We promised a grand total of 15 "Best of "2015" Lists (apart from the awards -- yeah, we're overplanning crazy) so here's the second to last. Diversity is the hot topic of the week and regardless of any one particularity (like an Oscar nominee list) thing are getting better on television (obviously) and at the movies, too, though you have to look a little bit harder. Still, if you go to a lot of movies and attempt to draw up lists like this you'll find you're spoilt for choice. There are so many more films these days directed by women, for gay audiences, for people of the color and the like. You just have to look beyond Big Hollywood and keep your eyes open for intriguing surprises if you do regularly hit the all wide releases multiplex.
Since 15 is a finite number (damn you math) not every film with an LGBT character can make the list. Some I didn't see only because you can't see everything (Legend, Duke of Burgundy, Cut Snake, Eastern Boys) and some just didn't make this particular list (Tom at the Farm, Saint Laurent, Gerontophilia, Ricki and the Flash, Mr Holmes, The New Girlfriend, Boulevard, Stonewall, Match, and The Danish Girl) though that shouldn't reflect on the film itself because that group has everything from terrible to great movies within it. The most high profile miss is Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmaybe) but that's mostly because The Danish Girl needed to be queerer and because there are several women that were far more fetching on this list.
Without further ado...
15 Best LGBT Characters of The Movies of '15
from Nasty Baby through Star Wars (???) and on up to Carol
15 Freddy (Sebastián Silva) in Nasty Baby
Silva, one of Chile's best known filmmakers, doesn't usually star in his own movies, but this time out he gifts himself the lead role. Freddy, an artist working haphazardly on a new project involving adults pretending to be babies, desperately wants to be a dad and is continually trying to make it happen between his boyfriend (Tunde Adebimpe from Rachel Getting Married) and his best friend (Kristen Wiig). Silva's a fluid filmmaker when it comes to gender, ethnicity, and genre and Nasty Baby is a fluid movie, freely hopping from genre to genre without much warning: drama, comedy, character study, art world satire, and even thriller. (Bonus points for the cat-loving.)
14 Nick (Scott Mescudi) in James White
Rapper Kid Cudi has complained that his kissing scenes were cut from the movie, another reminder that we've come a long way (mostly) from the days that actors tripped over themselves to talk about their bravery in playing gay while constantly drawing attention to their own straightness. Even without the kissing there's enough visual cues to Nick's sexuality, including who he picks up when he and his best bro James White are on the prowl at the clubs to raise eyebrows. The eyebrow isn't because gay is shocking but because we so rarely see it portrayed this nonchalantly when it has no bearing whatsoever on the plot. Nick's gayness is just part of the texture of the characters and the world that James White lives in and hangs on to like a lifeline as his mother lays dying.
10 HOT MESS FOURPLE
Shirin & Maxine (Desiree Akhavan & Rebecca Henderson) in Appropriate Behavior
and Donato and Konrad (Wagner Moura & Clemens Schick) in Futuro Beach
One of my all time favorite movies is Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) but if anyone makes a movie called Shirin & Maxine & Donato & Konrad I'm running for the hills. I'm not sure it'd be watchable from the cringey recognition without the half/mocking half/earnest "Oh, insight!" escapism. Appropriate Behavior, a very funny bisexual Iranian American romcom, is instantly endearing if you can get past Shirin's internalized homophobia (her "no homo" joking is funny until you realize it isn't solely a punchline). Futuro Beach is less instantly endearing and not at all funny but many months later I remember it far more clearly than most other films from 2015. Both films feature richly authentic, superly executed portraits of messy LGBT romances wherein the couple is clearly doomed in the long term but throw in together anyway, because... that's the way love (sometimes) goes. Good films, great characterizations, but so much discomfort from truth-telling!
when studio promo photos had hilarious hidden messages
09 Tab Hunter (Tab Hunter) in Tab Hunter: Confidential
As a known Natalie Wood nut I will see or read anything about her. Documentaries on Old Hollywood rarely lack for good gossip and entertainment and this one is no exception. It's well know that Natalie was quite popular in gay Hollywood circles. In Tab Hunter Confidential we're reminded that she and Tab (a frequent co-star) were good friends off camera and she'd happily beard him for the public after which they'd conspire to ditch each other and meet up with their real dates... Tony Perkins usually for him. The film's most fascinating section details the on and off romance between Hollywood's squarest blonde jock hunk (Tab) and one of its most promising post Brando brooders t(Tony). The documentary even has the balls (All American Boy Next Door balls of course) to side eye current movie hunks and the movie closet.
08 Oliver Lawless (James Marsden) in The D Train
The D Train, which caused a mini-stir at Sundance a year ago but didn't catch on when it was released dropping like a stone, is worth checking out just from a sheer curiosity factor. Be honest: How many movies have you seen about a washed up but still über hot bisexual actor who sleeps with an emotionally needy straight friend who has a major crush on him? It's not a perfect movie but it's a bullseye in the casting department because it gets that sexual charisma isn't strictly gay or straight and that crushes on people like, well, James Marsden freely defy such reductive hormones... I mean, who wouldn't?
07 YOUR CHOICE ... PICK A STEALTH QUEER
Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) in Star Wars: The Force Awakens
or Lene Winter (Nina Kunzendorf) in Phoenix
If you've never seen the documentary The Celluloid Closet you must. It gives a good history on coding within movies -- ways filmmakers and actors used to reveal gayness back when they couldn't portray it. We still see this today, albeit infrequently, and sometimes off-canon if an actor is feeling frisky. Oscar Isaac has been toying with Star Wars fan emotions, playing Poe Dameron with a knowing wink (and lip bite) and playing up fan investment in his galactic mancrush on Finn (John Boyega, who sadly doesn't return the favor). Is the Empire's bravest fighter pilot really gay? Probably not (this is Disney and Star Wars after all) but it's fun to see an actor push the boundaries like that as if he's daring a billion dollar franchise to Get Queer / Get Used To It. When I was thinking about which movie characters could be "read" as gay, from either performance or script choices, Jose opened my eyes to another noting Lene Winter's despair that her best friend Nelly (Nina Hoss) can't let the man who betrayed her go in the Holocaust drama Phoenix -- "She's obviously in love with Nina Hoss (just a reading though)". Now that he's pointed it out, I can't not see it. And Lene is more haunting than even before.
Do you think of these two characters as gay?
05 [PAIR] Sin-Dee & Alexandra (Kitana 'Kiki' Rodriguez & Mya Taylor) in Tangerine
True friendship means you'll share your very last donut and you'll even forgive her for "sharing" your man. These girls are so tight they'll even take a wig off their own head for the other if things go truly south. I'll never forget these two and this movie may be both 2015's most surprising gem and even its most loveable movie despite all the crass shouting, drug snorting, arm yanking, and power walking.
03 [PAIR] Carol Aird & Therese Belivet (Cate Blanchett & Rooney Mara) in Carol
What strange girls they are... flung out of space and into each others arms. Blanchett and Mara reinvented coded flirting for the movies and future actors are really going to have to step up their game if they hope to equal their fire in future high-stakes emotional courtship. This double act is perfection.
02 Abby (Sarah Paulson) in Carol
Matthew Eng wrote a glorious ode to Paulson's sublime performance which you should absolutely read if you haven't. She renders queer friendship and Abby's particular (off screen) story with such precision in her scenes which are entirely about another woman (her former lover Carol Aird) that you feel you've already seen her movie. Not that you wouldn't want to revisit it to be sure. Paulson's gift at quick character portraits is so strong that it's easy to imagine an entire sequel in which we follow Abby's pursuit of that "fiery redhead", the juicy hints she dropped in the diner were better than any freaking movie trailer we saw last year; where can we get a ticket to that movie and how soon?
01 Elle Reid (Lily Tomlin) in Grandma
What joy to see one of the great stars of the our lifetime get a role this big and this sculpted to her unique gifts in her mid 70s! This sharp-tongued lesbian poet, trying to guide her dim granddaughter through a difficult patch, while working through some of her own anti-social issues in the process, is a wonder. Bless Paul Weitz for giving her such a vehicle to drive around for a Lily-loving 79 minutes.