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

Battleship (Cinema)

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Just picture it – writer goes to see producer and says I have an idea for a movie, “Let’s base it on a game, say Battleship. We’ll make the enemy Aliens (Transformers style), set it in Pearl Harbor – with our allies being the Japanese, of all people – and let’s debut the worlds biggest pop star in her movie debut! You can think of it as Top Gun meets Independence Day!” Producer proceeds to mentally count the cash he thinks he’ll make.

This is basically the premise of one of the most anticipated films of the year – which to be honest isn’t a great state of affairs, if this is all Hollywood can deliver. That said, with an estimated budget of over $200M, you have to hope it’ll do better than last years’ two alien invasion efforts, Skyline and Battle Los Angeles. [Read more…]

Switch (DVD)

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Sophie Malaterre (Karine Vanasse) is excited by the idea of a house swap – where you exchange homes with someone so you both get a holiday but save on accommodation – which will allow her to escape her Montreal life for a while with a trip to Paris. However she hasn’t been in France for long when the police raid the flat she’s swapped into and arrest Sophie while she’s in the bath, carting her off to the station after a decapitated head is found in her room. [Read more…]

Jitters (DVD)

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We don’t get to see a lot of Icelandic movies, partly because as a nation of just over 300,000 people, they don’t exactly produce an endless stream of films of international calibre. However Iceland does make a few films each year and every so often something emerges from the country that deserves a wider audience. Jitters is one of them, a kind of Icelandic Skins, centring on a boy coming to terms with being gay, while his friends have their own issues with teenage life.

Rather than Iceland, the opening of the movie takes place in the UK, where young Gabriel (Atli Oskar Fjalarsson) is on a three week trip to Britain. He shares a room with Markus (Haraldur Ari Stefansson) and on the last night they share a kiss. Once back in Iceland, Gabriel hopes there will be more, but Markus treats it very much as if it never happened. [Read more…]

Texas Killing Fields (DVD)

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Based loosely on a true story, Mike Sounder (Sam Worthington) and Brian Heigh (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) play two cops investigating crime in the Texas bayous. Heigh becomes increasingly drawn to a series of murders where the bodies of the victims are dumped in an area that’s become known as The Killing Fields. Local guy Souder warns New York transplant Heigh against getting too deep into the investigation, partly because it’s outside their jurisdiction and partly because he knows it’s dangerous and you can get lost in trying to make sense of what’s going on.

However Heigh can’t give up and soon attracts the attention of the killer, who starts to seem as if he’s taunting the police with red herring clues. Then a local girl goes missing and the stakes are raised. [Read more…]

Absent (Ausent) (DVD)

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Winner of the Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival – a gong given to the best movie on LGBT themes – Absent comes to DVD fresh from a centrepiece screening at the recent London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in March.

The film is about a teenage boy, Martin (Javier De Pietro), who pretends to have something wrong with his eye so that his teacher, Sebastian, has to take him to the hospital. When they’ve finished with the doctor, Martin comes up with a convoluted story about having arranged to stay the night with a friend that they can’t get in touch with and then gives reasons why he can’t go home. Unsure what to do, the teacher decides to take him back to his apartment and let him stay the night. It’s clear though the student has ulterior motives, being somewhat flirtatious and touching Sebastian’s leg while he sleeps. [Read more…]

Die Hard Quadrilogy (Blu-ray)

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There’s a slightly awkward situation with the Die Hard movies in the UK, where the distribution rights for parts 1, 2 and 4 are owned by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, while Die Hard With A Vengeance is released by Disney (or at least Buena Vista). As a result, getting a box set release of all the movies is a trickier proposition than you’d expect, as you have to get different studios to accept it, and so it’s only now that Fox can bring out a Blu-ray box set containing all four movies, replacing the previous Die Hard Blu-ray set, which lacked part 3!

You’ve undoubtedly seen all four films (and if you haven’t, what are you doing on a film website, reading a review of a Die Hard box set?), but just in case you haven’t, the series follows the exploits of Bruce Willis John McLane, the archetypal right man in the wrong place at the wrong time. [Read more…]

Headhunters (Cinema)

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The antihero can be a difficult thing to pull off. If your protagonist is doing things that would normally be considered the province of the villain, you need to work extra hard to make the audience empathise with them or see them as heroic. You can get round it with something like someone’s family being attacked so they have a reason to go out for revenge, but what if your ‘hero’ is actually a bit of an asshole?

That’s what we have in Headhunters, but it actually manages to make it work, which is no small achievement. [Read more…]

North Sea Texas (Cinema)

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While adolescence is one of cinema’s favourite subjects (and for various reasons a virtual obsession in gay and lesbian cinema), few films find a balance that feels as if it’s getting to the truth about ‘coming of age’. Bavo Defurne’s North Sea Texas does just that, telling a familiar story yet managing to make it feel fresh, acutely observed and charming. Much of this comes from evoking a strong sense of the early 1970s, great cinematography and excellent performances from a mostly inexperienced cast. It doesn’t hurt either that the strong characters avoid clichés.

Pim (Jelle Florizoone) is a teenager living with his floozy former beauty queen mother in a Belgian coastal town. His mother is more interested in how Pim makes her feel than the boy himself, although this does give him a small amount of freedom to lust after his next door neighbour, Gino (Mathias Vergels). [Read more…]

This Must Be The Place (Cinema)

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What is it with Hollywood and unimaginative film titles? In this case it can be forgiven as it refers to a song by the Talking Heads, and not some ill thought out, Channel 5 afternoon  film drama. I suppose ‘Ex Rockstar Turned Nazi Hunter’, or ‘Cheyenne’s Odyssey’ might have been too obvious.

This Must Be The Place played in competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2011, and is certainly quirky enough to have gone down well. The film is directed by Paolo Sorrentino (his first English language film, having won the Cannes Prix Du Jury in 2008 with Il Divo) and stars the incredible talent that is Sean Penn. [Read more…]

The Adopted (DVD)

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Melanie Laurent came to international prominence with a superb performance in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and was seen more recently in the Oscar-winning Beginners. Here she turns director for a family drama that’s involving if imperfect.

Marine (Marie Denarnaud) is a young woman who was adopted as a child and is now virtually inseparable from her adoptive sister, Lisa (Laurent). They’re so close that she is virtually the second mother of Lisa’s young son, Leo. Then Marine meets Alex (Denis Menochet), or rather he meets and pursues her. The two begin a fledgling relationship, which Lisa seems to resent, although their feisty mother is all for it. Marine starts to waver, unsure whether relationships are for her – despite the fact the rather charming Alex seems utterly devoted – but then a shocking event changes all their lives and forces Lisa and Alex together over the future of Marine… and her unborn baby. [Read more…]