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

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (DVD Review) – An intimate look at the enigmatic icon

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Enigmatic is an overused word, but it’s one that seems to fit Grace Jones. She’s been famous since the 1970s, but quite what and who she is has always been elusive. She’s a model and a singer, she’s been a Bond girl and co-starred in Conan The Barbarian. Her shows could be viewed as Avant Garde performance art or as a use of striking visuals to cover for middling music. Just visually she is iconic – both an archetype of Amazonian warrior femininity (with the most astonishingly long legs), and yet completely androgynous.

Jones is also impressively ageless, looking pretty much the same now as she did in the 1980s.

She’s someone who seems like we view her through a veil and who isn’t quite on the same planet as the rest of us. To some she is a series of moments – singing while hula-hooping outside Buckingham Palace at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Concert, infamously slapping guest show host Russell Harty in the 1980s, or base-jumping off the Eiffel Tower in A View To A Kill. [Read more…]

The Florida Project (DVD Review) – A young girl lives a precarious existence next to the Magic Kingdom

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Director Sean Baker had a significant success with Tangerine, which followed two transgender sex workers as one of them looks for the man who broke her heart. With The Florida Project he stays with people living a precarious existence, this time in the shadow of Disney World in Orlando.

The movie is largely set at a budget hotel managed by Bobby (Willem Dafoe), where six-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) lives with her young mother Halley (Bria Vinaite). It’s an insecure, day-to-day existence where there’s no security and where they must move out for a while once a month, as they’re not permitted to officially become residents. [Read more…]

Thelma (DVD Review) – Lesbian sexuality awakens & so do supernatural powers

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Joachim Trier’s follow-up to his much-praised movie, Louder Than Bombs, has found much acclaim. It’s the sort of intriguing film that builds tension by living in a moral grey area and maintaining an enigmatic, sexual air.

Thelma (Eili Harboe) is a young woman who’s led an incredibly sheltered life. Her strongly religious parents have completely controlled her existence, but now she’s getting her first taste of freedom by going away to university. As she settles into college life – which still includes the need to contact her parents everyday so they can keep an eye on her – she starts to have feelings for one of her female friends. [Read more…]

Blade Runner 2049 (Blu-ray Review) – An artificial Ryan Gosling needs to track down Harrison Ford

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When it was first announced that a sequel to Blade Runner was in the works, it seemed like a bad idea. Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford are on a bit of a roll revisiting their greatest hits, following Scott’s Alien Prequels and Ford’s return to Indiana Jones and Star Wars. However, Blade Runner was such a singular movie – and one so far removed from the modern blockbuster – that it seemed a wholly bizarre idea to now be making a sequel.

Scott then handed the directing reigns across to Denis Villeneuve, which gave some guarded optimism following Sicario and Arrival, but it still seemed ill judged. [Read more…]

God’s Own Country (Blu-ray Review) – Does the BAFTA-nominated gay-themed movie deserve its acclaim?

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In most years we’re lucky if one gay-themed movie could be classed as a crossover success, but in the UK we had two released at cinemas within weeks of one another last autumn – Call Me By Your Name and the homegrown God’s Own Country. Although the former is now a quadruple Oscar nominee and the latter isn’t (although it did score a BAFTA nomination), as God’s Own Country star Josh O’Connor has said, that’s more to do with the lack of resources for a major Oscar push than because the movie isn’t good.

God’s Own Country follows young farmer Johnny Saxby (Josh O’Connor), who lives on a remote smallholding in Yorkshire with his recently disabled father (Ian Hart) and his taciturn grandmother (Gemma Jones). With most of his schoolfriends having gone to university or moved somewhere bigger, Johnny is leading a lonely existence. He has started drinking heavily and having occasional, casual sex with guys – although with no conception that it could be more than just one-off sex. With the lambing season on its way, they decide to hire someone to help, which brings Romanian immigrant Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu) to the farm. [Read more…]

Romeu & Romeu: Parts 1&2 (DVD Review) – Romeo & Juliet gets gayer and more Brazilian

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Romeo & Juliet seems to be a story that appeals to gay sensibilities, as it’s been referenced in all manner of gay books and movies. Romeu & Romeu is far from the first time the whole play has been given a same sex twist. For example, 2011’s Private Romeo kept Shakespeare’s dialogue but set the story between two male cadets at an American military school.

Romeu & Romeu is a Brazilian web series take of the Bard’s classic, with the Capulets and Montagues becoming the Monteiros and Campelos, and Verona moving from Italy to somewhere outside Sao Paulo. Ever since homophobic violence back in the 1960s, the families have been sworn enemies, trapped in a constant cycle of eye-for-an-eye anger and violence. [Read more…]

It (DVD Review) – Pennywise is back and scarier than ever

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I think it’s fair to say that after it had been in development for years, not many people held out much hope for the new version of Stephen King’s It. That’s especially true as after a number of interesting directors had been attached, the job eventually went to Andy Muschietti, whose only previous feature credit was the underwhelming Mama.

However, it not only turned out to be a really good movie, but also a bit of a record-breaker at the box office. It scored the biggest ever September opening in the US, and ended up with the highest gross ever for an R-rated horror movie. [Read more…]

American Made (Blu-ray Review) – Tom Cruise gets into the 1980s drug trade alongside the CIA

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Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) is working as a pilot for TWA in the late 70s when she’s spotted by CIA agent Monty ‘Schafer’ (Domhnall Gleeson). Schafer wants Barry to fly reconnaissance missions in Central America, where the Soviet Union is backing Communist militias. His success at that leads to missions where he acts of the CIA courier to General Noriega in Panama, as well as helping to arm the anti-Communist Nicaraguan Contras in Honduras.

All this leads him to some dodgy places, including into the sphere of the Medellin Cartel, who get Barry to help them smuggle drugs into the US on his return trips. The CIA turn a blind eye to his side job as long as he still gets results. However, not every US law enforcement agency is as keen to ignore Barry’s smuggling. [Read more…]

The Limehouse Golem (DVD Review) – Bill Nighy investigates possibly LGBT Victorian murders

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A murderer is stalking the streets of Limehouse in Victorian London, killing viciously and spreading panic. The killer has become known as the Limehouse Golem; named after the medieval Jewish monster made of clay. Police Inspector John Kildare (Bill Nighy) is brought in to investigate, soon coming to wonder whether the killer is the recently deceased John Cree (Sam Reid).

This line of questioning introduces him to Cree’s wife, Lizzie (Olivia Cooke), as well as the world of the music hall theatre she used to work at, which is led by cross-dressing comedy star Dan Leno (Douglas Booth). The number of potential suspects continues to grow – at one point even leading Kildare to the door of Karl Marx – especially after the discovery of a book that may be the murderer’s diary. But who wrote it and why? [Read more…]

Mixed Messages (DVD Review) – A lesbian experiences a year of being single in queer Berlin

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Ren (Alana Lake) is a British transplant living in Berlin. She’s single but doesn’t really want to be. Over the course of a year, we get to see her various attempts to get lucky and find connection. That ranges from dealing with someone who seems more interested in their Tinder match than her, as well as a one-night-stand who doesn’t seem able to eat any of the breakfast banquet she’s created. She also heads off to a bondage workshop and tries speed-dating, while a lost mobile phone on one date cause all manner of problems.

Ren is living in a world where finding someone for more than a night seems increasingly difficult, and sometimes even a whole night is too much to ask. [Read more…]