20 Underrated Movies You Have To See

If you're ever in the mood for an informative but emotionally devastating drama, you need look no further than Ryan Murphy's The Normal Heart. Released in 2014 on HBO and based on the play of the same name by the late Larry Kramer, the film features an ensemble cast led by Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Alfred Molina, Julia Roberts, Jim Parsons and Taylor Kitsch, and some of cinema's most harrowing and powerful scenes.

Focusing on the AIDs crisis between 1981 and 1984, the film follows activist Ned Weeks (played by Ruffalo and a pseudonym of Kramer), who founds a prominent HIV advocacy group in New York. Painting a frank and revealing portrait of an infuriating and deeply upsetting time in recent history, the film mainly centres of Weeks, his closeted lover Felix (Bomer) and the disagreements in strategy he has with his fellow advocates.

Thanks to mesmerising and respectful, passionate performances from Ruffalo, Bomer (who won a Golden Globe), Molina and Parsons in particular, The Normal Heart is more than a thrilling and heart-wrenching drama, it is also a concise and poetic documentation on the AIDs crisis and those who witnessed (and lived) it first hand.