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

Bwoy (US DVD/VoD Review) – Anthony Rapp starts an online relationship with a young Jamaican man

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Brad (Anthony Rapp) is a man approaching middle age, stuck in a dead-end job at a credit card company. He’s married, but there’s a profound sadness at the heart of his relationship, caused by a past tragedy. Brad decides to shake things up by setting up an online profile on a gay dating site.

He connects with a young Jamaican man called Yenny (Jimmy Brooks), spinning the Caribbean islander a story that he lives in New York City, works in finance and has a jet-setting lifestyle. Yenny meanwhile seems enamoured with his new ‘daddy’, asking Brad to call him his Jamaican ‘pussyboy’. [Read more…]

Front Cover (US Cinema Review)

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Asian-American Ryan (Jake Choi) is a stylist, struggling to make it up the ranks. He gets an unexpected assignment dressing a top Chinese film star who’s coming to the US for a photoshoot and to raise his US profile. The star, Ning (james Chen), only wants a ‘Chinese’ stylist, which is why Ryan gets the job, even though he’s lived in the US all his life and has somewhat been running from his Asian heritage.

The connection between the two is initially fractious. Ning is spoiled, difficult and entitled, while Ryan is more interested in what the assignment might mean for his career than his client. Things get even worse when Ning realises that Ryan is gay, which causes the star to fire the stylist. Ning is unprepared to deal with someone who doesn’t hide their sexuality or express any shame about it, but it soon becomes clear that his reaction isn’t pure homophobia, as he might have a few secrets of his own. [Read more…]

Women He’s Undressed (US Cinema/DVD Review)

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Gillian Armstrong is best known for directing the likes of Charlotte Gray, Oscar & Lucinda and Little Women, but here she returns to the documentary arena for a film about Orry-Kelly. It’s not a name you’ll necessarily recognise, although you will probably know some of his work – Ingrid Bergman’s costumes in Casablanca, Marilyn Monroe’s frocks in Some Like It Hot, the western clothes in Oklahoma! and all manner of dresses for Bette Davis.

He won three Oscars (making him Australia’s most prolific Academy Award winner until fellow costume designer Catherine Martin picked up her third and fourth gongs for The Great Gatsby (2013)), and to many in the filmmaking community he’s a bit of a legend. He was also an alcoholic and he was gay, something he didn’t hide but didn’t publicly flaunt either. Rumours suggest he may have had an intimate relationship with Cary Grant when they roomed together shortly after they both arrived in the US, although that’s never been confirmed. [Read more…]

Summertime (La Belle Saison) (US Cinema Review)

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It’s the early 1970s and Delphine (Izïa Higelin) is a young French woman working on her father’s farm. Her parents are keen to marry her off, but Delphine is secretly seeing a woman, which doesn’t last when her partner announces she’s marrying a man. Escaping the rural life, Delphine heads to Paris, where she falls in with a group of radical feminists, including Carole (Cécile De France).

Although Carole has a boyfriend, she and Delphine start to fall for one another, but their happiness is ruined when Delphine’s father has a stroke and she feels the need to go back to the farm to run it. Eventually Carole follows her, staying there as Delphine’s ‘friend’, but as people begin to realise the truth it causes an increasing amounts of problems. [Read more…]

Forbidden: Undocumented & Queer In Rural America (Outfest Review)

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Living in the UK, it can’t be said we have much of a ‘problem’ with immigrants from South/Central America, although as Brexit has shown – which was largely fuelled by a fear of mass immigration from Eastern Europe – issues with ugly xenophobia pretending it isn’t xenophobia is a problem across the First World (in fact across pretty much the whole world).

Forbidden: Undocumented & Queer In Rural America opens with Donald Trump’s hideous rhetoric about Mexican rapists and calls to build a border wall that Mexico is apparently going to pay for, before introducing us to Moises Serrano, who was born in Mexico but was brought to the US when he was a toddler, and now lives in rural North Carolina. Now in his 20s and despite the fact he was so small when he came to the United States, he is undocumented. That means he’s not just barred from many basic benefits naturalised citizens get, but when the documentary opens he’s potentially at risk of being deported to a country he hasn’t been in since he was two-years-old. [Read more…]

Margarita, With A Straw (US DVD Review)

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If you would like the heads to explode of those who voted for Brexit and who want to vote for Trump, just tell them about the concept for this movie. The idea of a film about a disabled, bisexual, Indian woman who becomes an immigrant should be enough to kill them. The shame is they won’t actually watch the movie, which is a sweet, sharply observed and often surprisingly funny movie about one woman finding herself and her independence.

Laila (Kalki Koechlin) has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. She’s in college and on the cusp of womanhood, but is becoming increasingly aware that due to her disability, people have difficulty seeing her as an adult, with her own sexual and emotional needs. After getting a scholarship to study in the US, she has the opportunity to discover a new culture, but also discovers something she wasn’t expecting about herself. [Read more…]

Memories Of A Penitent Heart (Tribeca Review)

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Filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo certainly didn’t give herself an easy task when she set out to make Memories Of A Penitent Heart, as it involves her delving into one of the most difficult and painful chapters of her family’s history. 25 years before, her uncle Miguel died, with her grandmother insisting it was cancer, although it was almost certainly of AIDS (although interestingly Miguel himself was never tested, due to his beliefs about how people with the disease were being treated and stigmatised).

Miguel was gay, and had moved from Puerto Rico to New York to become an actor, shunning his staunch, Catholic upbringing to live authentically as himself, no matter what his family thought – even going as far as to change his name to the anglicised Michael. He’d also gotten into a relationship with a man called Robert. It is finding Robert that becomes Cecilia’s route into the story, as due to the strained (to put it mildly) relationship between Robert and Miguel’s family, they don’t know what happened to him or even his surname. [Read more…]

How To Win At Checkers (Every Time) (US DVD Review)

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How To Win At Checkers (Every Time) was Thailand’s entry for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and it’s a shame it didn’t get a nomination, as it’s a really good movie.

Oat is an orphan, being looked after by his older brother and (to some extent) his aunt. Oat’s brother, Ek, is doing his best to ensure they have enough money to survive, but their lives are slightly precarious. Ek is also dating the much wealthier Jai, a young man who’s very different to him, but who he loves.

While Ek is trying to help Oat’s journey to manhood, their lives are thrown into turmoil when Ek gets a letter from the military telling him that it’s his turn to go into the lottery for the draft – and that if he picks wrong, he will have enter the military for two years. While Jai manoeuvres to bribe his way out of the draft, Oat has ideas of his own on how to stop his brother having to go, but they may just cause more trouble. [Read more…]

I Am The Queen (US DVD/VoD Review)

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Set in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighbourhood, I Am The Queen follows three transgender contestants taking part in an annual drag/trans beauty pageant held for those of Puerto Rican heritage. To be honest though, the Beauty Pageant is more of a framing device for a look into the lives of Jolizza, Julissa and Bianca, three young transgender women and the difficulties they face.

The documentary reveals a complex picture, ensuring that it goes beyond the women themselves to see how their transition has affected their parents and family. It certainly doesn’t make things look easy, especially for women of their age, as their gender identity comes on top of the typical teenage/young adult emotions and confusion, which unsurprisingly ensures they don’t always make the best choices. Likewise, it’s a time when they need the support of their family the most, but that is a challenge for all of them to a greater or lesser extent. [Read more…]

You’re Killing Me (Outfest Review)

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You’re Killing Me sounds like a fun premise, perhaps for a short movie. Indeed, it starts off with what is essentially an entertaining short film. After game night with his friends, Andy (Matthew Wilkas) wants to finally have sex with his new boyfriend, Joe (Matthew McKelligon). However, Joe doesn’t want to, so in desperation Andy says he’ll do whatever kinky thing Joe wants to do. It turns out that what Joe really wants is to murder Andy – which is exactly what he proceeds to do.

However, after this fun beginning, You’re Killing Me has to find something to fill the next 80 minutes with, and that’s where the premise quickly starts running thin. [Read more…]