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

Only The Brave (Blu-ray Review) – Hotshot firefighters risk it all

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Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin) of the Prescott, Arizona Fire Department is an expert at fighting forest fires, but he and his team have to take a backseat when ‘hotshot’ Type 1 front line firefighters, even if they don’t know as much as he does. He plans to become the head of the first municipal firefighting team to achieve Type 1 status.

Marsh’s Granite Mountain Hotshots are amongst the best there is. However, they also have their own issues to deal with, such as Eric’s dedication to fighting fires interfering with his marriage to Amanda (Jennifer Connelly). There’s also Brendan McDonough (Miles Teller), a young wastrel who uses drugs, sleeps around and has been in trouble with the law – but with an accidental child on the way, he decides it’s time to shape up and join the team. [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…]

Suicide Squad – Extended Cut (Blu-ray Review)

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Suicide Squad may have been this year’s most anticipated movie. After the underwhelming Man Of Steel and the ho-hum Batman vs. Superman, the trailers made it look like this was the fun, mischievous shot-in-the-arm that the DC Universe needed to really get it up and running, as well as being a counterpoint to the Marvel movies but which wouldn’t be as dour as the previous DC films. However, when the reviews came in, it was generally agreed by the critics the movie was a messy misfire (although it did okay at the box office).

Now it’s coming to Blu-ray and VoD in Extended Cut form, which adds in 10-minutes of extra footage. As with the Ultimate Edition of Batman vs. Superman, the extra scenes do help, but they’re unlikely to change anyone’s overall opinion of the movie. [Read more…]

The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Case (Blu-ray Review)

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The Conjuring surprised many when it grossed over $300 million on a $20 million budget. It ensured that a sequel was quickly put in the works (as well as last year’s spin-off, Annabelle), with the filmmakers looking through the cases of Ed and Lorraine Warren for more inspiration. What they came up with was the Enfield Poltergeist, one of Britain’s most documented paranormal cases, which was also the inspiration for Sky TV’s The Enfield Haunting earlier this year.

The film starts out with another very famous case the Warrens were involved in, Amityville, before moving to Britain and the Hodgson family, living in a council house in North London. Single mother Patricia (Frances O’Connor) and her two daughters and two sons, are being increasingly frightened by paranormal activity, which is moving things around the house and possessing one of the daughters. [Read more…]

Foxcatcher (Cinema Review)

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So that’s the Best Actor Oscar sorted then. Steve Carrell, that lovely chap from the US Office and 40-Year-old Virgin, has gone deep to play the deeply disturbed, and disturbing, John du Pont, and the results are stunning. The film itself is impressive on many levels, if a little one-note, and not quite satisfying, but Carrell’s performance is utterly mesmerising.

The charming, likeable, warmly funny persona is utterly gone. In its place is a portrayal of du Pont, the heir to a vast chemical fortune, enormously wealthy but painfully lonely. His mother, Jean (Vanessa Redgrave), looms like a huge dark cloud over his life, her disappointment in her geeky, fragile, unattractive son all too obvious. She pours her love into horses, he into the sport of wrestling – horses are stupid, he says, all they do is eat and shit. His love of his pastime is so great he decides to basically take over and run the US wrestling team to train them for the 1988 Olympics. Top of his shopping list is Mark and Dave Schultz (Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo), brothers who won Gold in Los Angeles in 1984. [Read more…]

Freud (DVD)

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It’s very peculiar that despite Montgomery Clift and Susannah York starring in the film and the legendary John Huston behind the camera, Freud has never been legally available on either VHS or DVD in the UK. That’s now being addressed with this release, which gives a fresh outing for the unusual biopic.

Rather than covering the whole of Sigmund Freud’s life, the film concentrates on the years from 1885 to 1890 when he was developing his most famous theories. Against the backdrop of a medical establishment who believed mental problems either had a physiological cause or were just people pretending, Freud began to explore the idea of the unconscious and his ‘talking cure’, which sought to uncover memories the patient had suppressed and by unlocking them, cure the problems they faced (or at least that’s the overly simplified way it works in the film). [Read more…]

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D (Cinema)

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I was seven-years-old when the original Star Wars movie came out, but for some reason after watching the first trilogy, I missed Phantom Menace on the big screen (I think I was off my tits at Mardi Gras in Sydney) and just never bothered to see the subsequent films. So I was really excited to be invited to the 3D theatrical re-release of the 1992 prequel, which is set 32 years BBY (before the battle of Yarvin)

Watching the current seven-year-olds having their picture taken with Storm Troopers in the foyer, a cute young bear asked if I’d take one for him and having obliged, he returned the favour saying that “we bearded geek types should stick together” –  I should have heard the alarm bells ringing and run to the barbers but thinking I’d pulled [Read more…]

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