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

Safety Not Guaranteed (DVD)

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Safety Not Guaranteed certainly acted as a great calling card for director Colin Trevorrow. His low-budget film got plenty of people in Hollywood interested in working with him, leading to rumours he was in talks to direct Star Wars Episode VII. He’s since been hired to write and helm the upcoming Jurassic World. It’s certainly a big jump from this film, which was made for less than a million dollars, and while it is technically sci-fi, for most of its running time it plays out as an indie rom com. [Read more…]

A Map For Love (DVD)

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South America is becoming a bit of a hotbed for interesting LGBT cinema. Now Chile has added one more film to the roster with A Map For Love.

Roberta is a young woman with a child, who tells her mother, Ana, that she is now living with someone she knew in school, Javiera, in a lesbian relationship. The conservative Ana isn’t immediately full of acceptance, suggesting her daughter just needs to wait for a man who will love her the right way, and guilt-tripping Roberta over how it will affect her son. [Read more…]

Snails In The Rain (UK Jewish Film Festival Review)

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A lot of people say that Israel is one of the best places to be gay and that Tel Aviv is one of the freest, most welcoming places for LGBT people, with a vibrant and open gay culture. However if the gay-themed films coming out of Israel are anything to go by, there’s still a lot of challenges for LGBT people in the country.

Snails In The Rain is one of several Israeli movies made over the past few years looking at the difficulty for closeted men who are struggling with the fact the life they’re living doesn’t match the way they feel inside. Interestingly a lot of these movies also juxtapose the men’s lives now with their experiences when they were in the military (which is compulsory for all young Israelis). You can understand why this is, as being in the army is almost the apogee of masculinity in society’s eyes and yet for many people it will be where they first express their same sex feelings. [Read more…]

Blackfish (DVD)

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Since the 1960s millions of people have gone to the various SeaWorld parks in the US, many drawn by the opportunity to see killer whales up close in the famed Shamu shows. Blackfish takes a close look at the parks and its animals, mainly focussing on the largest killer whale in captivity, Tilikum, who’s been implicated in the deaths of three people.

Using interviews with former trainers and various others, the documentary tells Tilikum’s story, surrounding this plenty of footage and other info that questions whether SeaWorld puts profits before the safety of its staff and even whether it’s right to keep these animals in captivity at all. [Read more…]

Tumbledown (DVD)

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Todd Verow is a virtual one-man gay film industry. He started making films in the mid-90s and has become increasingly prolific since, with the likes of Vacationland, Between Something & Nothing and last year’s Bad Boy Street. His last few films have been narratively and tonally more ambitious than the ones that came before and that continues with Tumbledown, which is based on Verow’s own experiences (and also stars him in the role of Jay). [Read more…]

The Liability (Cinema)

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After a run-in with his nasty brute of a stepfather (Peter Mullan), 19-year-old Adam (Jack O’Connell) is sent to chauffeur a taciturn man called Roy (Tim Roth) up north. Adam doesn’t know what they’re supposed to be doing, but it soon becomes apparent Roy is a hitman who’s keen to give up the game. They’re heading to a rendezvous with a Latvian man who Roy has been hired to kill, while making it look like a local serial killer who’s been chopping off people’s hands did it. [Read more…]

Dead Europe (Cinema)

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Following up some of the same themes as his earlier film, Jewboy, director Tony Krawitz this time brings Christos Tsiolkas’ novel to the screen. Ewen Leslie puts in an understated performance as the Australian Isaac, who against the wishes of his family takes his father’s ashes to Greece to scatter them in his dad’s homeland. [Read more…]

Lee Nelson – Live (DVD)

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I’m not sure about Lee Nelson, as my initially lefty think can’t help but wonder if he’s busy reigniting the class wars. I find it difficult not to feel there’s a slightly have-your-cake-eat-it aspect to Simon Brodkin’s character, so that some will see it as a critique of clueless chaviness and laugh at his dimness and stereotyped antisocial attitudes, while others will see him as some type of working class hero. Are we meant to laugh at or with his shoplifting and sexist jokes? Is it an act that essentially makes fun of marginalised people or celebrates them? I suspect Brodkin is playing both ends against the middle, or else he solely cares that it works and people enjoy it. [Read more…]

Into The Lion’s Den (DVD)

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A few years ago, gay themed horror films were pretty much unheard of, but very slowly more of them have been emerging, although it’s not exactly like we’ve had a flood. Now a new one has arrived in the form of Into The Lion’s Den, which also marks the first UK release from a brand new British branch of the successful US LGBT distributor Breaking Glass Pictures/QC Cinema.

The film sees three gay friends, Michael (Ronnie Kroell), Johnny (Jesse Archer) and Ted (Kristen-Alexzander Griffith), on a cross-country road trip heading for the big city. Johnny is busy shagging his way across the country, something the others have reservations about. When they arrive in a small town, Michael just wants to go to sleep, but Johnny drags them all to a rough looking bar, where he’s organised to meet someone for sex. However the evening turns out to be far more dangerous that any of them expected. [Read more…]

Nate & Margaret (DVD) (US Release)

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Nate (the slightly Bieber-esque Tyler Ross) is a young man studying film, who spends most of his time with his best friend, a 52-year-old woman called Margaret (Natalie West). It’s an unconventional friendship, but it works, with Margaret helping Nate with his films and Nate encouraging Margaret to further her interest in stand-up comedy. However when Nate gets his first boyfriend, a wedge starts to be driven between them.

Nate & Margaret could have been a very generic affair, and while it doesn’t exact break new narrative ground, it’s nice that it doesn’t go to the places you’d immediately think it would. Normally a film about a young man and a middle-aged woman would concern itself with asking why such a friendship would develop in the first place, but the film treats it as perfectly natural. Admittedly both are slightly socially awkward, particularly Margaret, whose lack of a husband and/or kids is at least partially the result of a history of abuse. [Read more…]