[caption id="attachment_172388" align="alignnone" width="500"] Emma Thompson in 2003's Angels in America[/caption]

Mike Nichols, one of the greatest stage and screen directors in America, died this week at age 83. While everyone should see films like The Graduate, Primary Colors and Postcards from the Edge and The Graduate, we call out five films every gay person should see below.

5. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Nichols first effort as a film director, the 1966 adaptation of gay playwright Edward Albee's stage play earned him an Oscar nomination. Elizabeth Taylor brought a drag queen's worth of fire and rage to the role of Martha, the unsatisfied wife of meek professor George (real life paramour Richard Burton), as the two host a young couple one evening.

Some have claimed the couples in Woolf are meant to represent gay men, though between the one liners and the behind-the-scenes drama with Liz and Dick, we don't need another reason to love this movie.

4. Silkwood

Based on the true story of nuclear-power whistleblower Karen Silkwood, this 1983 film helped elevate Meryl Streep into the kind of star who can open a film.

It also introduced America to Cher as a serious actress, earning an Oscar nomination as Silkwood's lesbian best friend, Dolly.

3. Working Girl 

While this Oscar contender from 1988 doesn't have any overtly gay content, gays took to its message of overcoming obstacles to earn your place at the table. Sigourney Weaver made for a terrifically bitchy boss, and Melanie Griffith's Tess, the woman with "a head for business and a bod for sin," was someone we could relate to.

Plus: what queer New Yorker hasn't sung "Let the River Run" while riding the Staten Island Ferry?

2. The Birdcage

1. Angels in America

Technically an HBO miniseries and not a film, Nichols' adaptation of Tony Kushner's groundbreaking play about the early AIDS crisis is perhaps the best screen adaptation of a play, period.

Nicholas' last collaboration with Streep sees her taking a variety of roles—an elder rabbi, Ethel Rosenberg, a dour Mormon mother—alongside fellow heavyweights Al Pacino, Mary Louise Parker, Patrick Wilson, Emma Thompson and Jeffrey Wright in a story that blends fact and fiction, religion and science, AIDS and revelation. It's not just entertainment, not just enlightening—it's a piece of art for the ages.