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

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Blu-ray Review) – A game (and gender-swap) like no other

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Every so often a film comes along that beats all expectations at the box office. Film commentators then race to come up with reasons for its runaway success. They tried to do that for Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, but generally came up short. After all this is a film that initially people thought would be lucky to clear $200-$300 million worldwide at the box office, but which ended up with $900 million+ and is now the highest grossing film Sony Pictures has ever made.

Is it down to the box office power of The Rock? Was it because there wasn’t much family film competition at the time it was release? Did box office watchers underestimate the love people had for the 1995 Robin Williams Jumanji movie, especially as many of those that grew up with that film now have kids of their own? [Read more…]

Stronger (Blu-ray Review) – Jake Gyllenhaal explores heroism as a Boston bombing survivor

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Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal) decides to surprise his ex-girlfriend, Erin (Tatiana Maslany), by heading to the finish line of the Boston marathon to see her cross the line. When a terrorist bomb explodes Jeff loses both his legs. Due to horrific photos of him at the bombing which quickly become iconic, he is held up by a hero by some and a prime example of ‘Boston Strong’. However, Jeff initially riles against the idea of himself as a hero, struggling with the fact that a city in need of catharsis desperately wants him to be an inspirational figure. [Read more…]

The Falls: Covenant Of Grace (US DVD Review) – Can gay Mormons RJ and Chris finally make it work?

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Not many gay films get a sequel and even fewer have become a trilogy, but The Falls has now done just that. The first movie followed young RJ (Nick Ferrucci) and Chris (Benjamin Farmer), who fall in love during their Mormon mission, knowing that they risk being thrown out of their religion if their relationship is discovered. The follow-up, The Falls: Testament Of Love, picked up the story several years later, with RJ living a gay life but Chris back deep in the closet, with a wife and child, trying to live a ‘good’ Mormon life.

Things still aren’t completely running smooth when The Falls: Covenant Of Grace opens. Chris is now out of his marriage, but he and Chris are still having difficulty sorting out where their relationship stands and where it’s going in the future, especially as they’re living in different parts of the country. After the Church of Latter-Day Saints announces that it isn’t just against the baptism of children of same-sex couples, but doesn’t think their kids should be welcomed into the Church at all, RJ and Chris decide to get together for the weekend in the hope figuring out where they stand. [Read more…]

A Girl At My Door (DVD Review)

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South Korean actress Doona Bae has had a fair amount of success in the West, thanks to home-grown movies such as The Host and Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance and becoming one of the Wachowskis’s favoured actors in the likes of Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending and Sense8. With A Girl At My Door she returns to the Korean peninsula to play Young-Nam, who after a minor scandal is sent to a small, rural town to be their police chief.

Told to keep her head down, she immediately begins to ruffle feathers when she discovers a man called Yong-ha beating his daughter Do-hee. He is not impressed about being told what to do, as he feels he runs the town – and most agree, as most people’s livelihoods rely on the crooked and corrupt economy he has set up. [Read more…]

The Danish Girl (Cinema Review)

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The idea of a film about Lili Elbe has been doing the rounds of Hollywood for years, but despite plenty of interest from well-known actors and directors, it never got off the ground, partly because the money men thought a period piece about transgender issues would be box office poison. However, trans issues suddenly hit the mainstream and the film got the go ahead.

It’s certainly arrived with a lot of fanfare, but the movie is so polite in a very British sort of way, that it will leave many feeling like they’ve appreciated it but aren’t totally satisfied. [Read more…]

Insurgent (DVD Review)

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Divergent arrived last year with a lot of fanfare and the hope on the part of its studio that it would become the new Hunger Games. While it did fairly good business at the box office, it didn’t exactly leave much of an impression. Now its sequel, Insurgent, arrives, which like its predecessor mainly leaves the viewers with the impression that, ‘Well, that happened’.

Following the events of the first film, Tris (Shailene Woodley) and many others are on the run. Meanwhile Jeanine moves on with her plan to take control of all the factions. Although she continues to see the divergents – those with multiple personality traits – as dangerous, she also knows she needs them, as it is only divergents who can open a box left behind by the city founders, which she believes will help her cement her power and end the divergent issue completely. [Read more…]

Transcendence (Blu-ray Review)

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It’s always a shame when a movie that wants to be a genuinely intelligent slice of a-list entertainment fails. If one succeeds, Hollywood always treats it like a fluke, but if it bombs they point at it as proof that all that audiences want are big, dumb fireworks. What’s a particular pity with Transcendence is that it would probably have been better as a slightly smaller film.

Johnny Depp plays Will Caster, a scientist working on artificial intelligence who believes he’s close to creating a machine that will vastly outstrip any human intellect there’s ever been. However as there always is in this type of film, a group of terrorist-type people don’t believe in this type of machine and launch a series of attacks on facilities working on AI systems. That includes shooting Will with a bullet that doesn’t initially kill him, but is poisoned with a radioactive isotope that will cause him to die over the course of a few weeks. [Read more…]

Looper (Blu-ray)

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Time travel is a tough nut to crack. It’s an idea that’s full of possibilities but it also has major pitfalls, not least of which are the endless paradoxes and logic knots that time travel films can tie themselves up in. Although Looper doesn’t completely resolve these problems, its gets closer than any film since Twelve Monkeys and presents a reality that’s actually pretty close to how some quantum physicists think time travel could actually work.

Indeed as Twelve Monkeys and Looper both feature Bruce Willis, perhaps all prospective time travel movies need to be given the Brucey seal of approval before they go into production. [Read more…]