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

More Than Honey (Cinema)

By Leave a Comment

Starring:
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

I’d like to coin a new genre of documentary, called the ‘Aren’t humans assholes’ genre. It’s becoming increasingly popular, where whatever the subject, at some point it has to get around to how people are screwing everything up. I’m not saying we aren’t screwing things up, but in everything from David Attenborough docs to More Than Honey, there’s an inevitability that at some point you’ll have to feel a bit guilty. [Read more…]

Stud Life (DVD)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

There aren’t that many movies about British black lesbians, so this film has an underserved and worthwhile subject going for it to start with. The film follows JJ (T’Nia Miller), a self-described ‘butch dyke’ who’s trying to find love and happiness in London.

She spends much of her time hanging around with gay best friend Seb (Kyle Treslove), who also acts as her assistant in her wedding photography business. JJ starts to date the more lipstick lesbian Elle (Robyn Kerr), although the road to true love certainly doesn’t run smooth. Elle is rather temperamental, takes umbrage at JJ’s friendship with Seb and has a few secrets about what she does for a living. [Read more…]

Broken (Blu-ray)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

Broken won Best Film at the British Independent Film Awards and got much praise on its cinema release. However I couldn’t help feeling it’s one of those movies where grittiness and being a bit of a downer is taken for it being ‘real’ and worthy. It’s certainly dramatic and very, very well-acted, but it’s still pretty contrived and looked at objectively, the events are fairly soap opera-ish. [Read more…]

Bringing Up Bobby (DVD)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

Having found fame in front of the cameras in the likes of X-Men and Goldeneye, Famke Janssen turns writer and director with Bringing Up Bobby. Milla Jovovich gets to take the central role as a Ukrainian immigrant to America Olive, who’s raising a young son called Bobby (Spencer List).

Olive’s idea of parenting isn’t exactly textbook, as she’s a full-on con-woman, happy to say and do whatever she has to in order to get by, whether it’s convincing a salesman to let her go on a test drive so she can steal a car, or pretending she’s raising cash for poor foreigners. [Read more…]

LLGFF Review: Margarita

By Leave a Comment

Margarita is the perfect nanny. She takes care of young Mali, cleans for rich couple Ben and Gail, and even repairs the gutters. When she’s not fending off marriage proposals from handsome young men, Margarita takes breaks in the hot-tub with her girlfriend. But as her bosses, Ben and Gail, find themselves in financial trouble, her life is turned upside down; they must let her go. As an illegal immigrant she must find a way to overcome this new challenge, the threat of deportation lingering over her head. [Read more…]

Animals (LLGFF Review)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , ,
Director:
Running Time:

Animals follows teenager Pol as he tries to make sense of the confusing world around him. Sexual orientation, a pressure to fit in, and family expectations all seek to complicate his struggle to come to terms with adolescence. Fortunately for Pol, he is not alone, facing life with his imaginary friend ‘Deerhoof’, a teddy-bear who is very much alive. As a girl at school goes missing, Pol’s infatuation with the new boy, Ikara, takes a dark turn and he takes extreme measures to leave behind childish fantasies and find himself. [Read more…]

The Company Of Wolves (Blu-ray/DVD)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

If you have a teenage daughter you want to warn off boys and sex, but would prefer to do it through symbolic folklore than just telling them straight, then this in the film for you. If nothing else it’ll make them wary of any man whose eyebrows meet in the middle.

Neil Jordan’s 1984 fantasy film, based on Angela Carter’s stories, is part anthology, part tales within tales and quite often very strange. The film plays out as the dreams of a girl called Rosaleen, who’s on the threshold of womanhood. He sleeping fantasies see her living in a folklore-ish village deep in the woods. Her grandmother (Angela Lansbury) tells her stories that impress upon her that she should, “Never stray from the path, never eat a windfall apple and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle.” These stories within stories generally involve women falling for rather bestial men who have an extremely wolfish side, or the terrible repercussions of doing the wrong thing. [Read more…]

The Babymakers (DVD)

By Leave a Comment

Someone must think the Broken Lizard Comedy Troupe are good, as they’re allowed to keep making films. After the likes of Super Troopers, Beerfeest and Broken Lizard’s Stand Up comes The Babymakers. It’s got a talented cast and a decent premise, but unfortunately it screws things up from beginning to end.

Tommy (Paul Schneider) and Audrey (Olivia Munn) are a married couple who decide they want to have a baby. There’s a problem though, as for some reason Tommy’s sperm is rubbish and more interested in swimming in circles than inseminating eggs. This wasn’t always true though, as to pay for his wife’s engagement he got paid to donate some healthy sperm. [Read more…]

The Woman In Black (DVD)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

It’s surprising it’s taken 30 years to turn The Woman In Black into a movie. Susan Hill’s novel has sold millions of copies, and a stage version has been running in the West End since 1989, becoming the second longest-running non-musical production ever. Now Hammer has finally managed to get it onto the screen, with Eden Lake’s James Watkins directing and Daniel Radcliffe starring.

Radcliffe plays young lawyer Arthur Kipps, a man still reeling from the death of his wife during childbirth. Having rather neglected his work, he’s given one final chance by his firm, which involves going to the remote Eel Marsh House to sort through the papers of the recently deceased owner. When he arrives in the nearby village, the locals seem singularly unwelcoming and don’t appear to want him to go to the house. [Read more…]

Ruggles Of Red Gap (Blu-ray & DVD)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

Back in the early part of the 20th Century, Hollywood really liked Ruggles Of Red Gap. Even though the original play only ran for 33 performances on Broadway, it spawned two silent movies and then this 1935 talkie starring Charles Laughton. The actor had just won a Best Actor Oscar for The Private Life Of Henry VIII, and many thought it was odd he chose such a straightforwardly comic role as a follow-up, something he wasn’t particularly well known for at the time.

Laughton plays title character Ruggles, the butler of a posh English lord who is lent to a rather unrefined but very rich American and his social climbing wife, who sees having a butler as a way of showing people how posh they’ve become. After a couple of adventures in Europe, Ruggles is taken to Red Gap, Washington, a pioneer town that doesn’t know quite what to make of this refined manservant. [Read more…]