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 Dark Tower (Blu-ray Review) – The Stephen King fantasy saga finally makes it to the screen

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It’s a movie 10-years in the making (at least this attempt took 10 year), but when it arrived in cinemas The Dark Tower was met with negative reviews and muted box office. It currently has a pretty abysmal 16% on RottenTomatoes and just 5.9/10 from viewers on IMDB. So is it really that bad? No, it’s not, but its easy to understand why it’s had such bad reactions.

The film focuses on teenager Jake (Tom Taylor), who’s been having strange visions of a giant tower at the centre of the universe and the ‘Man In Black’ (Matthew McConaughey), who’s determined to destroy it. While those around him are beginning to think Jake is becoming unhinged, the teen discovers what he’s been seeing is real. [Read more…]

Even Lovers Get The Blues (DVD Review) – Friends try to figure what sex and life mean in the LGBT-themed movie

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The Belgian film Even Lovers Gets The Blues follows a group of friends in the aftermath of the death of one of their number. After a night of fun and passion for all of them, Hugo keels over and dies while his girlfriend, Ana, is taking a post-sex shower.

This potent reminder of mortality has a profound effect on all of them. Ana is left reeling from the death of her lover, and tries to fill the gap in her life and deal with her grief by sleeping with a variety of men. Louis seems to wants his girlfriend, Leo, to have a baby, but she seems unsure and both have difficulty communicating about it. Dahlia and Graciano meanwhile have issues with their sex life, as Graciano is finding it difficult to stay aroused and his attempts to bring intimacy back to their relationship fail. Things change one drunken and drugged up night when he sleeps with their promiscuous gay friend, Arthur. [Read more…]

Taxi Stories (Review) – Three tales of power imbalance in the gay-themed film

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Taxi Stories got its US premiere on May 3rd at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. It was certainly a fitting place for the film, which spans across East Asia from Indonesia to Hong Kong and Beijing. Each of those locations is the setting for one of the movie’s three stories.

In Indonesia, a young taxi/bajai driver in Jakarta meets an Aussie woman called Samantha who’s on her gap year. He quickly becomes enamoured with her and hopes he can make her his girlfriend. He is also hired by a Hong Kong visitor to take him on a tour. However, the gay visitor may have ulterior motives – but perhaps not you might expect. [Read more…]

Women He’s Undressed (US Cinema/DVD Review)

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Gillian Armstrong is best known for directing the likes of Charlotte Gray, Oscar & Lucinda and Little Women, but here she returns to the documentary arena for a film about Orry-Kelly. It’s not a name you’ll necessarily recognise, although you will probably know some of his work – Ingrid Bergman’s costumes in Casablanca, Marilyn Monroe’s frocks in Some Like It Hot, the western clothes in Oklahoma! and all manner of dresses for Bette Davis.

He won three Oscars (making him Australia’s most prolific Academy Award winner until fellow costume designer Catherine Martin picked up her third and fourth gongs for The Great Gatsby (2013)), and to many in the filmmaking community he’s a bit of a legend. He was also an alcoholic and he was gay, something he didn’t hide but didn’t publicly flaunt either. Rumours suggest he may have had an intimate relationship with Cary Grant when they roomed together shortly after they both arrived in the US, although that’s never been confirmed. [Read more…]

Winning Dad (Film Review)

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Colby is gay, something his conservative father, Michael, has never properly accepted. However, Colby has now found a man he thinks might be ‘the one’ and so hatches a plan for his dad to get to know Rusty, without him realising he’s his son’s boyfriend. Colby tells his father that Rusty is his straight friend and future business partner who’s he’s invited along on their annual camping trip with them.

When it’s time to go on the trip, Colby says he can’t go at the last minute, and so Rusty and Michael head off alone. Initially it looks like they’re going to get on well, but as the men become more comfortable around one another, Rusty starts to think perhaps he can tell Michael the truth – although if he does, there’s no guarantee Michael will accept it and the repercussions might not just rip Colby’s family apart, but also his relationship with Rusty. [Read more…]

45 Years (Blu-ray Review)

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Following the indie success of Weekend and helping to produce/direct HBO’s Looking, Andrew Haigh shows he isn’t simply be a ‘gay director’ with the tender 45 Years. The film introduces us to Kate and Geoff Mercer (Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay), who are soon to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary.

Geoff gets unexpected news when he receives a letter informing him that the frozen body of his old girlfriend, who died in an accident decades before, has been discovered in the Swiss Alps. Initially Kate thinks this is surprising and upsetting news for her husband, but not something that will greatly affect either of them. However, as Geoff talks more about this woman he knew before he met Kate, she starts to feel that perhaps their marriage has been haunted by her, and Geoff’s feelings about an entirely different life that he might have led if fate hadn’t intervened. [Read more…]

Maggie (Blu-ray Review)

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Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a zombie movie! He’s going to be blowing the undead away left, right and centre, while mumbling memorable catchphrases, isn’t he? Actually, no, as this is something very different both for the Terminator and for zombie flicks. Except for the undead, this is Arnie in a small-scale mother-daughter indie melodrama, with fairly little action and much soul-searching.

Schwarzenegger is Wade Vogel, who’s living with his wife and kids in the middle of nowhere, where they’ve managed to escape a zombie plague that has affected millions. After his eldest daughter, Maggie (Abigail Breslin), gets bitten and infected, he goes to pick her up from quarantine to take her home, knowing that while she will be okay for a while, eventually she will turn and have to be taken away before she turns completely – assuming she doesn’t die before then. [Read more…]

Stretch (Blu-ray Review)

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Stretch is a bit of a crazy film. Indeed it’s so crazy that despite a cast full of well-known actors the studio behind it didn’t know quite what to do with it and cancelled its US cinema release just a couple of months before it was due to hit cinemas, before trying to sell it to another distributor. However, that’s a shame as while it is nuts and sometimes incredibly messy, it’s also oddly entertaining, even if you can see the studio’s point that it’s a tough film to properly market.

Patrick Wilson plays an LA limo driver whose life hasn’t turned out as he wanted – he planned to be an actor but never made it, he’s lost the love of his life and now he’s got a massive gambling debt and no time to pay it off. In the hope of getting a massive tip he takes a job driving an extremely eccentric passenger (Chris Pine), but soon finds him caught up in a situation involving foreign gangsters, the FBI, a suitcase full of cash, an asshole version of Ray Liotta (playing himself) and a psychotic tow truck driver. [Read more…]

Eat With Me (US Cinema Review)

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Elliot (Teddy Chen Culver) is a gay man running a Chinese restaurant (which is in major financial trouble). He’s trying to figure out his love life, which certainly isn’t devoid of men but none of them are around for long. His life is shaken up when his mother, Emma (Sharon Omi), turns up on his doorstep and asks to stay for a while.

It appears she’s left Elliot’s rather thoughtless and selfish father, although she doesn’t want to talk about it. There’s also the added complication that while Emma knows her son is gay, she’s not comfortable with it and isn’t sure how to reconcile it in her own mind. However with the help of Elliot’s next door neighbour (Nicole Sullivan), Emma begins to find a new way to look at her life and her possibilities. For Elliot meanwhile, having his mother stay forces him to re-evaluate his tendency to push possible relationships away. [Read more…]

Paddington (Blu-ray Review)

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Paddington is proof, if it were needed, that in a world where filmmakers constantly seem to think they need to make their family films cool and hip, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel if you’re going to do it right.

I have to admit I was dubious about this take on Michael Bond’s classic children’s character, as after seeing the first image of the bear’s new live-action/CGI incarnation, he just didn’t look quite right to me. However after only a couple of minutes of the movie starting, I have to admit I was rather enchanted. [Read more…]