Here is a sampling of movies that will play during the 22nd annual Pittsburgh International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival which opens Friday.

"THE CURIOSITY OF CHANCE" (2.5 out of 4 stars)

This is a funny, touching and strange film: funny and touching thanks in large part to Tad Hilgenbrink, a winning performer who tugs at our funnybone and heartstrings all at once in the title role; strange because director/writer Russell P. Marleau did his filming in Belgium where a very American-style high school is populated with students and grown-ups who have a variety of Never-neverland accents and European mannerisms.

The story is an old one: A highly intelligent, out teenager named Chance Marquis is brutalized and humiliated by one Brad Harden, a homophobic jock who bullies Chance and controls (by terror) the remaining members of his soccer team. Chance refuses to react to Brad's bullying, insisting that to respond would be to give the bully more importance than he deserves.

At home, Brad is harassed by a military caricature of a father and abetted by a clever multinational sister.

On his own, Chance manages to perform successfully in a drag show, win over a handsome team member who lives next door, and with the aid of his sister and a sharp-witted female student who takes on his cause, bring down the ignorant bully. It's pretty silly, but fun to watch, and somewhere in all of this, there's a genuine message amid the madness.

"Outing Riley"(2.5 out of 4 stars)

Writer-director Peter Jones, who also plays the title character, calls this homespun comedy "a gay Irish Chicago story."

Bobby Riley is a successful architect who has been hiding the fact that he is gay from his three working-class brothers, though he has confided his secret to his understanding sister.

Bobby has a boyfriend, Andy (Michael McDonald), and a lesbian girlfriend who acts as his "beard."

His brothers, however, include a "family man" addicted to Internet porn, a drug addict and a narrow-minded priest.

After their father dies, Bobby's sister convinces him to come out to his brothers by showing them a slide show of himself and Andy together in intimate situations.

The brothers' reactions are at the same time sad and funny. Jones's script is surprisingly sympathetic to the homophobes, but also at times quite witty.

One character says, "Look at homophobia as cancer, and the slide show was a very aggressive form of chemotherapy."

The boyfriend claims he didn't have to come out to his family: "I did music theater in high school."

Bobby says of his priest brother, "His greatest nightmare is: What if Jesus was the Britney Spears of his time?"

"A FOUR LETTER WORD" (3 out of 4 stars)

A sequel to Casper Andreas' 2004 comedy, "Slutty Summer," "A Four Letter Word" continues to explore life in Manhattan's renowned "gayborhood" of Chelsea.

It's taken for granted in this fictional Chelsea -- which bears only intermittent resemblance to the real thing -- that "a libido is a terrible thing to waste."

That's the philosophy of the new film's main character, Luke (acted with over-the-top relish by Jesse Archer) until he meets superhunk Stephen (Charlie David) and finds himself falling in -- well, that four-letter word that dares not speak its name in this company.

Love is all over Chelsea, and addictions can be of the substance or sexual variety. Recovering alcoholic Marilyn is about to be married but has no female friends to throw her a shower, so bi-racial couple Peter and Derek decide to do it -- with the guests in drag, to keep the event all female.

Having just moved in together, Peter and Derek are having their own issues about each other's quirks and compulsions, but that's nothing compared to Luke's dismay when he learns that Stephen is actually a high-paid rent boy.

Truth, commitment and compromise are only a few of the topics explored with hilarious irreverence in this delightful New York romp.

"DEAD BOYZ DON'T SCREAM" (2 out of 4 stars)

The premise here is original and fun: an over-the-top take-off on a slasher film, combined with a collection of muscular hunks strutting their stuff on camera.

Too bad that the actors deliver lines with an ineptitude that would be an embarrassment in a second-rate porn film.

This film avoids being porn, but it's the gorgeous guys that most viewers will come to the theater to see, and the photography -- while it's not going to win any prizes -- does not disappoint.

When a group of male models is sent to the mountains for a nude photo shoot (well, they do wear cowboy hats and boots some of the time) they turn up brutally murdered, one by one, each in a different way, traversing the horror genre repertory.

After one has been thrown off a balcony, those remaining are in turn axed, electrocuted, impaled with a pitchfork, hanged and shot to death. Along the way a woman is gratuitously chainsawed as well.

Don't take this seriously, however. The inanity is deliberate and often witty. A pair of twins is portrayed as so dim-witted that another character quips, "Their parents met at a family reunion."

"Shelter"(3 out of 4 stars)

Were it not that its protagonists are both young men, "Shelter" could pass for an old-fashioned Rock Hudson-Doris Day romance.

There are love scenes, but they're decorously photographed; and there's a crisis, but we know things are going to work out.

Writer/director Jonah Markowitz has fashioned a coming out, coming-of-age story centered on two buff surfers in San Pedro, Calif. The slim plot moves slowly, but the ending is sweet.

Zach, enacted with sullen charm by Trevor Wright, is a graffiti artist (he paints murals on outdoor walls) who would like to attend Cal-Art College. Instead, he works at a dead-end job in a local hash house and lives with his selfish, manipulating sister.

She has saddled him with a disproportionate burden -- and guilt, to boot -- in caring for their disabled father and her young son.

He has a girlfriend, but their relationship is more off than on, and he refers to her as "my best friend."

One day Shaun (Brad Rowe), the gay brother of Zach's closest male friend, goes surfing with Zach.

They become surfing buddies, then lovers, and as is often the case in real life, when Zach's gayness is discovered, he finds that the people he thought he was fooling had known it all along.