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

The Woman In The Fifth (Cinema)

By 1 Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) isn’t having a good time. He arrives in Paris in the hope of reuniting with his daughter, but is soon thrown out of his ex-wife’s home amid accusations of prior violence and a restraining order. After falling asleep on a bus, he wakes up at the end of the line having been robbed of his suitcase and cash.

Still in hope of having some contact with his child, Tom manages to find a cheap room in a hovel and to supplement his income with a strange CCTV job that merely involves opening a door for people, without knowing what’s on the other side. He has hopes of finishing his second novel (even though he seems to remember little about the first), and putting his life back on track. [Read more…]

Four Weddings And A Funeral (Blu-ray)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

“Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.”

It may be the most vomit-inducing line in modern cinema, to the point that it’s rather overshadowed people’s opinions of the movie. The fact is that beyond that moment, Four Weddings & A Funeral is a rather wry, witty, sweet and somewhat subversive romantic comedy. Indeed it’s the fact that it doesn’t take the usual route of generic rom-coms that turned it into a huge hit, which on its release became one of the biggest movies ever at the UK box office.

If you haven’t seen it, the title is very literal, as the film takes place over the course of four weddings and a funeral, as we chart the course of the relationship between Charles (Grant) and Carrie (MacDowell), who meet at the first wedding  and take a rather unusual romantic course through the other ceremonies. [Read more…]

Perfect Sense (DVD)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

Perfect Sense has a problem, which isn’t really anything to do with the movie. It’s to do with the fact that we like to pigeonhole film and so that when something comes along that doesn’t fit into any boxes, it tends to fall by the wayside. In the case of Perfect Sense the issue is that the plot synopsis makes it sound like a sci-fi flick, but it’s actually far from that. In reality it’s a rather touching, slightly arty romance, shot through with existentialist musings, but it’s a difficult sell, simply because it doesn’t sound like what it is.

Here’s the plot: Susan (Evan Green) is an epidemiologist, who’s asked to investigate a mysterious illness where people are losing their sense of taste. As this spreads around the globe, Susan meets chef Michael (Ewan McGregor), and the two begin an affair. However losing your sense of taste is only the beginning, and the strange illness continues to its course, slowly stripping people of their senses one by one. [Read more…]

Thelma & Louise (Blu-ray)

By 1 Comment

Starring: , , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

21 years after the release of Thelma & Louise, it’s rather sad that women’s position in film, both in front of and behind the camera, hasn’t changed all that much. When it first appeared in cinemas, the film was treated like it was going to be a new dawn for women in the movies, but little has changed.

In fact, other than the great movie itself, Thelma & Louise’s most lasting legacy is Brad Pitt, who might never have hit the big time if he hadn’t gotten the chance to be unfeasibly hot and sexy in this (he very nearly didn’t, as William Baldwin initially landed the role, but dropped out after he was cast in Backdraft). Thank God he did get the role, as few people have ever been so breathtakingly sexy in what is actually a very small role. [Read more…]

Sasha (DVD)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

Sasha is a teenager living in Cologne. The son of immigrant parents, his mother is slightly obsessed with her children bettering themselves, which in Sasha’s case means she wants him to become a renowned classical pianist – although he needs to get into a top music school first. His father meanwhile is a bit of a traditionalist, who feels things should be his way or no way.

However Sasha has more than music on his mind, as he’s coming to terms with the fact that he’s gay, which is brought into focus when the piano teacher he’s secretly in love with announces that he’s leaving Cologne to follow his own dreams.  As Sasha tries to absorb this, he sets out to tell his teacher how he feels and try to get him to stay. As Sasha tries to sort out the maze of his own emotions, things begin to spiral out of control and head towards a potentially tragic end. [Read more…]

A Bigger Splash (Blu-ray/DVD)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

A Bigger Splash is the very definition of enigmatic. The best description I can think of is that it’s kind of like The Only Way Is Essex, but made in the early 1970s and featuring artist David Hockney and his circle. Yep, that does sound weird, because it kind of is.

On the surface it seems like a fly on the wall documentary looking at Hockney, but as you watch it slowly becomes clear that what you’re seeing isn’t a documentary at all. Instead it is recreation of reality, using all the real players in Hockney’s life, who are taking part in a devised reflection of the truth. It is therefore an odd ally to TOWIE and its ilk, but of course made at a time when reality soaps would have seemed like the idea of a madman. [Read more…]

The Grey

By 1 Comment

Starring: , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

The first trailer for The Grey made it seem like someone had gotten over-excited about The Tree Of Life. It suggested the film was going to be some sort of weird, ethereal, existentialist drama. Thankfully though, that’s not what it is at all (well, it is a bit, but not too much).

Liam Neeson plays a guy whose job is to sort out the predators that occasionally menace the workers at a remote gas refinery operation in Alaska. On a plane ride with a number of other motley oil workers, things take a rather drastic turn when they fall out of the sky. Normally a plane crash would be the worst part of your day, but the men are now in the middle of nowhere and in the territory of a particularly vicious pack of wolves. [Read more…]

The Descendants

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

The Descendants was no doubt Oscar bound at its inception – directed and written by Alexander Payne (of Election, Sideways and About Schmidt fame) and starring one of The Oscars current favourites, George Clooney. With five nominations, the only question now is whether it’ll win.

Matthew King’s (Clooney) wife has been involved in a major accident and is on a life support machine. He is a lawyer as well as the executor of his extended family’s massive estate, even though he’s completely out of touch with his immediate family. The plot centres around Clooney coming to terms with, taking control of and understanding more about his fractured family, whilst also learning about his wife’s infidelity. [Read more…]

The Love Patient (DVD)

By 1 Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

There’s been an odd trend in recent years for comedies to be about unpleasant people who it’s difficult to like. Whether it’s Jason Bateman fathering Jennifer Aniston’s child without her knowledge in The Switch, or Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler trying to outdo each other in the impossible-to-empathise-with stakes in The Ugly Truth, there seem to be more rom-coms about assholes than ones about people you might actually like. The Love Patient seems to want to ensure that gay cinema doesn’t miss out on this trend.

The movie follows Paul, who’s feeling a bit down on his luck as the ex-boyfriend he still loves has found a new man and nothing else in his life seems to be going his way either. In his spare time, he volunteers at a medical centre (his sole redeeming feature), where he hatches a plan to make people care for him – pretend he has cancer. [Read more…]

The Debt (DVD)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

The Debt starts out in 1997, with Rachel (Helen Mirren) being lauded for her role in a Mossad mission 30 years before, in which she and two other agents are known for going into East Berlin to bring a Nazi War Criminal to justice, killing him in the process. After a dinner in her honour, shocking news comes through that one of the other agents, David (Ciaran Hinds), has thrown himself in front of a truck, and it seems to have something to do with their shared past.

Flashing back to 1965 – when Helen Mirren was Jessica Chastain, Ciaran Hinds was Sam Worthington and Tom Wilkinson was Martin Csokas – we find out exactly what happened on the mission. Rachel enters East Berlin and a rundown apartment where David and Stephan have been cooped up together for months, with only each other for company. When the mission goes wrong and the plan to get the Nazi out of East Berlin fails, the situation gets ever more intense while the trio try to find a way to extract the criminal to Israel. [Read more…]