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

Creed (Blu-ray Review)

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A few years ago, pretty much everyone thought the Rocky franchise was dead, and that any attempt to resurrect it would be a pointless, awful cash-in. However, 2006’s Rocky Balboa proved there might be a little life left, and now Creed is cashing in on that promise.

Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) is the illegitimate offspring of Apollo Creed, who’s been trapped in foster homes and juvenile detention until he’s given a chance by Apollo’s widow (Phylicia Rashad), who decides to take him in. She also points him towards someone else from her husband’s past, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), who reluctantly agrees to help train the young man and turn him into a boxer. [Read more…]

Grey Gardens (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray Review)

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A lot of movies that have been given the ‘cult film’ label are really nothing of the sort, but Grey Gardens is almost the definition of a cult phenomenon. 90% of the population have no idea what it is, but when you find somebody who does, it’s almost like you’ve discovered someone else who’s part of a secret club. Now it’s got a new Blu-ray release as one of the first Criterion Collection Blu-rays to be released in the UK.

Criterion has taken a long time jumping across the pond, as it’s been going in the US since the era of laserdiscs in the 1980s. However, now hopefully Britain will be able to get a taste of the collection, which is known for its attention to detail, intricate restorations and remastering, and good special features. [Read more…]

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (Blu-ray Review)

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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 was an entertaining movie but there’s no doubt that it largely felt like it was laying the groundwork and building us up for Part 2. Now that film is coming to Blu-ray, so that those who didn’t catch it in cinemas can find out how the struggle between the Districts and the Capitol ends.

Panem is now in full-scale Civil War, with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) having been enrolled as the Mockingjay, a figurehead that District 13 President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) wants to use for propaganda purposes. However, all Katniss really wants is to kill President Snow (Donald Sutherland) in the hope it will bring everything to an end. She also becomes increasingly suspicious of Coin, concerned that if she takes control after the Capitol collapses, they could be simply replacing one despot with another. [Read more…]

Brooklyn (Blu-ray Review)

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If you want Oscar nominations, you need to put Domhnall Gleeson in your movie. He was in four films released in 2015 that got multiple nominations. Brooklyn was one of those movies (alongside Star Wars, The Revenant and Ex Machina), although he doesn’t show up until the second half.

Based on Colm Toibin’s book, Brooklyn is about young Irish woman Eilis (Saoirse Ronan), whose sister Rose and a priest have organised for her to have a new life in New York, where they believe she will have more opportunities. After a difficult crossing, Eilis starts a new job at a department store while living at a boarding house in Brooklyn, and begins training to be a bookkeeper. [Read more…]

The Walk (DVD Review)

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It’s the 1970s and Frenchman Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a small-time street entertainer in Paris, dreaming of something big. He believes that he is a wire-walking artist and that he is bigger that drawing a chalk circle and balancing a few feet off the ground.

He decides that the ‘coup’ that he must achieve is to walk between the still uncompleted Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. It is a completely crazy idea – he doesn’t even know how far apart the buildings are – but after achieving a stunt to walk between the towers of Notre Dame, he begins to put his idea into action. [Read more…]

Everest (Blu-ray Review)

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It’s climbing season in the Himalayas and Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) is planning to lead a group of adventure tourists to the summit of Mount Everest. While he keeps telling them how dangerous it is and how many people physically cannot make it, many are gung-ho to get to the top. As they make their way higher up the mountain, Rob decides it’s going to be best to team up with a rival company, led by Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal), in the hope of keeping things as safe as possible.

After facing illness and other issues that prevent some of them getting to the top, a group of them make it, only to be hit by an extremely nasty storm, which threatens to ensure that none of them will make it back down again. As the team gets separated and faces ever greater threat, it becomes increasingly clear that not everyone is going to make it back alive. [Read more…]

The Cobbler (DVD Review)

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The Cobbler is not Adam Sandler in zany mood, but he’s not being 100% serious either. He certainly pulls things back from his usual performances and enters mumbling mode, which is admittedly more watchable than he often is. He is Max, a cobbler who is forced to use an old shoemaking machine when his newer one breaks. He discovers that the machine has magical properties, as he now has the ability to put on somebody else’s shoes and literally become them.

At first Max thinks he’s going to be able to have some fun with his powers (including a creepily rapey sequence involving a cameo from Dan Stevens and a woman in a shower), but he soon gets caught up in a tricky situation with a bunch of bad guys. Looking into the lives of his customers also makes his re-evaluate the attempts to save his neighbourhood, which he’d previously ignored, and so he sets out to use his powers to stop the baddies destroying everything. [Read more…]

Ricki And The Flash (Blu-ray Review)

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A film like Ricki And The Flash makes you realise just how good Meryl Streep is, as without her this film is likely to have gotten far worse reviews than it did. She is obviously having a great time in the lead role of an aging rockers whose dreams of stardom never really came to anything, and now finds herself somewhat estranged from her kids.

Ricki (whose real name is Linda) gets a call from her ex-husband, Pete (Kevin Kline), to tell her their daughter, Julie (Mamie Gummer), is severely depressed after her hubby ran off with another woman. Ricki jumps on a plane from California to Iowa and discovers things are worse than she thought, as Julie has attempted suicide. However, Julie seems to respond to having her mother around, even if her two sons are less impressed about having the mother who virtually abandoned them around. [Read more…]

Pixels (Blu-ray Review)

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Things have gone crazy with the world in Pixels. For a start we’re supposed to believe the American people have voted Kevin James to be their President, and also that if the POTUS is your bestie, you’re still going to have to work as a home entertainment installer. If that doesn’t suggest things are bad enough, the world is suddenly attacked by aliens whose army takes the form of 1980s 8-bit video game characters – from Centipede to Space Invaders – and starts destroying things by pixelating them.

The military can’t defeat them as they don’t know the rules of the games, so it’s down to Brenner (Adam Sandler), Ludlow (Josh Gad) and the arrogant and unstable Eddie (Peter Dinklage) – who were videogame champions when they were kids in the 80s – to take down the unusual invaders. [Read more…]

Hot Pursuit (Blu-ray Review)

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Hot Pursuit must have seemed like a slam dunk. Get two popular actresses who’ve had comedy success, give them a script that’s a little similar to The Heat and bring in a director who had a big hit with The Proposal. However, the resulting movie flopped at the cinemas and has an abysmally low rating of 7% on Rotten Tomatoes.

To be fair to it though, it’s not as dreadful as that might suggest. You can almost feel the critics reacting to the fact it all very forced – a movie that from the ground up feels cynically contrived to pander to the audience and as a result ends up lacking real heart. However, everyone involved is obviously extremely keen to please, rather like an overly keen party host, where you can appreciate the effort even if you wish they wouldn’t try so hard. [Read more…]