The Top 50 Most Influential Gay Movies Of All Time

To accomplish this feat, everyone on staff was asked for a top 10, then we asked readers for theirs, and finally began the arguing — always politely. The result is potentially a guide for anyone who wants to examine our roots through film. This Oscar-winning feature film is arguably one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking gay love stories ever told on the silver screen.

This film about the life and death of pioneering gay politician Harvey Milk won two richly deserved Oscars, for Dustin Lance Black's screenplay and Sean Penn's performance in the title role. It does not make Milk a plaster saint, but portrays him as fully and fallibly human as well as a formidable crusader for the rights of all.

Directed by Gus Van Sant, it's a film that moves and inspires, while assuring that a new generation will know an important figure in our history. Paris Is Burning Right at the beginning, the Emcee, played by the tireless Joel Grey, bids the audience a hearty "willkommen" to this world of seedy glamour. Our heroine Sally Bowles — portrayed by an exquisite Liza Minnelli — pops off the screen in a story that follows her trapped in love with two men, while the Nazi regime rises to power.

The film is epic, gripping, and entertaining. You will be singing at least one of the songs from this musical for days. The Boys in the Band Mart Crowley's hit play became the first famous gay film ever. Vito Russo said of the movie, "The internalized guilt of eight gay men at a Manhattan birthday party formed the best and most potent argument for gay liberation ever offered in a popular art form.

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Crowley's quotable script was shocking, real, and hysterically funny. Philadelphia encapsulates so many things that signify excellent filmmaking, but one of them is showing something that is simply true to life: When we get to know people who are different from ourselves, we become better people. Tom Hanks's unparalleled performance as Andrew Beckett, a man who is fighting for his dignity and his life, convinces small-time and homophobic lawyer Joe Miller, played by Denzel Washington, to represent him in a wrongful-termination suit.

Meanwhile, it followed the initial shock of the epidemic, which led to heightened paranoia on one side, and on the other, a better understanding of the virus itself. Philadelphia is undoubtedly a groundbreaking time capsule. The two women hatch a scheme to steal millions from the mob, and the usual noir tropes just who is betraying who?

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The reason queer girls loved it? The sex was genuine and hot, thanks in large part to Susie Bright, who served as the resident lesbian sexpert to help the auteurs get it right. She has a cameo too. Donna Deitch's directorial debut is the first "real" lesbian film an out lesbian, nobody dies, two women have sex.

Vivian is all class and repression, and the ranch owner warns her to stay away from her irrepressible lesbian daughter Cay Patricia Charbonneau, wearing jean shorts and cowboy boots and a whole lot of lesbian lust. Boys Don't Cry For a film that ends in such an atrocity, it has a breezy romanticism as we meet the flirty Brandon played by Hilary Swank, in a role that won her an Oscar and made her career and weary Lana, the girl he falls in love with.

Brandon knows little of other trans people, of hormones or gender identity or even the kind of sadly still limited, but at least talked about rights trans people have today. Watch it with a big box of Kleenex and a sense of injustice. Writer and director Bill Sherwood would never make another film — he succumbed to an AIDS-related disease in — but his only cinematic work, Parting Glances, will keep his legacy alive for decades to come.

The well-acted and brilliantly written film centers on Robert and Michael, a couple preparing for a two-year separation as Michael heads to Africa for work. Over the course of 24 hours, Robert, Michael, and their friends and lovers all collide to hilarious and heart-wrenching effect. The plot of this film — a supposedly straight, married L.

Making Love was also well-acted, with stellar performances from Michael Ontkean as the latently gay protagonist, Kate Jackson as the confused wife, and especially Harry Hamlin as the sexy, hedonistic novelist who Ontkean's character falls for. Hamlin, a huge star at the time, would later say the movie damaged his career but that he remains proud of it.

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The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert Today, the film is considered by many to be an LGBT kitsch comedy classic, loved as much for its over-the-top characters as its unflinching look at life through a queer lens. But I'm A Cheerleader Forster's long-suppressed novel of gay love, the film stars James Wilby, Rupert Graves, and Hugh Grant all at their most adorable.

Top 50 Most Influential Gay Movies Of All Time

Forster's novel, written in , was published in , after his death, as Forster knew there was controversy in giving the lovers a happy ending. The novel allowed a new openness in literature and biography. The film was the satisfying second shoe to drop. Gay people who had never seen dreamy romantic images of same-sex couples on the big screen swooned over the beautifully art-directed affair between the well-born Maurice and the laborer Scudder.

They also swooned at Rupert Graves's callipygian assets. Gods and Monsters One of our greatest gay actors, Sir Ian McKellen, plays James Whale, the gay movie director who brought Frankenstein and The Invisible Man to the screen in s Hollywood and demonstrated his versatility by helming the first film version of Show Boat. While Whale is a real-life figure, Gods and Monsters is a fantasia on his last days, showing him largely forgotten by the film industry and drawn to a young, straight gardener, played by Brendan Fraser.

McKellen's performance as this gifted, tragic man is extraordinary and heartbreaking. The British coming-of-age film perfectly captured the sweetness of young gay love at a time when stereotypes and fear of the AIDS epidemic dominated LGBT representations in cinema. Grounded in the reality of a London suburb in , the love story of Jamie and Ste stands out for its honest and positive portrayal of gay teens who embrace their true nature and experience the beauty of first love.

One of the first AIDS-themed films aimed at a wide audience is set in New York City and traces the effect of the disease, beginning with its emergence in , on a group of mostly gay friends. Written by Craig Lucas and directed by Norman Rene, it features several moving moments, including a goose bump—inducing final scene, and excellent performances from a cast that includes Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winner Bruce Davison, along with Campbell Scott and Mary-Louise Parker. All About Eve It's going to be a bumpy night. There is also the intimation that scheming Eve Harrington Anne Baxter , who wants to supplant Margo as first lady of the American stage, may well be a lesbian, but the greatest pleasure in a film with many is the incomparable and perfectly cast George Sanders as the ultimate bitchy queen, that "venomous fishwife" of a drama critic, Addison DeWitt.

Sanders won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor, Mankiewicz took home directing and screenplay honors, and the film was named Best Picture of the year. The Celluloid Closet This film provides an in-depth look at the history of LGBT people in North American cinema and the attitudes behind these portrayals. One of the most talked-about revelations from the documentary was that Gore Vidal had infused a gay subtext into the screeplay for the epic film Ben-Hur — a notion that had Vidal and star Charlton Heston in a notoriously public war of words.

Based on the book by Vito Russo, the documentary enhanced the foundation of queer film theory and has become a staple in the curriculum of LGBT studies courses at universities around the world. This beautifully restrained film tells the story of two young gay British men who meet at a club, hook up, and fall in love over the course of an eventful weekend.

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One of the guys is introverted and half-closeted, while the other is brash, gregarious, and wears his sexuality on his sleeve; their worldviews complement each other and their chemistry is explosive. Through passionate conversations, many drug-fueled, they alternately challenge, confuse, and confound each other. It's a grown-up, no-holds-barred exploration of modern love between men, and even the sex is honest.

Directed by Andrew Haigh, who's moved on to executive-produce HBO's Looking, the film well deserved its status as a critical darling. My Beautiful Laundrette Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. They entertain us in many ways, sometimes they make us laugh, occasionally they scare us and frequently they move us in some form or way. Using a unique scoring method comprised of original box office takings, video and DVD sales, audience numbers, enduring popularity or affection, and how influential its audience deemed it to be.

The latter was extracted from thousands of nominations or votes if you will, from cinema lovers around the world, people just like you.

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Exhaustive research, time and dedication have been spent on bringing you a comprehensive guide that features the top 50 films using that unique calculation method. Each movie has a complete and honestly frank reviews, plot synopsis and sometimes production notes or inside info. Most entries also include comments a or messages from other film goers from around the world, who voted for the movie they thought had been the most influential.

Jason Shaw exhaustively researched this book and compiled it with love, care and dedication. It offers information, insight and entertainment to film watchers and cinema goers from all walks of life. Almost a third of the people who nominated films were indeed straight! It is inclusive rather than exclusive, entertaining to people from all walks of life, from every background, every sexuality or ethnicity, just the way life should be.

Paperback , 1st , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Nov 10, Furio rated it liked it Shelves: The author is English and it shows, not only in the sometimes annoying idioms some of which were not to be found on the Oxford dictionary which is usually quite comprehensive as far as slang goes but also in his attention to British and European output.

Said attention was not as thorough as it could have been but it is there. The premise, where he explains his method for selecting the top fifty, is clear but a little dull and could use a revision.