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

Boys On Film 5: Candy Boy (DVD)

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Read our reviews of the other Boys On Film short film collections here.

It seems you guys can’t get enough of gay short films, as the Boys On Film reviews we posted last week have proved extremely popular. After Hard Love, In Too Deep, American Boy and Protect Me From What I Want, today we move on to the fifth in the great series, Candy Boy, which we’re reviewing ahead of the release of the eighth compilation, Boys On Film: Cruel Britannia, which is out May 28th (and which we’ll be reviewing later this week).

Candy Boy features nine shorts, so take a look at what we think of them below. [Read more…]

Boys On Film 4: Protect Me From What I Want (DVD)

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Read our reviews of the other Boys On Film short film collections here.

Nine more gay short films are brought together in this fourth disc in the Boy On Film series. Ahead of the release of Boys On Film: Cruel Britannia on May 28th, we’re looking at all the releases, which showcase some of the best gay-themed shorts from around the world. This fourth collection includes films from the US, UK, Portugal, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and even Iceland, and while some are better than others, they’re definitely an interesting bunch.

Let’s take a look at the nine shorts: [Read more…]

Plan B (2009)

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When Bruno sees his ex-girlfriend Ana with her new boyfriend, Pablo, he decides he wants her back, even though she only seems interested in occasional sex sessions. Realising the usual tactics won’t work to convince her – he comes up with a Plan B. He’s heard Pablo has had liaisons with guys, so Bruno determines that he’ll befriend Pablo without letting him know who he is, and then make him fall in love with him. Then, after this causes Pablo and Ana to break up, he can swoop in and be her knight in shining armour when she’s sad and lonely.

Admittedly it is the sort of plan that could go hideously wrong at any moment, but he manages to meet and get in with Pablo, convincing him that he’s not the guy Ana has a picture of on her wall. However while Bruno is convinced he’s being devious and clever, something happens that he never expected; he starts having genuine feelings for Pablo. [Read more…]

Bent (1997)

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It amazes me how many gay people know a pink triangle is a gay symbol but they don’t know why. However as gay history isn’t taught in schools, many don’t realise there is a long and complex history of homosexuality that goes beyond Ancient Greece and Oscar Wilde. Bent is based Martin Sherman’s play and stars Clive Owen as Max, who lives a decadent gay life in 1930s Germany, not caring who he hurts and feeling his looks and charm will get him everything he wants.

However as the Nazis’ power increases, life gets increasingly difficult for gay people and the net closes in on Max, who eventually gets rounded up and sent to Dachau. Once there he denies he’s gay, preferring the yellow star of David saying he Jewish to the pink triangle admitting he’s gay, as he knows Jews are more likely to survive than homosexuals. There he meets Horst (Lothaire Bluteau), who isn’t ashamed of wearing his pink triangle, and despite the difficulties and torments of concentration camp life, the two men form a complex bond. [Read more…]

Gay Sex In The 70s

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The documentary Gay Sex In the 70s both does what it says on the tin and completely fails to at the same. Joseph F. Lovett’s doc is a mixture of interviews, vintage photos and footage that look at the idea that the gay rights movement in the 1970s led to increased visibility and a more stridently upfront attitude, which resulted in an explosion of gay decadence and sex, with men screwing each other all over the shop. This was then brought to an abrupt end by the emergence of AIDS in the early 80s.

It’s a potentially interesting subject, and indeed this documentary isn’t the first to paint the 70s as some sort of halcyon age of gay free love that’s gone forever. Its problem though is that it never seems to get to the heart of anything, merely hinting at things that it doesn’t develop. [Read more…]

Zombies Of Mass Destruction (DVD)

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Another day, another zombie movie. Due to the fact they can be made fairly cheaply and generally sell quite well, there really are a ridiculous amount of movies about the undead made and released on DVD every year, most of which are pretty interchangeable and normally fairly dire. However, while Zombies Of Mass Destruction has a title that sounds like it’s going to be utterly dreadful, it deserves kudos for trying to reach above its no budget origins.

While some have compared it to Sean Of The Dead, that would be being a bit generous, other than the fact it’s a horror movie that’s also a comedy. More accurate description is its US tagline, ‘A political zomedy’. The set-up is pretty basic. Port Gamble is an idyllic small town where the locals are going about their humdrum lives when the whole place is taken over by the undead.  As usual a small band of the uninfected has to try to survive. [Read more…]

I Love You Phillip Morris (DVD)

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It took quite a long time for I Love You Phillip Morris to make it to UK cinemas, partly because it’s a bit of a tough sell. It’s a film that moves from broad comedy to deeply felt drama, doesn’t shy away from the gay side of its story, and makes a hero out of a man who in most cases would be seen as the bad guy. However despite all these difficulties, the movie succeeds admirably. [Read more…]

The Kids Are All Right (Blu-ray)

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What a confusing movie The Kids Are All Right is. Kids with two mothers? What craziness! Whoever heard of such as thing! And it has two women living in the same house, both of whom have fathered a child by the same sperm donor! Nuttiness.

At one point, when Julianne Moore was under the bed covers between Annette Bening’s legs, I even thought they were trying to suggest these two mothers were having some sort of sexual relationship, but then I heard a strange buzzing sound coming from down there and realised Moore must have just lost her cell phone or something. [Read more…]