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

All Male, All Nude (VoD Review) – Gerald McCullouch takes a documentary look at a naked gay strip club

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Magic Mike has certainly made people a lot more interested in male strippers. Well, people were already interested in male strippers, but now it’s more socially acceptable to acknowledge that interest. Gerald McCullouch, who’s best known as an actor in the likes of CSI and the BearCity movies, follows up his feature directorial debut, Daddy, with the documentary All Male, All Nude.

The film goes inside Swinging Richards, the US’s only all nude, all male, gay strip club. While you might expect such a venue to be in New York, Los Angeles or perhaps even New Orleans, it’s actually just up the road from an Ikea in Atlanta, Georgia. About half the footage in the documentary is from inside the club as a bevy of men dance on stage in and out of their underwear, with the other half consisting of interviews with a few of 60+ guys who take off their clothes at Swinging Richards. [Read more…]

Flatbush Luck (US DVD Review) – Insider trading and a gay realisation in Brooklyn

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Casper Andreas has made a name for himself with gay-themed movies such as Between Love & Goodbye, The Big Gay Musical, Going Down In La La Land and Kiss Me Kill Me. He’s back with his eighth feature, Flatbush Luck, which doesn’t put gay themes quite as much at the forefront as some of his other movies, although he certainly hasn’t abandoned them entirely.

Jimmy (Tanner Novlan) and his cousin Max (Robby Stahl) are best friends, and both of them work for the telephone company fixing the lines. Jimmy used to work on Wall Street but is going through a rough patch – hence the repairman job – and he’s also having women troubles both because of his change in social position and his rather libidinous ways. Max meanwhile is dealing with a pushy, manipulative fiancé who’s angling for a massive, expensive wedding that he can’t afford and doesn’t want. [Read more…]

Screwed (Frameline Festival Review) – A gay summer romance gets complicated for two teen boys

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I haven’t seen too many movies from Finland. That’s a shame purely because it limits my opportunities to put on a movie and go, ‘Is it Finnish? No, it’s just started’. But enough of the Dad jokes and on to the Suomi teen dramedy, which had its World Premiere at the Frameline San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival on June 19th 2017.

Miku is in his late teens, and doesn’t seem to quite know where he stands in the world. Quiet and introverted, he allows his wild brother, Sebu, to talk him into organising a wild party just before his parents are due to go and stay at their holiday cottage for the summer. After his parents find out, it puts a strain between Miku and his rather difficult mother, who insists their son spend the whole summer with them. [Read more…]

The Drama Club (US VoD Review) – Secrets emerge when teenage friends reunite after 20 years

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20-years-ago a group of Drama Club high school friends went on a retreat together. Now they’re getting back together for an anniversary meetup. The friends have all stayed in touch via social media, but they haven’t seen each other all that much. As you might have expected, while many things have changed, others have stayed very much the same.

The previously nerdy Nathan has now muscled up and he’s not going to take the bully-ish antics of Luke anymore. However, the increasingly conservative Luke has his own issues, as he’s due to go to prison soon for white collar fraud. The popular Elle is now married, and while her husband doesn’t seem to mind the fact she’s slept with three of her old friends, Elle may take things too far. Hannah is now a born again Christian who’s saving her virginity for marriage (even though she’s had sex before), and may have a soft spot for one of her old friends. [Read more…]

Garden Of Stars (US VoD Review) – A gay man brings together AIDS, the stillborn & the Brothers Grimm in a cemetery

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In the Schöneberg section of Berlin lies the Alter Sankt-Matthäus-Kirchhof, best known as the burial site of the Brothers Grimm. While framed by one of the Brother’s stories, this documentary isn’t about them, it’s about a man whose life has become inextricably linked to the cemetery.

Ichgola Androgyn is a gay drag queen, who used to be involved in experimental art and various other slightly hippie-ish pursuits. Almost accidentally he got involved with the cemetery, which he helped change from a staid, Victorian institution to something more welcoming that is designed as much for the living as the dead. [Read more…]

The Freedom To Marry (VoD Review) – Evan Wolfson & the long, gay march to Obergefell v. Hodges

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History is written by the winners. That’s true, but in the modern age it can also be about who’s best at getting their story out there – in numerous cases the full facts haven’t stood in the way of a particular narrative of how things happened gaining traction. In the past few years there have been several documentaries about the fight for same sex marriage in the US, each with a slightly different focus, a different cast of characters and a different take on how it got to the Supreme Court.

As with many things nowadays, there’s been an element in these documentaries (and other media), of people staking their place in the dominant narrative. I’m sure it’s not quite as contrived and cutthroat as that, but I must admit that early on in this documentary, part of my brain wondered whether that was what was happening in this documentary, not because the facts it was presenting were wrong but because of how it threatened to become a fawning hagiography of attorney and gay rights advocate Evan Wolfson and the Freedom To Marry organisation. [Read more…]

Political Animals (US DVD/VoD Review) – Taking a look at the first four gay California state representatives

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Alongside the ‘great men’ theory of history, we also have a tendency to think in ‘great events’, and that the things that have changed society fell out of the sky fully formed. That’s certainly been true of gay rights, where you could be forgiven for thinking no one had considered there should be more equality until Stonewall in 1969, or that the whirlwind of gay marriage in the US was a couple of overtures (the legalisation in Massachusetts in 2004, and Prop. 8 in California) before the Supreme Court decision in 2015. However, there was a lot more to it than that, laying the political groundwork for what was to come.

Political Animals is a look at the first four openly gay people to be elected to the California state legislature, all of them women (although there were previous gay elected officials in California – not least Harvey Milk – they’d operated on a more local level, rather than state-wide). However, as well as looking at the women themselves, the film is keen to show the work they did promoting gay rights in California, particularly in terms of legislation that helped pave the way for gay marriage. [Read more…]

Taxi Stories (Review) – Three tales of power imbalance in the gay-themed film

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Taxi Stories got its US premiere on May 3rd at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. It was certainly a fitting place for the film, which spans across East Asia from Indonesia to Hong Kong and Beijing. Each of those locations is the setting for one of the movie’s three stories.

In Indonesia, a young taxi/bajai driver in Jakarta meets an Aussie woman called Samantha who’s on her gap year. He quickly becomes enamoured with her and hopes he can make her his girlfriend. He is also hired by a Hong Kong visitor to take him on a tour. However, the gay visitor may have ulterior motives – but perhaps not you might expect. [Read more…]

Counting For Thunder (US DVD Review) – Rediscovering family and gay love in the Deep South

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Phillip Stalworth (Phillip Irwin Cooper) is an actor in LA, although he’s not been having much luck with his career. As his mother has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, he decides to head back to his hometown in the US South. His girlfriend knows this is the end for them, which allows Phillip to take a complete break from his LA life.

His return home inevitably brings up old family issues, not least his somewhat difficult relationship with his emotionally distant and seemingly selfish father (John Heard). His mother (Mariette Hartley) meanwhile is ailing, with Phillip and his sister struggling to find ways to help her. [Read more…]

Utopians (US DVD Review) – An erotic look at gay self-discovery

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Filmmakers in mainland China still have issues with LGBT content, as official censors are often pretty squeamish about anything decidedly queer, and have even tried to prevent some gay-themed Chinese films from screening at festivals outside the country, as well as banning them in China. However, it seems things are a little more relaxed in Hong Kong, where Utopians is set, as the movie includes a lot of full frontal nudity – most of it male – and even a very explicit male masturbation scene that goes right the way through to completion.

The film follows Hins (Adonis He), a student at a university in Hong Kong. He has a girlfriend, but in his dreams he’s started to have thoughts about men. That side of himself finds a further outlet when he starts studying under the outspoken Professor Ming, whose class explores ideas such as homosexuality and the philosophical ideas about utopias. [Read more…]