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

Killing Season (Blu-ray Review)

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It’s always a shame when you can see what a movie so desperately hopes to be, but it falls incredibly far short. Killing Season wants be a tense cat and mouse thriller, with a serious backdrop looking at the horrors of war and the way it affects people after the battle is over.  Unfortunately it ends up just being a bit silly and over the top.

It’s a particular shame as this is the first time Robert de Niro and John Travolta have appeared on-screen together. [Read more…]

Test (DVD Review)

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The TV show Looking has given us an insight into being gay in San Francisco in the 2010s, and now Test takes us back to the city as it was three decades ago, just as AIDS was emerging. Although documentaries and films such as The Normal Heart have tended to look at the advent of HIV on the entire community and the panic it caused, Test takes a smaller, more personal approach, where it hovers in the background of one man’s life.

Frankie (Scott Marlowe) is a young dancer, who’s practicing to be the understudy in a new piece. He’s heard the stories of gay men coming down with a strange illness and that there’s a new test for the disease. Slowly AIDS goes from being fairly distant to something that’s creeping ever closer to his own life, so he must decide whether to go in for the test, knowing that things he’s done could have exposed him to the virus. [Read more…]

The Double (Blu-ray Review)

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Richard Ayoade impressed many with his directorial debut, Submarine, and now he’s back with something a little more ambitious – an unusual, highly stylised movie based on a story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Jesse Eisenberg is Simon, who lives in a David Lynch by way of Terry Gillian self-contained world. He works as clerk for a government agency, where no matter what great ideas he comes up with, nobody seems to notice him. That includes the woman of his dreams (Mia Wasikowska), who works in the copy room but barely seems to remember him, despite the fact he’s close to being her stalker. [Read more…]

Masters Of Sex – Season 1 (DVD Review)

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Masters Of Sex is certainly a provocative title, and one that could promise a lot but deliver little. Thankfully though that’s far from the case with this excellent series, which takes a fictionalised look at the real-life Dr. Williams Master (Martin Sheen) and Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan), who revolutionised our understanding of sex by looking at it scientifically.

It’s amazing to think that in the 1950s we’d split the atom, begun to understand quantum physics, built skyscrapers that reached over 1,000 feet into the sky, and yet we knew remarkably little about something as fundamental as sex, largely due to prurience. [Read more…]

The Last Match (La Partida) (DVD Review)

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There’s been a lot of interesting gay-themed cinema coming out of South America. With The Last Match things move a little north to the island of Cuba – although thematically and stylistically it shares a lot in common with what’s been made in the likes of Brazil and Argentina.

Reinier (Reinier Díaz) is a teen who lives in the slums of Havana. He makes money as a rent boy – although he’s keen to tell his Johns he’s not a ‘fag’ – and dreams of playing soccer professionally. Then he meets Yosvani (Milton García), who’s also fighting against tough circumstances. Their friendship becomes complicated when Reinier drunkenly kisses Yosvani on the lips. However when Yosvani later tries to reciprocate, Reinier angrily pushes him away. [Read more…]

Love Or Whatever (DVD Review)

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It’s back into the world of gay-themed rom-coms with Love Or Whatever, which follows Corey (Tyler Poelle) who thinks he’s got is all – a good job as a counsellor and a boyfriend who he’s about to propose to. However his lover, Jon (David Page), has different ideas. He’s nervous about the commitment he knows Corey is going to ask for and so ends up having a one-night stand – with a woman.

Corey doesn’t take this news well and throws Jon out. Things get worse when Corey discovers his boyfriend’s new lady is one of his clients. He’s torn between whether to pump her for information or whether do the right thing and pass her off to another shrink. [Read more…]

A Long Way Down (DVD Review)

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If you’ve never read Nick Hornby’s book, A Long Way Down, I’d heartily recommend it. However most people who’ve read the novel will know it was always going to be tough to adapt it for the screen without making it seem trite or cheap. While not a complete disaster, unfortunately the movie version doesn’t completely overcome those issues.

On New Year’s Eve four strangers meet on a rooftop – disgraced broadcaster Martin (Pierce Brosnan), loud-mouthed politician’s daughter Jess (Imogen Poots), down-trodden mother Maureen (Toni Collette) and musician JJ (Aaron Paul). They’re all there to do the same thing – leap to their deaths. [Read more…]

Girls On Film: The First Date (DVD Review)

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After the success of Peccadillo’s Boys On Film series – which has so far given us 10 selections of great short films focussed on gay men – comes the lesbian-themed Girls On Film: The First Date. The disc features nine shorts, and as with the Boys On Film releases it’s a great selection that covers a broad range of topics and ideas, taking in everything from comedy to documentary.

You can take a look at what I thought of each of the shorts below: [Read more…]

Yves Saint Laurent (DVD Review)

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Yves Saint Laurent tells the story of one of fashion’s greatest legends. Directed by Jalil Lespert (Tell No One) and starring Pierre Niney (La Comédie Francaise) in the title role, this visually sumptuous film begins in Paris, 1957. The film charts YSL’s career from his early years at Dior in the late 1950s through to his iconic Ballet Russes collection of 1976. The world of late 1950s is perfectly captured with elegant Dior designs, stylish models and a jazz score that matches the chic Parisian apartments the fashionistas inhabit. [Read more…]

Harold And Maude (Blu-ray Review)

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Harold and Maude can be a tough sell. Despite saying to people that it’s a small masterpiece that’s amongst the best American movies ever made, the moment you mention that it’s a full-on love story between a teenager and a 79-year-old woman you can see the horror start to mount in people’s eyes, especially when you confirm we’re not talking purely about platonic love.

Now it’s arrived on Blu-ray, and I can only hope the release convinces a few more people to indulge in its quirky and yet often profound delights. [Read more…]