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 Misandrists (DVD Review) – Bruce LaBruce takes us into a rather gay world without men

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Bruce LaBruce has long been a provocateur, making the sort of movies that seem designed to push buttons and get people talking. Often they’re so busy pressing thosee buttons that there seems little point to the film other than to get people out of their comfort zone – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He’s mixed explicit gay sex and Nazi skinheads in Skin Gang, gay porn and zombies in Otto, and even when he went comparatively ‘mainstream’ with Gerontophilia (and I use the word mainstream advisedly, as it’s merely mainstream for LaBruce), it’s about a relationship between a teen and an octogenarian.

With The Misandrists LaBruce keeps pressing buttons but focuses on something that hasn’t played a huge part in his career so far – women. The film is set in a dystopian world where the FLA – the Female Liberation Army – has holed itself up isolated in the woods as it plots its revolutionary take on a world without men. Unsurprisingly no men are allowed inside the building, but when new recruit Isolde spots an injured young man who she knows is also being persecuted by the authorities like they are, she decides to hide him in the FLA’s stronghold. [Read more…]

Free Fire (Blu-ray Review) – Armie Hammer & co. have a shootout & a half

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After the complex and rather operatic JG Ballard adaptation High-Rise, Ben Wheatley has gone for something that’s far simpler in terms of plot, but perhaps just as complicated in terms of technical execution with Free Fire.

It’s the 1970s, and in a warehouse in Boston a group of American are hoping to sell some Irish men some guns. Things are already a little tense and distrustful when it’s revealed the weapons aren’t the exact ones ordered, but things get completely out of hand when one of the Yanks realises one of the Irish guys is the man who assaulted his cousin the night before. [Read more…]

Fallen (DVD Review) – Jeremy Irvine’s been in angelic love for thousands of years

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Poor old Jeremy Irvine. He turned down both Hunger Games and Divergent, and when he does finally decide to go properly young adult, he appears in a bit of a Turkey.

Addison Timlin is Luce, a teenage girl sent to a school for disturbed kids after she was seemingly involved in the death of a boy. She also says she’s been seeing strange shadows for years, which ensures plenty of people think he’s nuts. [Read more…]

Lost In White City (US DVD/VoD Review)

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Kyle (Thomas Dekker – Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) and Eva (Hayley Bennett – Hardcore Henry) are American art students who’ve headed to Tel Aviv, with both of them hoping it will bring a new aspect to their art. Eva begins to explore the world of Israeli literature, while Kyle starts to shoot an experimental movie. Then they meet local man, Avi (Bob Morley – The 100), who Kyle becomes fascinated with and decides to make the centre of his movie.

The relationship between Kyle and Eva slowly begins to disintegrate, as she tries to break through his seeming disinterest in her, and she starts to see new possibilities. She also starts to realise that there is more than just friendship between Avi and Kyle, and that her boyfriend is building perhaps subconscious (or perhaps not) feelings for the young man. Neither seems to know what to do about it, and it isn’t clear whether Kyle even really cares, or indeed whether Avi has motivations beyond friendship for either of them. [Read more…]

Love Is The Devil (Blu-ray Review)

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John Maybury’s 1998 film about the relationship between painter Francis Bacon (Derek Jacobi) and his lover George Dyer (Daniel Craig) gets an HD upgrade from the British Film Institute with this Blu-ray release. The movie focuses on one period of Bacon’s life in the 1960s, when Bacon was already a lauded artist, considered by many as the greatest living British painter.

Bacon wakes up one night to find small-time thief George Dyer robbing his apartment/studio. Instead of calling police, Bacon invites Dyer into his bed. The thief accepts, which marks the start of an intense relationship between the two – one of whom is a rarefied figure in the world of art, while the other is a working class criminal. Initially their mismatched social status doesn’t matter, partly as their sexuality and attitudes means both feel like outsiders, but soon cracks begin to show. [Read more…]

Minions (Blu-ray Review)

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I severely doubt that when the creators of Despicable Me came up with the Minions as a bit of comic relief they ever thought they would become the phenomenon they have. Indeed, you could be forgiven if you’d forgotten those films were about Gru, due to the massive wave of Minions merchandise in the shops, and now a spin-off movie that has massively eclipsed its predecessors, becoming only the third animated film ever to gross more than a billion at cinemas worldwide.

The film takes us back to the origins of the little yellow creatures, who have been look for the evilest boss to follow around for millions of years, from prehistoric fish to the T-rex. However, the last few hundred years have been tough, with the Minions losing all their masters and retreating from the world and hiding away at the South Pole. [Read more…]

London Road (DVD Review)

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It’s difficult not to look at London Road and think that it ought to have been a disaster. For a start, a musical about a fairly recent serial killer case sounds tacky and a little bit tasteless. Likewise, having a musical where all the lyrics are taken from real-life interviews, using the original genuine speech-patterns, sounds like the sort of thing that might be nice as an artistic exercise, but not anything that could create good songs that people would be interested in hearing.

However, when London Road reached the National Theatre stage in London, critics had to eat their words and admit it was really good. Whether it would survive a jump to film was another matter, as while it worked within the inherent theatrical artifice of the stage, bringing it out into the ‘real world’ is something rather different. [Read more…]

It’s All So Quiet (DVD Review)

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When they named this film, ‘It’s All So Quiet’, they weren’t joking. This is not a film that will be remembered for its verbosity and wall-to-wall action, but that’s exactly as it should be, as Nanouk Leopold’s movie is a look at the stillness inside people, of isolation and the things that are locked away.

Helmer is a Dutch farmer who lives a largely solitary existence, interrupted only by caring for his father. His dad is sick, largely immobile, taciturn and spends his time lying in bed waiting to die. Helmer also has occasional visits, such as from milk collector Johan, who seems slightly fascinated by Helmer.

Then there’s young farmhand Henk, who is almost as quiet as Helmer, but who awakens feelings the farmer has repressed and which he may still not be ready to deal with. [Read more…]

Chocolate City (VoD Review)

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There aren’t many films with titles that guilty white people might worry that they’re not even allowed to say, but Chocolate City does. The film is an African-American answer to Magic Mike – a comparison the film itself doesn’t shy away from – all about a young man who becomes a male stripper. In fact the director has suggested the movie was a response to Magic Mike, after they noted that the Channing Tatum movie had few people of colour.

Michael is doing his best to get through college, while working and helping out his mom (Vivica A. Fox), but when the electricity company threatens to shut off their supply, he needs cash fast. After being given a ‘job interview’, Michael is shocked to see he’s being offered the chance to do exotic dancing. [Read more…]

The Last Five Years (DVD Review)

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Normally movie musicals are set in a heightened reality, not just due to the fact that everyone is singing, but also because the universe itself is shifted to the side. Even something like West Side Story is obviously in a fantasy version of New York, several steps away from reality. However The Last Five Years takes a look at a very real story (indeed it’s based on a tumultuous marriage the musical’s writer, Jason Robert Brown, had when he was in his 20s), and sets it in a realistic New York.

Everyone may be singing and it may play with time in unusual ways, but the world and the characters are extremely grounded, with plenty that everyone will be able to recognise from their own relationships. [Read more…]