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

Mulligans (DVD)

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If they handed out Oscars for ‘Most Hand-wringingly Melodramatic Movie’, I think Mulligans might win. Jock Tyler (James) invites his university friend Chase to stay with him and his family over the summer. However Chase has a secret he hasn’t told James – he’s gay – but that’s not the only surprise James has in store, as it turns out that even though his parents have been together for over 20 years, his dad also harbours secret desires for members of the same sex and ends up sleeping with Chase. [Read more…]

Little Ashes (DVD)

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I have a new theory. If you want to become really famous, you need to make a period movie where you’re a bit gay for a while but then decide that you’re actually straight, and if you’re playing some kind of artist, all the better. It’s worked for Hugh Grant with Maurice, Leonardo DiCaprio with Total Eclipse and now Robert Pattinson with Little Ashes. I’m not quite sure how the mechanism works exactly, especially as both Little Ashes and Total Eclipse were made before but released after the star’s breakout hit, but there definitely seems to be something going on. [Read more…]

I Dreamt Under The Water (DVD)

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I know the world can be a dark place, but some filmmakers and artists seem to believe that just because a story is unrelentingly bleak, it’s good or realistic. I Dreamt Under The Water suffers terribly from this. Angel’s lover dies in his arms from a drug overdose, and after that he descends into a hell of intoxication, public gay sex and life as a rent boy.

I’m sure if your lover died it’d be terrible, but here it just becomes tedious, mainly because the film is more interested in making you think the world is a terrible place than telling a story with momentum that actually seems rooted in the real world. Unfortunately, it’s difficult not to wonder whether the film got a release more because it includes brief hardcore gay sex shots, rather than the merits of the film itself.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

Third Man Out (DVD)

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Private eye Donald Strachey is asked to look into an attack on a man called John Rutka, who’s famed for outing powerful people as gay. While Strachey and Rutka’s ideas on gay politics differ dramatically, the PI gets pulled into the case after his boyfriend is attacked and Rutka is killed. [Read more…]

Brokeback Mountain (DVD)

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In the 1960s, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist get a job shepherding on Wyoming’s Brokeback Mountain. Slowly they fall in love, starting a 30-year relationship that endures through their marriages and attempts to stay apart. Jack wants to be with Ennis full time, but the taciturn cowboy is too scared of that, which only allows them brief ‘fishing’ holidays in the wilderness. Even so, they just can’t quit each other. [Read more…]

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (DVD)

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When red tape prevents firefighter Larry from naming his kids as his pension beneficiaries, he asks friend and colleague Chuck to pretend to be his domestic partner in order to get around the bureaucracy. However their charade gets increasingly complicated.

I’ve got a high horse and I’m going to get on it. Universal may have screened I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry to GLAAD (the Gay And Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) and other gay groups to try and prove it wasn’t homophobic, but you can’t get around the fact that it trades on every homosexual stereotype imaginable. [Read more…]

The Art Of Being Straight (DVD)

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The Art Of Being Straight is one of those movies that just sort of happens. There’s nothing actually wrong with it, but it merely drifts along and then stops, rather than offering you any reason to engage with it.

Jon (played by writer/director Jesse Rosen) is on a break from his girlfriend and decides to move from New York to LA, and take a room with his old college buddy and his macho mates, who are the kind of jocks that can’t complete a sentence without using the word gay as a pejorative (although their homophobia is unthinking rather than genuine hatred). [Read more…]

I Love You Phillip Morris (DVD)

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It took quite a long time for I Love You Phillip Morris to make it to UK cinemas, partly because it’s a bit of a tough sell. It’s a film that moves from broad comedy to deeply felt drama, doesn’t shy away from the gay side of its story, and makes a hero out of a man who in most cases would be seen as the bad guy. However despite all these difficulties, the movie succeeds admirably. [Read more…]

Milk (Blu-ray)

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Only a few years ago, the idea of Hollywood making a movie almost completely peopled by gay characters would have been virtually unthinkable. However it seems Brokeback Mountain might have opened a few doors, as not long after that film came out both Gus Van Sant and Bryan Singer announced they’d be making movies based on the life of Harvey Milk, who in 1977 became the first openly gay man to be elected to political office in California. However Van Sant’s film was the first out of the gate, while Singer’s has now fallen by the wayside. That’s probably not a bad thing, as it’s difficult to imagine Singer’s take on the subject being better than Milk. [Read more…]