ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (1999)
Everything you need to know about Almodóvar's ideas, themes, and aesthetics you can find in this one film, and nowhere else in his body of work does everything seem to come together with such organic, alchemic perfection. This is a divine film.

BILLY ELLIOT (2000)
It’s hard to imagine anyone who wouldn’t like this simple rags-to-riches story enriched by wit, emotion and excellent acting. Billy Elliot is a brighter younger brother to Beautiful Thing, another excellent British film that dealt with sensitive young pups from the wrong side of the tracks who believe in love, hope and happiness.


THE DEEP END (2001)
Margaret’s trip to The Deep End, a black-lit space behind a hole in the wall, couldn’t be further away from her sunny lakeside home, but though she’s nervous and out of place there, she's not intimidated. Some self-centred, dependent-less gay guys don’t bother her at all, as their bronzed, muscular exoskeletons and city-hardened wits are no match for petit and soft spoken Margaret’s primeval maternal instincts.

FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (1975)
Multitasking superbly, Fassbinder imbues Fox with a mental simplicity but a wise heart. Fox is not at all fluent in social mores, but he does know the importance of laughter, and enjoys drinking, fucking and gambling more than almost anything else. Once he discovers that he’s been tricked by his own fate, he goes mad and kills himself, like a gay (proletarian) Oedipus Rex.

INCH BY INCH (1985)
All aboard the Retro Express to Hottieville. Inch by Inch is a masterpiece of gay porn packed with great sex and hot guys. It’s also one of those rare AIDS-cusp televisual objects like Kiss of the Spider Woman or the video clip to The Buggles’ "Video Killed The Radio Star", objects that ache with the tragedy of paradise lost and an eerily clairvoyant sense that a mega-viral curtain was about to come down on a barely nascent golden age of promise.


KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN (1986)
The history of gay cinema can be split into two sections: before Kiss of the Spider Woman, and after. This great film was undeliberately timely, and in the twenty years since its release, its pop-cultural importance has only increased. It opened in a Manhattan cinema on July 26, 1985, the same week that a dying Rock Hudson flew to Paris on Concorde to try the experimental AIDS treatment, HPA-23. Days later, the first reviews of the film began appearing in newspapers, obscured behind disaster-movie style front pages featuring blown up pictures of the wasted Hudson, and announcements from UCLA immunologist Michael Gottlieb, such as “Mr Hudson is being evaluated and treated for complications of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.”


PARTING GLANCES (1986)
Widely regarded the best "gay film" ever made, Parting Glances holds up almost 20 years after its release thanks to the inscrutably accurate vision suggested by its title. In the same way that a good-bye glance between friends - or a furtive look back over the shoulder between gay men - can impart volumes, this 90-minute indie still feels like it knows all there is to know about the gay experience. It communicates this understanding through knowing vignettes that unfold while following a simple narrative peopled with the resonant real-life archetypes from which so many other films draw watered-down stock characters.


THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)
Misguided and counterproductive gay activists set upon The Silence of the Lambs and made fools out of themselves simplifying and misinterpreting certain elements of a complex cinematic masterpiece.


SPOKES (1983)
Mark Hunter's grimacing and screaming when Rod Philips dry fucks him is also a bit of a Sterling trademark (see again, Inch By Inch) and is so convincing that you have to wonder whether the guy is acting really well, or whether the rough-housing sex is for real.

SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER (1959)
IV-ecstasy/crystal meth users note: the scene where Catherine gets shot up with “truth serum” then gets real chatty, before tongue kissing everyone in sight is a thing for you to treasure.


UN CHANT D’AMOUR (1950)
Apart from being an excellent and extremely horny short film, Un Chant D’Amour is quite the hidden treasure, an underviewed and lushly romantic avant-garde tribute to yearning and desire, and and a frustrating glimpse of what might have been if Genet had kept making films.

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