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

Going In Style (Blu-ray Review) – Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman & Alan Arkin are going bank robbing

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As a feature film director, Scrubs star Zach Braff has previously helmed the quirky indie comedies Garden State and Wish I Were Here. He’s gone far more mainstream with Going In Style, a movie that could have perhaps benefitted from a quirkier spirit.

The movie is a remake of a 1979 film that starred George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg, who have here been replaced by Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin. The three men are lifelong friends whose old age is being put in jeopardy by shady corporate goings-on that are set to rob them of their pensions. [Read more…]

Handsome Devil (DVD Review) – Being young & gay at boarding school can be tough in the charming Irish film

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Handsome Devil became a bit of a fave at film festivals, winning multiple awards at the likes of FilmOut San Diego and the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. You can see why, as it’s a sweet film, which does a good job of capturing the confusion, anger, cruelty and contradictions that are so often part of teenage life. Some of it will also be worryingly familiar to those who went to a rugby-mad boarding school.

Ned (Fionn O’Shea) feels like a total misfit. He’s constantly bullied at his Irish boarding school and called all manner of homophobic slurs. At first, he’s pleased that this year he’ll be getting a room to himself, but that’s disrupted when new boy Conor (Nicholas Galitzine) is assigned to share with him. Neither boy seems happy with the arrangement, with Ned certain that sharing a room with the boy who’s being held up as the school’s new rugby star will just mean he’ll get picked on even more. [Read more…]

Ghost In The Shell (DVD/VoD Review) – Scarlett Johannson is just a robot with a human brain

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Despite being in development for years, the live-action Hollywood movie version of Ghost In The Shell seemed to have the cards stacked against it. Some questioned whether Snow White & The Huntsman’s Rupert Sanders was the right director for the job, and many more felt that casting a white actress in a traditionally Japanese role smacked of whitewashing. Sadly, when the movie arrived, it didn’t get the sort of critical and commercial reaction that might have been able to overturn the issues surrounding it.

The movie opens in the near future with the brain of a young woman being transferred into a robot body (Johannsson) – the first of her kind. The android is named Major, and with memories of being nearly drowned by terrorists, she becomes part of a special team tasked with particularly difficult, often technological crimes. [Read more…]

A Quiet Passion (Blu-ray Review) – Terence Davies & Cynthia Nixon explore the life of Emily Dickinson

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Filmmaker Terence Davies early work was intentionally autobiographical. The likes of The Terence Davies Trilogy, Distant Voices Still Lives and The Long Day Closes looked at growing up working class in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s, touching on the overwhelming effects of Catholicism on him, as well as his own difficult relationship to being gay. Although his work then hasn’t been so explicitly based on himself, there have always remained very distinct echoes of the director in the subjects he’s chosen and the way he’s approached them.

That continues with A Quiet Passion, his biopic of 19th Century American poet, Emily Dickinson. Davies personal connection to the material is apparent from the first scene, where a young Emily is being asked to pick between two strict ideas of where she and a group of other young women stand in relationship to Christianity. However, she stands alone, unable to say where she should be. Once again Davies is fascinated by the push and pull of religion, of someone who wants the world while simultaneously limiting themselves to a small part of it, as well as the strictures of society for those who both desire to fit in and reject it. [Read more…]

Frantz (DVD Review) – Is Francois Ozon’s film a gay post-war movie or not? Truth is complex

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I’ve generally shied away from covering movies on BGPS where the gay content is all down to interpretation, but it’s well worth reviewing Frantz here – a film that could either be very gay or barely at all depending on how you look at it. Just from reading the synopsis I suspected that it might be a film like that, due to the presence of director Francois Ozon (Swimming Pool, 8 Women), a filmmaker whose career has been marked by a strong interest in female characters, gay desire, and how different people interpret the same things.

It’s just after World War I, and in a small German town a young woman called Anna (Paula Beer) is still in mourning for her fiancé – Frantz – who she lost in the trenches of France. She lives with her fallen boyfriend’s parents – Hans (Ernst Stötzner) and Magda (Marie Gruber) – who are also still reeling from the loss. [Read more…]

The Great Wall (Blu-ray Review) – Matt Damon helps the Chinese with their alien dinosaur problem

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After watching this film you’re going to feel dumb. I bet you thought the Great Wall Of China was built to protect the north of the country from human invaders. Nope, it was to stop alien dinosaurs attacking and eventually becoming unstoppable.

Set hundreds of years ago, William (Matt Damon) gets mixed up in this after he and his friend, Tovar (Pedro Pascal) head towards China looking to steal/trade for the fabled ‘black powder’. They are attacked by one of the alien dinosaurs, known as Taotie, and soon after are captured by the Chinese military at the Great Wall. [Read more…]

The Naked Civil Servant (Blu-ray Review) – John Hurt’s classic take on ‘stately homo’ Quentin Crisp returns

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It’s difficult to imagine nowadays what audiences would have made of The Naked Civil Servant in 1975. Gay sex had only been (partially) decriminalised in England and Wales eight years before, and homosexuality certainly wasn’t seen on screen much. Then suddenly there was a primetime TV movie in the UK, about someone who didn’t even have the common decency to hide in the shadows and pretend being gay was the most shameful thing in the universe!

The film charts the life of Quentin Crisp (John Hurt) from his youth through to his 60s. As a young man, his parents don’t know quite what to make of their fey son, who doesn’t seem to like girls or be able to fit himself into ‘normal’ society. After meeting a bunch of ‘effeminate homosexuals’ in London, Quentin starts wearing makeup and becoming increasingly ‘noticeably gay’ at a time when homosexuality was one of society’s most detested things. [Read more…]

La La Land (Blu-ray Review) – Should it have won the Best Picture Oscar for more than 90 seconds?

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It’s the film that won the Best Picture Oscar for a whole 90 seconds, before the Academy managed to says, ‘Whoops, sorry, it was actually Moonlight’. However, it did pick up six of film world’s most prestigious gongs, including Best Actress for Emma Stone, and Best Director for Damien Chazelle. It was also the favourite for the biggest prize going into the ceremony, having charmed audiences with its tale of two people trying to find both love and artistic success.

In LA, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is a jazz musician, working a dead-end job playing piano in a bar, but desperate to prove himself as a real force in a music form that many others have given up on. Mia (the brilliant Emma Stone) is a young woman who works as a waitress, but she also goes to a succession of auditions for movie and TV roles in the hope of finding success as an actress. [Read more…]

Assassin’s Creed (DVD Review) – Michael Fassbender brings the videogame to life

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After witnessing the aftermath of his mother’s murder as a child, Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender) has been on the run and fighting to survive, something that’s left him on death row. After his ‘execution’, he wakes up in a strange facility. The people who run it, led by Sofia (Marion Cotillard), have gotten hold of him because they want to awaken the ‘genetic memories’ he holds, which they can access through a machine called the Animus.

Once attached the contraption, he relives events that took place 500 years ago involving his ancestor, Aguilar de Nerha, who was part of The Assassins, a secret group fighting to stop the Templars taken over Christendom and ruling it with an iron fist. That involves a search for the Apple of Eden, where man’s freewill comes from. [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…]