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 Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (DVD Review) – Robbed of the Best Picture Oscar?

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For many Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri seemed to be the smart bet to win the Best Picture Oscar. While The Shape Of Water had made the early running, Three Billboards gained momentum through the Award season and seemed like it might cruise to a victory. In the end it didn’t get the big gong, although it did win for the exceptionally strong performance of Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell. Many were also surprised it lost for writer/director Martin McDonagh’s screenplay, although it is a couple of issues with that screenplay that may be the reason it didn’t win the biggest award.

McDormand plays the hard-bitten Mildred, a woman filled with anger at the local police’s inability to catch whoever was responsible for the rape and murder of her daughter. To try and force the authorities into action she hires three billboards on a rural road, putting up massive posters asking why there have been no arrests and specifically calling out police chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). [Read more…]

Romeu & Romeu: Parts 1&2 (DVD Review) – Romeo & Juliet gets gayer and more Brazilian

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Romeo & Juliet seems to be a story that appeals to gay sensibilities, as it’s been referenced in all manner of gay books and movies. Romeu & Romeu is far from the first time the whole play has been given a same sex twist. For example, 2011’s Private Romeo kept Shakespeare’s dialogue but set the story between two male cadets at an American military school.

Romeu & Romeu is a Brazilian web series take of the Bard’s classic, with the Capulets and Montagues becoming the Monteiros and Campelos, and Verona moving from Italy to somewhere outside Sao Paulo. Ever since homophobic violence back in the 1960s, the families have been sworn enemies, trapped in a constant cycle of eye-for-an-eye anger and violence. [Read more…]

New Queer Visions: Men From The Boys (VoD Review) – The gay film festival strand brings us a short film collection

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For several years New Queer Visions has been presenting programmes of LGBT short films at various film festivals. Now some of the shorts that have been screened by NVQ have been brought together into a package available for us all to watch via Filmdoo (worldwide) and Amazon (in both the UK and US).

While a previous New Queer Visions collection we covered concentrated on female-led films, this one is all about the boys. They range from how sexuality touches race and ethnicity to dating someone deep in the closet. Take a look at what we thought of the films below. [Read more…]

Alpha Delta Zatan (VoD Review) – It’s homoerotic frat boy murder time

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You know the bits at the beginning of a porn scene where they have some plot (the plumber’s here to work on your pipes etc.) or where men get themselves all sexually frustrated by working out? Well, this is kind of like the feature-length version of that, except with no sex at the end.

Set in a frat house at a top university, right from the beginning we know this is a dangerous place as a man is stalked and killed by someone wearing a harlequin costume. When a new pledge comes into the house, he’s at first pleased to have been chosen for this prestigious frat, which is known to produce the future leaders of America. However, he soon starts to realise something strange is going on, as his fellow frat members start disappearing, he has dreams about someone wearing a harlequin mask and a slightly older guy known as ‘Frat Dad Brad’ begins being increasingly demanding. [Read more…]

Call Me A Ghost (Gay Adult Short Film Review) – Can porn explore sadness?

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A few months ago we reviewed explicit filmmaker Noel Alejandro’s short film Thank You, which impressed us by creating porn that felt more grounded and real than most. Now he’s back with Call Me A Ghost, which brings a touch of the supernatural to hardcore gay movies.

However, perhaps the most surprising thing is that it’s porn where the main character is sad. Mixing sadness and depression with sex isn’t unheard of in other sorts of movies – often shown as an act of desperation or the need to feel something, with the actual sex depicted as a negative thing. Things are different here, with the sex bringing connection and erotic charge. It may not ‘solve’ the main character’s melancholia, but neither is it depicted as the symptom of something bad. [Read more…]

A Young Man’s Future (VoD Review)

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Jeremy is a young man at college who thinks his life is on track, until his live-in boyfriend announces they’re too young for anything too serious and ends up moving out. Thinks look up when Jeremy meets Scott, with their flirtation developing into a full blown love affair.

Their happiness takes an unexpected turn when Scott starts exhibiting unusual, paranoid behaviour and slacking off on his studies. Jeremy initially doesn’t know what’s going on, until Scott is hospitalised and diagnosed with schizophrenia. The love between them is strong, but with both Jeremy and Scott’s parents questioning whether they should continue their relationship, and Jeremy coming to understand the difficulties of dealing with certain mental illnesses and the choices that need to be made for those who cannot fully make them for themselves, it’s far from certain their connection can survive or that they will be able to regain some form of normality. [Read more…]

Thank You (Gay Adult Short Film Review)

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Most of the time the term ‘art-porn’ isn’t quite correct. It refers to explicit sexuality in films that are otherwise ‘normal’ movies, with the ‘porn’ term used because erections and real sex are normally the preserve of that genre. However, the likes of Shortbus, Intimacy, Romance and others can’t really be considered porn. Indeed, many of these movies seem absolutely determined that despite how explicit they are, what they’re showing must not be considered erotic in any way, as if admitting that would diminish their legitimacy (Shortbus being an exception, which isn’t afraid to suggest sex can be fun).

However, Noel Alejandro’s short film Thank You, legitimately is ‘art porn’, joining the likes of Travis Mathews’ I Want Your Love and TheBlackSpark Project as something that is unabashedly erotic but aspires to be more than solely about getting people off. The setup is classic porn – two men come together and have very explicit sex, with the majority of the running time taken up with foreplay, BJs and screwing. In other ways though it’s something a little more. It has a simple but effective plot, decent acting and a genuine filmmaker’s interest in lighting, shot composition and editing. [Read more…]

Eroddity(s) 2 (VoD Review)

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In 2014 director Steven Vasquez brought us the gay short film anthology film Eroddity(s) (as well as the Eroddity(s)-esque Angels With Tethered Wings). It was a big enough success that now we have Eroddity(s) 2, which present three more creepy tales. In case you’re wondering the title is a contraction of ‘erotic oddities’, which is quite apt as the film is what would result if you smashed a horror film, The Twilight Zone and gay porn together in a super-collider.

If your ears pricked up on reading the words ‘gay porn’, you’ll be pleased to hear that as with the first movie, hardly any of the actors get through the movie without stripping naked at least once, and on a few occasions you can tell they were quite enjoying what was going on. So if you want to, you can play spot the (semi-)boner with the movie. [Read more…]

Chocolate City (VoD Review)

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There aren’t many films with titles that guilty white people might worry that they’re not even allowed to say, but Chocolate City does. The film is an African-American answer to Magic Mike – a comparison the film itself doesn’t shy away from – all about a young man who becomes a male stripper. In fact the director has suggested the movie was a response to Magic Mike, after they noted that the Channing Tatum movie had few people of colour.

Michael is doing his best to get through college, while working and helping out his mom (Vivica A. Fox), but when the electricity company threatens to shut off their supply, he needs cash fast. After being given a ‘job interview’, Michael is shocked to see he’s being offered the chance to do exotic dancing. [Read more…]

Dick: The Documentary (VoD Review)

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I think it’s fair to say that when director Brian Fender set off to make Dick: The Documentary he didn’t have a budget to rival Avatar or Man Of Steel. But then he didn’t need one, because what he did was take a very simple but surprisingly underexplored idea  – getting men to talk about their penises – and realised that doing something flashy would detract from looking directly at it (if you’ll pardon the expression).

The entire documentary is simply a selection of guys who strip naked, stand in front of a wall and discuss their dicks. We never see any of their faces, which is a smart move as while on the surface it makes the whole thing seem slightly voyeuristic, it ensures that the guys involved are less inhibited as they know that even though it’s being filmed they have anonymity. It also ensures the viewer sticks with the subject at hand and that the participants remain somewhere between individuals and archetypes. [Read more…]