partners eager to get their plans started, and on the other hand you have lovely but dissatisfied singles preparing to witness all the plans in action, right? No! There are also people who get together with their palentines and do something quiet or have an absolute rager, people who go to bars or clubs or parties for the sake of a good time, people who visit loved ones—who may have lost loved ones—to offer comfort and company, etc. Then, there are those of us die-hard cinephiles who don’t have a fulfilling holiday without popping in a film or two. Whether you have a valentine, palentine, or you’re a singleton, there’s something for everyone to enjoy under the “Sweet and Sour” sublist,...

John Hughes once explained why he loved stories about young people caught between childhood and adulthood. “One of the great wonders of that age is your emotions are so open and raw,” he said. “At that age it feels as good to feel bad as it does to feel good.”

The poet laureate of the coming-of-age film wasn’t wrong. These movies are built on some of the biggest feelings there are – first love! True friendship! Desperately trying to find a decent party and some booze! – and put you right back in the time when you felt everything so much, you thought you might actually burst. The arc is simple: a young person (or little gang of them) goes through some kind of quest or experience which opens their eyes to the world and shows them how innocent they were, and now never can be again. Come the credits, everyone...

The 2018 QFest St. Louis begins on Wednesday, April 4, and runs through Sunday, April 8. All screenings will be held at .Zack,. 3224 Locust St. in Grand Center. Advance sales will be available through MetroTix. The schedule of screenings, events, trailers, and full descriptions of the films will appear on the festival website at cinemastlouis.org/qfest. The official QFest St. Louis page on Facebook is facebook.com/QFestSTL.

QFest St. Louis, a presentation of Cinema St. Louis, is sponsored by Jeffrey T. Fort, Aarp in St. Louis, Whitaker Foundation, Regional Arts Commission, Missouri Arts Council, Arts & Education Council, Coffee Cartel, Dekkoo, Just John Nightclub, Dennis Gorg Trust, Mark Utterback, and Michael Reisers:

Here’s the line-up for the 11th Annual QFest St. Louis:

Becks Wednesday, Apr. 4th at 7:00pm.

Singer/songwriter Becks (Tony-winning and Grammy-nominated Lena Hall) gives up her Brooklyn apartment and heads across the country to join her long-distance girlfriend (Hayley Kiyoko) in La.

The 2018 QFest St. Louis begins on Wednesday, April 4, and runs through Sunday, April 8. All screenings will be held at .Zack,. 3224 Locust St. in Grand Center. Advance sales will be available through MetroTix. The schedule of screenings, events, trailers, and full descriptions of the films will appear on the festival website at cinemastlouis.org/qfest. The official QFest St. Louis page on Facebook is facebook.com/QFestSTL.

QFest St. Louis, a presentation of Cinema St. Louis, is sponsored by Jeffrey T. Fort, Aarp in St. Louis, Whitaker Foundation, Regional Arts Commission, Missouri Arts Council, Arts & Education Council, Coffee Cartel, Dekkoo, Just John Nightclub, Dennis Gorg Trust, Mark Utterback, and Michael Reiser

Here’s the line-up for the 11th Annual QFest St. Louis:

Becks Wednesday, Apr. 4th at 7:00pm.

Singer/songwriter Becks (Tony-winning and Grammy-nominated Lena Hall) gives up her Brooklyn apartment and heads across the country to join her long-distance girlfriend (Hayley Kiyoko) in La.

Brace yourselves. This list of the Top 100 Greatest Gay Movies is probably going to generate some howls of protest thanks to a rather major upset in the rankings. Frankly, one that surprised the hell out of us here at AfterElton.

But before we get to that, an introduction. A few weeks ago we asked AfterElton readers to submit up to ten of their favorite films by write-in vote. We conducted a similar poll several years ago, but a lot has happened culturally since then, and a number of worthy movies of gay interest have been released. We wanted to see how your list of favorites had changed.

We also wanted to expand our list to 100 from the top 50 we had done previously. We figured there were finally enough quality gay films to justify the expansion. And we wanted to break out gay documentaries onto their own list (You'll find the...

Kevin Kline, Tom Selleck kiss, In & Out Following my Valentine's Day post featuring lots of male-female kisses and embraces (and a few shapely legs, bare breasts, and sensuous lips, courtesy of, respectively, Silvana Mangano, Clara Calamai, and Jane Russell), here's the gay/lesbian version. This Gay Kiss Montage post was originally published in June 2007, when Turner Classic Movies ran a couple of dozen films featuring gay/lesbian/bi/etc. characters as part of their Screened Out series. Created in late 2006 by Robert Eldredge, the video was inspired by the finale of Giuseppe Tornatore's Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winner Cinema Paradiso, in which Jacques Perrin watches clips — kisses, hugs, embraces, nudity, sensuality, expressions of human desire — that, decades earlier, had been cut from the films screened at his Italian village's old movie house. The local Catholic priest had found those bits of celluloid harmful to the town's morals and family values.

British director Hettie Macdonald's debut feature, based on an acclaimed British stage play, takes place in a low-rent district in southeast London and depicts the burgeoning love affair between two young men. Although the picture mixes whimsy, romance and harder-edged drama in uncomfortable amounts, it has a certain charm that could win it an audience in urban situations with large gay populations.

The music of Mama Cass and the Mamas and the Papas permeates the film, which gives you some idea of its atmosphere. It concerns a group of teenagers who live as neighbors in the privacy-deprived Thamemead Estate. Jamie (Glen Berry), a quiet boy who likes to skip school and watch old movies, lives with his 35-year-old mother, Sandra (Linda Henry), a brassy barmaid with a propensity for telling off-color jokes during job interviews. Their neighbors include Ste (Scott Neal), a young man who loves sports and is brutalized by his drug-dealer brother and alcoholic father, and Leah (Tameka Empson), a 16-year-old dropout obsessed with the music of Mama Cass. Also on hand is Sandra's younger lover Tony (Ben Daniels), a hippie art-school dropout who considers himself particularly attuned to teenage concerns.

One night Ste stays over with Jamie in order to avoid another beating from his father. Sleeping together in the same bed, the boys discover their mutual attraction that throws everyone in their working-class neighborhood into a tizzy.

The picture's often-amusing dialogue and insightful characterizations aren't quite enough to compensate for its forced qualities and stagy situations. It doesn't help that the most interesting character is Sandra, so the romance that is the central focus of the film doesn't resonate as much as it should despite a climactic clinch filmed with the romantic fervor of a Bette Davis movie. Although "Beautiful Thing" has many small, finely observed moments, there are too many times when the artificiality of its stage origins becomes all too evident.

BEAUTIFUL THING

Sony Pictures Classics

Director Hettie Macdonald

Screenplay Jonathan Harvey

Producer Tony Garnett

Director of photography Chris Seager

Editor Don Fairservice

Color

Cast:

Jamie Gangel Glen Berry

Sandra Gangel Linda Henry

Ste Pearce Scott Neal

Leah Tameka Empson

Tony Ben Daniels

Running time -- 90 minutes

MPAA rating: R...