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 Love Patient (DVD)

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There’s been an odd trend in recent years for comedies to be about unpleasant people who it’s difficult to like. Whether it’s Jason Bateman fathering Jennifer Aniston’s child without her knowledge in The Switch, or Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler trying to outdo each other in the impossible-to-empathise-with stakes in The Ugly Truth, there seem to be more rom-coms about assholes than ones about people you might actually like. The Love Patient seems to want to ensure that gay cinema doesn’t miss out on this trend.

The movie follows Paul, who’s feeling a bit down on his luck as the ex-boyfriend he still loves has found a new man and nothing else in his life seems to be going his way either. In his spare time, he volunteers at a medical centre (his sole redeeming feature), where he hatches a plan to make people care for him – pretend he has cancer. [Read more…]

Red State (Blu-ray)

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From the moment Kevin Smith first mentioned Red State several years ago, it was clear it wasn’t going to be like any of his other movies. Although his claims it would be an incendiary movie that’s “so bleak that it makes The Dark Knight look like Strawberry Shortcake” turned out to be slightly hyperbolic, it’s certainly a new side to the director. It’s rare that making a violent horror/thriller movie can be said to show a director maturing, but this really is Kevin Smith on a different level to where he’s been before.

The director’s earlier movies have been a relatively easy ride, with fairly simple stories, plenty of jokes and a rather point and shoot filming style (that’s not to denigrate how much fun they are). [Read more…]

The British Guide To Showing Off (DVD)

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The British Guide To Showing Off is a feature-length documentary that looks at artist Andrew Logan and his anarchic creation, The Alternative Miss World Show, which has been going since 1972 and seen a heady mix of eccentrics and artists taking part and, well, showing off.

The movie follows Logan as he rather leisurely tries to organise 2009’s pageant, as well as charting the history of the event, which has seen everything from David Hockney judging the first, David Bowie not being able to get into the second and the whole thing even being won by a robot. At one point it even got into a court battle with the Official Miss World organisation, who objected to Logan’s event’s name (Miss World lost). [Read more…]

The Debt (DVD)

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The Debt starts out in 1997, with Rachel (Helen Mirren) being lauded for her role in a Mossad mission 30 years before, in which she and two other agents are known for going into East Berlin to bring a Nazi War Criminal to justice, killing him in the process. After a dinner in her honour, shocking news comes through that one of the other agents, David (Ciaran Hinds), has thrown himself in front of a truck, and it seems to have something to do with their shared past.

Flashing back to 1965 – when Helen Mirren was Jessica Chastain, Ciaran Hinds was Sam Worthington and Tom Wilkinson was Martin Csokas – we find out exactly what happened on the mission. Rachel enters East Berlin and a rundown apartment where David and Stephan have been cooped up together for months, with only each other for company. When the mission goes wrong and the plan to get the Nazi out of East Berlin fails, the situation gets ever more intense while the trio try to find a way to extract the criminal to Israel. [Read more…]