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

Three Veils (DVD)

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Three Veils features three interlinked tales about young Arab-American women in Los Angeles, dealing with being products of both modern US culture and the mores and traditions of the countries their parents come from.

The first story follows Leila, who is preparing for her arranged marriage, putting aside her wilder impulses and respecting the traditions of the culture she comes from. However her father begins to suspect she isn’t really happy about what’s happening, and her prospective husband reveals himself to be increasingly controlling. Next up is Leila’s study partner Amira, who’s had lesbian feelings since a young age, but after her mother realised this she got Amira to dedicate herself to The Koran and is determined her daughter will put her same-sex feeling aside. However the arrival of Nikki in Amira’s life stirs things up, and makes her realise that maybe she cannot be happy in the life her mother is pushing her towards. [Read more…]

Hijacked (Blu-ray)

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Making any film is an achievement. It’s something that nearly always happens against the odds, with people having to make a gargantuan effort just to get something in the can. However there are undoubtedly movies where you can’t help but feel it would have been better if they’d just invested the budget in the stock market rather than using it to make a film, and saved everyone a whole lot of trouble. Sadly Hijacked is one of those movies.

Paul Ross (Randy Couture) is a burly guy who’s determined to take down a mysterious criminal/terrorist organisation called The Tribe, which funds itself through drugs and illegal arms dealings. He becomes even more single-minded in destroying them after a set-up leaves many of his colleagues dead.  Ross learns that The Tribe’s next target may be one of the world’s richest men, Bruce Lieb (Craig Fairbrass), which leads him the magnate’s private jumbo jet. The plane is hijacked by the terrorists mid-flight, with Ross determined to get revenge, protect his ex-girlfriend (who conveniently is also on the flight), and find out who’s really behind The Tribe. But exactly who can he trust? [Read more…]

The Night Porter (Blu-ray)

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At the time it was made, The Night Porter was seen as intensely controversial, and even now it remains an occasionally uncomfortable experience, largely as it refuses to give easy answers for what is going on. Dirk Bogarde plays Max, who works as a night porter at a Vienna hotel in 1957. However Max has a secret former life, as 13 years before he was an SS officer in the Nazi concentration camps.

Along with a network of fellow former Nazis, he’s managed to keep his former identity a secret, but there are always people looking for Nazis, especially those like Max and his friends who haven’t fully renounced their previous ideology. Then a woman called Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) arrives at the hotel, who is a former prisoner who Max had an intense relationship with in the camps. While you’d expect her to revile him, they fall back into the strange sado-masochistic relationship they had before. [Read more…]

Mirror Mirror (DVD)

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Hollywood is now investing a lot of time and money into fairytales of old, as with today’s CGI anything goes. You wait ages for a Snow White films and two turn up, the same can also be said of waiting for a Tarsem Singh film, as we hadn’t had anything since 2006’s The Fall, and now we’ve had Immortals and Mirror Mirror within a few months of one another. One does not normally associate a Tarsem Singh film with comedy, but this is what has he has delivered with Mirror Mirror, which is unusual considering his inability to connect with the audience with his previous films.

Tarsem Singh is a cinematic visionary who tends to focus more on imagery, costumes and style than with plots, and again has delivered something very similar with Mirror Mirror. Personally I enjoy watching Singh’s films and marvel at the beauty and striking canvas he envisages like a true artist (it is definitely style over substance), along with the creator of his incredible costumes, Eiko Ishioka, who unfortunately passed away this year. [Read more…]