Queer movies

Now I admit, because it was a pretty hefty task to begin with and I also based most my reviews on personal experiences, I narrowed my criteria to only involve movies with gay male/mlm/masc leaning gay representation. I didn't exclude trans characters but you will notice a lack of lesbian rep here because that's something I can't really speak on personally (and I'd have an unholy amount of things to watch). Another way of narrowing down my movies was that the queerness had to play a major role - either having a gay main character, storyline involving it, etc. So movies with gay side characters (sadly) aren't included.

I have to be honest, I haven't officially visited this list in a long time. I still watch movies that could be included there just because I want to but I haven't actually sat down for it in a while. So I'd like to get back into it and share my findings & opinions here!

Additional note: it's nearly impossible to have literally EVERY gay movie ever. New ones are coming out now more than ever, there are a ton of smaller/independent filmmakers I don't know about, this is just the list of movies I see being talked about and such. There is also a lot of gray areas in terms of "what is gay enough", for example Bohemian Rhapsody isn't here because despite being about a queer icon I didn't find that aspect of his life that prevalent in the film. Then again there are movies here that could be considered "not gay enough", like I struggled with whether or not to include movies like Saltburn or Challengers. So yeah, a lot of complications with this whole thing but still this is the ever-expanding list as it stands right now!

(The real question is whether or not Interview with the vampire, 1994 should be here because like... it's gay but it's not? I'm biased in both directions because I like IWTV but I also have a personal problem with Brad Pitt.)

Simon is the titular main character and he is a perfect example of a protagonist we are meant to root for and one that has very few flaws. He's however equally bland because all the "interesting", more complex things happen outside of him. A perfectly inoffensive main character, sanitized for a straight audience. It in many ways feels like the sort of movie you could show to your conservative parents to convince them gay people aren't evil. But as a queer person this gets really boring really quick and the gay movie starts to feel like it's not even made for gay people.

Compare that to Louis, also an explicitly gay main character. He's very morally gray and while we still root for him there is more nuance to him. You find relatability in his flaws, he's not made to be the posterchild of what it means to be a "good gay person". He becomes a much more realistic reflection of what it is to be queer.

Because let's face it, not all queer people are flawless. Because we are humans after all and we screw up just as much as anyone else. I don't think there's any issues with queer characters being villains or outright evil if their queerness isn't the thing that makes them evil. We shouldn't have to clean-up and censor our lives for a cishet audience, shouldn't deny ourselves things just so we "look good" to queerphobes who will hate us anyway.