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

Playing It Cool (VoD Review)

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It’s not often that a movie with this much star power doesn’t get a cinema release in the UK, but Playing It Cool has gone straight to VoD, despite the presence of Chris Evans, Michelle Monaghan, Topher Grace, Aubrey Plaza, Luke Wilson, Patrick Warbuton, Matthew Morrison, Ioan Gruffudd, Ashley Tisdale, Anthony Mackie and Phillip Baker Hall, amongst others.

So is there something wrong with it? Well, there’s nothing really bad, but its problem is that it has a lot of ambition but doesn’t quite hit any of its marks. Even so it’s a surprise it hasn’t been in cinemas.

Chris Evans plays a screenwriter who has little interest in the romantic comedy script he’s been commissioned to write, largely because he’s not a big believer in love. With every relationship he’s had, he’s ended up telling the woman he doesn’t feel the same way she does, and he’s now essentially trying to avoid the whole thing. But then he meets Michelle Monaghan, and there’s definitely a connection. [Read more…]

Mr. Turner (Blu-ray Review)

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Mr. Turner is one of those films that ought to be interminable. It doesn’t follow a traditional plot, just showing you things happening to the famed painter Joseph William Mallord Turner in the last quarter century of his life. However it possesses a surprising charming, which is even more impressive when you consider the 150 minute running time.

While it may not be plot heavy, that’s not to say it lacks incident, with Turner loved by some, loved by others and living a life that is part high society, part working class and part living by the rules of his own desires. He is profoundly affected by his father’s death, and for a mid 19th Century man possesses an attitude to women that ranges from extremely forward-thinking to the extremely base – working with a female natural scientist but simultaneously taking sexual advantage of his servant – before ending up secretly living with a woman he never marries. [Read more…]

Nightcrawler (Blu-ray Review)

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I’m not entirely sure why Jake Gyllenhaal felt the need to lose loads of weight for Nightcrawler, but conbined with a very good performance he certainly looks the part of a man who’s one step away from being a psychopath – and maybe not even one step.

He is Louis Bloom, who’s certainly not lacking in confidence and believes he’s got everything to offer the world, but his life and career is going nowhere, partly because he lacks direction and also because he had no issue being on the edge of the law. However he stumbles into a career he never expected when he meets a Nightcrawler – freelance cameramen who race to emergencies in the hope of getting sensationalist footage for the local news. [Read more…]