Operation Hyacinth is set in 1980’s Communist Poland where the secret police are portrayed as threatening, harassing, and/or killing gays in the thousands. In the process of working a case of a murdered gay, a member of the police falls in love with another young gay man. He cancels his long-delayed wedding, which infuriates his fiancée and family. He faces probable execution when he kills a fellow officer while allowing his lover to escape. It’s so brutal that you wonder why any gay would stay in the country, except they probably had few opportunities to escape the repressive regime. We’re left guessing that the head of the secret police is involved in a secret gay sex club known as the Villa.

The over-hyped psychological drama titled The Power of the Dog set in 1925 Montana is a star vehicle for Benedict Cumberbatch. He portrays a tortured soul who lives on a ranch with his older brother. He is secretly reliving a gay encounter with an older man when he was a teenager. One scene shows a lot of male nudity as the ranch hands folic in the river. The inner conflict comes to reality when his brother marries and brings a bride with a teenage son to the ranch. The effeminate, skinny kid obviously is gay and is ridiculed by the ranch hands. When the teenager discovers Benedict’s secret hide-away with a stash of muscle-men magazines, he changes his attitude. He takes the teenager under his protection, teaches him how to ride, and even makes him a rope. In a dramatic scene, the kid teases him with a cigarette seduction vamp. We’re left wondering if the tension is fulfilled sexually. The film ends with the protagonist dying, and again we are left wondering if it was an accident, a suicide, or a murder.

The last film is a modern reality show about a coming-out story in a 6-part TV mini-series titled Coming Out Colton. As dark as the first two movies were, the 30-minute segments are as light as air. Perhaps it is because Colton is a gorgeous young hunk, who whose smile could charm a vixen. It follows the coming out of a former NFL player and Bachelor Contestant Colton Underwood. Since he is familiar with the reality TV format, he chose that to tell his story. He films himself telling his high school best friend, his brother, mother, father, high school football coach, and his priest. All are open and accepting except the last two, who are very hostile. Of course, it is a bit of a stretch that these people should be surprised at the revelation considering it occurs in front of a camera crew and drones with expert lighting in HD. Each revelation is interrupted with a face-on commentary about what has just occurred. The time frame is somewhat vague, as the story apparently unfolds over a period of weeks of jetting back and format across the country to multiple cities. In the final episode he comes to terms with himself and the conflict he caused as a follow-up to the Bachelor that created such notoriety.