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

Land Of Storms (Iris Prize Festival 2014 Review)

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Land Of Storms centres around a promising yet troubled and angry football player, Szabi, played with high-quality brooding by Andras Suto. No longer enjoying the beautiful game, Szabi moves back to Hungary to the house he inherited from his grandfather. When he starts to renovate the house, which has become very tumbledown and rotten due to vandalism and lack of care, he meets a young man called Arun (Adam Varga) who lives nearby. Szabi and Arun begin to work on the house together and as they get to know each other, a deeper relationship starts to blossom.

Eventually the extremely religious and intolerant locals, never keen on Arun’s relationship with this newcomer, start to understand that there’s something more than friendship between the two. Add to that the appearance of Szabi’s German friend and possible lover Bernard (Sebastian Urzendowsky), and a three-way dynamic begins to unfold, which the locals don’t like at all. [Read more…]

A Man, His Mother And His Lover (DVD Review)

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Lorenz (Fabian Krüger) is a successful writer who’s made a name with his gay-themed literature. He’s called back from Berlin to his small Swiss hometown after his mother, Rosie (Sibylle Brunner), has a stroke. While she’s determined to get back to normal, with her health declining and her refusal to stop drinking too much, she may have to go into a home.

While dealing with Rosie, Lorenz also bumps into Mario (Sebastian Ledesman), a young man he knew when he was a kid but who is now all grown up and gay himself. Mario seems interested in Lorenz, but after spending the night together Lorenz starts to push Mario away, even if he isn’t sure himself why he’s so intent on backing away from this possible romance. [Read more…]

Tom At The Farm (DVD Review)

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This is Xavier Dolan’s fourth film as a director, and he’s still only 25. It’s difficult to know whether to be impressed or whether to dislike him on principle. Indeed that’s true of much about Dolan – he has a supreme confidence that is simultaneously exciting and a little exasperating, his grasp of plot and theme is both engrossing and frustratingly underdeveloped, and he manages to imbue his films with a hipster vibe that is too pleased with itself and yet gives his films an unexpected vibrancy.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (DVD Review)

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After Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck comes Chris Pine as Jack Ryan, with a film that attempts to relaunch the Tom Clancy-based franchise for a new generation. As with the Ben Affleck effort, Shadow Recruit takes us back to the early days of Ryan, this time setting him up as a Marine injured in Afghanistan who is then recruited by the CIA to use his superior intellect as an analyst inside top banks, in order to try and track funding for terrorism.

It’s supposed to be a desk job, but he’s still not allowed to tell his girlfriend, Cathy (Keira Knightley), he’s in the CIA until they’re married. Ryan uncovers hidden accounts that suggest some rich Russians plan to destroy the American economy by tanking the dollar and coinciding that with a terrorist attack. His handler, Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner), decides to send Jack to Moscow as he is the only one who understands the complex financial information. [Read more…]

Tom At The Farm (Tom à la ferme) (Cinema/DVD)

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This is Xavier Dolan’s fourth film as a director, and he’s still only 25. It’s difficult to know whether to be impressed or whether to dislike him on principle. Indeed that’s true of much about Dolan – he has a supreme confidence that is simultaneously exciting and a little exasperating, his grasp of plot and theme is both engrossing and frustratingly underdeveloped, and he manages to imbue his films with a hipster vibe that is too pleased with itself and yet gives his films an unexpected vibrancy.

All that’s true of Tom At The Farm, even if it is a bit of a sidestep from his earlier movies into the world of the psychosexual thriller. [Read more…]

The Frozen Ground (DVD)

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Back in 1997 John Cusack was busy trying to track down Nicolas Cage in Con Air. Now the roles have been reversed in The Frozen Ground. Based on a true story, Cage is Alaska State Trooper Jack Holcombe, who believes a serial killer is on the loose after several bodies are found in the wilderness. He even believes he knows exactly who it is after one of the victims, Cindy Paulson (Vanessa Hudgens), escapes and says she was held captive by Robert Hansen (Cusack). [Read more…]

A Magnificent Haunting (DVD)

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Pietro is a rather obsessive, anal man, who moves to Rome in hope of finding work of an actor, and which will also allow him to be closer to a man he’s been in contact with. Before then he’s going to work in a bakery while living in a rather rundown apartment.

Shortly after moving in he discovers he’s not the only tenant, as the house is full of ghosts dressed in 1940s clothes. Initially Pietro can’t understand what’s going on, but soon comes to realise these are people who were once part of a World War II era theatre group, but who don’t realise they’re dead. He wants them out, as well as for them to stop moving his things around, but eventually he finds a way to live with them. As he finds out more about them it begins to change his life, even though his growing relationship with the spooks has others wondering about his sanity. [Read more…]

The Iceman (DVD)

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The Iceman is a textbook case of how to take a fascinating true story and make it far duller than it actually ought to be. It can’t quite decide whether it wants to ditch the facts and just be a rollicking story or stick close to the truth in order go deep into reality – and its indecision results in a film that doesn’t seem to know quite what it’s for, other than killing a lot of people. [Read more…]

A Late Quartet (DVD)

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The world famous Fugue Quartet has reformed a year after cellist Peter’s wife passed away. Determined to play Beethoven’s notoriously challenging Opus 131, the aging Peter (Walken) is now facing retirement due to the early onset of Parkinson’s, while second violinist Robert (Hoffman) and his wife, violist Juliette (Keener), have reached a breaking point in their relationship. All the while the cold first violin, Daniel (Ivanir), refuses to accept that the people in his quartet are struggling to survive together. Can the quartet keep it together for one last grand farewell to Peter? [Read more…]

Side Effects (DVD)

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I don’t think they did the early marketing of Side Effects very well, particularly in the US, as it was presented as if this was in the vein of Steven Soderbergh’s ensemble tales like Traffic and Contagion, but this time taking on the pharmaceutical industry. However it isn’t anything really like them – although it rather deliberately starts out like them and retains a streak of questioning our love of prescription drugs – as this is really a full-on twisty, turny thriller designed to keep you guessing as to what’s really going on. [Read more…]