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4. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

I still remember the chills down my spine when as a newly-out gay man (literally, out by maybe a week) I discovered that the lead character of The Talented Mr. Ripley, played by a mainstream, Oscar-winning actor, was secretly gay. And there is no doubt about it, Anthony Minghella’s masterpiece is a gay movie - Ripley is gay. The only question is, is Dickey too? Ultimately, I don’t think so - Dickey likes attention from men and woman alike. And the attention was, as Gwyneth Paltrow’s character sadly explained to Ripley, bright as the sun when it shone on you and dark and cold when it went away. This proved too much for the deeply closeted, and ultimately tortured but evil Ripley, played by Matt Damon in arguably his best and most daring career role.

In the meantime, the movie takes us through stunning vistas in Italy, has a deeply resounding and emotional soundtrack by Gabriel Yared (The English Patient), and is based on the classic novel and character by the brilliant existentialist Patricia Higginsmith.

The story is gripping, and the internal struggle of gay men in the 1950s is hinted at but at times explored directly. And, for 1999, the movie makes no pretense of showing sexual tension and even scenes between Ripley and Dickey (the then-new Jude Law), as well as between Ripley and his lover Peter. To round out the incredible cast, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays another closeted man and antagonist to the wily Ripley, and he meets a fate not unlike others who cross his demonic past.

Twisted, dark, melancholic, The Talented Mr. Ripley was perhaps too much too soon in 1999, for it was mostly ignored by the Academy - relegated to technical categories. But, in that sense, it set the stage for other movies to be rewarded in the 2000s, from Brokeback to Milk, and in that sense is a landmark movie.

3. Boys in the Band (1970) Before he won an Oscar for The French Connection and directed the brilliant The Exorcist, William Friedkin gave us what is arguably the first LGBT-themed movie in modern history with the moving Boys in the Band.

The movie is an exhilarating mix of realism and untowardness, and it is very much a play-based film (a la Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). The characters essentially live in a single setting - a party being thrown in a New York apartment by one of the guys in the group. Where The Broken Hearts Club did it through sport and laughs in the late 1990s, Boys in the Band does it with liquor and tears. The people in this movie have so many psychological issues, both within and outside their sexuality, that it is hard not to pity and feel uncomfortable towards them.

The closeted gay guy, the alcoholic gay guy, the promiscuous gay guy. These men are not necessarily representative of the gay culture of the time they lived in, of today, or of when the movie was made. But for all the typecasting and inability to represent the average gay American of 1970 (really, what movie is ever representative of an entire subculture?), what the movie does achieve is to synthesize into five characters the anxieties and problems of a lot of gay males in the 1970s. There is little doubt that hidden relationships with women, internal struggles and cross-cut desires, hustlers, and alcohol, were a part of what it meant to be gay in 1970. By bringing those issues to the forefront with mostly likeable characters, however, the brilliant Boys in the Band humanized the issue for the first time in ways I can’t really think had happened until then.

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