EW.com sheds tears over the gays

I admit it: I’m addicted to movie lists. Everything from the AFI’s list to "The 50 Best Date Movies Ever" gets my attention, and the more random, the better ("Greatest Pizza Moments on Film", anyone?). I can’t get enough of ‘em.

This is exactly why visiting Entertainment Weekly’s online division never fails to make me ridiculously happy: there’s always some new list to peruse and debate over. Their latest, "The 50 Best Movie Tearjerkers Ever" (see the top 25 HERE), is pure genius. Filled with loads of great movies, the list provides the reasoning behind each film’s inclusion and even pinpoints each film’s "Kleenex Moment"; the scene guaranteed to reduce the viewer to a sobbing, blubbery mess. Best of all, the list includes several notable gay titles.

Philadelphia (at a respectable 35th place) is the first to make the cut. Says EW.com:

It's rare that a movie with all-male headliners is a weeper. But when there's a fatal illness involved, the crying's anyone's game. Tom Hanks plays Andrew Beckett, an attorney wrongfully canned by his firm for having AIDS, and Denzel Washington is the attorney who fights for his rights. Hanks' Oscar-winning portrayal of a dying man is second to none; overacting would have killed the otherwise thin role, but his quiet, heroic demeanor is perfect.

See the gays films that made the top 25, after the break.

Longtime Companion (22nd place):

In 1981, an article in The New York Times identified the "gay cancer" that would ultimately ravage the homosexual population. That item's appearance opens Companion (the title refers to the newspaper-obituary euphemism for gay partners), a film that deftly injects the disease-of-the-week formula with a political agenda, providing its audience with the human face of AIDS. In a series of vignettes that take place over a decade, those faces, an appealing group of loosely connected Manhattanites of varying ages and socioeconomic and romantic status (some of whom get sick, some who don't), eloquently represent an era filled with fear and loss.

And, as if you had any doubt, the top ranking gay tearjerker on the list: Brokeback Mountain (cracking the top ten, at 6th place).

Ang Lee's awe-inspiring Western masterpiece follows Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger), a tight-mouthed tough guy who falls in love with his fellow cowpoke Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) but is unable — or, rather, unwilling — to take the relationship past the occasional tryst. Two years since its release, there's no denying that the whole hoopla over Brokeback and its frank sexuality overshadowed a poignant part of its narrative being: proof that cowboys most certainly do cry.