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

Like Crazy (DVD)

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Ah, young love. Like Crazy is the sort of film that will either have you reach for the sick bucket, or get you blubbing in the first 10 minutes due to the aching love on display. Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones are Jacob and Anna, who meet at an LA university while the British Anna is in the US on a student visa.

Falling deeply in love, Anna overstays the limit of her Visa and discovers that after she pops back to the UK for a short visit, she’s now banned from going back to the States. Their passion still burns, but with both of them building lives for themselves in different parts of the world and Jacob unable or unwilling to move to Britain, keeping their relationship going becomes increasingly difficult. They eventually try to take decisive action to get her into the US, but will it work? [Read more…]

This Is What Love In Action Looks Like (DVD)

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It’s always good to see people standing up for a cause they believe in and forcing some change, especially when it so often seems there’s not much small groups of people can do. However with the right cause and the right way of doing things, you can make a difference, as this documentary proves.

In 2005 the friends of 16-year-old Memphis teenager Zach were shocked to find a series of MySpace posts saying that following his parents reacting badly to his telling them he was gay, they were sending him to a Fundamentalist Christian live-in programme, Love In Action, which would try to turn him straight. With Zach having already been packed off to the organisation’s centre, Zach’s friends decide to organise a protest. Their peaceful attempts to raise awareness of the centre’s existence and to try and help Zach soon become a major news story, forcing things to change. However with Zach inside the centre, he knows little about what’s going on in his name. [Read more…]

The Queen (Blu-ray)

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While the world of film loves to make royal biopics, nearly all of them are historic, with even something like The King’s Speech causing some to wonder whether its subject matter is too close to the present to make it suitable for a movie (seriously, some people complained about that). It’s very unusual therefore for a mainstream royal biopic to take on the current royal family, especially concerning events that are in the recent past. The Queen does though and does it very well, winning Helen Mirren an Oscar in the process. Now the film is making its first appearance on Blu-ray, just in time for the monarch’s Diamond Jubilee.

Following the death of Princess Diana, the Queen (Mirren) and royal family attempt to deal with what they believe should be a private matter between themselves and the Spencer family. However as attacks from the media and public begin to grow, and with new PM Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) advising her, the Monarch slowly comes to realise that her apparent inaction is becoming a threat to her position. [Read more…]

Nightbirds (Blu-ray & DVD)

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Until relatively recently Nightbirds was thought to be a lost movie from cult director Andy Milligan, who’s best known (although he’s not known that much, as his cult is pretty small) for slightly bizarre horror flicks. However at least one print remained, which Drive director and Milligan aficionado Nicolas Winding Refn managed to get hold of. He then approached the BFI about giving Nightbirds the first proper release it’s ever had, as it hardly even saw the inside of a cinema when it was first made.

This proved trickier than you might expect, as Refn’s solitary print was missing several key scenes, which had literally been cut out of it to make the six-minute trailer. However working with a company that had a copy of that trailer, they’ve managed to put the movie back together and create this new Blu-ray and DVD release. The real question though, is whether it was all worth it? [Read more…]

Ruggles Of Red Gap (Blu-ray & DVD)

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Back in the early part of the 20th Century, Hollywood really liked Ruggles Of Red Gap. Even though the original play only ran for 33 performances on Broadway, it spawned two silent movies and then this 1935 talkie starring Charles Laughton. The actor had just won a Best Actor Oscar for The Private Life Of Henry VIII, and many thought it was odd he chose such a straightforwardly comic role as a follow-up, something he wasn’t particularly well known for at the time.

Laughton plays title character Ruggles, the butler of a posh English lord who is lent to a rather unrefined but very rich American and his social climbing wife, who sees having a butler as a way of showing people how posh they’ve become. After a couple of adventures in Europe, Ruggles is taken to Red Gap, Washington, a pioneer town that doesn’t know quite what to make of this refined manservant. [Read more…]

Catch .44 (Blu-ray)

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Writer/director Aaron Harvey really wants to be Quentin Tarantino, and I mean REALLY wants to be. While many people have made films that can be considered Tarantino-esque, Catch .44 takes that to the extreme but falls short on just about every level. Despite trying everything from fast-paced dialogue that seems to be about random topics to dicking around with the timeline, all the film really manages to prove is that Quentin is a singular talent, and you can’t just copy and paste his style in a slightly amateurish way and expect it to work.

Three young women (Malin Akerman, Nikki Reed and Deborah Ann Woll) are in a cafe in rural Louisiana when one of them appears to start a stick-up, which soon goes horribly wrong. The film then jump around the timeline, gradually revealing how we got to the café and what happens after, which involves a sleazy drug kingpin (Bruce Willis), a brutal killer (Forest Whitaker) and a job to intercept a lucrative dope deal. However nothing is quite what it seems. [Read more…]

Boys On Film 8: Cruel Britannia (DVD)

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Read our reviews of the other Boys On Film short film collections here

After two weeks in which we’ve been reviewing all the Boys On Film gay short film compilations, we’re finally come right up to date with Cruel Britannia. As the title suggests, all 10 shorts on the disc come from the UK and cover a broad range of gay-allied themes, most of which tend towards the darker side of life.

It’s a great selection, showing there’s a lot of talent out there in the UK working on LGBT themed film projects. Here’s what we thought of the shorts. [Read more…]

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (Blu-ray)

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The Anderson family sure have a knack of getting lost in Jules Verne-ian places! After going in search of his missing father in Journey To The Center Of The Earth back in 2008, Sean (Josh Hutcherson) gets a strange encoded message from his grandfather (Michael Caine), which once deciphered says he’s stuck on the Mysterious Island in the South Pacific. Sean gets his new stepdad, Hank (Dwayne Johnson), to agree to take him there, with the man hoping it will be a bonding experience. [Read more…]

The Artist (DVD)

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In an era where cinema audiences are bombarded with romcoms, remakes and endless superhero franchises, along came a silent film that showed the industry that there was a market for the more concerning cinemagoer, who liked something a little different. The Artist became a worldwide phenomenon that swept every award ceremony across the globe, winning 5 Oscars, 7 BAFTAs, 3 Golden Globes, and Best actor at Cannes, as well as being lauded by the harshest of critics and filmgoers alike. The film cost $15 million to make, but has so far amassed over $130 million at the box office, and is only the second time a silent film has won best film Oscar, the first being at the very first Oscars – Wings. [Read more…]