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

J. Edgar

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There’s an old adage on the standup comedy circuit that the only thing worse than complete silence to greet your routine is a couple of stifled chuckles. This, they say, indicates that not only has your material failed, it has done so in such a way that the audience’s only response is to laugh at its failure.

Had Clint Eastwood, the director of J.Edgar attended the screening of his film that I did, he might have had a similar feeling. The last thing one would expect from a serious political biopic is moments of unintentional hilarity, but from the minute Leonardo DiCaprio appears on screen in an unconvincing elderly prosthetic, that’s exactly what you get. [Read more…]

Troll Hunter (DVD)

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Troll Hunter is a movie that shouldn’t work. The whole thing has a faint whiff of the ridiculous about it, but thanks to a contradictory mix of absolute conviction and tongue-in-cheek knowingness it turns out to be a rollicking Brothers Grimm meets Blair Witch Project ride.

Purporting to be real footage mysteriously sent to a film company, the film follows a group of eager young filmmaking students who are out in the Norwegian wilds making a documentary about a spate of bear killings. Although the local legal hunters feel there’s something odd about these dead bears, they also think they might know who’s responsible, a man called Hans, who they believe is a poacher. While Hans initially wants nothing to do with the documentary crew, they won’t be shaken off and while following him late at night they have a close encounter with a strange creature. Hans is convinced it’s a troll, but surely these fairytale creatures can’t exist? [Read more…]

CSI: NY – Season 7 (DVD)

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You have to wonder whether Melina Kanakaredes pissed somebody off in CSI land. After six years playing the female lead character of Det. Stella Bonasera in CSI: New York, she decided to leave the show. However, the fact she’s no longer in the series at the beginning of Season 7 isn’t even mentioned. None of the characters finds it odd or even comments on it. In fact it’s like she was never there.

Presumably the idea is to treat things as business as usual, but it does feel like a bit of a snub after audiences have gotten to know her over the years. The show just powers through this departure, with Kanakarades’ replacement, Sela Ward’s ex-FBI agent Jo Danville, not in her job more than five minutes before she finds a dead body on the floor of the Crime Lab. [Read more…]

Summer Storm

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Summer Storm (or to give it its proper German title, Sommersturm) is a Teutonic addition to the ever-expanding gay movie subgenre of coming out flicks. It’s little surprise it’s such a popular subject, as coming out in one way or another is one of the few things nearly always gay people share and which becomes a pivotal moment in their lives.

Teenagers Tobi and Achim are best friends who are heading off for a summer camp with their rowing team, ahead of a big competition. The boys are extremely close, even going as far as to wank off together, and believe nothing could ever come between them. [Read more…]

Shock To The System

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The second of four Donald Strachey movies starring Chad Allen (following Third Man Out) sees the gay actor back as the gay detective, this time delving into the exceedingly dodgy world of ex-gay therapy. Strachey is hired by a young man, Paul Hale, who almost immediately afterwards turns up dead, after apparently killing himself. While Donald isn’t sure exactly why he was hired, he starts to investigate the death, which leads him to the door of the Phoenix Foundation and its director Dr. Trevor Cornell, who practices controversial techniques that attempt to turn gay people straight. [Read more…]

Final Destination 5 (DVD)

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I’m slightly worried I’m about to die. Before I even put the Final Destination 5 DVD in the player, I had a premonition that it would be about someone foreseeing a terrible event that allows them and a bunch others to survive, followed by an hour of death trying to claim the lives of those who managed to escape its clutches. As I knew all that before the film started playing, going by the rules of the franchise it surely means I’m going to die in an overly elaborate fashion anytime now!

This time around the disaster is a spectacularly collapsing bridge, and it’s a guy called Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) who’s having the premonition, which allows him to lead a bunch of his friends and work colleagues off the bridge just before all hell breaks loose. [Read more…]

The Terence Davies Trilogy

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Terence Davies recently returned to the director’s chair after an 11 year gap with The Deep Blue Sea, but he started out behind the camera with this trilogy of short films made in the late 70s and early 80s. Together the three short films make an intriguing piece, with each film having its own style but following the same central character at different stages of his life, from childhood to death, with a heavy interest in the nature of memory.

The trilogy kicks off with ‘Children’, about a young adolescent boy called Robert Tucker. The film show us vignettes of his life as an outsider at his school, as well as his burgeoning sense that he may be gay. At home his father is presented as a strange and rather terrifying presence, with Robert having conflicting feelings about his death. ‘Madonna and Child’ sees Robert as a middle-aged man, still living his mother (who he’s devoted to) and working in a dead end job. [Read more…]

Brazil (Blu-ray)

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A masterpiece to some, a source of utter befuddlement to others, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil has been dividing opinions now for over 25 years. Now it reaches Blu-ray, which is certainly a good way to show off the film’s extraordinary production design.

Set in a dystopian mix of the future and the past, Jonathan Pryce plays Sam Lowry, a man trying to live a quiet life as part of a vast bureaucracy, but who has extravagant dreams where he’s a flying, monster-slaying hero. During his waking life though, he’s mainly trying to be efficient and stop his plastic surgery obsessed mother from pushing him around. [Read more…]

The Thing (Cinema)

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From the second it was announced a film was in the pipeline that was somehow related to John Carpenter’s 1982 movie, The Thing, there’s been much grumbling from fans. However this is a slightly unusual case, as while Carpenter fans have been predictably wary of anything tampering with a classic they love, the early 80s film was actually a remake itself, of the 1951 movie The Thing From Another World. As a result it’s tougher to argue here that things from the past should be preserved in aspic and never touched.

What we have here though isn’t a straight remake, but (as the movie studio insists on calling it) a ‘prelude’ to the Kurt Russell movie. Quite why they gave it the exact same name as the other film is a bit of a mystery then, but it just goes to show some of the muddle-headed business-butting-up-against-entertainment thinking that went into the new The Thing. [Read more…]

50/50 (Cinema)

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Ok, here’s my pitch to try and get a poster quote for 50/50 – ‘The funniest film about possibly dying of cancer you’ll see all year!’ I doubt the studio is going to use that one, but it doesn’t mean it’s not true. It also kind of sums up 50/50’s problems, because while it’s very funny, extremely moving, quite sweet and extremely entertaining, the fact it’s about someone with cancer will inevitably limit its audience.

It’s a real shame, as a lot of people will undoubtedly miss out. It doesn’t really matter what I or anyone else says – a movie about cancer sounds like a bummer, and so getting people through the door is gonna be tough. [Read more…]