Stonewall

1995 Directed by Nigel Finch

The fight for the right to love

A group of homosexual people try to live with dignity and self-respect while events build to the opening battle in the major gay rights movement.

Guillermo Díaz Frederick Weller Brendan Corbalis Duane Boutte Bruce MacVittie Nicole Ari Parker Matthew Faber Isaiah Washington

99 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Carlos (Ctron3120)

If you feel so empty
So used up, so let down
If you feel so angry
So ripped off, so stepped on
You're not the only one
Refusing to back down
You're not the only one
So get up
Let's start a riot, a riot
Let's start a riot
Let's start a riot, a riot
Let's start a riot
If you feel so filthy
So dirty, so fucked up
If you feel so walked on
So painful, so pissed off
You're not the only one
Refusing to go down
You're not the only one
So get up
Let's start a riot, a riot
Let's start a riot
Let's start a riot, a riot
Let's start a riot
If you feel…
Review by mac 🦕 ★★★½

Stonewall (1995) > Stonewall (2015)
Will always be the superior Stonewall movie
Review by Julius Kassendorf ★★★

"To be honest, this edition of Stonewall seems less to be an accurate depiction of the Stonewall Riots than a reminder for how far the gay community had come since the 1960s. No longer were the gay bars run by a mob establishment and subject to police raids. No longer were awareness marches tiny affairs of maybe 30 people. Sure you may have had to be paranoid if you were in the closet, but gays had come a long way baby and they sure weren’t stopping then. The riots? Merely an afterthought.
1995’s Stonewall will never be as polished as a Hollywood feature. It’s storytelling conceit – the jump between docudrama and Drag-Queens-As-Greek-Chorus-By-Way-Of-1960s-Pop-Hits – seems inspired at first, but becomes…
Review by Edith Nelson ★★★★

Revolution, Not Riot
Man, the poster that Letterboxd has irritates me. I'm not sure the image is ever in the movie. We do see the person on the right not in drag once or twice, but for the most part, no. For the majority of the movie, what we are seeing is a romance between a white guy who could pass as straight and a Hispanic (probably Puerto Rican, given New York) drag queen. There's never an implication that the white guy is "really" looking for a girlfriend. He loves his boyfriend as a man, even though he also loves when his boyfriend dresses up as a woman. He loves her flashy drag persona, and when he gets angry at…
Review by León ⚡ Serratos ★★★

Un regalito de Mr. B. basada en la novela de Martin Duberman. Homosexuales luchando por sus derechos en la década de los a finales de los 60. Esta épica de Nigel Finch me llegó fuera de tiempo. No estaba listo y me aburrió. La historia es muy interesante pero, al gusto de un heterosexual veinteañero le pareció aburrida, tediosa y cansada.
Nigel Finch murió un un año después de esta película.

Recent reviews

Review by Matthew Cheney ★★★

Often stagey, sometimes awkward, this depiction of gay NY in the late 1960s is nonetheless entertaining and even endearing, particularly thanks to a wonderful lead performance by Guillermo Díaz.
Review by Carlos (Ctron3120)

If you feel so empty
So used up, so let down
If you feel so angry
So ripped off, so stepped on
You're not the only one
Refusing to back down
You're not the only one
So get up
Let's start a riot, a riot
Let's start a riot
Let's start a riot, a riot
Let's start a riot
If you feel so filthy
So dirty, so fucked up
If you feel so walked on
So painful, so pissed off
You're not the only one
Refusing to go down
You're not the only one
So get up
Let's start a riot, a riot
Let's start a riot
Let's start a riot, a riot
Let's start a riot
If you feel…
Review by Francisco Ríos Telles ★

Bastante divertida y conmovedora. Me faltó más de la confrontación final con los polis. Actuaciones bastante buenas!
Review by JoKatz ★★★★½

Great for Pride TV
Review by Political Films ★★★★½

In the early morning hours of 28 June 1969 in front of the New York bar Stonewall there was a violent confrontation between police and a large number of gays, lesbians, transvestites…
This movie follows a young gay who just arrived in town, several drag queens who are regulars in Stonewall and a group of gay activists in the days preceding the riot. Stonewall was a gay bar in Greenwich Village where the poorest people from the gay community used to go – transvestites, homeless gay youth, male prostitutes, and others from the margin. At the same time it was the only gay bar in New York where dancing was allowed.
In this period, little was allowed to gays in…
Review by hilmanoid

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

"Stonewall" begins and ends with drag queen La Miranda speaking to the audience, looking into the camera and asserting that the tale as told is hers: her Stonewall legend. I would not have known if she had not told me. The film’s multiple, interweaving narrative threads often leave her seeming like a supporting character in what is ostensibly her story. This is not necessarily a negative, as it points to the expansiveness of the film’s scope. What is disagreeable, though, is whose perspectives the film then favours.
In the two relationships most keenly explored in "Stonewall" - between La Miranda and Matty Dean, and between Bostonia and Vinnie - it is the white cis male in the pairs whom the…
Review by Reece Roberts ★★★★★

Basically this film is amazing.
The only film about Stonewall that should exist.
It's funny, campy, and most importantly Q.U.E.E.R. (Right On)
I love the drag scenes. They're my favorite. So simple but so magical.
The exploration of police brutality was interesting. And the double standards that was explored in a couple of scenes of life on Fire Island. The fact that A) they couldn't dance until, the token female hit the dance floor, that they where policing themselves to what was acceptable, seemed like a totally different place to the Fire Island that exists today (even though I've never been).
Sure, some scenes are fabricated stretched out versions of the truth, but that's what all good legends are, and as drag artists, the truth is just another exaggerated form of reality.
The only gaff, I have with the film is the sound quality and design hasn't dated very well. "Everybody's liberal when they're in front of the press."
Review by mac 🦕 ★★★½

Stonewall (1995) > Stonewall (2015)
Will always be the superior Stonewall movie
Review by Hunter ★★★½

A pretty imperfect film that taps into some great ideas while trying to do too much in 100 minutes
Review by Craig White ★★★★

From my TIFF 1995 reviews:
Just when I needed it "Stonewall" ended the day for me on quite an up-note. It tells the fictionalized story of the events leading up to and including the Stonewall Riot in New York in 1969 that essentially kick-started the Gay Rights Movement. The film introduces us to a number of characters all with their own ideas of what it means to be gay and their own visions of how they want to achieve rights and respect. The film is very well put together - entertaining and informing, not pedantic; it's a history lesson a la Priscilla. Following the film was the best of the Question and Answer sessions I've seen this year - lots…
Review by breakingbooty ★★★½

"Everyone has their own Stonewall legend, that's mine. I maybe didn't get exactly every detail down perfect but that's the story of my life honey. What the hell, I am a drag queen and we don't always deal in reality. You could say we kinda deal in something realer. We deal in dreams. We're American as apple pie."
- La Miranda
Review by NonDexterous ★★★½

A narrative film about the riot which catalysed American gay rights, directed by a British documentary filmmaker, produced by the East Coast doyenne of New Queer Cinema and co-financed by the BBC. A distinctive production context to be sure and one befitting a story of improbable but ultimately enfranchising coalitions.
As the film acknowledges in an opening montage of talking heads, the specifics of what took place during the riot are still widely contested. This was a Heffalump trap the recent Roland Emmerich film about Stonewall blundered into, making Jeremy Irvine's wholesome white dreamboat the story's focal point and the riot's initiator.
This film has a similar plot line to the later version but the script is more varied in…

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