Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

There is no such thing as watching too many movies. I know that since my family and I have enacted social distancing, the amount of movies we’ve watched has skyrocketed. And if there can be a silver lining in the messiness and ugliness of the situation we’re all in right now, it’s that we have an opportunity to watch a lot of the movies that we’ve been meaning to watch and re-watch a lot of the movies that we’ve been meaning to re-watch. I know the other day I was looking through my Blu-ray collection and picked out the 1933 King Kong, a movie I’ve owned for about a year but never watched. It’s one of those movies I always said to myself, “Not now, I’ll watch it another time.” But because we’re stuck indoors with nothing to do, I finally said, “Screw it, it’s time to watch King Kong!” And I loved it!

With the popularity of my previous list (you can check it out here), I wanted to recommend another 19 movies for people to check out across Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, and Hulu. So here you are; go watch some movies! You can’t really go wrong with any of them.

1 | Apocalypse Now (1979) | Amazon Prime

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola

With Luke Skywalker back in the public consciousness for, uh, no particular reason, now seems like an opportune time to revisit one of cinema’s most iconic heroes. There’s much to be said about the farm boy from Tatooine. One could argue that Luke upholds false narratives about white male exceptionalism, or conversely that he represents a softer and more compassionate view of masculinity. As far as I’m concerned, though, two things about Luke Skywalker are unquestionably true. First, he reinvented the classical hero’s journey for the space age. Second, he’s gayer than a basket of Coruscanti jogan fruit.

I would say “Welcome to my TED Talk,” but apparently my gay Star Wars headcanons don’t meet TED’s highfalutin standards of academic rigor. Instead, I will present my humble homosexual argument by walking you through each film with a pair of gay goggles firmly in place. Please note that I’m restricting myself to the Star Wars canon as presented in the films. I won’t be delving into the bottomless Sarlacc pit of comics, novelizations, TV shows, and games because I don’t hate myself. Without further ado, here’s my hot gay take on Star Wars: A New Hope.