It’s gonna be a happy new year with these queer NYE streaming picks

Ring in 2024 with these four very different movies set on and around New Year's Eve.

Mark

Jan 1, 2024 - 19:00

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It’s gonna be a happy new year with these queer NYE streaming picks

Image Credit: ‘Into The Dark: Midnight Kiss,’ Hulu

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!

New Year’s Eve is a time for celebrating, looking back, and looking ahead. And, according to these movies, it’s also a time for murder, failed weddings, breaking out into song, and sapphic secrets.

So, have a happy new year, queers, and ring it in with these super-gay streaming picks that feature the holiday, one way or another.

Read on for LGBTQ+ New Year’s Eve movies to stream this weekend.

Midnight Kiss

Who doesn’t love a little gore to start the new year? Midnight Kiss is part of Hulu’s Into the Dark, an anthology series where each episode—a standalone horror movie—is based on a different holiday. In Midnight Kiss, a gaggle of hot and b*tchy gays meet at a gorgeous but isolated resort on New Year’s Eve to play their annual, eponymous game… and start dying, one by one. Midnight Kiss also stars queer actors Scott Evans, Augustus Prew, Adam Faison, Chester Lockhart, and It Boy Lukas Gage.

Now streaming on Hulu.

Rent: Filmed Live On Broadway

How do you measure a year? That’s the question this beloved and iconic rock musical seeks to answer. Set against the backdrop of New York’s AIDS-riddled East Village on Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and through 1989, Rent follows a group of friends—including filmmaker Mark (Adam Kantor), songwriter Roger (Will Chase), drag performer Angel (Justin Johnston), professor Collins (Michael McElroy), businessman Benny (Rodney Hicks), dancer Mimi (Renée Elise Goldsberry), performance artist Maureen (Eden Espinosa), and lawyer Joanne (Tracie Thoms)—as they navigate love, loss, drug addiction and art. Don’t bother with the extremely sanitized film version; this production, filmed on Broadway, is terrific.

Available to purchase digitally on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, Microsoft Store, DirecTV and Vudu.

Sex And The City: The Movie

Once you accept that you’re essentially watching a compressed season of the show, the 2008 Sex And The City movie, directed by Michael Patrick King, is pretty lovely (the less said about the second film the better). After Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is left at the altar by Big (Chris Noth), she and friends Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) find their lives changing in ways they didn’t expect. And in a New Year’s Eve segment set to Mairi Campbell’s gorgeous rendition “Auld Lang Syne,” supporting gays Anthony (Mario Cantone) and Stanford (the late Willie Garson) share their first kiss.

Available to rent digitally on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, Microsoft Store, Vudu, DirecTV and Spectrum.

Carol

This sumptuous 2015 Todd Haynes film, based on the 1952 dime novel The Price Of Salt, stars Cate Blanchett as a closeted housewife who meets aspiring photographer and department store worker Therese (Rooney Mara) during the Christmas season. On New Year’s Eve, they share their first kiss. Their affair proves to be an awakening for both women, but also threatens to derail both their lives. Carol is a sexy, moving film with absolutely staggering turns by Blanchett and Mara.

Now streaming on Netflix and Kanopy. Available to rent digitally on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, Microsoft Store, DirecTV and Spectrum.

The Kicker…

2011’s ensemble film New Year’s Eve, directed by Garry Marshall, has a dismal 7% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This side-splitting Saturday Night Sketch imagines a sequel with nearly every Hollywood star.