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Boys in the Band
: essential video:A sensitive yet humorous adaptation of the stage play, this 1970 film directed by William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) is one of the first films to openly address gay issues in a matter-of-fact style that largely avoids stereotyping. Shot on one set and featuring a birthday party as the festive setting, a group of friends assemble to celebrate, reminisce, and discuss their lives and the travails of ...
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M Butterfly
: essential video:Jeremy Irons gives another superb and underrated performance in M Butterfly, an elegant adaptation of the Broadway hit by playwright David Henry Hwang. Irons plays a French diplomat in China in 1964 who falls in love with a star of the Beijing Opera, not realizing that the entrancing performer holds secrets that will ruin his life--that the singer is a spy for the Communist government is only the beginning of ...
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Common Ground (2000)
: :In Common Ground director Donna Deitch (Desert Hearts) uses three stories to explore attitudes toward homosexuality in the fictional small town of Homer, Connecticut, over a period of almost half a century. 'A Friend of Dorothy's' tells the story of a girl who returns to Homer in 1954 after leaving the Navy. When it emerges that she was discharged after being arrested in a gay bar, she is ostracized by everyone ...
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Birdcage
: essential video:The great improvisational comedy team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May reunited to (respectively) direct and write this update of the French comedy La Cage Aux Folles. Robin Williams stars as a gay Miami nightclub owner who is forced to play it straight and ask his drag-queen partner (Nathan Lane) to hide out when Williams's son invites his prospective--and highly conservative--in-laws and fiancée to a meet-and-greet dinner party. Gene ...
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Wild Reeds
: :This resonant, engrossing 1994 film by André Téchiné (Thieves) is an unusual coming-of-age story set at a French boarding school in 1962, when news of France's war in Algeria is still plentiful. Téchiné focuses on a handful of students, measuring their transition into adulthood against the reality of love, sex, and the war's controversial cost. Strikingly sensitive and sophisticated, beautifully dramatized, and perfectly acted by a young cast, the film feels ...
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Nijinsky
: :This resonant, engrossing 1994 film by André Téchiné (Thieves) is an unusual coming-of-age story set at a French boarding school in 1962, when news of France's war in Algeria is still plentiful. Téchiné focuses on a handful of students, measuring their transition into adulthood against the reality of love, sex, and the war's controversial cost. Strikingly sensitive and sophisticated, beautifully dramatized, and perfectly acted by a young cast, the film feels ...
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To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything
: :This clunky road movie about three drag queens (Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes, and John Leguziamo) who get stranded in a sleepy Nebraska town on their way to a beauty contest, is too uplifting for its own good. Released during drag's mid-'90s heyday when RuPaul and the Wigstock documentary were all the rage, To Wong Foo aimed straight for the mainstream with its inoffensive camp and 'can't we all get along' moralism. ...
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Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil
: essential video:Readers of John Berendt's bestselling novel were bound to be at least somewhat disappointed by this big-screen adaptation, but despite mixed reaction from critics and audiences, there's still plenty to admire about director Clint Eastwood's take on the material. Readers will surely miss the rich atmosphere and societal detail that Berendt brought to his 'Savannah story,' and the movie can only scratch the surface of Georgian history, tradition, and ...
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Get Real
: :Get Real begins with a couple of hedgehogs having sex, and deals with a topic just as prickly: gay love in adolescence. Steve (Ben Silverstone) is a student at a British school where everyone wears classy uniforms, knows he's gay, and is pretty comfortable being so. John (Brad Gorton), a top athlete and all-around admired guy, is just getting an inkling and isn't sure how he feels about it. This, cleverly, ...
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Female Perversions
: :Get Real begins with a couple of hedgehogs having sex, and deals with a topic just as prickly: gay love in adolescence. Steve (Ben Silverstone) is a student at a British school where everyone wears classy uniforms, knows he's gay, and is pretty comfortable being so. John (Brad Gorton), a top athlete and all-around admired guy, is just getting an inkling and isn't sure how he feels about it. This, cleverly, ...
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