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

Broken Gardenias (DVD Review)

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Jenni (Alma S. Grey) is a rather odd young woman prone to treating the plants she works with like real people and telling them nerdy jokes. Her already somewhat fragile life falls apart after a short stay in the hospital results in her getting let go from her job and being unceremoniously evicted from her house by her selfish roommate.

With no house, job or friends, Jenni decides to end it all but is saved from suicide by the free-spirited Sam (Ashley Morocco), who offers the hand of friendship and also suggests they should follow Jenni’s dreams with a trip to LA to find her father, who abandoned her when she was just six. [Read more…]

Hidden Away (DVD Review)

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Rafa is a teenage boy on the verge of becoming a man, who’s starting to realise that maybe his friends are jerks (and racists), something that becomes especially acute when they begin to pressure him to get with girls, which he isn’t interested in.

Then he meets Ibra, a young Moroccan immigrant, who he knows his friends wouldn’t approve of but who he feels drawn to. They spark up a friendship which may be leading to something more. However Ibra’s precarious situation begins to take precedence when it becomes clear the Spanish authorities want to deport him, despite the fact he’s underage and has nobody to go back to. [Read more…]

Eternity: The Movie (US Cinema Review)

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Is Eternity: The Movie a gay film? Well, yes, except no. It manages to straddle a hitherto unknown line where it’s a celebration of bromance, but yet has no bones about being a gay love affair in all but name. There’s little ‘no homo’ here, just two characters who are too clueless to know that’s what they would probably say if set if this was set in the 2010s.

The film is a parody of the 80s, filled with as much innuendo as it’s possible to cram into 88 minutes. Todd (Barrett Crake) is freshly arrived in LA with dreams of making it big in music – as well as selling affordable fashions at everyday prices at BJ Maxx (see, we told you it liked innuendo). He meets fellow ‘glamorist’ B.J. Fairchild (Myko Olivier) and while they don’t initially hit it off, they soon realise that with B.J.’s saxophone skills and Todd’s vocals – and his talent at writing songs about heartbreak – they could make it as a big-haired 80s pop duo. [Read more…]

Postman Pat: The Movie (DVD Review)

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It’s surprising how many films get made where the moral of the movie is completely contradicted by the film itself, but nobody involved in making it seems to have realised that. And that’s the problem with Postman Pat: The Movie, a film where the central character has to remember to appreciate the small things in life that the original 80s TV show handled so well – where the most pressing issue was a lost sheep – but then sets it within a movie that’s noisy and bombastic, and has little to do with the gentleness of the series it’s based on. [Read more…]

Legends Of Oz: Dorothy’s Return (DVD Review)

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I get the impression that whoever did the casting on Legends Of Oz: Dorothy’s Return must have a fondness for the 1980s. After all bringing in Dan Aykroyd (the Scarecrow), Kelsey Grammer (Tin Man), John Belushi (Lion) and Martin Short (Jester) to play some of the voices can’t be a coincidence.

But that’s by-the-by to this sequel to The Wizard Of Oz, which is pretty much the same as the earlier story but different. Dorothy is just back from Oz when she gets snatched up (by a rainbow this time) and dumped back in the magical country. Once more she needs to get to the Emerald City, this time enlisting the help of an overweight owl, a prissy princess made of bone china, a marshmallow soldier and a talking tree that gets turned into a boat. [Read more…]

The Harry Hill Movie (Blu-ray)

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Harry Hill is a bit of a love him or loathe him comedian, and so it’s no surprise that a film he wrote and stars in is the same. However the problem is that his current main fanbase knows him from his television show TV Burp, and while that serieswas silly and sometimes surreal, it never really showed quite how nuts he can be when left to his own devices.

Harry plays himself (or at least his usual big-collared character), who lives with his Nan (Julie Walters) and a talking hamster called Abu (voiced by Johnny Vegas). When he takes Abu to the Vet, Harry thinks his pal only has a week to live and so decides to take him on a trip to Blackpool. However what he doesn’t realise is that he’s actually caught up in a plan by his evil twin brother (Matt Lucas), who wants revenge. [Read more…]

Twixt (DVD)

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It’s taken quite a while to get Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt to the UK, but now it’s here. While famed for the likes of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, recently Coppola has gone much smaller with Youth Without Youth, Tetro and now Twixt. It’s an odd yet intriguing film, which feels more like the work of someone early in their career than a grand-old-man like Coppola.

Val Kilmer plays Hall Baltimore, a struggling writer who arrives in a strange town that we’re told is a peculiar place where evil may lurk. As Hall attempts to write a book, he gets sucked into an old murder mystery, which spans both everything from possible vampires and a seeming dream-world to a ghost called V and being visited by Edgar Allan Poe. [Read more…]

The Mummy (1959) (Blu-ray)

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Following the success of Dracula and Frankenstein, it was little surprise that Hammer decided to take on one of the other characters that Universal had success with in the 1930s – The Mummy. The British film company’s 1959 take on bandaged ancient Egyptians reunites Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and director Terence Fisher, and while the results aren’t as memorable as with the earlier movies, it is fun. [Read more…]

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (Cinema)

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On February 21st 2012, five members of the Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot decided to put on a performance at Moscow’s Christ The Saviour Cathedral. While a service was in progress they went up to the altar – dressed in the band’s trademark balaclavas – and started to sing. While they were stopped by security, footage of the event was soon turned into a video called, ‘Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!’, which protested what they see as the increasingly oppressive regime of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Othodox Leader’s support for him. [Read more…]

The Numbers Station (VoD)

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The Numbers Station is available on VoD in the UK now, and will reach DVD & Blu-ray on July 1st

The success of ‘Nordic Noir’ such as The Killing and Headhunters has caused Hollywood to look towards Scandinavia for a new crops of directors to mine. Denmark’s Karspar Barfoed is one of those who’s heard the call of American film, making his English-language debut with The Numbers Station. However he certainly hasn’t jumped into the big budget realm, as it’s a relatively small-scale, claustrophobic thriller, with limited locations and much of it taking place between just two people. [Read more…]