Brokeback Mountain (2005) - Ang Lee

From the director of Life of Pi comes one of the highest grossing films with LGBT protagonists of all time… How to Get Oscar Noms by Two Straight Guys!

Kidding aside, I fell ridiculously in love with this movie. Now I’ll discuss why it’s problematic.

I’m joking! *clears throat* In Wyoming in 1963, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) are hired to herd sheep for the summer. Jack’s job is to guard the sheep all night from coyotes in their remote sleeping area in the mountains, and Ennis’ job is to… take care of base camp? A bottle of booze later, their loneliness gets the better of them and after two seconds of cuddling they’re in crazy frantic love-making mode.

I knew they were gonna have sex the second Jack tried to help clean Ennis’ wound from falling of his horse. Nothing is more intimate than cleaning a wound!!

But sadly the summer of cuddling in denim ends, and Ennis marries Heath’s wife IRL the white Michelle Williams, Alma. They have two daughters together. Jack tries to come back the next summer, but the homophobic rancher knew about their little secret and refuses to hire him. So he moves to Texas and marries his Love and Other Drugs (2010) costar Anne Hathaway!

When Jack and Ennis reunite after four years, the chemistry is electric!

Don’t see how two closeted men in the 1960s would make out outside, but it’s cute.

They begin to have seasonal trips up to Brokeback Mountain for “fishing.” Alma knows better, and over the years her marriage to Ennis deteriorates, ending in divorce.

During one trip, Jack suggests they get a cute little ranch together and live happily ever after and it’s the actual cutest thing. But Ennis has some weird childhood memory of his town brutally murdering a gay man and he refuses. Stupid Wyoming.

The film is seeped in toxic masculinity and explores how it negatively impacts their relationship. Poor Jack just wants to be with Ennis forever and ever.

He’s the sensitive one. Ennis is more of a… wear denim and punch guys on the Fourth of July kind of guy.

And so they fight and fight over the course of a 20 year relationship.

Jack is so sensitive even with his creepy mustache.

I knew the movie had great performances by the main four actors, Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, and Anne Hathaway, but what I didn’t know is the great tertiary characters that fill Brokeback Mountain’s awesome cast.

Kate Mara (House of Cards, The Martian) plays Ennis’ grown up daughter.

Linda Cardellini (Scooby Doo, Freaks and Geeks) plays Ennis’ girlfriend for a short period of time after his marriage.

Anna Faris (everything great) plays a random girl who is a friend of Jack’s wife. A gif of her in the movie doesn’t exist so here she is playing basketball in her underwear with Chris Evans.

Brokeback Mountain is a hugely successful mainstream film with a love story between two men. It won Best Picture and Best Director at the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Critics’ Choice Awards, Producers Guild Awards, and Independent Spirit Awards. It lost Best Picture at the Academy Awards to Crash.

So much of the LGBT film we have today is in part due to Brokeback Mountain’s success. Despite it’s limiting view of same sex love, how it is shameful and private and ultimately doomed, it remains a true accomplishment of cinema for its time.

Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) - Abdellatif Kechiche

I’m sorry for not calling it La Vie d’Adèle, I went through my blog and I’ve only ever used the English titles for films so I need that consistency in my life.

A French coming of age film about two women who fall in love… that unanimously won the Palme d’Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival… how has it taken me this long to see it?

Um… I’ll tell you why, it’s 2 hours and 59 minutes.

Yeah… my reaction exactly.

But you can’t pass up a film that contains scenes which Variety calls, “the most explosively graphic lesbian sex scenes in recent memory.”

Blue Is the Warmest Color is a massive undertaking that charts the long and passionate relationship between its two main characters, Adèle and Emma. When the film begins, Adèle is a closeted 15-year-old high school student and Emma is an openly gay art student. They have a love at first sight moment!

Across years of intense sex, heated fights, and professional success, the film vividly explores the realities of falling in love while coming of age. Based on the graphic novel, Le bleu est une couleur chaude, by Julie Maroh, the relationship in the film is probably more toned down than the destructive and even fatal love of the graphic novel. But its scope and closeness to its characters is supremely impressive.

Watching Adèle come to understand her sexuality in a seemingly conservative high school is powerful, as she tries failingly to hide this information from her classmates.

After a failed relationship with a male classmate, Adèle is kissed by a girl in her class who then rejects Adèle’s romantic advances. It’s sad and quick, but inside Adèle a spark is ignited. She decides to go to a gay club one night, where she sees the blue haired girl, Emma, once again.

They become friends, and love soon follows. They discuss art and philosophy, Adèle expressing her passion for reading while Emma wants to become a painter.

Crazy, Olympian-type sex comes next. Despite all the warnings, I was not ready for the intensity or duration of the sex scenes. Many critics (as well as trusted friends of mine) hinted at the “male gaze” aspect of the sex scenes, which are elaborately choreographed and include close-up shots I’d never though I’d see in my lifetime. There’s definitely an element of male fantasy that many viewers picked up on.

The duration may be a little bit more realistic than the average 1 or 2 minute sex scene we’re used to, but I’m not sure if that means it is justified in a 179 minute film. But maybe the goal was to purposefully discomfort me with the intensity, knowing how destructive and heartbreaking this level of passion would end up being for them? I just don’t know if I trust any lesbian sex scene written, filmed, and edited by straight men.

As years go by, Adèle and Emma move in together and live a happy life as a couple. But Emma’s success as a painter distances the two, with Adèle working as a teacher and regularly being questioned about whether she is “fulfilled.” The theme of social class is important in the film, as Emma comes from an upper middle class background where her parents welcome Adèle as Emma’s girlfriend, discussing art and culture and even making a point to question her decision to become a teacher.

The scene with Adèle’s middle class parents is markedly different, where Adèle’s father points out that Emma should have a more stable career than a painter, and both of them believing Emma is just Adèle’s philosophy tutor rather than her serious girlfriend.

Food is an important motif as well, pasta being Adèle’s food of choice until one scene where Emma teaches her how to eat oysters. Kechiche notes that these are both indicative of class as well as suggestive sexual metaphors.

Obviously blue plays an important role in the film, symbolizing both Adèle’s curiosity for something different as well as the sadness of the outcome. Picasso, the second most famous artist to have a Blue Period (Lilo Pelekai), is regularly referenced.

But despite the run time, despite the crazy sex, I found Blue Is the Warmest Color to be a beautiful film about love, heartbreak, and growth. From the minutiae of daily life of two women in love to the chaos of having it all come crashing down, everything is presented seemingly without pretext, giving the audience a chance to form their own opinions. I personally loved the ambiguity of the ending, as almost a mirror for the ambiguity of our own futures. We can’t predict where Adèle will go from here because not even she knows.

A Beautiful Mind (2001) - Ron Howard

I feel like this movie belongs in a box set with The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything.

Russell Crowe stars in this Best Picture winning movie about the American Nobel laureate and mathematician John Nash. He’s no Gladiator, but he’s nice enough.

The best part about the movie is that they think they can casually age Russell Crowe from 20 years old to 66 in a two hour movie.

Not to mention his Noah costar and on-screen wife, Jennifer Connelly! And if you’re wondering why this is included in a Wikipedia article called “List of films featuring whitewashed roles,” Alicia Nash is El Salvadorian. Noah is in this list too, obviously.

Anyway, I’m getting distracted. A Beautiful Mind tells the story of John Nash, who in 1948 began his doctorate program at Princeton, where he received the John S. Kennedy fellowship. Determined to discover something wholly original, Nash skips all his classes.

But he ends up writing a paper on equilibrium that wins him the respect of his colleagues and the commendation of his superiors.

Also his fun and crazy roommate, Charles.

Soon, Nash begins a career as a mathematician, where he sometimes helps the government with covert operations to crack codes from the Soviet Union.

And he meets his wife! He wins her over despite being incredibly socially awkward.

But as the movie reminds us, Nash is one of the best pattern recognition experts in the world.

He woos her with this party trick where he can find any shape he wants amongst the stars. I looked up at the stars that night and counted three… so… triangle.

But just when you think this rich, straight, white man has it all, the movie reveals a twist! And even though they were on the verge of losing me because almost everything in the first hour goes exactly as Nash plans, I found it to be really heartbreaking.

I won’t give it away, but the rest of the movie finds Nash desperately trying to hold on to that passion for numbers and discovery that made him endearing in the early part of the film. Disgraced, he tries to return to Princeton, and eventually finds a loving community amongst the 80s and 90s students (the 70s ones were so mean to him). And then he wins a Nobel Prize!

The movie is ultimately a story about love, how important it is and what it can do to transform people who are lost. A Beautiful Mind tackles mental illness in a way that is sort of refreshing for its time.

Plus the movie is incredibly prominent in our pop culture consciousness. Whenever you see a room filled with papers covering every surface with an attempt to reach a singular conclusion, that’s A Beautiful Mind reference.

A Beautiful Mind went on to win 4 Oscars, including a whopping two for Ron Howard… who directed How the Grinch Stole Christmas the year before.

Braveheart (1995) - Mel Gibson

20 years ago we gave Mel Gibson two Oscars.

Braveheart is a big budget movie of the 1990s, or as I like to call them, one thousand white men in period costume. 700 years ago, William Wallace helped start the First War of Scottish Independence, which ended with King Edward I of England granting Scotland their… independence.

Let’s face it, no one enjoyed being ruled by England. Except Canada?

When King Edward I decides to institute a Jus Primae Noctis, meaning that any lord may take the virginity of any woman he chooses on her wedding night… it basically starts a spiral of crazy events that leads to a revolution.

According to Wikipedia, that never happened though. Just fun imagination on the part of the writers. Because nothing gets a man more riled up for rebellion than avenging his woman!

So William Wallace starts a rebellion, and becomes a very successful military leader. Then he comes into contact with the French Princess Isabella.

Who is married to King Edward I’s son, Prince Edward. Who is of course… flamboyantly gay? Because why else would Princess Isabella be so swept up in the rugged masculinity of a Scottish rebel?

Have we already forgotten about Murron?

Yes. Yes we have. Because this movie is 2 hours and 57 minutes. I always used to confuse this movie with Gladiator and now I get why.

There is also a colorful cast of noblemen, warriors, and villagers who fill this titanic picture.

The film gets most of its historical knowledge from an epic poem, and it definitely maintains that level of immensity in the film. Mel Gibson gives at least ten speeches about the importance of freedom.

Is this what Drake is referencing when he says “Everybody dies but not everybody lives” in Moment for Life? Crazy.

So Braveheart did go on to win Best Picture, Best Director, and a bunch of other Oscars. It beat Babe! It lost Best Drama at the Golden Globes to Sense and Sensibility though. It’s also #77 on the IMDb Top 250. Personally, I can’t sit through war movies this long unless they introduce Matt Damon in the final act.