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

The Little Mermaid (Blu-ray)

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Through the tail end of the 70s and the early 80s, Disney Animation was floundering. Movies like Basil The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company and The Black Cauldron looked pretty but weren’t drawing in the crowds, largely because the company had lost its storytelling magic.

Then along came 1989’s The Little Mermaid, kicking off a remarkable run of critical, commercial and audience success that included Beauty & The Beast, The Lion King and Aladdin. While Disney Animation is perhaps most often thought of for its fairy tale movies, this was actually the first film the company had made based on a bona fide fairy story (this time one by Hans Christian Anderson) since Sleeping Beauty in 1959. They also threw a lot more money, time and effort at it than they had for years, even opening new studios to handle the artistic challenge, not least hand-drawing millions of bubble. [Read more…]

Scenes From A Gay Marriage (US DVD)

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Written, directed by and starring Matt Riddlehoover, Scenes From A Gay Marriage follows Darren, a man who’s rather lost in life. His only job is growing a beard and taking photographs of it for a strange man on the Internet (who pays him $200 a week). That gives him plenty of time to pine for both the relationship he lost and the man he moved across the country for – only for that man to move back to where they came from.

Spending most of his time in his small apartment, he passes the hours listening to the ups and downs of the relationship of his neighbours, whose arguments, conversations and noisy lovemaking comes straight through the air ducts. [Read more…]

Men To Kiss (Männer zum Knutschen) (DVD)

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Men To Kiss is a bit of an odd movie. It’s entertaining even while a lot of it is complete nonsense, and it’s fun even when it’s difficult not to feel the wrong thing is happening.

Ernst (Frank Christian Marx) and Tobi (Udo Lutz) are a couple who may be ready to take the next step in their relationship. However Ernst is starting to feel out of place, as he doesn’t know many people in Berlin, so his only friends are Tobi’s. He’s therefore pleased to see his old mate Uta (Alexandra Starnitzky), even if she is rather pretentious, biting and rude to those she sees as being beneath her – which is pretty much everybody. [Read more…]

What Richard Did (DVD)

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What Richard Did got a healthy dose of publicity a couple of months ago when Michael Bay announced he was casting young Irish actor Jack Reynor in one of the lead roles in Transformers 4 after seeing his performance in Lenny Abrahamson’s movie. Reynor is indeed very good, although the film itself is slightly more problematic.

Richard (Reynor) is a young lad who’s popular, has plenty of friends and has status thanks to playing on the rugby team. He begins a relationship with Lara (Roisin Murphy), although there are some issues with her ex-boyfriend, Conor (Sam Keeley). At a party things come to a head when Conor steps into an argument between Richard and Lara, leading to a moment of violence that could have major repercussions for all involved. [Read more…]

Rhod Gilbert: The Man With The Flaming Battenberg Tattoo (DVD)

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I was starting to wonder whether Rhod Gilbert’s patented brand of frustrated ranting was all purely an act. Surely someone can’t really get as annoyed and care so much about such small things? Yes it’s funny taking things to the extreme, but it’s not real, is it?

Then I watched this disc’s special feature, ‘Rhod vs. Hecklers’, which sees the comedian answer audience comments that were cut out of the main show. The first half of this feature is pretty standard, but then Rhod starts talking about how he hates the adverts pinned on the wall in front of men when they’re standing at urinals. A woman tells him that girls have the same thing on the back of the door of their toilet cubicles. And that’s enough to set Rhod off on a rant that shows just what pedant he can be, where he gets increasingly annoyed as he’s determined it’s not the back of the door, it’s the inside. [Read more…]

She-Monkeys (Cinema)

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She Monkeys is an intriguing, dark and eerie tale of two girls engaged in a confusing underlying lesbian relationship set against the backdrop of the equestrian vaulting world. With a relationship that’s brimming with physical and psychological challenges, lead character Emma (Mathilda Paradeiser) does whatever it take to master the rules of this almost twisted game, failing to resist the temptation of taking control from Cassandra (Linda Molin).

The film was shot and is based in Sweden, but is subtitled in English for all of you out there who enjoy a good foreign language film, and this film is pretty special. You can see why it won a host of awards on the festival circuit over the last 12 months, even taking the Best Narrative Feature trophy at the Tribeca Film Festival as it grips you from beginning to end even if Swedish isn’t your mother tongue. [Read more…]

Jeff, Who Lives At Home (Cinema)

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A film starring Jason Segel and Ed Helms should be hilarious, right? Plus it’s directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, the brothers who had indie success with the likes of The Puffy Chair and Baghead, and are now making their first properly mainstream movie (the underwhelming Cyrus doesn’t really count). Sadly the results are less than the sum of the parts, with the movie being infuriating in parts and only sporadically entertaining.

As the title suggests, Jeff (Jason Segel) lives at home. He’s in his mid-thirties, has no job, doesn’t leave his basement all that often and spends most of his time trying to work out the ‘signs’ he feels are all around him, which will tell him what his destiny is if only he can interpret them properly. His mother (Susan Sarandon) asks him to go out and get some wood glue, however when he receives a wrong phone call for somebody called Kevin, he sees this as a sign, which leads him to get distracted from his task and ends up following someone with the word ‘Kevin’ on his basketball vest. [Read more…]

Angel & Tony (Cinema)

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This award winning, intense debut from French writer director Alix Delaporte, takes you on a journey of frustrated emotions, trust and hopefulness in adversity. Think Taming of the Shrew meets I’ve Loved You So Long.

The synopsis – Angel (Clotilde Hesme) is a stunning ex-con currently on probation and looking for a new life, Tony (Gregory Gadebois) is a homely fisherman living in solitude with his family who have suffered a recent bereavement. The two meet through a personal ad in the paper, Tony wants a wife whereas Angel seems very direct and thinks that sex will get her what she thinks she needs (which is very obvious from the opening scene, where she has sex with a young man to get a toy for her son!). [Read more…]

Booked Out (DVD)

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Booked Out is a sweet but small-scale movie that was always going to have difficulty finding large-scale distribution, and so it’s going with a rather charming DIY-feeling release strategy, with a DVD & Blu-ray release on Monday, alongside a cinema tour with accompanying Q&As all over the country between now and mid-April (you can find out more about that here).

The film follows artist and bookstore worker Ailidh (Mirren Burke), who’s seen a young man coming and going from another one of the flats in her building and so she manufactures a way of meeting him – by acting as if she’s accidentally dropped all her drawings on him. The man turns out to be Jacob (Rollo Weekes), and soon a friendship develops between the two of them, partly due to Ailidh drawing Jacob into helping her with fellow neighbour Mrs. Nicholls, whose husband died several years before, although she still acts as if he’s alive, well and in the house. [Read more…]

Tomboy (DVD)

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A mother, father and their two children move house one summer, several weeks before the new school year is about to begin. The eldest child introduces himself to the local kids, telling them he’s called Michael, starting friendships and beginning a fledgling adolescent romance with a girl called Lisa.

However 10-year-old Michael is hiding something, as he was born a girl and his parents know him as Laure. Initially Michael manages to keep his secret well, with the local kids accepting him as a boy, but the truth inevitably emerges, especially as they’re all due to attend the same school and Michael will be enrolled by his parents as a girl. [Read more…]