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

Book Club (DVD Review) – A cast of living legends reads Fifty Shades of Grey

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

For decades four female friends have been getting together for a monthly book club. However, while this started when they were in their youth, they now all facing the fact they’re aging. Diane (Diane Keaton) is a relatively recent widow being pressured by her daughters to move to nearer to them in Arizona, as they think she’s too old to manage by herself. Carol (Mary Steenburgen) is stuck in a rut with her husband, while federal judge Sharon (Candice Bergen) has completely given up on the idea of either love or sex. Finally there’s Vivian (Jane Fonda), a woman who’s never had a problem finding sex but has always disdained the idea of settling down with one person.

Rather than their typical book club novels, the quartet decide to read Fifty Shades Of Grey. After discovering the Red Room shenanigans that Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele get up to, the four women start to shake up their own lives. That may not involve BDSM, but it does set them thinking about what they really want from their remaining years. [Read more…]

My Own Private Idaho: Premium Collection (Blu-ray Review) – Gus Van Sant’s gay classic gets a new release

By 1 Comment

Starring: , , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

My Own Private Idaho is the sort of film that really shouldn’t work. The movie apparently came about when writer/director Gus Van Sant was working on three separate scripts and then decided to merge them all together. The result is a movie that ought to be a mess. The tone and story jump about, some of its pretty random and surreal, and its Shakespearean pretentions are a bit bizarre.

However, it works. These disparate elements and tones come together, helped by an astonishing performance by River Phoenix as young hustler Mike. His character – an outsider living a marginal and disintegrating existence – is a reflection of the film itself. It ultimately becomes an unexpected masterclass of montage – where by placing seemingly disparate things side-by-side and throwing in unexpected imagery (not least the famous falling barn), it creates something unique and pulls you into a character and world in a way few other films have ever managed. [Read more…]

Professor Marston And The Wonder Women (DVD Review) – A bisexual polyamorous relationship births a comic book icon

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

It must have seemed like the perfect time for this movie. Coming just after the huge success of the Wonder Woman movie, Professor Marston And The Wonder Women explores the birth of the character. However, despite some decent reviews it didn’t make much of a dent at the box office and got none of the award love it was probably hoping for.

The Professor Marston of the title is William Moulton Marston, a psychology lecturer at Harvard in the early 1940s, whose theories include trying to promote better equality between the sexes. His smart and forceful wife, Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) is well aware of the era’s gender issues, as Harvard won’t give her a doctorate because she’s a woman. [Read more…]

Paddington 2 (Blu-ray Review) – Ben Whishaw’s bear is back and he’s heading to prison!

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

Before the first Paddington movie, a lot of people were convinced Michael Bond’s classic character couldn’t work as a live-action film. Not only was it a major success, but the sequel was even better received, with Paddington 2 becoming the first film ever to get more than 190 ‘Fresh’ reviews on RottenTomatoes, without a single negative notice. That doesn’t mean it’s the best film ever made, but it does mean it’s one that’s very difficult not to be charmed by.

Paddington (Ben Whishaw) is happily living in London with the Brown family. He wants to get his beloved Aunt Lucy a special 90th Birthday present, and sets his sights on a unique pop-up book. Just when he’s nearly got enough cash, the book is stolen and the police think the small bear is the one who took it. As a result, Paddington ends up in prison, at the mercy of a scary brute known as Knuckles (Brendan Gleeson). [Read more…]

God’s Own Country (Blu-ray Review) – Does the BAFTA-nominated gay-themed movie deserve its acclaim?

By 1 Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

In most years we’re lucky if one gay-themed movie could be classed as a crossover success, but in the UK we had two released at cinemas within weeks of one another last autumn – Call Me By Your Name and the homegrown God’s Own Country. Although the former is now a quadruple Oscar nominee and the latter isn’t (although it did score a BAFTA nomination), as God’s Own Country star Josh O’Connor has said, that’s more to do with the lack of resources for a major Oscar push than because the movie isn’t good.

God’s Own Country follows young farmer Johnny Saxby (Josh O’Connor), who lives on a remote smallholding in Yorkshire with his recently disabled father (Ian Hart) and his taciturn grandmother (Gemma Jones). With most of his schoolfriends having gone to university or moved somewhere bigger, Johnny is leading a lonely existence. He has started drinking heavily and having occasional, casual sex with guys – although with no conception that it could be more than just one-off sex. With the lambing season on its way, they decide to hire someone to help, which brings Romanian immigrant Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu) to the farm. [Read more…]

The Lego Batman Movie (Blu-ray Review) – Has the Caped Crusader gone a little gay?

By 1 Comment

The Lego Movie was a surprise to many – a film that when it was announced sounded like such a bad idea turned out to be one of the funniest, most original animated movies of the last few years, and a major hit to boost. Warner Bros. suddenly realised they had the potential for something much bigger, so rather than just putting a sequel in the works, they started working on spin-offs, including a Ninjago movie and The Lego Batman Movie.

We first met the Lego version of Batman (Will Arnett) in The Lego Movie – an arrogant vigilante convinced of his own greatness and jealous of the praise other superheroes get. He starts out the same here, saving Gotham City from The Joker and a Rogues Gallery of villains, and confident about how awesome everyone thinks he is. However, he’s also obsessed with doing things alone, with the result that when he’s back at Wayne Manor, he only has his butler Alfred (Ralph Fiennes) for company. Batman thinks that for the best, but it may be because he’s afraid of having a family. [Read more…]

A Little Lust (DVD Review) – A bullied gay teen really wants to see his favourite singer

By Leave a Comment

Rocco is 16-years-old and used to being bullied at school – even if the bullies don’t know he really is gay. Most of the time though, Rocco is more interested in hanging out with friends Maria and Mauri, and hoping that he will get laid. However, after an incident of bullying leads to a boy jumping out of a window, it leads Rocco to telling his parents the truth about his sexuality. Although the divorced Olga (Veronica Pivetti) and Manuele (Corrado Invernizzi) like to think of themselves as modern and cosmopolitan, the news they have a gay son sends them into a tailspin.

With Olga demanding her celebrity psychiatrist ex-husband get their son into therapy to get over this ‘phase’, and Manuele refusing to properly accept it, Rocco decides he needs to get out. His favourite singer has recently been outed, and announced that his latest set of tour dates will be his last. Rocco, Maria and Mauri decide to run off and see the singer in concert, escaping the problems at home. After they’ve set off across the country, Olga decides she has no choice but to follow, heading off after them with her own mother in tow – a woman who’s still upset the fascists aren’t running Italy anymore. [Read more…]

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

By Leave a Comment

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…]

10 Cloverfield Lane (DVD Review)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is having a bad time. She’s just left her fiancé and is heading away from their apartment when she gets run off the road by another vehicle. Things get even worse when she wakes up to find she’s now locked in a concrete room with no windows, chained to the wall. She discovers Howard (John Goodman) has brought her into this underground bunker.

He says the world has been attacked, pretty much everyone except him and another survivor in the bunker, Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), is dead, and the air outside is toxic. He says that she would be dead too if he hadn’t saved her. Michelle is understandably suspicious that Howard’s actually a madman who’s kidnapped her and is lying. As the trio start to live together in the bunker, Michelle begins to wonder whether, even if the outside is toxic, it’s actually a safer place to be than underground with the temperamental and possibly unhinged Howard. [Read more…]

Mr. Holmes (DVD Review)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

You’d be forgiven for thinking that a movie about an aging Sherlock Holmes would be about the famed detective back on the case solving a murder and recapturing his glory days, but Mr. Holmes is something slightly different.

Holmes (Ian McKellen) is in his 90s, living in a remote cottage after leaving his illustrious career behind 35 years before. His main company is his cook/housekeeper, Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney), her son Roger (Milo Parker) and the bees that he keeps. He’s not trying to recapture his glory days, he just wants to be able to properly remember them, as creeping senility keeps making him to forget things, including what really happened on his final case.

He knows that the ending to the tale isn’t what Watson wrote in his successful books about Sherlock, but he’s having trouble remembering exactly what it was that led him to leave his former life behind. [Read more…]