20 Great LGBT+ Movies
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If you fancy watching a great LGBTQ film this weekend, take your pick from the below –
some new, some older, but all are worth a watch!
My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Gus Van Sant’s loose Shakespearean adaptation brought New Queer Cinema into the mainstream, with River Phoenix as a young, narcoleptic hustler and Keanu Reeves as his best friend and unrequited love interest.
Pride (2014)
A group of London LGBT+ activists form a coalition with striking Welsh miners in Thatcher’s U.K. Stephen Beresford’s Golden Globe-nominated screenplay underscores the need, as urgent as ever, for oppressed groups to join forces, showing that there is power in a union.
God’s Own Country
A closeted Northern Englishman prepares to take over his family farm, with some help from a Romanian farmhand whom his father has hired. A heart-breaking depiction of British repression.
A Single Man (2009)
Tom Ford’s directorial debut adapts Christopher Isherwood’s novel about an English professor in returning to life a year after the death of his lover. As you would expect, it is relentlessly stylish, with supercool performances by Colin Firth and Julianne Moore.
Moonlight (2016)
It earned a well-deserved Oscar for Best Picture. The film depicts a story of Chiron, a young man growing up in Miami (and played by three different actors at various stages of his life) who struggles with his sexual identity amid his troubled relationship with his mother.
Carol (2015)
Todd Haynes adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel in this cult Christmas film following a young shopgirl named Therese (Rooney Mara) who finds herself charmed by an alluring older woman named Carol (Cate Blanchett). A road trip follows and ultimately brings ruin to Carol’s marriage.
Boy Erased (2018)
Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe play a couple who send their son to a sinister camp designed to ‘pray away’ his sexuality. Another adapted memoir – this time by Garrard Conley about his painful experiences in a Christian anti-gay conversion camp for teenagers in Arkansas.
The Kids Are Alright (2010)
Julianne Moore and Annette Bening play lesbian mothers to two teenagers whose family is rocked when their kids seek out their sperm-doner father played by Mark Ruffalo. The family falls into crisis when his appearance into their lives causes a rift between the two women and their kids.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Heath Ledger’s Ennis del Mar falls in love with Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist over a long, lonely winter spent on a mountain, and their lives bounce off each other’s for years afterward. Ang Lee adapts Annie Proulx’s short story into a film and threw the film into the mainstream.
Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Peter Jackson story of New Zealand school girls (played by Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey) who escape their own realities through their imaginations. Their friendship turns intense and dangerous when they conspire to commit murder in one of the most notorious true crime stories of all time.
Call Me By Your Name (2017)
Lovely Timothée Chalamet plays the teenager Elio, living in Italy, who becomes infatuated with an older American student, Oliver (Armie Hammer), who is staying with his family for the summer. What begins as a friendship turns into a full-blown love affair as the two young men spend their idle summer days together.
Boys Don’t Cry (1999)
Hilary Swank’s breakthrough performance anchors Kimberly Peirce’s film about the murder of Nebraskan trans man Brandon Teena. A breakthrough film highlighting gender issues to a mainstream audience.
Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)
Blue Is the Warmest Color, which follows its protagonist, Adele, over the course of her first serious relationship with a woman, remains a landmark depiction of sexuality and first love.
The Hours (2002)
Three stories combine the lives of Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman), a 1950s housewife (Julianne Moore), and a modern-day Mrs. Dalloway (Meryl Streep) into a single narrative. Kidman (in an Oscar-winning role) is particularly effective as the tormented Woolf.
Milk (2008)
Gus Van Sant’s biopic about America’s first openly-gay elected official in 1972 San Francisco and Sean Penn’s performance is Oscar-winning. The film is as resonant today as it was in 2008, when California voted to uphold a ban on gay marriage.
Disclosure (2020)
Starring Laverne Cox and several other trans actors, filmmakers and historians, this documentary sees Hollywood figures delve into the TV and film industry’s depiction of the trans community and how their stories have touched American culture and individuals.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)
Winning the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, Chloë Grace Moretz stars as the main character Cameron, in this young adult film that tackles big, dark topics with just the right amount of lightness for its target audience. Sent to a gay conversion therapy centre for getting caught kissing another girl, the centre merely reaffirms her sexuality, much to everyone’s dismay.
Supernova (2020)
Long-time partners Sam (Firth) and Tusker (Tucci) are on a road trip across the country, revisiting old haunts. Having been diagnosed with early-onset dementia, Tusker has neglected to pack his meds, exasperating Sam, who seems to be in denial about his partner’s deteriorating condition. Tusker is determined to be the master of his fate, taking matters of life and death into his own hands.
The Boys in the Band (2020)
This new film version of the original 1970 off-Broadway hit about gay lives in New York is strange, intoxicating and theatrical. Jim Parsons plays Michael, a writer and closet Catholic. A former hookup called Donald (Matt Bomer) has come to help him throw a birthday party for a friend in Michael’s exotically bijou apartment from where the whole film is shot.
Happiest season (2020)
Abby, a lesbian, plans to propose to her girlfriend, Harper, in front of Harper’s family members. But she is in for a shock when she learns that Harper is yet to come out to her parents. Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis are the couple caught in farcical family circumstances over the festive period.
Summerland (2020)
Set in coastal Kent in 1975 to begin with, and Penelope Wilton’s reclusive Alice rudely avoiding the rest of the village in favour of returning to her typewriter. From here, we jump back to the 40s, where the younger Alice (Gemma Arterton) taps away on the same keyboard. Forced to look after an evacuee, her life changes as we learn through a series of flashbacks about her past relationship.
