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

I Promise You Anarchy (DVD Review)

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In Mexico City, Miguel and Johnny have started sleeping with one another. They’re both involved in a somewhat shady business where they’re paid to find people to donate blood that is used by drug gangs, or in their parlance, they’re looking for human ‘cows’ to be ‘milked’. As their relationship deepens – despite Johnny having a girlfriend and suggesting he just likes to have fun with people of either gender – the duo find themselves tempted when they’re offered a big payday by the gangsters to find 50 people to be ‘milked’.

As things start to spiral out of control and they realise their greed may have repercussions they never expected, events threaten to split them apart forever. [Read more…]

Burning Blue (VoD Review)

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It’s the early 1990s and Daniel (Trent Ford) is a Navy fighter pilot, following in his admiral father’s footsteps. He’s made a pact with his friend, Will (Morgan Spector), that they will do whatever it takes to get on the programme to be astronauts, even though there are questions about Will’s night vision, which may have caused an almost fatal jet crash.

Into their tight-knit group arrives Matthew. Daniel starts to have feelings for Matthew that go far beyond friendship, even though he has a longterm girlfriend and Matthew is married. It seems Matthew may feel the same way, especially after a night in New York involving shirtless dancing, two women and a hotel room. [Read more…]

Imperium (DVD Review)

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Movies like Imperium always have difficulty finding a wide audience, largely because people often tend to actively avoid uncomfortable truths. The fact is that is you make a movie about Muslim terrorists – people who for many western audiences are part of an undifferentiated ‘them’ – they’ll watch it, but those same people will shy away from a movie about the realities of things such as white supremacism, because they don’t want to be confronted with the fact that as big a danger might come from those who are supposedly part of ‘us’.

In the film, Daniel Radcliffe is FBI Agent Nate Foster, who’s been working on Islamic fundamentalist terrorism until he’s pulled aside by Angela Zamparo (Toni Collette), who wants him to go undercover into the white supremacist movement. The FBI knows that six canisters of radioactive material has gone missing, and their biggest clue is that a neo-Nazi radio host, Dallas Wolf (Tracy Letts), appears to know more than he ought to about it. [Read more…]

Girls Lost (Cinema Review)

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There have been quite a lot of films about people who have magically become a different gender to the one they were assigned at birth. However, most have failed because their ideas about gender were rather facile, and despite pretending otherwise they still treated the idea of a man becoming a woman or vice versa as a punchline. It’s great then to find a film that’s a bit smarter about a ‘gender swap’, which takes gender issues seriously and uses its magical setup to explore trans issues in an interesting and different way.

The movie follows teenagers Kim, Bella and Momo, who are the misfits of their school. They manage to grow a special flower, which when they drink its nectar, allows them to outwardly become boys. The nectar gives them a chance to experience life as young men, which includes both excitement and a feeling of power, but also confusion and the risk of violence. Bella and Momo enjoy their time as guys, but for them it’s a fun diversion. However, Kim increasingly begins to feel that being a man is right and who she should really be. [Read more…]

Elvis & Nixon (DVD Review)

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Elvis & Nixon is a movie spun out from a single moment – a meeting between Elvis Presley and President Richard Nixon in December 1970, which resulted in a picture of the two of them, which is apparently the most requested image from the US National Archive. Here we get Michael Shannon as a surprisingly good Elvis, and Kevin Spacey as a slightly more human Nixon that we might be used to.

The movie picks up a while before the meeting, with Elvis fed up with the direction the country is heading – he doesn’t like hippies, the anti-Vietnam protests or The Beatles – so he decides he wants to become a Federal Agent and go undercover to help sort things out. While Elvis is used to having people around who organise his life for him, he decides he’s got to sort this out himself, reaching out to his long-time friend, Jerry (Alex Pettyfer), to help him. [Read more…]

The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Case (Blu-ray Review)

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The Conjuring surprised many when it grossed over $300 million on a $20 million budget. It ensured that a sequel was quickly put in the works (as well as last year’s spin-off, Annabelle), with the filmmakers looking through the cases of Ed and Lorraine Warren for more inspiration. What they came up with was the Enfield Poltergeist, one of Britain’s most documented paranormal cases, which was also the inspiration for Sky TV’s The Enfield Haunting earlier this year.

The film starts out with another very famous case the Warrens were involved in, Amityville, before moving to Britain and the Hodgson family, living in a council house in North London. Single mother Patricia (Frances O’Connor) and her two daughters and two sons, are being increasingly frightened by paranormal activity, which is moving things around the house and possessing one of the daughters. [Read more…]

Closet Monster (DVD Review)

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Oscar is a teenager, just coming into his own in life. Coming from a broken home and living with a difficult father, he’s seeking an escape, which he hopes to get by being accepted into a makeup school in New York. His father thinks Oscar may be dating his female friend, but actually Oscar is more interested in his male co-worker at his new job.

As the weeks go by, the pressure begins to build for Oscar as he increasingly feels trapped. Eventually they reach breaking point, with the memories of a horrific homophobic assault he witnessed as a child always haunting the back of his mind. [Read more…]

Departure (DVD Review)

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Beatrice (Juliet Stevenson) and her teenage son Elliot (Alex Lawther) head for their French summer home to pack everything up ahead of leaving it behind forever. Beatrice and her husband’s marriage is crumbling, leaving her feeling adrift but putting on a brave front for her son.

Elliot meanwhile is just finding his feet in the world and discovering his sexuality, something that gets accelerated when he meets young Frenchman Clement (Phénix Brossard). They strike up a friendship, which for Elliot is something far more, although he’s not sure how to find out if that’s true for Clement as well. [Read more…]

Money Monster (Blu-ray Review)

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Lee Gates (George Clooney) presents the TV show Money Monster, a programme that tries to make stocks, shares and investments a bit more entertaining. His latest broadcast quickly takes an unexpected turn when a man (Jack O’Connell) bursts into the studio brandishing a gun and forces Lee to put on an explosive vest.

The man, who it’s revealed is called Kyle, is an average joe who’s been sent over the edge by the fact that a few weeks before Lee told people they should invest in a company called IBIS. However, while Lee said it was safer than a savings account, the share price has collapsed due to what the company said was a glitch in its trading algorithm, and Kyle has lost every penny he’s got. Kyle wants answers and thinks Lee should be the one who gets them for him. With the help of his producer, Patty (Julia Roberts), talking to him from the gallery, Lee attempts to keep Kyle calm while they figure out what’s going on. [Read more…]

The Nice Guys (Blu-ray Review)

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While writer/director Shane Black had a huge success with Iron Man 3, The Nice Guys takes him back to what he does best – crime thrillers with a dash of noir and plenty of comedy. This time around, the writer of Lethal Weapon and director of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang takes us to the 1970s with The Nice Guys.

Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a private eye. He’s also a functioning alcoholic trying to be a single parent to his daughter. He accidentally gets involved with enforcer Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), after Holland’s case looking into the apparent suicide of a porn star called Misty Mountains crosses paths with Healy’s job involving a missing young woman called Amelia. [Read more…]