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
Cinema, DVD and Blu-ray reviews
The second day of the Iris Prize Film Festival brought another trio of eclectic film brought together into themed programmes. The six-day celebration of LGBT+ film is centred around its justly prestigious Iris International Prize. This is the most valuable LGBT short film prize in the world, worth £30,000, which allows the recipient to make another short.
You can read about what we thought about the films from Day 1 by clicking here, but read below for Day 2. [Read more…]
The ‘gay short film Oscars’, the Iris Prize, is happening in Cardiff, Wales as I post this. The six-day celebration of LGBT+ film is centred around its justly prestigious Iris International Prize. This is the most valuable LGBT short film prize in the world, worth £30,000, which allows the recipient to make another short. The first of the 35 films in competition have now screened, and once more it’s an eclectic and fascinating bunch, covering a range of themes concerning sexuality, gender and more.
This year the screenings of the shorts have been brought together into thematic groups, so take a look below to see our thoughts on the Iris Prize International Shorts from Day 1 of the fest.
Click here to read Iris Prize Festival LGBT+ International Short Films 2018 – Part 2 [Read more…]
For decades four female friends have been getting together for a monthly book club. However, while this started when they were in their youth, they now all facing the fact they’re aging. Diane (Diane Keaton) is a relatively recent widow being pressured by her daughters to move to nearer to them in Arizona, as they think she’s too old to manage by herself. Carol (Mary Steenburgen) is stuck in a rut with her husband, while federal judge Sharon (Candice Bergen) has completely given up on the idea of either love or sex. Finally there’s Vivian (Jane Fonda), a woman who’s never had a problem finding sex but has always disdained the idea of settling down with one person.
Rather than their typical book club novels, the quartet decide to read Fifty Shades Of Grey. After discovering the Red Room shenanigans that Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele get up to, the four women start to shake up their own lives. That may not involve BDSM, but it does set them thinking about what they really want from their remaining years. [Read more…]
It really doesn’t seem that long since I saw the last Mission: Impossible film (Rogue Nation, 2015), and I praised it for its ability to utilise the tried and tested formula of its predecessors, whilst being a fresh and exhilarating entry to the franchise. That’s something this series continues to do effortlessly with Fallout, which is without doubt one of the best entries. You can’t say that for many other franchises six movies in.
Without going too much into the plot, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team have to retrieve three plutonium cores before they are turned into nuclear bombs, as well as foil the plot of a religious terrorist group called the Apostles, who want to reshape the world. On this mission Hunt is chaperoned by CIA agent Walker (Henry Cavill), and we have the welcome return of regulars Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), Ilsa (Rebeccan Fergurson), alongside some new and memorable additions. [Read more…]
Many people were surprised when it was announced there was going to be a Tomb Raider movie reboot, especially considering the Angelina Jolie movies of the early 2000s aren’t exactly well remembered. However, as with so many other videogames, there’s no intrinsic reason it couldn’t be turned into a good movie. Although for some reason, Hollywood has great difficulty turning games into serviceable film.
This time around Jolie has been replaced by Alicia Vikander, who like her predecessor stepped into Lara Croft’s shoes shortly after winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar (Jolie for Girl Interrupted and Vikander for The Danish Girl). Her Lara is a young woman who’s fiercely intelligent and smart, but whose life shifted sideways when her adventurer father went missing, presumed dead, when she was a child. [Read more…]
Often I like to watch films that I know nothing about besides the title so that it doesn’t taint my viewing experience, but having seen this movie I feel that having prior knowledge of the protagonist’s horrific crimes would have enabled me to have gotten more out of this film.
Having grown up in England and not having an interest in serial killers, I had never really heard of Jeffrey Dahmer and the 17 men and boys he murdered between 1978 and 1991. I read his Wikipedia page after seeing this movie and it shed a lot of light upon things that were hinted at, both subtly and explicitly, throughout the film. [Read more…]
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…]
He may be in his 70s but Steven Spielberg shows no signs of slowing down. He managed to slot in The Post while simultaneously making Ready Player One, something most directors half his age wouldn’t even contemplate let alone succeed at.
The Post is a bit of an old school flick, set in the 1970s and telling the story of the Pentagon Papers, a leaked set of documents that revealed that while in public the military and government was still positive about the war in Vietnam, privately many felt that it was unwinnable and that official finding bore this out. The authorities from President Richard Nixon downwards unsurprisingly didn’t want this made public, while the press felt it was imperative to publish it. [Read more…]
‘Batman Ninja’ is a title that sounds like the fever dream of a six-year-old, but it’s not inaccurate for this latest DC animated movie. The film takes the Caped Crusader to Japan and into full-on anime mode, as this was produced and animated in the Land Of The Rising Sun. As the Japanese production company behind the film says in the special features, they were allowed to make a movie where Batman was essentially a guest in their country and had to adapt to their way of doing things, rather than the other way around. As a result this is a Japanese film with Batman in it, rather a Batman film set in Japan.
In the film, after an incredibly quick setup Batman is mysteriously thrown back in time after something goes wrong with the villainous Gorilla Grodd’s time displacement machine. The Caped Crusader finds himself in medieval Japan, but one that’s got a few problems as the time machine also sent a Rogues Gallery of Gotham’s bad guys into the past. Those villains arrived two years before Batman, which has given the likes of Joker, Poison Ivy, Bane and Penguin time to start gaining control of Japan, using their futuristic knowledge and evil skulduggery to control the locals. [Read more…]
Mike Roma had great success with his web series, Danny The Manny. Now he’s segued into the movies with Dating My Mother, which he both writes and directs. The semi-autobiographical movie follows Danny (Patrick Reilly), who’s finished studying film at college in LA and is now back in small-town New Jersey while he works out what to do next. [Read more…]
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