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

Spooks: The Greater Good (DVD Review)

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While Spooks (known as MI5 in the US) ended on British TV in 2012, it’s now been resurrected for the big screen with Spooks: The Greater Good. It’s certainly not necessary to have seen the show though, especially as it’s largely about new characters, with the main holdovers being the Secret Service setting and the presence of Peter Firth as counter-terrorism chief Harry Pearce.

Harry’s career comes crashing down around him after he makes the call to free dangerous terrorist Qasim (Elyes Gabel), after his prisoner transport is held up by armed men, which makes many people in MI5 feel he needs to be removed. He also becomes convinced that Qasim couldn’t have escaped without help from inside MI5, and so decides to disappear and go into hiding, in order to investigate. [Read more…]

The Third Man (Blu-ray Review)

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As you might have guessed, a lot of my friends are film fans. However, I was genuinely surprised how few of them had seen The Third Man. Everyone had heard of it, knew Orson Welles was in it and quite a few knew cuckoo clocks were involved somehow, but hardly any had seen it all the way through.

That’s a shame, as it’s a great film. The wonderful Joseph Cotten (who should be considered one of the screen’s greatest actors but normally gets overlooked) plays pulp novelist Holly Martins, who arrives in Vienna to start a new job that’s been offered to him by his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). He finds a city that in the post-war era is still in crisis and where the black market is flourishing. [Read more…]

Let’s Be Cops (Blu-ray Review)

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God bless Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr. They’re both very talented comic actors who struggle valiantly in Let’s Be Cops to make it work, but thanks to a script that’s far too dumb and clunky it’s all to little avail.

Ryan (Johnson) and Justin (Wayans) are friends who’ve reached their 30s and are struggling with the fact that neither of them are even close to living their dreams. When they’re invited to a reunion ‘costume party’ (which turns out to be a masquerade ball), they decide to go as cops. While the reunion is a disaster, they can’t help but notice the effect their police uniforms have on those they pass on the streets. [Read more…]

Oculus (Blu-ray Review)

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Tim (Brenton Thwaites) is just out of the mental institution where he’s spent most of his childhood after being blamed for the brutal death of his parents. However, while his sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan) was bounced around the foster system, she held tight to the idea that Tim wasn’t really responsible – it was the Lasser Glass, an antique mirror she is convinced has supernatural powers and which destroyed her family.

She now has possession of the Lasser Glass and takes Tim back to their old house where she has set up cameras and alarms which she believes can prove that the mirror is evil. However she may have underestimated its power, as while Tim is initially convinced his sister is just trying to deny what he did (as his psychologists have made him take responsibility), strange things start happening where neither of them can trust what they’re seeing. [Read more…]

The Other Woman (DVD Review)

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Carly (Cameron Diaz) is a lawyer who thinks she’s found the perfect man – the handsome, romantic Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). However when she tries to surprise him at his home, she discovers he’s not there, but his wife is. While Carly is ready to just dump Mark and never see him again, his wife, Kate (Leslie Mann), isn’t about to let it lie, and soon the two team up teach him a lesson.

However neither of them is prepared for the fact that Mark has another, even younger woman that he’s dating (Kate Upton), and may also be involved in some shady dealing. Together all three women set out to take revenge. [Read more…]

Goddess (DVD Review)

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Elspeth (Laura Michelle Kelly) is a young mother who’s been transplanted along with her family from the UK to rural Australia. However it’s not proving the idyll she’d hoped, as with her husband James (Ronan Keating) constantly away at sea she’s having to raise young twins alone. She doesn’t even have any friends.

When James gives her a webcam to help them keep in touch, she decides to let the world into her kitchen with a webcast where she sings ‘sink songs’. The idea becomes popular and soon catches the eye of a Sydney marketing whizz (Magda Szubanski), who wants to make Elspeth a star. However as she gets caught up in a whirlwind of possible fame, she risks losing her family. [Read more…]

Vampire Academy (DVD Review)

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There have been a vast array of films in the last few years that have bid to be the new Twilight or Harry Potter. While Vampire Academy may not have ever been likely to have hit those heights, there were hopes it could carve out its own niche. Instead it pretty much sank without trace, partly because it’s so busy trying to be other popular franchises – or perhaps parodying them – that it never becomes anything on its own.

The film’s mythology follows three races of being – the Moroi, who are a mortal, largely benevolent magical race but who have to live on blood; the Strigoi, who are the evil, immortal vampires of myths; and the half-bloodsucker Dhampir, a warrior race who protect the Moroi. [Read more…]

Inside Llewyn Davis (Blu-ray Review)

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It just goes to show how useful it is to have a ‘name’ in the film world. If most filmmakers had said they wanted to make a movie about a misanthropic 1960s folk singer who spends the first 25 minutes of the film trying to get a cat back to its owner, they’d have been laughed out of the room. However the Coen Brothers have the sort of clout that can get things done.

And while not one of their best, Inside Llewyn Davis is not a bad movie at all. [Read more…]

Kill Your Darlings (DVD)

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When reading the press surrounding Kill Your Darlings, you could have been forgiven for thinking it was a movie all about Harry Potter having bum sex. Half the questions Daniel Radcliffe and director John Krokidas were asked seemed to be about the sex scene. However that’s only a very small part of the movie, and while Radcliffe does indeed get bummed, it’s merely part of a montage rather than anything with a big fanfare.

The movie is actually about some of the Beat generation writers and their brethren before they became well known, following one of the infamous events that helped shape who they were. Radcliffe plays Allen Ginsberg, who would go on to be the openly gay man behind the wonderful Howl. He heads to Columbia University, where he immediately riles against the college’s old fashioned attitude to literature and poetry. [Read more…]

Querelle (Blu-ray)

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Ever since it was first screened in 1982, Querelle has divided audiences. Some are drawn in by its complex exploration of sexuality, its theatrical look and tone, and the way it creates a totally fake world that feels oddly real. Others however can never get past its pretentious edges and the fact it is so deliberately artificial.

The 1982 movie was the final film of the storied Rainer Werner Fassbinder and it’s one of his most personal. While based on the dense and difficult Jean Genet novel, Querelle De Brest, it’s filtered through Fassbinder’s own life experience and the fact he’d come to realise that he was gay himself (he had a rather complex sexuality). It’s an impressive mix, keeping the philosophical literary pretensions of Genet, while turning a book most thought was unfilmable into something that feels almost like a trip into one man’s mind. [Read more…]