Big Gay Picture Show

Taking a look at the world of film through gay eyes - news, reviews, trailers, gay film, queer cinema and more

Taking a look at the world of film through gay eyes - news, reviews, trailers, gay film, queer cinema & more

DVD and BLU-RAY REVIEWS

The latest reviews from the world of home entertainment

Manchester By The Sea (Blu-ray Review) – Inside broken lives doing their best in the Oscar-winning film

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Despite allegations of past sexual assault swirling around Casey Affleck, he picked up the Best Actor Oscar for Manchester By The Sea, with Kenneth Lonergan also winning an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Judging purely from what’s on the screen, you can see why they won, as Affleck puts in an extremely good performance, working from a nicely nuanced script which prizes emotion but tries to avoid cliché.

Affleck is Lee Chandler, who’s working as a janitor in Boston. He drinks too much, barely socialises and gets in trouble for being rude to tenants. He gets a call to say that his brother has died and so he heads to his hometown of Manchester, Massachusetts. Lee also knows he’ll have to help look after his teenage nephew, Patrick (Lucas Hedges) but isn’t prepared for that fact his brother has named him as Patrick’s guardian, something he doesn’t feel vaguely able to handle. [Read more…]

Assassin’s Creed (DVD Review) – Michael Fassbender brings the videogame to life

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After witnessing the aftermath of his mother’s murder as a child, Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender) has been on the run and fighting to survive, something that’s left him on death row. After his ‘execution’, he wakes up in a strange facility. The people who run it, led by Sofia (Marion Cotillard), have gotten hold of him because they want to awaken the ‘genetic memories’ he holds, which they can access through a machine called the Animus.

Once attached the contraption, he relives events that took place 500 years ago involving his ancestor, Aguilar de Nerha, who was part of The Assassins, a secret group fighting to stop the Templars taken over Christendom and ruling it with an iron fist. That involves a search for the Apple of Eden, where man’s freewill comes from. [Read more…]

Fallen (DVD Review) – Jeremy Irvine’s been in angelic love for thousands of years

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Poor old Jeremy Irvine. He turned down both Hunger Games and Divergent, and when he does finally decide to go properly young adult, he appears in a bit of a Turkey.

Addison Timlin is Luce, a teenage girl sent to a school for disturbed kids after she was seemingly involved in the death of a boy. She also says she’s been seeing strange shadows for years, which ensures plenty of people think he’s nuts. [Read more…]

Swiss Army Man (Blu-ray Review) – Things get a little gay between a man & Daniel Radcliffe’s farting corpse

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It’s the call every actor dreams about, when someone asks them, ‘Will you play a farting corpse which has a direction-finding erection?’ The lucky man to get that role was Daniel Radcliffe, who stars as a dead guy dubbed Manny. He’s found washed up on a beach by Hank (Paul Dano), a man stranded on an island whose just about to kill himself. However, discovering Manny starts to change Hank’s perspective – not least because it allows Hank to ride the massively flatulent body back to the mainland.

Although Manny is definitely dead, things take an unexpected turn when he starts to talk, and also reveal other powers that help Hank survive in the wilderness. However, Manny has no memory of his previous existence, so Hank begins to teach him about life and love, and in the process begins to think that perhaps there are things worth living for. That includes a woman whose picture is on a phone, as well as in the growing relationship between Hank and Manny, which moves towards being a romance. Oh, and there’s Manny’s erection, which helps point them in the direction they need to go to. [Read more…]

Snowden (Blu-ray Review) – Oliver Stone looks into the life of the whistleblower

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Pretty much everyone has heard of Edward Snowden, but Oliver Stone wants to take us behind the headlines to look at the man himself and what he was exposing when he leaked top secret information about what spying agencies were up to. The movie opens at the end, with Snowden in a Hong Kong hotel room, preparing to go on record with what he knows and the information he’s releasing. Most of the rest of the film is told in flashback, when a young Ed is forced out of the military and gets a job at the CIA in the days after 9/11. Along with his new career, he starts a relationship with the lefty, arty Lindsay (Shailene Woodley).

Initially pleased to be helping the US prevent another major terrorist attack, but after working for the CIA and then as an NSA contractor, Snowden becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the massive surveillance network the government has built. Secret projects and operations allow the spying agencies to go far beyond just finding the bad guys, and give them the ability to hide illegal activities and mistakes, and to track pretty much anyone and everything they choose, whether they’ve done anything wrong or not. [Read more…]

Moana (Blu-ray Review) – Disney has a lot of fun in the Pacific

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A few years ago it seemed that Disney animation was slightly heading into the wilderness, but more recently they’ve come back with a vengeance, and a series of major hits including Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen and Zootropolis. That has continued with Moana, which brings us a new Polynesian Disney Princess.

Moana is the daughter of the chief of her island. While her grandmother talks of her people’s proud seafaring past, the Chief has banned people from going too far from the island, due to the dangers of the deep. However, the crops are failing and they can’t catch any fish. The reason for that is that years before, the demigod Maui caused the blight by stealing the heart of the goddess, Te Fiti. [Read more…]

Bleed For This (Blu-ray Review) – Miles Teller breaks his neck but still wants to box

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Bleed For This is based on the true story of Vinny Pazienza, as played by Miles Teller. Having had difficulty making his weight for his Lightweight bouts, world champion boxer Vinny ends up in hospital with severe dehydration, and decides to move up a weight. However, shortly after becoming only the second person to become the world Junior Middleweight champ after being a Lightweight champion, he’s involved in a serious car accident which breaks his neck.

The doctors don’t know whether he will ever walk again, but Vinny insists they fit him with a large metal halo in the hope that not only will he regain full function, but his neck will recover enough that he will be able to fight. Although those around him feel he should give up boxing, he is determined to get back in the ring. With a single-minded drive he strives to get back to full fitness, and to take a shot at another world championship belt. [Read more…]

The Edge Of Seventeen (DVD Review) – Teen life gets a bit much for Haillee Steinfeld

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Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) is a teenage girl who feels likes an outcast. She only has one friend, Krista (Hayley Lu Richardson), and has difficulty with both her perfect brother Darian (Blake Jenner) and her neurotic mother (Kyra Sedgwick). Things seem to be getting even worse when she walks in on Krista and Darian in bed, leading to a complete breakdown in her relationship with both her best friend and her brother.

As her social awkwardness and desperation intensifies – including a difficult situation involving a hot guy and a sext – she may be overlooking something good with a boy who’s interested in her, but who she doesn’t really see in a romantic light. [Read more…]

Arrival (Blu-ray Review) – Worthy of its eight Oscar nominations?

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It’s very rare for a sci-fi film to get Oscar nominations outside of the technical categories, so it’s truly exceptional that Arrival scored eight of them, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actress. It may have won just one Academy Award – Best Achievement in Sound Editing – but it’s still highly unusual.

In the movie, the world is shocked when 12 mysterious ovoid spaceships arrive at various points around the planet, hanging in the sky. One of them is over American soil, so the government decides it needs to know what’s going on. Inside the ship are two aliens – which look like a cross between trees and octopuses – but there’s no way to communicate with them. [Read more…]

The Light Between Oceans (Blu-ray Review) – Michael Fassbender & Alicia Vikander go romantic baby-stealing

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After the end of the First World War, former soldier Tom Sherbourne (Michael Fassbender) takes a job as the keeper of an isolated lighthouse off the coast of Australia. While he’s hoping for some time alone, he’s surprised to find romance with the young Isabel (Alicia Vikander), who soon becomes his wife. Their happiness on the remote island is hampered by the fact she loses several children during pregnancy.

Fate then intervenes when a boat washes up on the shore with a dead man and a live baby in it. While Tom knows he must signal the mainland about this unexpected development, his wife realises that if they stay silent, no one is likely to question whether the child was theirs or not. After deciding to keep the baby girl, Tom accidentally discovers whose child it really is, and that there’s a grieving mother on the mainland. [Read more…]