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

Like You Mean It (DVD Review)

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Oftentimes when someone writes and directs a movie and then cast themselves in the lead role, there’s a tendency to try to underplay the flaws of that character and make it seem like nothing is really their fault. It’s to Philipp Karner’s credit that he doesn’t smooth his character’s rough edges – indeed some will think the person he plays is often a bit of a dick – which allows this to be a much sharper movie than it might otherwise have been.

Like You Mean It is a character study, but the character isn’t so much a person as a relationship. Mark (Karner) and Jonah (Denver Milord) have been together for some time, and while Jonah is happy with the domestic normality and routine that their life has settled into, Mark isn’t so sure. Jonah is surprised to discover that not only does their relationship have problems, but it may be on the verge of ending. [Read more…]

Big Game (DVD Review)

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Big Game will not be winning the award ‘Most Sensible Movie Of The Year’. Indeed it reaches Fast & Furious levels of preposterousness, where you either have to submit to its inherent silliness or alternatively break down in tears and decry the state of modern entertainment. Personally I went for the former.

The US President (Samuel L. Jackson) is flying to some important talks when an evil terrorist (played by an actor who looks the dictionary definition of ‘stereotypical foreign bad guy’) blows Air Force One out of the sky. The Pres is put in an escape capsule and dropped into the middle of the remote Finnish wilderness. [Read more…]

Tab Hunter Confidential (Outfest Review)

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Some younger people may have never heard of Tab Hunter, but if you say the name to any straight woman or gay man who was young in the 1950s, you can often see their eyes glaze as they remember the teen heartthrob who was the biggest dreamboat crush of an entire generation. However, while he was setting millions of teenage hearts aflutter in the likes of Damn Yankees and Battle Cry, he was also hiding the fact that he was gay (with the help of the studio system).

Hunter only officially came out when he wrote his autobiography in 2006, on which this documentary is based. The film includes extensive interviews with Hunter, who still seems somewhat reticent to talk about his sexuality – an entire lifetime of not talking publicly about that side of his life hasn’t disappeared now he’s ‘outed’ himself – but even so he does open up about his career, his relationships with the likes of Psycho star Anthony Perkins, and the studio-mandated dates he went on with a string of young starlets. [Read more…]

Reckless (US DVD Review)

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We’re used to Hollywood doing pointless remakes of European movies, but we’re less used to one European country remaking a film from another. It’s not actually that uncommon though – for example Spain has had some success with new versions of British films – and now it’s time for Holland to take on the 2009 British movie, The Disappearance Of Alice Creed.

The set-up is pretty much the same. In the opening scene a woman, Laura, is kidnapped, taken to an apartment, stripped naked and photographs are taken or her in preparation of asking for a ransom. Victor and Rico are the kidnappers, with Victor an incredibly intense, paranoid and dominant person, who met the softer, more gentle Rico in prison, and who has plotted their latest attempt to make a lot of cash. [Read more…]

Paternity Leave (Review)

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Director Matt Riddlehoover has been described as gay cinema’s answer to Woody Allen. It’s difficult to know whether he’s consciously thinking about that when he makes his movies, but there are definitely a lot of echoes of Woody in his work.

With Paternity Leave those echoes are particularly of some of Allen’s earlier work, where he took an absurdist situation but then didn’t treat it in an overtly over the top, silly way. The movie follows boyfriends Greg (Jacob York) and Ken (Charlie David), who’ve been together for four years, but whose lives are flipped upside-down when Greg discovers that he’s pregnant. [Read more…]

Boys In Brazil (DVD Review)

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Also known as The Pink Pact, Boys In Brazil follows four men – teenage friends Mauro and Rodrigo, Mauro’s uncle Vicente and a man they meet at Sao Paulo’s Pride Parade, Roger. After Roger is gay-bashed the quartet end up at Vincente’s apartment, where the outrageously camp Mauro decides that something must be done about the fact they are all in the closet. He makes them promise that by next year’s parade, they will have all come out.

Rodrigo is scared to tell his parents but does manage to embark on a relationship with a good-looking school friend. Vincente meanwhile is afraid to let his work colleagues know about his sexuality and even enlists his female friend to pose as his wife. Roger is married, has a child and his thoughts of escape get more complicated when he discovers his wife is pregnant again and has to be on bed rest until the baby comes. [Read more…]

Kite (Blu-ray Review)

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Some films manage to take a low budget and use it to their advantage, finding interesting and innovative ways to get around the fact they don’t have much cash and still deliver a full and complete film experience. Sadly Kite is not one of those films. It thinks it is, but it really isn’t.

The movie follows young Sawa (India Eisley) who lives in a scummy, corrupt post-apocalyptic future where she ruthlessly tries to hunt down the people who killed her parents, helped by her father’s ex-partner, Karl (Samuel L. Jackson). Things begin to change when she meets someone she knew as a child – although she can’t remember him due to the fact that the drugs she takes to help her be a single-minded and very successful killer blur her memory of the past. [Read more…]

Fading Gigolo (DVD Review)

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Fioravante (John Turturro) is a florist whose life – and career – takes a surprising turn when his friend, Murray (Woody Allen), talks him into becoming a male escort. Murray’s dermatologist (Sharon Stone) has always dreamed on having a threesome and will pay handsomely for first having an individual session and afterwards bringing in her friend (Sofia Vergara).

Then Murray decides to expand the ‘business’, by hiring Fioravante as a ‘healer’ to the widowed Avigal (Vanessa Paradis), whose been living a hidden, buttoned down Orthodox Jewish life, kept in check by the overzealous neighbourhood patrol. To his own surprise, Fioravante start to have feelings for her. [Read more…]

Dom Hemingway (DVD)

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How you react to Dom Hemingway is completely reliant of how you react to the title character. It’s easy to imagine that some will quickly be on his side, seeing him as a funny and entertaining wide-boy, but there will be plenty of others who will never be able get past the fact Dom is often a complete asshole.  It essentially depends on if you find the fact Dom thinks he’s a legend but is actually a mess is oddly charming and empathetic, or whether it just makes him a dick. [Read more…]

Don Jon (Blu-ray)

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes his writing and directing debut with Don Jon and also takes the lead role – so he was certainly busy. You have to wonder whether he thought his previous movies didn’t have enough sex scenes, so he wrote himself a movie where he got loads of them, and where he also had the chance to buff up to show off a very impressive physique. (I’m sure those weren’t his motivations though). [Read more…]