Movies
Queer films, ranked by us
The canon you grew up on and the ones released last month — scored out of five rainbows by people who actually watched them.
What makes a great LGBTQ+ movie?
The best LGBTQ+ movies are the ones that still mean something now — not the ones that were merely well reviewed in their year. Every film here carries a Jibbi Score: our own rating, from half a rainbow to five, for how well it earns its place in the queer canon. We weigh three things: representation that holds up on a rewatch, whether the queer characters get interior lives rather than lessons, and whether the film is actually good.
Five rainbows currently go to Moonlight, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Brokeback Mountain, Paris Is Burning, Pride, All of Us Strangers and But I'm a Cheerleader. The score is ours and it is meant to be argued with — where we differ from Rotten Tomatoes, we say why on the film's own page.
New this month
Queer films released this month, pulled from TMDB and refreshed nightly. Not yet rated — we have to watch them first.
Every film, ranked

Drama · Romance · Fantasy2023
All of Us Strangers
A man visits his parents. They died when he was twelve.
5/5
Romance · Drama2019
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
A painter, her subject, and the most famous page 28 in cinema.
5/5
Drama · Coming of Age2016
Moonlight
Three chapters, one man, and the best film on this list.
5/5
Comedy · Drama · History2014
Pride
London gays fundraise for striking Welsh miners. It really happened.
5/5
Romance · Drama · Western2005
Brokeback Mountain
The one that broke through, and broke everyone.
5/5
Comedy · Satire1999
But I'm a Cheerleader
Conversion therapy as a candy-coloured satire. Still undefeated.
5/5
Documentary1990
Paris Is Burning
The ballroom documentary that half your vocabulary came from.
5/5
Horror · Drama2024
I Saw the TV Glow
A horror film about egg cracking, disguised as a 90s TV show.
4.5/5
Comedy2023
Bottoms
Two lesbians start a fight club to hook up with cheerleaders.
4.5/5
Comedy · Romance2022
Fire Island
Pride and Prejudice, relocated to a gay beach week.
4.5/5
Thriller · Romance2016
The Handmaiden
A Korean con-artist thriller that keeps turning inside out.
4.5/5
Romance · Drama2015
Carol
Two women, 1950s New York, and a great deal of looking.
4.5/5
Comedy · Drama2015
Tangerine
Two trans sex workers, Christmas Eve in LA, shot on iPhones.
4.5/5
Romance · Drama2011
Weekend
A hookup that turns into 48 hours and then into your whole personality.
4.5/5
Musical · Drama2001
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
A glam-rock musical about a botched surgery and a stolen songbook.
4.5/5
Romance · Drama1997
Happy Together
Wong Kar-wai’s breakup film, stranded in Buenos Aires.
4.5/5
Comedy · Farce1996
The Birdcage
Robin Williams and Nathan Lane pretending to be straight, badly, for two hours.
4.5/5
Comedy · Road Movie1994
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Three queens, a bus, and the entire Australian outback.
4.5/5
Thriller · Crime · Romance2024
Love Lies Bleeding
A gym manager, a bodybuilder, steroids, and a lot of bodies.
4/5
Comedy · Coming of Age2020
The Half of It
Cyrano de Bergerac, rewritten so the letter-writer is a queer Chinese-American girl.
4/5
Romance · Drama2018
Rafiki
Two girls in Nairobi, in a film Kenya banned.
4/5
Romance · Coming of Age2017
Call Me by Your Name
Northern Italian summer, one very significant peach.
4/5
Romance · Drama2017
God's Own Country
Yorkshire sheep farming, and two men with nothing to say.
4/5
Romance · Coming of Age1996
Beautiful Thing
A gentle south London first love, scored entirely by Mama Cass.
4/5
Thriller · Crime1996
Bound
The Wachowskis’ debut: a lesbian heist thriller with actual heat.
4/5
Drama · Legal1993
Philadelphia
The first big-studio AIDS film. Careful, compromised, and it worked.
4/5
Drama · Romance2024
Queer
Guadagnino adapts Burroughs. Daniel Craig is very lonely in Mexico City.
3.5/5
Romance · Comedy2023
Red, White & Royal Blue
The President’s son and a British prince. Exactly what it says.
3.5/5
Comedy · Romance2022
Bros
The first gay rom-com a major studio put in every multiplex.
3.5/5
Musical · Crime2024
Emilia Pérez
A cartel musical about a trans woman. It went badly.
2.5/5
Questions
- What is the Jibbi Score?
- The Jibbi Score is our own rating, from 0.5 to 5 rainbows, for how well a film earns its place in the queer canon. It is not a quality score — third-party ratings already do that. It weighs representation that holds up, whether queer characters get interior lives, and whether the film still lands today.
- What is the best LGBTQ+ movie of all time?
- Moonlight (2016) is our pick at five rainbows: three chapters following one Black gay man from childhood to adulthood in Miami, and the rare film that is both a landmark for representation and technically close to perfect. Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Brokeback Mountain are the other two we would put beside it.
- Where do the Rotten Tomatoes and TMDB scores come from?
- TMDB scores and posters come from the TMDB API, refreshed nightly. Rotten Tomatoes has had no public API since 2018, so Tomatometer figures come from Wikidata, which records many of them under an open CC0 licence. A film with no recorded Tomatometer simply shows no percentage.
- What are the best older LGBTQ+ films to start with?
- Paris Is Burning (1990) for the ballroom documentary that half of queer vocabulary came from, But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) for camp satire that has aged better than anything else from its year, and Brokeback Mountain (2005) for the one that broke through. Filter the list by Nostalgic to see everything from before 2010.
Last updated Aug 5, 2026Movies





