Top 10 Pride Movies — Cinema Sugar

10. The Watermelon Woman

The Watermelon Woman is the story of a video store employee that becomes determined to discover the identity of a long forgotten Black movie star from the 1930s whom she suspects was having an affair with a white woman director (all while diving into a new relationship with a white woman herself). She seeks to examine the harmful racial tropes in film as she steps into her personal identity as a Black lesbian filmmaker. It’s a super challenging and important film, but also, it’s a rom-com! You love to see it. And film school nerds will be happy to return to this era in their lives, I know I did. —Natalie Pohorski (streaming, libraries)

9. Tangerine

Sean Baker’s 2015 film Tangerine follows two friends and transgender sex workers through a chaotic Christmas Eve in the seedy streets of West Hollywood. Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez), fresh out of jail, discovers her boyfriend and pimp has been cheating on her and storms through the neighborhood to find him, while Alexandra (Mya Taylor) tries to remain above the fray as betrayals and bad decisions multiply. Shot entirely with an iPhone, the movie doesn’t reach the same highs as Baker’s subsequent films The Florida Project and Red Rocket, but its eye-popping camerawork manages to capture small grace notes and touching moments amidst the turbulent, unforgiving circumstances of the trick-turning life. —Chad Comello (streaming, libraries)

8. Paris Is Burning

Paris Is Burning is brave, gorgeous, tragic, an astronomical blast of perfectly performed power. It is spirit frayed to its most skeletal limb, where we get to witness its fierce strength progressing only to prevail and dazzle. The characters here are real people, and this community seems immortal, which makes the nearly unavoidable epilogue of their survival even more heart-wrenching. Everybody who was notably highlighted in this documentary is no longer with us, one of whom was killed ahead of production still being completed. Everybody deserves a chance to live, undeniably, but for all of these people to have died so young seems like the ultimate indignation, an overtone that the world visible here isn’t protected the way it certainly should be, at all. —Natalie Bauer (streaming, libraries)

7. My Own Private Idaho

Someplace between David Lynch and True Stories is a crushing Shakespearean adaptation concerning a couple of cherub-cheeked gigolos on a crusade to quit nodding off early enough to meet someone who notices. It’s Shakespeare for disenchanted, destitute, budding, queer, cognizant America. If you’re an admirer of Keanu Reeves, you know he worships Shakespeare, and this is perhaps the best version of Shakespeare that isn’t fully Shakespeare. River Phoenix is like a seraph from a different realm, and we were fortunate he ever even lived here at all. In tandem, they embody adolescence, torment, and euphoria; as well as the reservoir of distinctive recollection that is all that lasts of passion that never grows, because the world at large wouldn’t offer it a spot to blossom. This one’s for when you hold something so dear that you can’t divulge to anybody, not even the soul you want to spill all of it to. —Natalie Bauer (streaming, libraries)

6. The Birdcage

Once upon a time, an MGM Studios family comedy featuring movie stars dressed in drag was capable of making $185 million worldwide. In today’s climate, when any mention of the word “drag” is capable of starting a World War, that’s pretty staggering. At minimum, we accepted Mike Nichols’ The Birdcage as entertainment—Robin Williams’ signature display of genius, Gene Hackman’s domineering Reaganism, Nathan Lane’s scene-stealing hilarity. But at large, the experience of watching two wildly different groups of people (a conservative political family and a cabaret owner and his drag queen companion) come together for the sake of love was healing in its own way. There were no notions of “wokeness” or “radical” left or right when this film was released—it simply presented two vastly different human experiences and bridged the humanity between them. As we continue to lean into this absurd debate over children’s exposure to drag queens, I can’t help but reflect on me and my friends watching films like The Birdcage, Mrs. Doubtfire, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything!, and more—and guess what? Just like the Goldman and Keeley family, we’re alright. —Kevin Prchal (streaming, libraries)

5. Moonlight

We’ve written about this movie a few times now, but it's especially important this month and easily makes our Top 10. Moonlight is a beautiful movie about a Black queer kid’s coming of age, whose understanding of his sexuality is often at odds with the societal expectations placed on him and the falsehoods he believes about himself. He’s a quiet kid in an unstable household trying to navigate his way to manhood and grasping at straws of guidance and love in those around him in the process. It is so deeply empathetic and romantic. —Natalie Pohorski (streaming, libraries)

4. Pink Flamingos

The reason I treasure this movie is that in spite of its rebellion and unhindered rule-violating gimmicks, Divine, Mink Stole, and John Waters all emit such a lust for both life and the queer community that it would be absurd not to enjoy it. It’s raw, lower than low-budget, and unusually entertaining to artlessly observe a troupe of people so in love with thriving that their circumstances aren’t of consequence at all. Pink Flamingos is by no means meant to be a first-rate film, but it is a compelling watch. It’s a spree of enthusiasm and gender and lust and sex, a refusal of moderation and commercialism, a movie that exposes folks who are complacent in their survival, who have been ravaged by society at large. Connie and Raymond Marble aim to devastate Divine’s very existence, to push her into a bleak psychological state that mirrors her destitution, but they are unsuccessful. Because Divine loves being alive in such a way that grants her the ability to merely cackle at, and keep an eye on, and rile up the conservative class. Divine flourishes in such a way that obliges Pink Flamingos to eclipse serving as purely a tawdry, offhand prototype of queer cinema. Divine establishes Pink Flamingos as the feel-good movie of the 1970s. And if you let it, it can help remind you of why you’re alive. —Natalie Bauer (streaming, libraries)

3. Brokeback Mountain

Setting aside this movie’s unfortunate legacy of losing the 2005 Best Picture race to Crash, almost 20 years later Ang Lee’s neo-western romance remains an achingly gorgeous piece of art and important touchstone in queer cinema history. Two cowboys—the laconic Ennis (Heath Ledger) and mercurial Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal)—spend a summer herding sheep together in 1963 Wyoming and eventually develop a sexual and romantic relationship. But the homophobia of their times and cultural milieus forbade any chance of a real and open relationship, leading to a decades-long string of trysts, broken families, and the emotional wreckage that unfulfilled desires can create. It’s hard to believe Ledger and Gyllenhaal were only in their mid-twenties when they made this given the gravitas and richness they bring to the roles. They along with Gustavo Santaolalla’s haunting guitar-driven score, an absolutely stacked supporting cast, and Rodrigo Prieto’s spartan yet stunning cinematography make this an all-timer. —Chad Comello (streaming, libraries)

2. Happy Together

Gay couple Yiu-Fai and Po-Wing visit Argentina seeking adventure but end up lost and out of money, so we journey with them as they fall in and out of love. Their relationship is full of toxic tendencies and mistakes, yet it is so incredibly relatable. It makes you feel like they have no business being together, but part of you still roots for them. Po-Wing isn’t ready to settle down but is so lonely, and Yiu-Fai is hopelessly in love even if the burden of keeping them afloat falls entirely on him. Wong Kar-wai’s film is very stylized, though not too out of the ordinary for that era. It’s an impressive show of cinematography and low-budget filmmaking at its finest. —Natalie Pohorski (streaming, libraries)

1. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Watching Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire is like walking through a haunted house. Only instead of jump-scares, you’re quietly anticipating each breathtaking image, sharply intimate conversation (“Not everything is fleeting, some feelings are deep”), and beautifully rendered scene as it all unfolds in exquisite detail. Set on an island in 18th-century France, the film follows Marianne (Noémie Merlant) who has been commissioned to paint the portrait of the soon-to-be married Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). As their relationship deepens, the portrait she creates becomes less of a commission and more of a heart-soaked reflection of the woman she loves. Simultaneously quiet and riveting, it’s a truly awe-inspiring film in every possible respect and more worthy of its mountain of praise than any other film this century. Though it hangs high in the halls of queer cinema, Portrait of a Lady on Fire understands the sensual and complicated palette of human connection better than most. —Kevin Prchal (streaming, libraries)