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

Wild Awakening (DVD Review) – Things get a little gay & homoerotic on a Spanish horse farm

By Leave a Comment

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

I feel like I should have watched a few telenovelas before viewing Wild Awakening. Although I’m far from an aficionado of the genre (and I’m more than ready for someone to tell me I’m completely wrong about it), but Wild Awakening shares the heightened reality, love for over the top drama and intrigue, and the slight sense where you can’t decide whether it’s a knowing spoof or not.

Young Emma and her gay brother Toni are the owners of a riding school, having inherited the business when their parents died. On the farm a group of (often shirtless) men work, led by the homophobic Ramon. [Read more…]

Tomcat (DVD Review) – Can a gay relationship withstand inexplicable violence?

By Leave a Comment

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

Tomcat is a bit of a tough movie to review. Much of the film pivots around a single, shocking moment, which takes place around a third of the way into the film. However, revealing too much about it would take us into spoiler territory, and it’s the sort of thing the needs to come as a surprise – although the amount of foreshadowing may give you a clue something ominous is gonna happen. That said, there are some who’ll be genuinely shocked and probably won’t be able to get past that moment.

Andreas (Philipp Hochmair) and Stefan (Lukas Turtur) are a seemingly happy gay couple, with fulfilling careers and plenty of loving friends. They live in a beautiful house with their cat, Moses. Their lives are full of music, sex, socialising and a sense of connection with both each other and those around them. [Read more…]

Live By Night (DVD Review) – Ben Affleck tries to make a gangster classic

By Leave a Comment

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

Live By Night has been Ben Affleck’s passion project for several years. He started working on the adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel since shortly after it was published in 2012. However, it kept getting pushed back as be strove to prove he was a director worth the film’s hefty budget, and also while he honed the script (yes, he wrote the screenplay too, as well as directing and starring).

After Argo won the Best Picture Oscar, Warner let him loose on Live By Night, but to be honest, it might have been worth delaying it a little longer and bringing someone in who could have tightened the script and made more of the themes that should have tied it together. [Read more…]

Manchester By The Sea (Blu-ray Review) – Inside broken lives doing their best in the Oscar-winning film

By Leave a Comment

Despite allegations of past sexual assault swirling around Casey Affleck, he picked up the Best Actor Oscar for Manchester By The Sea, with Kenneth Lonergan also winning an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Judging purely from what’s on the screen, you can see why they won, as Affleck puts in an extremely good performance, working from a nicely nuanced script which prizes emotion but tries to avoid cliché.

Affleck is Lee Chandler, who’s working as a janitor in Boston. He drinks too much, barely socialises and gets in trouble for being rude to tenants. He gets a call to say that his brother has died and so he heads to his hometown of Manchester, Massachusetts. Lee also knows he’ll have to help look after his teenage nephew, Patrick (Lucas Hedges) but isn’t prepared for that fact his brother has named him as Patrick’s guardian, something he doesn’t feel vaguely able to handle. [Read more…]

You’ll Never Be Alone (DVD Review) – A man’s life spins out of control after his gay son is attacked

By Leave a Comment

Based on a true story, Pablo (Andrew Bargstead) is a gay teenager just finding his way in the world. He loves drag and sex, but doesn’t seem to have many other goals. His father, Juan (Sergio Hernández), can’t understand why his son is like this. He’s always believed that you must work hard and apply yourself, and – along with the country as a whole – you will eventually succeed and make something of yourself.

After years of planning and trying, Juan is also hoping to invest in the company he’s been employed by for the past 25 years, and become a partner in the business. He will finally be independent. [Read more…]

Swiss Army Man (Blu-ray Review) – Things get a little gay between a man & Daniel Radcliffe’s farting corpse

By Leave a Comment

It’s the call every actor dreams about, when someone asks them, ‘Will you play a farting corpse which has a direction-finding erection?’ The lucky man to get that role was Daniel Radcliffe, who stars as a dead guy dubbed Manny. He’s found washed up on a beach by Hank (Paul Dano), a man stranded on an island whose just about to kill himself. However, discovering Manny starts to change Hank’s perspective – not least because it allows Hank to ride the massively flatulent body back to the mainland.

Although Manny is definitely dead, things take an unexpected turn when he starts to talk, and also reveal other powers that help Hank survive in the wilderness. However, Manny has no memory of his previous existence, so Hank begins to teach him about life and love, and in the process begins to think that perhaps there are things worth living for. That includes a woman whose picture is on a phone, as well as in the growing relationship between Hank and Manny, which moves towards being a romance. Oh, and there’s Manny’s erection, which helps point them in the direction they need to go to. [Read more…]

I Am Michael (DVD Review) – James Franco goes ex-gay in a true-life story

By 2 Comments

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

Michael Glatze (James Franco) is a gay man who really wants to help people. Initially working for XY Magazine before increasingly becoming an activist and launching YGA (Young Gay Americans), he becomes a prominent figure advancing the gay cause. However, Michael still feels something is missing. That’s despite having a loving boyfriend, Bennett (Zachary Quinto), and the sometime addition of a third into the relationship, Tyler (Charlie Carver).

After a health scare where he’s convinced he has the disease that caused his father to drop down dead, Michael increasingly turns to religion. What initially seems like an attempt to find meaning and reassurance that death is not the end, takes an unexpected turn when Michael leaves Bennett and publicly announces that he no longer identifies as gay. This causes a bit of a sensation, but Michael is determined he must live his own ‘truth’. That includes his new belief that homosexuality leads people away from being their ‘true selves’, which is the only way to find God. Eventually that takes him into a relationship with a woman. [Read more…]

Snowden (Blu-ray Review) – Oliver Stone looks into the life of the whistleblower

By Leave a Comment

Pretty much everyone has heard of Edward Snowden, but Oliver Stone wants to take us behind the headlines to look at the man himself and what he was exposing when he leaked top secret information about what spying agencies were up to. The movie opens at the end, with Snowden in a Hong Kong hotel room, preparing to go on record with what he knows and the information he’s releasing. Most of the rest of the film is told in flashback, when a young Ed is forced out of the military and gets a job at the CIA in the days after 9/11. Along with his new career, he starts a relationship with the lefty, arty Lindsay (Shailene Woodley).

Initially pleased to be helping the US prevent another major terrorist attack, but after working for the CIA and then as an NSA contractor, Snowden becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the massive surveillance network the government has built. Secret projects and operations allow the spying agencies to go far beyond just finding the bad guys, and give them the ability to hide illegal activities and mistakes, and to track pretty much anyone and everything they choose, whether they’ve done anything wrong or not. [Read more…]

A Little Lust (DVD Review) – A bullied gay teen really wants to see his favourite singer

By Leave a Comment

Rocco is 16-years-old and used to being bullied at school – even if the bullies don’t know he really is gay. Most of the time though, Rocco is more interested in hanging out with friends Maria and Mauri, and hoping that he will get laid. However, after an incident of bullying leads to a boy jumping out of a window, it leads Rocco to telling his parents the truth about his sexuality. Although the divorced Olga (Veronica Pivetti) and Manuele (Corrado Invernizzi) like to think of themselves as modern and cosmopolitan, the news they have a gay son sends them into a tailspin.

With Olga demanding her celebrity psychiatrist ex-husband get their son into therapy to get over this ‘phase’, and Manuele refusing to properly accept it, Rocco decides he needs to get out. His favourite singer has recently been outed, and announced that his latest set of tour dates will be his last. Rocco, Maria and Mauri decide to run off and see the singer in concert, escaping the problems at home. After they’ve set off across the country, Olga decides she has no choice but to follow, heading off after them with her own mother in tow – a woman who’s still upset the fascists aren’t running Italy anymore. [Read more…]

Bleed For This (Blu-ray Review) – Miles Teller breaks his neck but still wants to box

By Leave a Comment

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

Bleed For This is based on the true story of Vinny Pazienza, as played by Miles Teller. Having had difficulty making his weight for his Lightweight bouts, world champion boxer Vinny ends up in hospital with severe dehydration, and decides to move up a weight. However, shortly after becoming only the second person to become the world Junior Middleweight champ after being a Lightweight champion, he’s involved in a serious car accident which breaks his neck.

The doctors don’t know whether he will ever walk again, but Vinny insists they fit him with a large metal halo in the hope that not only will he regain full function, but his neck will recover enough that he will be able to fight. Although those around him feel he should give up boxing, he is determined to get back in the ring. With a single-minded drive he strives to get back to full fitness, and to take a shot at another world championship belt. [Read more…]