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

Yossi (DVD)

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Etyan Fox’s 2002 film Yossi & Jagger has become a bit of a gay fave, and now 10 years later he catches up with one of the title characters in Yossi. The earlier movie followed two men in the Israeli army who fall in love against a backdrop of a military that doesn’t look favourably of gay liaisons. Now Yossi (Ohad Knoller) is a doctor in a hospital, leading a rather lonely, solitary life that revolves around his work, internet porn and looking for one night stands (that don’t always go well). [Read more…]

Life Just Is (DVD)

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I always say a film must be doing something right if you have a reaction to it, rather than it blandly flitting across your retina. However it’s preferable if that reaction is joy or admiration, rather than a sense of irritation and a feeling that the whole thing is closer to being pretentious toss than a successful trip into the minds of a group of people in their mid-20s. [Read more…]

African Cats (Blu-ray)

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Once Upon A Time, Disney wasn’t just known for Mickey Mouse and animated movies, it also used to make nature films, bringing the wonders of wildlife to children. Over time, this beloved project of Walt himself rather got lost in the shuffle, but now it’s back with a new imprint called Disneynature, which produced this look at Lions and Cheetahs on the African savannah.

To help them, Disney went to some of the best in the nature filmmaking business, who inevitably worked for the BBC Natural History Unit, including Alistair Fothergill, the former head of the unit who was also the brains behind The Blue Planet and Planet Earth. He co-directed African Cats alongside Keith Scholey, who also got his training at the Beeb. [Read more…]

Comes A Bright Day (DVD)

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Director Simon Aboud (who’s Paul McCartney’s son-in-law, no less) assembles a good, small cast for the Comes A Bright Day, including Submarine’s Craig Roberts, 28 Weeks Later’s Imogen Poots, Grey’s Anatomy’s Kevin McKidd and the always excellent Timothy Spall. Roberts plays a young Sam, who bigs himself up when he meets a pretty girl called Mary (Poots) who assumes he’s rich because of the watch he’s wearing. He heads to the upmarket jewellery store where she works to ask her out, just in time for a pair of armed robbers to turn up.

The store’s owner (Spall) trips the alarm, and soon he and the two young people are being held hostage by the sociopathic Cameron (McKidd) and his nervous young accomplice Clegg (Josef Atlin). As the robbers try to negotiate with the police and find a way out, the danger inside the shop increases, with Cameron always on the edge of going loco and killing somebody. As Mary begins to discover Sam has been lying to her about his job and wealth, his position becomes even more dangerous when she begins to think he may be in on the robbery. [Read more…]

Cleanskin (DVD)

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Ewan (Sean Bean) is a British secret service agent who starts to realise that a dangerous terrorist plot in being planned. While being manipulated by his superiors, he’s essentially given carte blanche to do whatever it takes to get to the plotters, something he’s more than happy to do, as he wants revenge for the atrocity that took his wife. However he starts to realise he’s mixed up in an ever deepening conspiracy.

Ewan’s incredibly violent and single-minded journey is contrasted to young Muslim Ash, the man who’s going to commit the suicide bombing. In flashback we discover how he got radicalised, while in the present things get ever more vicious as he prepares himself for what he believes he must do. [Read more…]

The Amazing Spider-man (Cinema)

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Considering the amount of money studios spend on their tentpole flicks, you’d think that they’d at least be able to come up with something entertaining each time. However history has told us that each summer brings a slew of movies that promise much and deliver little. The moment it was announced that Sony was rebooting Spider-man only a decade after Sam Raimi’s first arachnid flicks, the fanboys and Internet doom-mongers immediately decried the whole idea and decided on principle that the film was a middle-finger to fans and to be ignored.

While some saw Marc Webb coming on-board to direct as a sign of promise, others immediately decided his lack of experience with big budget movies spelled disaster. Well, all the naysayers and incessant prophets of pessimism had better eat their words (and hopefully find something better to do with their lives, such as wait until movies are actually made and then go watch them), as The Amazing Spider-man is great. [Read more…]

Falling Skies – Season 1 (DVD)

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It’s tough to make a successful sci-fi TV show. Many arrive each year but most quickly fall by the wayside, some getting cancelled because the ratings don’t justify the expense and others ending quickly because they’re simply not very good. Falling Skies however was a ratings hit on its US debut last year, and for the most part tells a compelling story.

In the aftermath of an alien invasion, the major cities have been destroyed, modern civilisation has fallen and only ragtag groups of survivors are around to resist the brutal extra-terrestrials. While he’s spent most of his life as a history professor, in this new world Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) has become second in command of the 2nd Massachusetts, a military unit fighting the ‘skitters’ and also sheltering a group of civilians. [Read more…]

The Rise And Fall Of A White Collar Hooligan (DVD)

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The Rise And Fall Of A White Collar Hooligan feels like a movie made in shorthand, taking a fairly well-worn tale and rushing through it so it seems like you’re getting the bullet points rather than the whole story.

Mike (Nick Nevern) lives for football and the violent disorder that he and other engage in after the match. However he has dreams about getting a decent job and being somebody – unfortunately he has few skills and a tendency to say completely the wrong thing at job interviews. His friend, Eddie (Simon Phillips), offer him a nice, simple, but well-paid position, couriering boxes around London. Mike is initially convinced it has to be drugs, but it turns out he’s actually got himself involved in credit card fraud, where criminals are cloning cards and heading out to cash machines each night to take money. [Read more…]

Magic Mike (Cinema)

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When I first saw the advert I thought, ‘Oh no, it’s Showgirls meets The Full Monty’, however I was perplexed somewhat that Oscar winning director Stephen Soderbegh was at the helm. He’s delivered some brilliant films over the years, including Traffic, Erin Brockovich and Solaris, although his work of recent has not been as impressive, namely Haywire and Contagion.

However, with Magic Mike, he has given us is a crowd pleasing, energetic, realistic behind-the-scenes look at the glamorous but shady lives of the stripping community, in a tight, well scripted gem of a movie. [Read more…]

Friends With Kids (Cinema)

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What do you do if you want a kid but you don’t have a significant other (or indeed if you’re a gay man)? Well, if you’re a woman you could pop down the sperm bank, I suppose, but in the case of Jason (Adam Scott) and Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt), they decide perhaps they should have a kid together, despite not being in love. Now in their 30s, the duo are best of friends, but for various reasons haven’t settled down.

That’s not true of their friends, Ben (Jon Hamm) and Missy (Kristen Wiig), and Leslie (Maya Rudolph) and Alex (Chris O’Dowd), who are married and on the baby train. Despite the fact both couples seem harassed and on the edge due to their children, Jason and Julie decide to go ahead anyway and have a child. [Read more…]