Movies Like Paul Monette: The Brink of Summer's End
If you liked Paul Monette: The Brink of Summer's End (1997), a documentary movie directed by Monte Bramer, here are 20 movies with a similar feel, based on TMDB's recommendations. Each one links to its cast, trailer and where it's streaming.
- 1
Howard (2018)
★ 6.8/10Also documentaryThough legendary lyricist Howard Ashman died far too young, his impact on Broadway, movies, and the culture at large were incalculable. Told entirely through rare archival footage and interviews with Ashman’s family…
- 2
How to Survive a Plague (2012)
★ 6.8/10Also documentaryA story of two coalitions – ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group) – whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these self-made…
- 3
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)
★ 7.2/10Also documentaryThe life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family…
- 4
Tab Hunter Confidential (2015)
★ 7.2/10Also documentaryThroughout the 1950s, Tab Hunter reigned as Hollywood’s ultimate male heartthrob. But throughout his years of stardom, Tab had a secret. Tab Hunter was gay, and spent his Hollywood years in a precarious closet that…
- 5
Welcome to Chechnya (2020)
★ 7/10Also documentaryThis searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a…
- 6
Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (2018)
★ 6/10Also documentaryA deliciously scandalous portrait of unsung Hollywood legend Scotty Bowers, whose bestselling memoir chronicled his decades spent as sexual procurer to the stars.
- 7
Disclosure (2020)
★ 7.8/10Also documentaryAn investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
- 8
Pray Away (2021)
★ 6.7/10Also documentaryIn the 1970s, five men struggling with being gay in their Evangelical church started a bible study to help each other leave the "homosexual lifestyle." They quickly received over 25,000 letters from people asking for…
- 9
Cameraperson (2016)
★ 6.7/10Also documentaryAs a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What…
- 10
Come See Me in the Good Light (2025)
★ 7.1/10Also documentaryIn an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.
- 11
Tongues Untied (1990)
★ 6.7/10Also documentaryMarlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of Hemphill reciting his poetry, Riggs…
- 12
John Candy: I Like Me (2025)
★ 7.9/10Also documentaryThose who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.
- 13
28 Up (1985)
★ 7.5/10Also documentaryJust two years away from turning 30, participants in Michael Apted's documentary series are facing serious questions of identity and purpose, wondering whether they've found their place in the world.
- 14
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000)
★ 7.8/10Also documentaryA compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
- 15
I Am Heath Ledger (2017)
★ 7.4/10Also documentaryThe life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.
- 16
The Celluloid Closet (1996)
★ 7.3/10Also documentaryExuberant, eye-opening movie that serves up a dazzling hundred-year history of the role of gay men and lesbians have had on the silver screen. Film contains fabulous footage from 120 films showing the changing face of…
- 17
Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (2016)
★ 6.9/10Also documentaryNude men in rubber suits, close-ups of erections, objects shoved in the most intimate of places—these are photographs taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, known by many as the most controversial photographer of the twentieth…
- 18
STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie (2023)
★ 7.8/10Also documentaryA short kid from a Canadian army base becomes the international pop culture darling of the 1980s—only to find the course of his life altered by a stunning diagnosis. What happens when an incurable optimist confronts an…
- 19
Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin (2003)
★ 7/10Also documentaryBrilliant, long in-the-works story of the life and art of the world's greatest comedian and the cinema's first genius, Charlie Chaplin. Produced, written and directed by renowned film critic Richard Schickel.
- 20
Life Itself (2014)
★ 7.5/10Also documentaryThe surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership…