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

Safe House (DVD)

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Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is a young CIA operative feeling trapped by his dull posting as the keeper of a safe house in Cape Town. His rather tedious existence is suddenly blown apart by the arrival of Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), a former secret agent accused of selling out his country and who’s been on the run for several years.

The team who’ve captured him immediately start using aggressive techniques to get info out of him, but are interrupted by armed men storming in, shooting up the place while looking for Tobin. Matt is forced to go on the run with Frost in tow. He’s determined to get captured fugitive safely into CIA hands, but the former agent isn’t planning to go quietly, especially as there’s more to him than meets the eye and an ever growing conspiracy around him. [Read more…]

J. Edgar (DVD)

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J. Edgar is a movie that’s perhaps better off on DVD and Blu-ray than it was in cinemas. The reason for that is that it’s a rather narratively complex beast and so takes at least a couple of viewing to properly unravel. Its problem is that the first viewing is likely to seem rather dull to many, so they’re less likely to want to revisit it.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays J. Edgar Hoover, who for nearly half a century oversaw the FBI from when it was a fledgling organisation, though the depression and era of the gangster, onto the red scare and beyond. The film sees Hoover as an old man dictating his memoirs, while in flashback we see his earlier days and how he quickly climbed to the top of the Bureau Of Investigation (as it was initially known) and used the likes of the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping to increase the power of the organisation. [Read more…]

Because Of A Boy (You’ll Get Over It) (DVD)

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Vincent (Julien Baumgartner) is a French teenager who’s fairly popular in his school and a member of the swim team. However he’s also secretly coming to terms with being gay, despite the fact he has a girlfriend. When new boy Benjamin (Jeremie Elkaim) turns up, who has a bit of a reputation as a bad boy, Vincent is soon attracted to him. After Vincent’s attempt to kiss Benjamin turns sour, the new boy inadvertently lets Vincent’s secret out.

The teen turns up to school to find graffiti calling him a ‘fag’ scrawled next to his locker and plenty of people ready to laugh and try to intimidate in. As his outing spreads from school to his family, Vincent must face a lot of prejudice, but also begins to realise that maybe not everything about being open about your sexuality is a bad thing. [Read more…]

C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005)

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C.R.A.Z.Y. follows the first 20 years of young French Canadian Zac’s life, who was Born on Christmas Day 1960. Always striving to please his father, Gervais, this becomes more difficult when his sexuality comes into question. As Zac struggles through his teenage years, will he and his family ever come to understand each other?

What’s the point of Quebec? After all, this is the place that gave us Celine Dion, so it’s got a lot to answer for. However, while not traditionally thought of for its film industry, it came to international attention in 2003 when Les Invasions Babares won the Best Foreign Film Oscar, and now C.R.A.Z.Y. also got a fair amount of attention when it was released in 2005. [Read more…]

Prometheus (Cinema)

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After one of the biggest and most hyperbolic marketing campaigns ever, which did all but suggest that Ridley Scott’s return to sci-fi is a bigger deal than if Jesus returned, Prometheus is here. Ever since it was announced, there’s been a lot of talk about exactly how it’s related to Alien. Scott himself has distanced the film from his earlier effort, saying only that strands of ‘Alien DNA’ would be apparent and that it only becomes a prequel in the last few minutes.

Well, the truth is that this doesn’t just have ‘Alien DNA’, it’s a full-blown prequel. The reason for Scott distancing it is the same as it often is with marketing nowadays – the assumption the audience is stupid (which, to be honest, is often quite a fair assessment for a lot of cinemagoers). There aren’t any xenomorphs (well, pretty much), and so it appears Scott wants to make sure audiences aren’t expecting the iconic facehuggers and aliens and are then disappointed by their absence. [Read more…]

Redwoods (2009)

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If you like melodrama, then Redwoods is the film for you, which lays it on so thick you could almost choke on it, although thankfully has its heart in the right place. Everett (Brendan Bradley) and Miles (Tad Coughenour) are a gay couple who’ve lost the spark in their relationship but are held together by raising their autistic son.

When Miles and the kid head off for a week to visit his grandma, Everett is left alone to work and reflect. He soon bumps into Chase (Matthew Montgomery), who’s visiting Redwood country as he travels around writing a book.  The two men’s relationship soon blossoms into an affair, with Everett suddenly regaining the passion that’s long been missing from his life. However he knows at the end of the week his boyfriend and son will return, but the temptation is to leave them. Will he stay, go and will he even have the choice? [Read more…]

Walk On Water (2004)

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Etyan Fox’s follow-up to his LGBT Israeli hit Yossi & Jagger follows Mossad agent Eyal, who is assigned to pose as a tour guide when young German Axel comes to Israel to visit his sister, who’s working on a kibbutz. Axel’s grandfather was a Nazi war criminal and Mossad wants Eyal to gather info on whether the old man is still alive.

A friendship begins to develop between the two men, although cultural differences soon raise their head, especially when Eyal discovers Axel is gay, something he’s not comfortable with. When the German makes friends with an Arab, Eyal reaches the end of his tether. However eventually he decides to visit Axel in Germany, which may also give him a chance to lay to rest his guilt over the death of his wife. [Read more…]

The Skin I Live In (2011)

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Pedro Almodovar rarely makes a bad movie and The Skin I Live In is no exception. Antonio Banderas plays a doctor called Robert Legrand, who’s known for his advances in artificial skin and sex change operations. However he hides a secret, because locked away at home is a woman (Elena Anaya) he’s been doing surgical experiments on. She wants to get out, but Robert has a sophisticated security system and a dedicated mother (Marisa Parades) to keep her in. But is he keeping her in because what he’s been doing is illegal, or is there more going on?

The Skin I Live In is the sort of film where I don’t want to say too much about the plot or it’ll spoil the film’s slow reveal, but suffice to say things are not as they appears, and it all has to do with former tragedies in the doctor’s life and the destruction of his family. And it’s no coincidence the woman looks like Robert’s deceased wife. [Read more…]

This Is What Love In Action Looks Like (DVD)

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It’s always good to see people standing up for a cause they believe in and forcing some change, especially when it so often seems there’s not much small groups of people can do. However with the right cause and the right way of doing things, you can make a difference, as this documentary proves.

In 2005 the friends of 16-year-old Memphis teenager Zach were shocked to find a series of MySpace posts saying that following his parents reacting badly to his telling them he was gay, they were sending him to a Fundamentalist Christian live-in programme, Love In Action, which would try to turn him straight. With Zach having already been packed off to the organisation’s centre, Zach’s friends decide to organise a protest. Their peaceful attempts to raise awareness of the centre’s existence and to try and help Zach soon become a major news story, forcing things to change. However with Zach inside the centre, he knows little about what’s going on in his name. [Read more…]

Catch .44 (Blu-ray)

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Writer/director Aaron Harvey really wants to be Quentin Tarantino, and I mean REALLY wants to be. While many people have made films that can be considered Tarantino-esque, Catch .44 takes that to the extreme but falls short on just about every level. Despite trying everything from fast-paced dialogue that seems to be about random topics to dicking around with the timeline, all the film really manages to prove is that Quentin is a singular talent, and you can’t just copy and paste his style in a slightly amateurish way and expect it to work.

Three young women (Malin Akerman, Nikki Reed and Deborah Ann Woll) are in a cafe in rural Louisiana when one of them appears to start a stick-up, which soon goes horribly wrong. The film then jump around the timeline, gradually revealing how we got to the café and what happens after, which involves a sleazy drug kingpin (Bruce Willis), a brutal killer (Forest Whitaker) and a job to intercept a lucrative dope deal. However nothing is quite what it seems. [Read more…]