10 Queer Movies to Rewatch This Pride Month

Happy Pride, y’all. How do we celebrate? Marching in the parade? Going to the club? Blowing off work to have a movie marathon? The answer to all of these questions is “yes.” And while I don’t have the time or the executive functioning abilities to look up Pride parade dates or cool clubs in your area, I can certainly help you ditch your summer bummer job in favor of an at-home film-watching fest. Romance, horror, adventure, while the genres of these films are as varied as the colors on a rainbow flag, you have my guarantee that every one of them shares the same gay brain cell. These are 10 movies you simply must rewatch during Pride month. Your boss will understand.

Jennifer’s Body

Having an unexamined queer crush on your best friend is hard. When that friend gets possessed by a maneating sex demon, that’s even harder. Like queer icon SpongeBob SquarePants’s “What Not To Do At A Stoplight” essay, Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body is a PSA on how not to handle budding sapphic desire. Do not allow the poor man’s version of The Strokes to make you a sacrificial virgin in exchange for fame (call 911). Do not do nothing when your best friend shows up at your house at midnight and pukes up black liquid after eating the rotisserie chicken she dug out of your fridge (call a priest). Do not eat your best friend’s boyfriend to sabotage their relationship because you can’t handle rejection (call a therapist). There are lots of life lessons to be gleaned from Jennifer and Needy, and if you find yourself in a demonic situationship this Pride, you might need to relearn them with a rewatch.

But I’m a Cheerleader

Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader turned something not fun (conversion therapy camps) into something very fun (meetcutes between sapphics). Suspected of being a lesbian due to her stalling relationship with a football player and her suspicious love of Melissa Etheridge, high school cheerleader Megan is unceremoniously shipped off to the True Directions camp by her parents — hopeful that she’ll be “cured” of her girl-crush affliction. Their closed-minded hopes are dashed when Megan meets semi-our college student Graham while sequestered away, and the pair learn to embrace their queerness as a form of radical revolt against their counselors. Lest we forget, queerness and rebellion go hand in hand. After all, Pride was a riot — just ask anyone who was at Stonewall in 1969. Judging by the current state of world governments and their crackdown on queerness, gay revolution is exactly the thing we need today.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Ah, summer romance. Here one moment, gone the next. If your latest breakup has got you feeling like Fantine singing “I Dreamed a Dream,” Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire might help you cope with the pain. This story of two beautiful women — one noble and the other hired to paint her — staring at one another yearnfully for 120 minutes before disappearing from each other’s lives will give your broken heart a cinematic outlet. Sure, you might not have been forced to break up because of an engagement to an Italian nobleman, or maybe that’s exactly what happened! If so, this movie is definitely for you. Just don’t tell your rich Milanese husband what you’re crying about; he doesn’t need to know. He wouldn’t understand anyway.

Titane

Pride is about celebrating all sexualities, and in Titane‘s case, director Julia Ducournau celebrates the lead heroine’s sexual attraction to four-wheeled objects! Alexia begins the film grinding on the hoods of hot rods, and while cars might not be everyone’s cup of tea, her interest soon shifts to something that every queer woman can understand: the desire to murderize the annoying straight man who won’t take no for an answer. On the run from the cops for killing, Alexia’s story takes an unexpected turn towards a gender bending odyssey. It’s a curveball that delightfully surprised queer audiences on the first watch, and reminds us all of an essential piece of Pride Month advice upon rewatch: never let ’em know your next move. You wanna join the fire department this year like Alexia? Please, do it for the plot.

The Advetures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

A queer tale of wilderness survival, Stephan Elliott’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert teaches an essential tip for making it through Pride: be prepared. While for you and me that means bringing water, snacks, and sunscreen to the parade, for the trio at the heart of this road movie, preparedness looks very different. These three drag queens may not have brought enough supplies or roadmaps to navigate Australia’s Simpson Desert, but at least they remembered to bring the only thing that really matters: a fabulous wardrobe. If you’re unprepared for Pride in sweltering June heat, be like this trio: show up looking amazing, trust in the kindness of strangers, and have faith that it’ll all work out. It (probably) will.

Bound

Parades? Nightclubs? Movie marathons? These are passé Pride celebrations. You wanna do something really chic? Rob a mobster with your lesbian lover. The cinematic blueprint for “be gay, do crime,” the Wachowskis’ Bound is a chaotic caper revolving around robbery and sapphic relations. Violet and Corky are the queer Bonnie and Clyde that you didn’t know you needed, and their story will certainly help you seek out some Pride party favors you didn’t know you needed either: rope, revolvers, and $2 million in cash. Now THAT’s a celebration.

Showgirls

What would Pride Month be without philosophical discussions about the exact definition of the word “camp?” If you overhear anyone debating such on a night out, plop down a portable TV and cue up Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls; that’ll settle the issue once and for all. A “so bad it’s good masterpiece, no one knows if Verhoeven intended this glitter-blitzed disaster to be serious or satire. The debates about dogfood over champagne dinners. The myriad mispronunciations of the word “Versace.” The money-stealing, slot-winning, stranger-fighting, almost-got-hit-by-a-car chaos of the film’s first ten minutes. This film leaves a glorious mess in its wake, much like any Pride party worth its salt.

Pearl

There’s a lot to be angry about this Pride, most of it involving the cartoonishly evil decisions that today’s politicians are making to police and demonize queer people. If you’re looking for a film that captures the primal rage of being stuck in a backwards world, look no further. Ti West’s Pearl may be a sequel to an earlier slasher, but this love letter to feminine anger certainly stands on its own. Sometimes, this world is so frustrating that it could make anyone wanna dry hump a scarecrow, adopt a pet alligator, stab a man with a pitchfork, or stage a family dinner with dead bodies. We all need to crash out sometimes, and Pearl shows us how. Are her coping methods healthy? Hell no. Emotionally satisfying? Absolutely.

My Own Private Idaho

If you’re looking for a good queer cry, there’s no better film than Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho. Named after a surprisingly not-sad banger by the B-52’s, this film is a lonely opus about the open road and the lonelier hearts drifting along it. All poor Mike wants is for someone to love him. Could that love come from his best friend, Scott? Nope, Scott’s too busy quoting Shakespeare and being a rich politician’s kid. Could it come from Mike’s mom? No, she left long ago, and Mike spends the entire movie fruitlessly trying to track her down. My Own Private Idaho is a testament to one of the most important things in this world: family. Whether that family is blood-related or found, we all need to remember to keep our loved ones close this Pride. We’re all each other have got. That’s more than poor Mike has.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

This is it. This is your sign to blow off work and spend the day rewatching The Lord of the Rings trilogy —extended editions, if you please. While there are no confirmed queer characters in this film, Sam and Frodo are certainly head-canonically a couple. What’s gayer than crossing a continent with your gardener to drop a piece of jewelry into a flaming hole? Perhaps only the beautifully incestuous creatures of chaos that are Merry and Pippin, but I’ll leave that for you to decide. Seriously, Sam and Frodo have more on-screen chemistry than the series’ actual canon couple. Does Aragorn ever yearnfully whisper about the taste of strawberries in Arwen’s ear? Does he carry her up a mountain? Do they spend the film wearing little matching outfits? No, but Samwise Gamgee does, and that’s why he’s the greatest gay hero in the history of cinema. This Pride, be like Sam. Shoot your best shot at your crush. With love on your side, you’ll have the power to take on any Dark Lord (or at least an evil little twink like Gollum).

(featured image: Neon)

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]