Philadelphia

6. "Philadelphia" (1993)

Tom Hanks's Andrew Beckett, the legal eagle who's suing his former firm for unlawful termination because he's afflicted with the AIDS virus, is the primary focus of Jonathan Demme's timely melodrama. Yet that doesn't mean that Washington's ambulance-chasing... more lawyer Joe Miller is any less significant to the story. For better or worse, he's a stand-in for every well-intentioned person who suffers from knee-jerk homophobia and considers the plague a "gay disease." But watch Denzel's eyes as he's unpleasantly sized up by a white gentleman in a library, and then sees someone else treat Hanks's homosexual like a leper seconds later. It's as if a veil is lifted when his character finally connects the dots that sexual prejudices are no different than racial ones, and in the end it's Miller who guides the viewer on a journey from ignorance to understanding.

(Image: Everett Collection)