Rotten Tomatoes, the movie ranking website, has compiled its list of the Best 200 LGBTQ-themed films of all time.
All of these films stand on the shoulders of other LGBT films that have come before. Our list of the 200 Best LGBT Movies of All Time – expanded from our original list of 150 movies, released last year – stretches back almost 90 years to the pioneering German film, Mädchen in Uniform, which was subsequently banned by the Nazis, and crosses multiple continents, cultures, and genres.
There are broad American comedies (The Birdcage), artful Korean crime dramas (The Handmaiden), groundbreaking indies (Tangerine), and landmark documentaries (Paris Is Burning). In this thorough update and expansion of the list, we added films from the last year in cinema that qualified (from 2018’s We the Animals and The Miseducation of Cameron Post to this year’s The Heiresses and Giant Little Ones and more) and worked to include more stories from outside of the U.S.
To be considered for the list, a movie had to prominently feature gay, lesbian, trans, or queer characters; concern itself centrally with LGBT themes; present its LGBT characters in a fair and realistic light; and/or be seen as a touchpoint in the evolution of queer cinema.
And it had to be Fresh. The final list was culled from a longlist of hundreds, after which the films were ranked according to the Adjusted Tomatometer, which acts as a kind of inflation adjustment, taking into consideration the Tomatometer score, as well as the number of reviews a film received relative to the average number of reviews for films released that same year.
It's a pretty comprehensive list to be sure. Some folks are surprised at the ranking of certain films versus others, but I think it's a great list.
Just a few of my favorites here are (in no particular order): Torch Song Trilogy, The Sum of Us, Cabaret, Trick, The Birdcage, Philadelphia, The Hours, The Color Purple, Beach Rats, Boy Erased, The Way He Looks, Rocketman, Longtime Companion, Brokeback Mountain, Victor Victoria, The Kids Are Alright, God's Country, Call Me By Your Name, Moonlight and Love, Simon.
Click here to check out the list over at Rotten Tomatoes.
