My [str8] best friend badgered me until watched this, which until I did I had known nothing about. I enjoyed its optimistic if glib and revisionist take on recent history, but it did remind me how much I hated Thatcher (and Reagan) and there is a hint of what it was like to be openly gay and political in the early 80s, when our friends were just starting to die. There are a dozen better movies about this period but I still appreciate its idealism and its attempt to depict political bridge-building, which the tumblr kiddies now call "intersectionality" and we just called "common sense."

I’m afraid to fact-check this movie, as I do any film that purports to be based on a true story. I want to believe it's true, and I'll take that hope over all the cynicism represented in most of the Oscar nominees of this and every year, whether it's the rich-people-making-fun-of-other-rich people maneuvers in a clever indulgence like Gone Girl or the faux-avant-garde self-regard in a piece of shit like Birdman.

Bronski Beat's Why? in the soundtrack and in a faked performance from the band in the film's big fundraiser, has never sounded angrier, or more wild and beautiful.