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

The View From Here Short Films (BFI Flare Review)

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The View From Here – a collection of short films centring on coming out and the emotional minefields associated with such a life-changing action.

An Afternoon (En Apftermiddag)
Dir. Soren Green
A very sweet yet tense coming-out story involving two young friends. With communication restricted mostly to lingering looks, semi-articulate teenage grunts and text messages, this feels convincingly teenage, with the boys seemingly authentically struggling with feelings they’re not entirely confident about and have no idea how to express. A contemporary story told deftly and convincingly by everyone involved. [Read more…]

Out To Win (BFI Flare Review)

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Out To Win is an interesting and intimate documentary of LGBT sporting history over the past 40 years.

Beginning as a retrospective, Out To Win looks at how attitudes and conceptions of gay sports stars has changed since 1975 when David Kopay came out as the first professional gay NFL player. Featuring interviews with several now-retired athletes including Kopay, Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King, all of whom have lived through scandal and prejudice and had their careers damaged as a result of their sexuality being made public.

In the telling of their now historical comings-out, these elder statesmen and women of gay sports are able to tell their stories in a non-sensationalised context, allowing them to discuss openly and honestly how things have changed since their (often forced) exposure and the work they’ve done to ease the process for younger athletes who’ve found themselves in similar situations. [Read more…]

Vivant! (Alive!) (BFI Flare Review)

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Vivant covers the week of training undergone by five HIV+ men leading up to their first solo parachute jump, and documents the development of unlikely friendships that develop between such a disparate group.

The Director’s decision to focus quite evenly between the interpersonal relationships of the five men and on the quite intense training for the parachute jump makes for an interesting mix. The training is obviously both physically and mentally demanding, and there are points when these men visibly struggle to assimilate all the information needed to make a successful jump. [Read more…]

I Am Michael (BFI Flare Opening Night Film Review)

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Chosen as the Opening Night Gala film for this year’s BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival, this is an angry-making film. It’s supposed to be as it’s probably the first Going In movie, in that it’s a reversed Coming Out tale: I am Michael tells the story of how Michael Glatze went from out gay activist and editor of San Fransisco-based gay magazine XY to a straight, married Pastor in Wyoming.

The film opens with James Franco as Michael and Zachary Quinto as his loving-yet-bland boyfriend Bennet. Apparently they’re happily in love in San Francisco, both running a gay magazine and helping gay youth in 2001. We watch as Bennett and Michael go from being happy together to being happy in a three-way relationship with Tyler (played by the ab-tastic Charlie Carver). At least, we assume they’re happy together – at no point does anyone say “I am happy being gay with you”, which is about the level of some of the exposition this script has in places. Michael is moody. Bennett is bland. Tyler is pretty. That’s about it. [Read more…]

Oh Boy Online Mini-Series – Episode 1 ‘Sébastien’ (Review)

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Normally with gay-themed online series, we can just post the episodes and let you decide for yourself whether you like it or not. However Oh Boy, from porn model/actor/director Damien Moreau, is a little different, both because it’s being released on a pay-to-view basis and also because it’s sexual nature means it’s a bit too rude for us to post here anyway.

While quite a few straight filmmakers have tried to explore the point where art and porn meet, in the last few years it’s been on the gay side that a lot of the more interesting work has been taking place, whether it’s Travis Mathews’ In Your Room and I Want Your Love films, or the Black Spark hardcore vignettes that set the internet on fire a couple of years ago (and which many have said resulted in an increase in production values for real gay porn). [Read more…]

Angels With Tethered Wings (Review)

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Last year Steven Vasquez’s erotic horror anthology, Eroddity(s), hit DVD, offering a collection that had a lot of penises but was only sporadically successful in storytelling terms. Now he’s back with Angels With Tethered Wings, which is a step up from Eroddity(s) but still suffers from a few of the issues of the earlier release.

Although it tells one complete story, the film is split into three parts. The first chapter shows us what happens before and after part two, introducing us to identical twins Grant and Garret Gleason (both played by Cory Tyndall). Garret is a mean and callous porn producer who’s just received a briefcase containing $200,000 dollars, which he must hand over to the mysterious Carmine. After an argument with his main star, Timothy (Brandon Rife), the twink storms out, with Garret thinking the young man has taken the money with him. [Read more…]

Out To Kill (US DVD Review)

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I have to admit that for about 20-minutes I didn’t hold out any hope for Out To Kill. It starts out following Justin (singer/songwriter/actor Tom Goss), who lives in an apartment complex full of gay people and believes he’s just about the best thing that’s ever happened to the planet. He’s the type of guy who thinks looking good is all that matters, treats nearly everyone else with disdain, and just about everything he says is a sexual come-on.

It appears he’s going to be the lead character – and an intensely annoying one he’d be as well. Therefore it almost comes as a relief when he’s found dead in the communal swimming pool (that sounds like I’m being nasty, but if you watch the movie you’ll know what I mean). The police are quick to blame the death on a drug overdose, but Justin’s friend, Gene (Rob Moretti), thinks it was murder. He hires new resident and private eye Jim (Scott Sell) to investigate. [Read more…]

The Dark Place (US DVD Review)

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It’s certainly been noticeable in the past year or two that an increasing amount of gay-themed thrillers have been released. Some have been good, some have been dreadful and now we have The Dark Place, which sits somewhere in the middle.

Keegan Dark (Blaise Embry) is a young man who’s long been estranged from his family, but agrees to go with his boyfriend Wil (Timo Descamps) to see his mother at her vineyard. His first shock is that when he arrives he discovers that his mom, Celeste (Shannon Day), has a new husband, Adrian (Andy Copeland), and as a result Keegan suddenly has a stepbrother, Jake (Sean Paul Lockhart). [Read more…]

More Scenes From A Gay Marriage (US DVD Review)

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More Scenes From A Gay Marriage starts out with a dangerous gambit. As its title suggests, it’s a follow-up to Scenes From A Gay Marriage, a film that asked us to root for its main characters, Darren (Matt Riddlehoover) and Joe (Jared Allman), to get together by the end. However the sequel opens with trouble in paradise as the duo have now decided they’re going to split up.

So much for happily ever after! But then, that’s part of what the movie is about – suggesting that quite often films give us a neatly packaged and unrealistic version of reality, and that real life is often more messy. [Read more…]

Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine (DOC NYC Review)

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There are some people who become totemic. Their name and/or image are indelibly associated with something to the point that the person behind it often gets hidden or ignored. That’s certainly true of Matthew Shepard, who in October 1998 at 21-years-old was savagely beaten, tied to a fence and left for dead. By the time he passed away six days later he had become international news, with people around the world shocked at what was a truly cruel and barbaric crime motivated by homophobia.

No anti-gay crime before or since has had the kind of international impact Shepard’s death did, helping to give people a rallying point to demand change and to say that LGBT people would no longer put up with the kind of bigotry and potential violence from the homophobic society that surrounded them – especially as there were comparatively few legal protections afforded gay people. [Read more…]