Band was about making the case to America that AIDS mattered - that people who were dying from it mattered, that the hatred unleashed against those who had the disease mattered. Adapted from Randy Shilts’s history of the epidemic, And the Band Played On didn’t set out to be a major work of art, unlike its Broadway contemporary, Angels in America. There are times when a film simply needs to be upfront about being didactic - and this dispatch from the early days of the AIDS epidemic is a classic of event-movie didacticism. It has the finish of an immaculately tailored garment. It’s the day George has decided will be his last (and we hasten to add that this is not a spoiler), finally giving in to the depression that has consumed him since his longtime partner was killed in a car accident.įashion designer Tom Ford, making his directorial debut, uses his keen eye and polished aesthetic to provide the film an alluring, beautiful richness. Based on the Christopher Isherwood novel of the same name, A Single Man unspools a single day in the life of George, an English professor living in 1960s Los Angeles. The two share nothing more than a cigarette, George complimenting Carlos on his good looks and ultimately taking the flirtation no further, but the erotic ache contained in those few minutes of film is palpable. George Falconer (Colin Firth) has just left the liquor store when he meets Carlos (Jon Kortajarena), a James Dean-esque Latin rentboy who’s hanging out in the parking lot.
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Should anyone decide to compile a collection of the most sexually intense film scenes where absolutely nothing explicitly sexual takes place, it would be impossible not to include the cigarette scene from A Single Man.
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We’re ready for the barrage of where’s Fassbinder? Where’s Jarman? Where’s Jeffrey? The Broken Hearts Club? Mambo Italiano? WHERE THE HELL’S EATING OUT 2: SLOPPY SECONDS?!
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Ditto for To Wong Foo, which is kind of a lesser Priscilla. Including it would have been a redundancy.
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And for those of you about to squawk, “Why isn’t The Birdcage on the list?” please note that, while we admire the film, it is exactly the same movie as the far superior La Cage. Queer cinema is evolving - slowly but surely - into a mainstream entertainment, but it’s still one that pushes the envelope and achieves a richness of culture that goes far beyond the norm. It’s telling - encouraging, even - that two of the films to make this second round weren’t even in release at the time of the first - Lisa Cholodenko’s Oscar-nominated The Kids Are All Right and Tom Ford’s magnificent, visually opulent A Single Man. Yes, there are classics that allude to homosexuality - Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and Rope, Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot - and a handful that are slightly more direct in their queer suppositions - Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer, Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour - but gay movies are essentially a 40-year-old phenomenon.
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Hallmark LGBTQ Movies by TV Ratings Movieĭebbie Macomber’s A Mrs.What’s interesting is that in the history of cinema, explicitly queer movies didn’t really venture into the cultural landscape until the mid-’70s, coming to full fruition in the mid-’80s and, especially, ’90s. This does not qualify as a gay lead character, and doing the bare minimum isn’t endearing Hallmark to anyone. It just so happens that Jeremy Jordan, who is playing that straight man is also playing his gay twin. As for Mix Up in the Mediterranean, the main romantic storyline is between a man and a woman.
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While I truly enjoyed The Christmas House and loved seeing the happily married gay couple, they played second-fiddle to the main straight couple’s romantic storyline. No matter what official Hallmark reps say, The Christmas House and Mix Up in the Mediterranean do not feature gay leads. Let’s be clear, as of the start of 2021, no Hallmark movie has featured gay characters as leads. The representation is not enough, but it’s a start. Most gay characters and couples in these movies are white and male. However, it’s a good first step that there are even enough movies for me to create this list of Hallmark movies with gay characters. These Hallmark movies featuring LGBTQ characters don’t by any means solve the lack of diversity, representation, or inclusion on the channel.