Love, Simon

The travails of teenage romance get even more complicated when you're hiding your true sexuality, as a 17-year-old boy discovers, in the first mainstream Hollywood teen movie to feature a gay central character. Nick Robinson's Simon is a pretty average middle American adolescent - except that he's increasingly anxious about coming out and finding love if it means friends and his doting parents (Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Garner, both terrific) will start treating him differently. Clearly styled after the milestone John Hughes teen movies of the 1980s, the film's astute ensemble approach underlines how all high-schoolers, gay or straight, struggle with self-esteem and finding the right moment to tell someone you fancy them. Since time has moved on, social media plays a major role, the anonymity of the chatroom allowing Simon to find an online soulmate who may possibly be at the same school. Accessible and inclusive, this is a major pop-culture breakthrough, offering authentic validation for LGBT teens, worthwhile insights for hetero viewers, and crowd-pleasing entertainment for everyone.