My All-Time 40 Favorite LGBTQ Movies
I haven’t made a lengthy movie list in way too long.
Because Movieline recently published a crowdsourced list of the 25 Most Important LGBT films, and because I haven’t wasted my time on a lengthy movie list in quite awhile, I devised a list of my own personal favorite films that fall under that umbrella. Although most of the Hollywood movies about the queer experience are either ridiculous (The Birdcage) or just plain shitty (Milk), there are some keepers that tend to get overlooked in when people make these lists (and believe me, there are a lot of these lists). I started with a longlist of about sixty films and then whittled it down from there. (Any list of best/favorite most important movies is, of course, completely subjective because I haven’t actually seen every single film with LGBTQ themes. I haven’t even seen some of the major ones, like Cruising or Weekend or Madchen In Uniform, to pull three names completely at random. Also: it’s hard to write short descriptions of movies you love. Just for the record.)
40. Keep The Lights On (Ira Sachs, 2012)
A rather devastating story about drug addiction, Keep The Lights On conveys romantic doom but declines to pass judgment on its two lead characters as they slowly destroy themselves and each other. Thure Lindhardt is quietly lovable in a role Sachs based on his own experiences.
39. Female Trouble (John Waters, 1974)
Rape, incest, and multiple savage murders propel the plot of John Waters’ dark, dark comedy Female Trouble. In general I prefer his glossy later films (Cry-Baby and Hairspray) to the icky cynicism of, say, Polyester. But Female Trouble is also a lot funnier than Polyester, in a completely frightening way.
38. Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, 1998)
This is my second-favorite Todd Haynes film—I think Safe is better—but Velvet Goldmine was the movie I saw on my first ever date with a boy. Come for the full-frontal Ewan McGregor, stay for the great performance by Christian Bale as a reporter belatedly piecing together the truth about his musical idol.
37. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (Richard Brooks, 1958)
I’m quite partial to films where Southern people yell a lot, so any Tennessee Williams adaptation is a-ok with me. Dreamy Paul Newman stars as Brick Pollitt, a man who maybe loved his friend Skipper a little more than he loves his nagging, money-grubbing wife. Williams thought this adaptation played down the homoerotic subtext too much, but it’s pretty clear what’s really going on, despite the moral high ground of fifties censors.
36. Carrington (Christopher Hampton, 1995)
If Merchant-Ivory had made Patti Smith’s Just Kids… Carrington chronicles the true story of homosexual critic Lytton Strachey and his platonic love affair with an artist (Emma Thompson) he initially confuses for a boy. Their ever-evolving domestic arrangements made me realize at a young age—I was probably fifteen when I saw it— that there’s really nothing wrong with fluidity.
35. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
I won’t explain the plot, because there’s no point, but the relationship between Naomi Watts and former Miss USA Laura Elena Harring is one of the better, and sexier, portrayals of lesbian sex that I’ve ever seen. Which is saying a lot, considering how terribly traumatic sex normally is for women in David Lynch movies.
34. Cruel Intentions (Roger Kumble, 1999)
If you weren’t gay and in high school when Cruel Intentions came out, then you might not understand what makes this movie special. It’s a wonderfully evil film in a lot of ways, but at the same time the ease with which Sarah Michelle Gellar teaches Selma Blair how to kiss, not to mention Pacey from Dawson’s Creek sleeping with the closeted jock, was oddly liberating.
33. Entertaining Mr. Sloane (Douglas Hickox, 1970)
Homosexuality was a criminal offense in England for most of the sixties, but that didn’t stop London theatre from tackling the topic head-on. As films became increasingly more risqué, some West End plays were adapted for the big screen, including this campy farce about a deranged brother and sister competing for possession of a bisexual killer.
32. The Talented Mr. Ripley (Anthony Minghella, 1999)
Critical opinion has turned against this film over the years, as it’s turned over pretty much every other beloved American film of the late nineties (except Boogie Nights, for whatever reason). It was such a revelation when I saw it in the theater, though, and not just because Good Will Hunting had tricked me into thinking Matt Damon was a horrible actor.
31. Priest (Antonia Bird, 1994)
As a teenager I watched this on a hot summer day with my mother, a moderately liberal Catholic, and my cousin’s wife, who had come over to use our pool. By the end I was trying my hardest not to sob, whereas my cousin’s wife had no qualms about voicing her disgust.
30. Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001)
Over a decade before he sent Sandra Bullock and George Clooney into space, director Alfonso Cuarón sent Diego Luna, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Maribel Verdú on a road trip across Mexico. It’s a very sexually charged movie, and also just plain sexy, with the camera frequently lingering on the bodies of its three very horny stars.
29. Jubilee (Derek Jarman, 1978)
Jarman’s best-known work (according to the internet), Jubilee is a largely plotless time-travel story about England during the ultimately very brief punk era. There’s plenty of nudity, lots of gang violence, a starring role for young Adam Ant, and a lot of appearances by the well-known scenesters of the day, most of whom are now mostly forgotten.
28. The entire X-Men franchise (2000-2014)
Admittedly Ellen Page and Anna Paquin weren’t publicly out when they were cast as Kitty Pryde and Rogue, but three of the series’ films were directed by twink enthusiast Bryan Singer, a large chunk of the series cast is either gay (Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming in his one appearance as Nightcrawler), allegedly gay (Hugh Jackman), or beloved by gay men (Michael Fassbender). Oh, and then there’s that whole recurring theme about lonely teenagers having to come to terms with their true identities.
27. All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar, 1999)
My favorite Almodovar film is one of his least campy. And by that I mean someone is killed while trying to get an autograph from someone playing Blanche DuBois, and that Penelope Cruz plays a pregnant nun with HIV. Everything is relative. Still, there’s good reason why critics tend to single this film out as Almodovar’s best.
26. No Skin Off My Ass (Bruce LaBruce, 1994)
A gay retelling of Robert Altman’s sadly undervalued That Cold Day In The Park, No Skin Off My Ass is brief and gritty, starring the director himself as a hairdresser who becomes infatuated with a skinhead. There’s actual sex, something I’m pretty sure I hadn’t seen before in a movie that wasn’t explicitly considered porn.
25. The Killing of Sister George (Robert Aldrich, 1968)
Directed by someone from my hometown, The Killing of Sister George looks at a lesbian soap opera star whose character is killed off by a predatory BBC executive (who then sets her sights on the actress’s dimwitted lover). The backstabbing drama echoes Aldrich’s own Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, but this time with some really great lesbian bar scenes.
24. Transamerica (Duncan Tucker, 2005)
Co-written by William H Macy, this road trip movie stars Macy’s real-life wife Felicity Huffman as a trans women who doesn’t know what to do with her estranged son after bailing him out of prison. Someone recently informed me that no trans person actually likes this movie at all, although I’m not sure whether that’s actually true. I really like the story, and the sly art direction is really wonderful.
23. My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)
Ignore the bubble sounds, please. Nearly thirty years after the release of Stephen Frears’ first big hit, I wonder whether in 2014 the film’s protagonist would still have to confront the violent, awful Thatcher-era combo of racism and homophobia that plagued England in 1985. I’m guessing, sadly, that he would.
22. Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, 1989)
I was totally unfamiliar with this film until it screened at an event I actually organized myself. An experimental documentary—very experimental, considering that it first aired on PBS—it was the first film I know of to really address gay black identity as its own thing. Influential to a whole generation gay black men, it had an unfortunately small impact on the film world at large. There ought to be a lot more of this.
21. Ma Vie En Rose (Alain Berliner, 1997)
This is the biggest tearjerker. Adorable young Ludovic wants to live life as a girl, with disastrous results for his family. As his parents geadually succumb to societal pressure, things get more and more uncomfortable, with the child unfairly bearing the brunt of the responsibility.
20. Come Back To The Five And Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Robert Altman, 1982)
I’m a big fan of the Group Of Women Reunite And Each Talk About Their Personal Problems One By One genre. (Steel Magnolias! The Joy Luck Club! That one where Jon Bon Jovi was hired to paint Whoopi Goldberg’s house!) The mother of them all is CBTTFADJDJD, Robert Altman’s first film after Popeye (!). The almost wholly female cast includes Cher, Sandy Dennis and Kathy Bares. Karen Black is amazing (as always) as Joanne, a trans woman who at first goes unrecognized by her former friends.
19. Fucking Åmål / Show Me Love (Lukas Moodysson, 1997)
An uplifting but occasionally brutal film about two girls in rural Sweden, the film’s original title was censored by Hollywood. Instead they changed the name to that of a Robyn song, despite the fact that the teen-pop singer—or her celebrity fragrance, anyway—is one of the more contentious topics for the film’s characters.
18. Victim (Basil Dearden, 1961)
Homosexuality was still illegal in Great Britain when Victim was released—Scotland and Northern Ireland didn’t legalize consensual sex between men until the eighties—and Victim looks at the more unsettling side effects of what happens when the law spies on bedroom behavior. Things lose steam a little when the righteous lawyer comes to terms with his own preference for man-on-man action, but this is still a fascinating piece of historical melodrama.
17. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)
This film’s release was such an event! I drove to Randolph, Massachusetts, to see it on Christmas night, and I spent an embarrassingly large chunk of the movie crying. Lee knows how to tell a story, whether it’s Sense and Sensibility or The Ice Storm, and he lets everything unfold so slowly here; it’s really glacially paces for a Hollywood movie, which excited me even more than Jake Gyllenhaal as a gay cowboy.
16. Bound (The Wachowskis, 1996)
The nineties were such a good time for noir, and the peak of that era might have been the debut film by The Wachowskis, the sibling duo who would go on to make the Matrix series. The lesbian sex scenes were choreographed by actual lesbian Susie Bright, and Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gerson are totally sultry as the brainy duo trying to steal two million dollars of Mafia money.
15. Swoon (Tom Kalin, 1992)
This aired on PBS when I was a teenager, which seems really funny now. Do black and white thrillers about homosexual child murderers still air on late-night TV? I don’t think they do. A queer telling of the Leopold and Loeb story, Swoon is told in a far less tedious style than Rope, Hitchcock’s ambitious but snoozy exercise in telling the same story.
14. Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, 2003)
Composed of decades’ worth of Super-8 footage and stitched together with a really memorable soundtrack, Tarnation is an autobiographical story about a gay man’s complicated relationship with his terminally ill mother. The whole film was assembled in Movie, but it’s the collaged-together style resonates at least as much as the funny (but occasionally gut-wrenching) story.
13. Stranger By The Lake (Alain Guiraudie, 2014)
Simultaneously a celebration of gay cruising culture and an indictment of our collective obsession with physical beauty, Stranger By The Lake is funny and sexy—I don’t think I’d ever seen a cumshot in a movie theater before—but it’s also utterly disturbing. It’s also one of the few movies I’ve seen whose characters I can relate to on a sexual level.
12. The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1993)
The Crying Game is first and foremost a film about Northern Ireland, though the Weinsteins’ very effective marketing campaign shifted the focus in a different direction. Neil Jordan rivals Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson for use of popular songs to supplement a story; The Crying Game starts with the oft misunderstood When A Man Loves A Woman and ends with a Lyle Lovett cover of “Stand By Your Man.” The title song, originally a 1964 hit for Dave Barry, is covered by Boy George (with production by the Pet Shop Boys).
11. Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994)
The story of a real-life murder that rocked New Zealand in the fifties, Heavenly Creatures looks at the violent side of adolescence as two young women retreat into a fantasy world full of disturbing clay people. A surprisingly powerful film, especially considering that Jackson’s previous films were zombie films and a pervy puppet parody.
10. Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)
Hitchcock’s sole Best Picture Oscar went to Rebecca, the gothic tale of creepy Maxim de Winter and his second, never-named wife. Unlike the novel it’s based on, the film gets all its oomph from Mrs. Danvers, the sinister housekeeper who still can’t get over the death of the first Mrs. de Winter.
9. Boys Don’t Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999)
An uncompromisingly sad story about a trans man, played by Hilary Swank, and his doomed relationship with a women in a small Nebraska town. The real people involved—like the real people who inspired Heavenly Creatures—feel the film takes too many liberties with plot details and, in particular, with the characters’ sex lives.
8. Flesh (Paul Morrissey, 1968)
The impossibly handsome Joe Dallesandro stars as a street hustler getting funds together for his girlfriend’s abortion. Largely carried by his charisma, the meandering film shows Dallesandro modelling for an artist, playing with a baby, and giving advice to a younger hustler.
7. Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
Warning: I don’t recommend watching this film in public when you’re already sad.Broader in scope than Flesh, Midnight Cowboy follows a male rape victim who leaves Texas for New York, where he plans to earn a living as a gigolo. His plans are complicated when he’s not up to the task. Another tearjerker, I made the mistake of watching this again at a bar while I was really depressed.
6. I Shot Any Warhol (Mary Harron, 1996)
Drug-addled and self-absorbed to the point of insanity, the peripheral figures of Warhol’s Factory scene are almost all insufferable, which is maybe what makes Mary Harron’s grimy biopic so fun to watch. I love pretty much everything Lili Taylor did in the nineties, but her portrayal of radical feminist Valerie Solanas is probably a career best.
5. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)
My first encounter with Hedwig came via a glam-loving college rock DJ who threw on “Tear Me Down” and “Angry Inch” in-between whatever was actually big on college radio in 1999. The film Is visually stunning—the Gümmibaren sequence alone deserves some kind of award—and expands Hedwig’s story visually (with animation, even) in a way that the original one-man show could never do.
4. Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)
Critics don’t give enough credit to I Am A Camera, the fifties adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin memoirs. But that film lacks the open discussions of bisexuality and abortion that were allowed in 1972. It also lacks the Kit Kat Girls, and Bob Fosse’s strange, strange choreography.
3. Taxi Zum Klo (Frank Ripploh, 1982)
One of the more unflinching looks at gay male cruising culture, Taxi Zum Klo looks at a sexually promiscuous schoolteacher, a homosexual whose professional and social lives are entirely separate (although this concept would surely horrify a majority of American parents). Quite graphic—his doctor’s visit is not for the squeamish—it’s one of very few films about casual sex that I’m actually able to relate to.
2. If… (Lindsey Anderson, 1968)
Before A Clockwork Orange made him a star, Malcolm McDowell starred in If…, an equally bleak film about angry British youth. Set at a boarding school where the teachers are cruel and the older boys prey on the younger ones, it’s a complicated but centuries-old power dynamic. Critics used to debate why certain scenes are in color while others are in black and white, although late in his life Anderson revealed that the only motivation was financial: he ran out of funding halfway through production.
1. Orlando (Sally Potter, 1993)
My all-time favorite piece of queer cinema: Orlando, Sally Potter’s grand adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s sardonic novel about a characters who lives for four hundred years without aging. Theatrical and surprisingly very funny, Orlando features cameos by Quentin Crisp (as Queen Elizabeth I) and Jimmy Somerville (as an opera singer). It plays with ideas of gender and performance, focusing in large part on centuries of queerness in English drama. There’s also Tilda Swinton, who spent much of the eighties working with Derek Jarman and who spends much of the film quietly reacting to her character’s constantly-changing environments.
