Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Five Queer Lady Films to Watch Instead of “Happiest Season”

Here we present quality queer films to watch over the winter holidays.

Maria Aurelio

December 25, 2020
Facebook Twitter Share
San Joaquin Kit Fox, from the film Mosquita y Mari

Let’s be real– the queer lady film scene generally isn’t very good. But this holiday season we may have hit a low with Happiest Season, which was terrible any way you look at it. The internet overlords know that I’m a self-identified dyke, so I keep getting ads encouraging me to watch it on all of my social media. If you haven’t suffered through it yet, don’t give in. Here are five movies I suggest watching instead. 

Mosquita y Mari, 2012

This would, in my opinion, be in the running for one of the best queer films ever made, with an especially beautiful soundtrack and cinematography. The film is a story of two working-class Latina high school students who develop a deep connection. But capitalism doesn’t provide the material conditions for them to explore their sexuality fully—highlighting the effects of poverty and immigration status on love and desire. 

But I’m a Cheerleader, 1999

This movie is a queer classic, featuring Clea DuVall—who ended up writing and directing the significantly inferior Happiest Season. This film is about a cheerleader whose parents suspect she is a lesbian and send her to “straight camp”— a conversion camp. In real life, there is absolutely nothing funny about this, but the film pokes fun at these camps, highlighting their hypocrisy and promoting pride and acceptance. 

Tangerine, 2015

As opposed to being a  lesbian lovefest like many of these other films, this movie is about a (seemingly straight) trans woman in LA. It is funny and poignant, with main characters who are full of life that the viewer can immediately connect with, root for, and care about. It’s about Sin-Dee Rella, a sex worker who has just finished a prison sentence only to find out her boyfriend has been cheating on her. The film follows her as she is on a mission to find him and the woman he has been cheating on Sin-Dee with. The light tone of the film is abruptly cut by violence, but also deep solidarity of other trans women. 

Pariah, 2011

This is a heartbreaking and beautiful film about coming out as a young Black lesbian in a conservative family. It’s about butchness and first sexual experiences, and eventually, being brave and being free. It is beautifully directed, beautifully written and heartbreaking to watch— recommended if you want a good cry. 

Saving Face, 2004

This is a classic rom-com, with a queer and Chinese American twist. Girl meets girl, girl likes girl, and then it’s complicated. “Wil”, the main character isn’t out to her traditional Chinese American family and begins to date Vivian. But Wil’s mom moves in with her because she’s pregnant and shunned from the family. Ultimately, this film is about the secrets we keep and the experience of breaking with conservative norms while keeping deep connections to home, community, and culture. This is a fun queer movie for the whole family.

Facebook Twitter Share

Arts

Turning the Greatest Anti-war Novel Ever into Bourgeois Propaganda

All Quiet on the Western Front won four Oscars, and it’s not hard to see why. The production — depicting the horrors of World War I — is spectacular. Yet the producers did not at all understand Erich Maria Remarque’s novel. Spoilers follow.

Nathaniel Flakin

March 16, 2023

Five Years after Ursula K. Le Guin’s Death, We Need Her More Than Ever

Ursula K. Le Guin tended the embers of revolt in a new age of imperialism and counterrevolution. She tasked us with stoking them into a blaze.

Jason Koslowski

January 22, 2023
The cast of "Glass Onion" lounge next to a pool.

Glass Onion: Liberalism’s Dream

Netflix’s new movie, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, is the ruling class’s dream about itself.

Jason Koslowski

January 4, 2023
Main characters in a desert landscape

Selling Suffering and the Spectacle of Blackness in Nope

In his new movie, Jordan Peele examines the ways in which the capitalist system forces us to place our lives in jeopardy and sell our own suffering. Spoiler alert!

Emma Boyhtari

October 14, 2022

MOST RECENT

Despite Threats of Arrest, Refinery Workers in France Refuse to Break Strike

As energy strikes continue, France is faced with a kerosene shortage that’s creating an urgent situation at the country’s airports. With capitalist profits on the line, the government has attempted to force Normandy refinery workers back to work through an anti-strike legal weapon called requisitions. In their first victory, refinery workers forced the police to withdraw in an incredible demonstration of solidarity.

Nathan Erderof

March 24, 2023

“We Need Action Committees Everywhere”: Building the General Strike in France

Workers across France are organizing action committees to build a general strike to take down the Macron government and the Fifth Republic.

Arthur Nicola

March 24, 2023

What’s Behind Xi Jinping’s Visit to Moscow?

Chinese president Xi Jinping has visited Moscow for the first time since the beginning of the Ukraine war, in an effort to strengthen trade relations between the two countries.

Madeleine Freeman

March 23, 2023
Protesters gather during a demonstration on Place de la Concorde in Paris on March 17, 2023, the day after the French government pushed a pensions reform using the article 49.3 of the constitution. - French President's government on March 17, 2023 faced no-confidence motions in parliament and intensified protests after imposing a contentious pension reform without a vote in the lower house. Across France, fresh protests erupted in the latest show of popular opposition to the bill since mid-January.

Battle of the Pensions: Toward a Pre-Revolutionary Moment in France

President Macron's use of article 49.3 to push through an unpopular pension reform bill has opened up an enormous political crisis that has changed the character of the mobilizations against the French government. We are entering a "pre-revolutionary moment" that can change the balance of power between the classes in France.

Juan Chingo

March 21, 2023