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

Jitters (DVD)

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We don’t get to see a lot of Icelandic movies, partly because as a nation of just over 300,000 people, they don’t exactly produce an endless stream of films of international calibre. However Iceland does make a few films each year and every so often something emerges from the country that deserves a wider audience. Jitters is one of them, a kind of Icelandic Skins, centring on a boy coming to terms with being gay, while his friends have their own issues with teenage life.

Rather than Iceland, the opening of the movie takes place in the UK, where young Gabriel (Atli Oskar Fjalarsson) is on a three week trip to Britain. He shares a room with Markus (Haraldur Ari Stefansson) and on the last night they share a kiss. Once back in Iceland, Gabriel hopes there will be more, but Markus treats it very much as if it never happened. [Read more…]

Texas Killing Fields (DVD)

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Based loosely on a true story, Mike Sounder (Sam Worthington) and Brian Heigh (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) play two cops investigating crime in the Texas bayous. Heigh becomes increasingly drawn to a series of murders where the bodies of the victims are dumped in an area that’s become known as The Killing Fields. Local guy Souder warns New York transplant Heigh against getting too deep into the investigation, partly because it’s outside their jurisdiction and partly because he knows it’s dangerous and you can get lost in trying to make sense of what’s going on.

However Heigh can’t give up and soon attracts the attention of the killer, who starts to seem as if he’s taunting the police with red herring clues. Then a local girl goes missing and the stakes are raised. [Read more…]

Plan B (2009)

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When Bruno sees his ex-girlfriend Ana with her new boyfriend, Pablo, he decides he wants her back, even though she only seems interested in occasional sex sessions. Realising the usual tactics won’t work to convince her – he comes up with a Plan B. He’s heard Pablo has had liaisons with guys, so Bruno determines that he’ll befriend Pablo without letting him know who he is, and then make him fall in love with him. Then, after this causes Pablo and Ana to break up, he can swoop in and be her knight in shining armour when she’s sad and lonely.

Admittedly it is the sort of plan that could go hideously wrong at any moment, but he manages to meet and get in with Pablo, convincing him that he’s not the guy Ana has a picture of on her wall. However while Bruno is convinced he’s being devious and clever, something happens that he never expected; he starts having genuine feelings for Pablo. [Read more…]

Absent (Ausent) (DVD)

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Winner of the Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival – a gong given to the best movie on LGBT themes – Absent comes to DVD fresh from a centrepiece screening at the recent London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in March.

The film is about a teenage boy, Martin (Javier De Pietro), who pretends to have something wrong with his eye so that his teacher, Sebastian, has to take him to the hospital. When they’ve finished with the doctor, Martin comes up with a convoluted story about having arranged to stay the night with a friend that they can’t get in touch with and then gives reasons why he can’t go home. Unsure what to do, the teacher decides to take him back to his apartment and let him stay the night. It’s clear though the student has ulterior motives, being somewhat flirtatious and touching Sebastian’s leg while he sleeps. [Read more…]

Headhunters (Cinema)

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The antihero can be a difficult thing to pull off. If your protagonist is doing things that would normally be considered the province of the villain, you need to work extra hard to make the audience empathise with them or see them as heroic. You can get round it with something like someone’s family being attacked so they have a reason to go out for revenge, but what if your ‘hero’ is actually a bit of an asshole?

That’s what we have in Headhunters, but it actually manages to make it work, which is no small achievement. [Read more…]

North Sea Texas (Cinema)

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While adolescence is one of cinema’s favourite subjects (and for various reasons a virtual obsession in gay and lesbian cinema), few films find a balance that feels as if it’s getting to the truth about ‘coming of age’. Bavo Defurne’s North Sea Texas does just that, telling a familiar story yet managing to make it feel fresh, acutely observed and charming. Much of this comes from evoking a strong sense of the early 1970s, great cinematography and excellent performances from a mostly inexperienced cast. It doesn’t hurt either that the strong characters avoid clichés.

Pim (Jelle Florizoone) is a teenager living with his floozy former beauty queen mother in a Belgian coastal town. His mother is more interested in how Pim makes her feel than the boy himself, although this does give him a small amount of freedom to lust after his next door neighbour, Gino (Mathias Vergels). [Read more…]

This Must Be The Place (Cinema)

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What is it with Hollywood and unimaginative film titles? In this case it can be forgiven as it refers to a song by the Talking Heads, and not some ill thought out, Channel 5 afternoon  film drama. I suppose ‘Ex Rockstar Turned Nazi Hunter’, or ‘Cheyenne’s Odyssey’ might have been too obvious.

This Must Be The Place played in competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2011, and is certainly quirky enough to have gone down well. The film is directed by Paolo Sorrentino (his first English language film, having won the Cannes Prix Du Jury in 2008 with Il Divo) and stars the incredible talent that is Sean Penn. [Read more…]

The Adopted (DVD)

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Melanie Laurent came to international prominence with a superb performance in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and was seen more recently in the Oscar-winning Beginners. Here she turns director for a family drama that’s involving if imperfect.

Marine (Marie Denarnaud) is a young woman who was adopted as a child and is now virtually inseparable from her adoptive sister, Lisa (Laurent). They’re so close that she is virtually the second mother of Lisa’s young son, Leo. Then Marine meets Alex (Denis Menochet), or rather he meets and pursues her. The two begin a fledgling relationship, which Lisa seems to resent, although their feisty mother is all for it. Marine starts to waver, unsure whether relationships are for her – despite the fact the rather charming Alex seems utterly devoted – but then a shocking event changes all their lives and forces Lisa and Alex together over the future of Marine… and her unborn baby. [Read more…]

Swinging With The Finkels (DVD)

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Sometimes a movie comes across as trying so hard to hit the buttons of popular success that it has all the charm and fun sucked right out of it. Meet Swinging With The Finkels. With a multi-national cast, sex and relationships as a subject, lowest common denominator jokes and an utterly predictable plot, it’s like someone sat down and made a checklist of everything that’s worked in Brit-coms in the past 20 years and then tried to distil it into a single film, and in doing so created something utterly anaemic.

Alvin and Ellie Finkel (Martin Freeman & Mandy Moore) have been married for years and are feeling bored with one another. The romance is gone, neither can be bothered with sex and their whole relationship is feeling stale. After talking about the various options to spice things up, they decide to try a bit of wife swapping. Will it work, or will it just highlight the cracks in their marriage they’re trying to paper over? [Read more…]

House Of The Rising Sun (DVD)

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Ex-con Ray (Bautista) is working as a doorman when a group of armed men force their way into the club where he’s working and open fire, killing the owner’s son. While Ray has been trying to go straight, he finds himself being blamed by his boss for letting the men into the club and told he must find the robbers. As he digs digger, he starts to realise the police are as dirty as the mob that surrounds him, and his own criminal past makes him a prime suspect in the case. Ray struggles to solve the crime and to clear his own name, while also attempting to protect a beautiful young woman (Amy Smart). [Read more…]