The mainstream is malleable, neither a monolith nor a mere majority. The mainstream adapts to constant contingencies and the ever-changing zeitgeist, something seen most explicitly in popular culture at every level. There's a reciprocal relationship between art and the societal mainstream, each influencing the other; while art reflects the society which produces it, it affects that same society in turn. Cinema, the dominant art form of the 20th-century, is particularly representative of this in the way a film's success (critically and financially) is both determined by and determines what is considered mainstream.Queer cinema has been slowly chipping away at this slippery idea of "mainstream" since the beginning of last century with films like Making a Man of Her and I Don't Want to Be a Man. The LGBTQ+ films of pre-Code Hollywood continued this gradual influence, and inclusive representation throughout the ensuing years has created many masterpieces. Thanks to this legendary lineage, one could argue that the mainstream was ultimately redefined (and even queered) in the 2010's, not just politically but cinematically, too.The 2010s saw LGBTQ+ representation increase throughout the movie mainstream in a series of landmarks: Moonlight won the first Best Picture Oscar for an LGBTQ+ film; the Star Wars franchise included its first LGBTQ+ character; the cover of TIME magazine featured its first transgender actor; a transgender actor was nominated for a major film award for the first time, followed by many more; Disney featured its first gay characters; and on and on, the mainstream beeing molded into something different and diverse all the while. Finally, the mainstream had begun to catch up to the variety of reality, and films were released year after year which truthfully represented the lives of so many wonderful lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer and questioning people. If one of the best aspects of film is the ability to connect with experiences and lives other than one's own, then all this is truly a cinematic advancement. These are the best LGBTQ+ films of the 2010's.

12 The Kids Are All Right

The-Kids-Are-Alright-1
Focus Features

The Kids Are All Right kicked off the decade with Lisa Cholodenko's humorous, quiet study of human nature during cultural shifts. The ensemble is brilliantly acted, but Julianne Moore and Annette Bening are particularly fabulous as a married lesbian couple whose children seek out their birth father. The film's depiction of their marriage is radical not in how it accentuates their sexuality but rather in how it accepts it; the film has no bias in its exploration of marriage and, by normalizing the couple's lives, it subtly fights back against the stereotyping Hollywood often commits.

Related: The MCU's First Gay Kiss Brought a Lot of Emotions to Marvel's Eternals Set

11 Love, Simon

Love, Simon
20th Century Fox

Greg Berlanti has been quietly reshaping the mainstream from his own LGBTQ+ experiences, from Dawson's Creek to Riverdale, but his movie Love, Simon broke the most mold. The first film of its kind to 'come out' of a major Hollywood studio, this sweet and brisk story follows a gay teenager through his process of coming out. What's most subversive about the movie is just how family-friendly and PG-13 it is, giving it a good shot at changing the hearts and minds of moviegoers who may have been hesitant to approach an LGBTQ+ film. Warm and light, the phenomenal supporting cast (especially Jennifer Garner and Natasha Rothwell) seals the deal.

10 The Handmaiden

The Handmaiden
CJ Entertainment

Park Chan-wook erotically navigates a budding relationship between a young con artist and the woman she has been paid to dupe. Exquisitely constructed with jaw-dropping twists and turns, The Handmaiden is extremely graphic, both in its sex scenes between the two women and its occasional bursts of violence—and yet utterly tender as it explores the lust and love of two women as they fight back against the men who've wronged them.

9 The Normal Heart

The Normal Heart
HBO

HBO's moving drama The Normal Heart combines LGBTQ+ activist Larry Kramer's emotionally devastating play with director Ryan Murphy's penchant for thoughtful character development to great effect. The performances in the film are routinely excellent, especially Jim Parsons, introducing a beautiful group of people the audience simply wants to spend time with, and the story benefits greatly from the authentic live experiences of Kramer throughout his time in the 1980's as an AIDS activist.

8 Carol

Carol
The Weinstein Company

Todd Haynes' first feature, Poison, was a subversive and seminal work in the New Queer Cinema movement, and 15 years later the great American director proved that he's still cinematically invested in the LGBTQ+ experience with Carol. Meticulously crafted in the vein of 1950's Technicolor melodramas like All That Heaven Allows (which Haynes once remade), Carol utilizes the female gaze like almost no other modern film, with sensual help from Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett. Their relationship is explored amidst the repressive Norman Rockwell-style backdrop, and the development from fascination to lust and later love is both poetic and erotic.

7 Weekend

Weekend
Peccadillo Pictures

This extremely low-budget romantic drama (costing roughly $120,000) from British director Andrew Haigh chronicles one whirlwind weekend between two initial strangers, like a queer Before Sunrise, capturing the fleeting ephemera of desire and love-at-first-sight. With its frank observations of modern sexuality and intimate, naturalistic direction, Weekend's depiction of 21st century romance transcends its minimalist trappings to become something heartfelt and true.

6 Pariah

Pariah
Focus Features

A black teenager, played by the wonderful Adepero Oduye in her first leading role in a feature, discovers her sexuality and identity in Dee Rees' debut, Pariah. The director and actor worked together on a short version of the film years prior, and their experience together creates something tenderly authentic about the specificity of the black LGBTQ+ experience; the two obviously know each other and the world they're trying to create really well. With amazing cinematography, the movie expertly emulates the joy and curiosity in Oduye's journey of self-discovery, and is considered to be one of the best "coming out" stories cpatured on film.

Related: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Introduces Adepero Oduye as Falcon's Sister

5 Call Me By Your Name

Call Me By Your Name
Sony Pictures Classic

Luca Guadagnino's sumptiously directed Call Me By Your Name was a surprisingly popular film, thanks in no small part to the breakthrough performance of Timothee Chalamet, who subsequently became a hearthrob sensation. Armie Hammer is also excellent, rescued from the damage The Lone Ranger could have done to his career with his sexy portrayal of a 24-year old's flirtatious advancement on the younger Chalamet. Lighthearted and gorgeous, the film manifests what the director calls "the beauty of the newborn idea of desire, unbiased and uncynical."

Related: Armie Hammer Thinks It's Too Soon For Call Me By Your Name 2

4 Tangerine

Tangerine
Magnolia Pictures

Tangerine is a groundbreaking film for several reasons-- it was shot with an iPhone 5S and still looks fantastic, inspiring amateur directors everywhere; it starts two transgender actors and launched the first Academy Award campaign for transgender individuals; it features BIPOC LGBTQ+ sex-workers without denigrating them or reducing them to stereotypes. Sean Baker's film, and Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, make Tangerine one of the warmest, funniest, and raw depictions of any marginalized group.

3 Blue is the Warmest Color

Blue is the Warmest Color
Wild Bunch

This incredibly erotic French film introduced the LGBTQ+ experience to many people for the first time; some viewers went in to see graphic lesbian sex scenes but came out with a deeper appreciation and understanding of aspects of human experience which were unfamiliar to them. Led by committed, generous performances from Lea Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos, who literally give their all in the film, Blue is the Warmest Color is a three-hour epic of character development detailing the confusion and excitement of coming-of-age and exploring one's ownidentity and desires.

2 The Favourite

The Favourite
Fox Searchlight Pictures

Nominated for ten Oscars (and winning for Olivia Colman's layered performance), Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite is a bizarre, delightful subversion of haughty historical dramas and pretentious period pieces. Traversing the witty, jealous love triangle between two women and the Queen of England in 1711, the movie expertly juggles comedy and farce with melancholy and eroticism, all grounded by three excellent performances. Playfully provocative in the way it dismantles the heteronormative bias within the study of history, and sensitive in how it sits with women sexuality, loneliness, and companionship, The Favourite is one of the decade's best films.

Related: The Favourite Review: A Wickedly Funny & Ruthless Competition

1 Moonlight

Moonlight
A24

Moonlight pulled it off. Against all odds, this quiet, searing drama somehow managed to upset the Academy Awards (literally and figuratively) and break ground with its Best Picture win; besides being tthe first LGBTQ+ movie to win that Oscar, it was also the first all-black film to do so, and the lowest-budget and second-lowest-grossing movie to do so. Located thoughtfully at the intersection of queer and black identities, Barry Jenkins' film personifies what he has said about desiring to represent his "personal experience, what it feels like to be a young black man in America," while also movingly observing the transformation of self-awareness and identity in a person's life. Haunting in its beauty, powerful in its performances, unshakeable in its exploration of marginalization, Moonlight is a masterpiece of inclusivity which showed Hollywood how to change.