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Is there a better way to launch Pride Month than with a parade of impressive movies, many of them recent? Here’s a list rife with Oscar winners and nominees, celebrated LGBTQ+ directors and out-and-proud actors who give rending, revealing or raunchy performances in unexpected and unapologetic stories.
All of Us Strangers (2023)
Count this acclaimed drama from director Andrew Haigh, 51, among the most aching ghost stories ever made. Adam (Andrew Scott) and Harry (Paul Mescal) appear to be the only tenants of an apartment complex on the outskirts of London. Hindered in writing about his parents, Adam takes trips to his childhood home. Claire Foy and Jamie Bell are heart swelling (and breaking) as Adam’s mom and dad. Back at the apartment tower, Scott and Mescal gently turn the dial toward carnal, wholly believable tenderness as they begin a tentative dance of deep connection.
Watch it: on Hulu
Passages (2023)
He’s a jerk, a cad and a stunning narcissist, yet we can’t look away from Tomas (Franz Rogowski) or the emotional train wrecks he engineers again and again in Ira Sach’s fascinating marital drama set in Paris. Rogowski is flawless as the flawed film director who embarks on an affair with Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a schoolteacher he meets at a wrap party. With his typical hushed intensity, actor Ben Whishaw portrays Tomas’ husband, Martin, who’s had just about enough.
Watch it: on Vudu
Nyad (2023)
Not unlike the open-water swimmer of the title, Annette Bening, 66, gave it her all playing record breaker Diana Nyad, 74, who attempted to swim the 110 miles from Cuba to Florida five times. She was 64 when she tried that fifth time. But it is Jodie Foster, 61, as Nyad’s coach Bonnie Stoll, 71, who adds the ballast of an enduring friendship. Foster has been doing some of her finest work recently (True Detective), landing in the sweet and elusive spot of being utterly focused and remarkably relaxed.
Watch it: on Netflix
The Blue Caftan (2022)
With three beautifully woven performances, this love-triangle drama from Morocco is as finely crafted as the caftans that tailor Halim (Saleh Bakri) and his wife and business partner, Mina (Lubna Azabal, 50), sell in their intimate shop in the town of Salé. The arrival of Halim’s new apprentice, Youssef (Ayoub Missioui), infuses the air with longing and apprehension but also engenders love at its most credible and incredible.
Watch it: on Prime Video
Monica (2022)
Trace Lysette moves with confident grace from supporting player in the groundbreaking show Transgender to her star turn in the family drama Monica. After years of estrangement, Monica returns home to help her brother with their dying mother. The always exquisite Patricia Clarkson, 64, plays a mother who adored, then shunned and now doesn’t quite recognize Monica. Seeing what these waning days bring to this mother-and-child reunion from Monica’s life-toughened but vulnerable vantage is a welcome gift.
Watch it: on Hulu
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