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

Kite (Blu-ray Review)

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Some films manage to take a low budget and use it to their advantage, finding interesting and innovative ways to get around the fact they don’t have much cash and still deliver a full and complete film experience. Sadly Kite is not one of those films. It thinks it is, but it really isn’t.

The movie follows young Sawa (India Eisley) who lives in a scummy, corrupt post-apocalyptic future where she ruthlessly tries to hunt down the people who killed her parents, helped by her father’s ex-partner, Karl (Samuel L. Jackson). Things begin to change when she meets someone she knew as a child – although she can’t remember him due to the fact that the drugs she takes to help her be a single-minded and very successful killer blur her memory of the past. [Read more…]

The Secret Path (DVD Review)

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While indie gay cinema has become more diverse in recent years, the genres it’s dipped its toes into are still limited, largely because the often minuscule budgets tend to limit what you can do in arenas such as sci-fi or action. Another genre we very rarely get is period drama, but writer/director Richard Mansfield has found a way to do it by making a film that’s set totally in a forest with only four people ever seen – and just two of them on-screen for 95% of the time. As a result he can do period drama just with costume and character.

In the early 1800s Frank (Darren Bransford) and Theo (Henry Regan) have escaped the Navy and washed up on the shore. They are now on the run from the press gangs and hiding in the woods near a large country house. They plan to get by on crime, perhaps as highwaymen or grave robbers. [Read more…]

Joe (DVD Review)

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Nicolas Cage may be an Oscar-winning actor, but in recent years he’s largely become synonymous with an endless string of not particularly great movies where he gives one of his interchangeable extreme wild-man performances, where restraint is regarded as an alien concept.

Joe gives us something a little different, with Cage playing title character Joe Ransom, a character who spends much of the movie trying to keep a lid on the fiery, violent temper that lies underneath. It was an extremely smart move to cast the actor, as you can genuinely feel Cage pulling in the tics and extreme tendencies he has shown in endless movies in the last few years. [Read more…]

Lilting (DVD Review)

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An aging Cambodian-Chinese woman (Cheng Pei Pei) talks to her son, Kai (Andrew Leung) in a nursing home. However he’s not really there. It’s her remembrance of the last time she saw him a few weeks before, the day before he died. Now she is left alone, living in Britain but unable to speak English.

Her son’s partner, Richard (Ben Whishaw), wants to help her, even though he’s going through his own grief, something that’s complicated not just by the language barrier but also because Junn didn’t know her child was gay (or perhaps she did know but was in denial). Richard’s remembrance of his lover revolves around his gentle coaxing of him to come out, so that perhaps Junn can come and live with them, something he hopes will assuage the guilt he knows Kai feels. Now he still wants to help Junn, but she’s not sure she wants his help, partly because she always disliked him and doesn’t trust him. [Read more…]

Space Station 76 (DVD Review)

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Space Station 76 is an odd but interesting idea. It’s a movie set in the future, but the 1970s version of the future, complete with bell bottoms, big hair and attitudes to sexuality and gender that haven’t fully gotten to grips with the sexual revolution.

Jessica  (Liv Tyler) comes aboard Space Station 76 and is immediately faced with suspicion due to the fact she’s a woman, and so people wonder why she isn’t at home making dinner and raising children. However that’s soon the least of her problems as she’s been dumped in the middle of a melting pot of fractured relationships, simmering resentment, and tortured sexuality. [Read more…]

Fading Gigolo (DVD Review)

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Fioravante (John Turturro) is a florist whose life – and career – takes a surprising turn when his friend, Murray (Woody Allen), talks him into becoming a male escort. Murray’s dermatologist (Sharon Stone) has always dreamed on having a threesome and will pay handsomely for first having an individual session and afterwards bringing in her friend (Sofia Vergara).

Then Murray decides to expand the ‘business’, by hiring Fioravante as a ‘healer’ to the widowed Avigal (Vanessa Paradis), whose been living a hidden, buttoned down Orthodox Jewish life, kept in check by the overzealous neighbourhood patrol. To his own surprise, Fioravante start to have feelings for her. [Read more…]

300: Rise Of An Empire (Blu-ray Review)

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Ever since 300 became a surprise blockbuster they’ve been talking about a sequel. However it kept getting put back due to the fact comic creator Frank Miller hadn’t finished the graphic novel it was supposed to be based on. Eventually they decided to go ahead anyway, and so we have 300: Rise Of An Empire.

The movie is a sidequel to the earlier film, following the men of Athens before, during and after what happened to Gerard Butler and his Spartans (and in case you’re wondering, the shirtlessness and six pack abs are back, although the Athenians aren’t quite as hulking as the Spartans). [Read more…]

Who’s Afraid Of Vagina Wolf? (DVD Review)

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Anna (Anna Margarita Albelo) has just turned 40 and is having a bit of an early midlife crisis. After leaving college she had dreams of finding love and having a glittering filmmaking career, eventually deciding she would sacrifice the former for the latter.

However she’s now finds herself with neither, she’s living in someone’s garage, and she can’t even organise herself enough to put in a grant funding application on time. Her film career – while initially promising – has come down to her dancing around in a vagina costume. [Read more…]

My Straight Son (DVD Review)

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Diego is a photographer in Venezuela, living a nice life where he can go out to clubs and restaurants, and spend time with his doctor boyfriend, Fabrizio. However his life takes an abrupt right turn when his teenage son, Armando, arrives from Spain to visit and quickly realises that his dad is gay – something the young man isn’t that impressed about. Around the same time Fabrizio is beaten into a coma, leaving Diego reeling.

Diego’s friends become an unconventional family while he tries to deal with what happened to his boyfriend and also attempts to reconnect with his son. [Read more…]

Sabotage (Blu-ray Review)

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There’s a tendency that even film reviewers fall into, which is to think that we always treat each individual film on its own merits. However sometimes it’s often not true. There can be a big problem when people go into a movie thinking it’s going to be one thing when actually it’s something else. As a result they judge it against their expectations not against the film itself.

I couldn’t help thinking about that while watching Sabotage, as many of the truly horrendous reviews the film have received are essentially bemoaning the fact they thought they were getting a ‘typical’ Arnie movie. However it’s not that, but the reviews still seem to view it through the lens of 80s Schwarzenegger. [Read more…]