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

REVIEWS

Cinema, DVD and Blu-ray reviews

My Friend Dahmer (Cinema Review) – The infamous gay serial killer as a teen

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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…]

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…]

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The Post (Blu-ray Review) – Spielberg, Streep & Hanks stand up for press freedom

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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…]

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Batman Ninja (Blu-ray Review) – The title pretty much says it all!

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‘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…]

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Dating My Mother (US VoD Review) – Kathryn Erbe, Kathy Najimy & a young, gay man

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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…]

The Misandrists (DVD Review) – Bruce LaBruce takes us into a rather gay world without men

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Bruce LaBruce has long been a provocateur, making the sort of movies that seem designed to push buttons and get people talking. Often they’re so busy pressing thosee buttons that there seems little point to the film other than to get people out of their comfort zone – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He’s mixed explicit gay sex and Nazi skinheads in Skin Gang, gay porn and zombies in Otto, and even when he went comparatively ‘mainstream’ with Gerontophilia (and I use the word mainstream advisedly, as it’s merely mainstream for LaBruce), it’s about a relationship between a teen and an octogenarian.

With The Misandrists LaBruce keeps pressing buttons but focuses on something that hasn’t played a huge part in his career so far – women. The film is set in a dystopian world where the FLA – the Female Liberation Army – has holed itself up isolated in the woods as it plots its revolutionary take on a world without men. Unsurprisingly no men are allowed inside the building, but when new recruit Isolde spots an injured young man who she knows is also being persecuted by the authorities like they are, she decides to hide him in the FLA’s stronghold. [Read more…]

Cas (DVD Review) – A triple helping of gay threesomes

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Dutch couple Sjors and Pepijn invite the younger student Cas to stay on their couch for a couple of days until he finds a place of his own. Pepijn is initially uncertain about this arrangement, especially when he discovers his boyfriend of seven years has already met up with the young man a few times before and hasn’t mentioned him. However, the tension soon begins to develop into something else as both men start to fall for Cas’s charms. As the barriers come down and the couple moves towards becoming a throuple, it could either destroy Sjors and Pepijn’s relationship or take it to places neither expected.

Although relatively short at 50 minutes long, Cas is an interesting and at times a rather sexy movie about three good-looking guys who aren’t afraid of wandering around in their underwear or hopping into bed with one another. It’s also a smart look at one of the issues that seems to be becoming more pressing in modern gay culture, of whether the tendency to separate sex from relationships and to be more open to bringing in a third (or more) person – either for the night or for longer – has consequences and issues that need to be looked at. It may seem like a good idea, or even a desirable political statement, but is there more to it than that? [Read more…]

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Blu-ray Review) – A game (and gender-swap) like no other

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Every so often a film comes along that beats all expectations at the box office. Film commentators then race to come up with reasons for its runaway success. They tried to do that for Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, but generally came up short. After all this is a film that initially people thought would be lucky to clear $200-$300 million worldwide at the box office, but which ended up with $900 million+ and is now the highest grossing film Sony Pictures has ever made.

Is it down to the box office power of The Rock? Was it because there wasn’t much family film competition at the time it was release? Did box office watchers underestimate the love people had for the 1995 Robin Williams Jumanji movie, especially as many of those that grew up with that film now have kids of their own? [Read more…]

Pitch Perfect 3 (Blu-ray Review) – The Bellas are back for a final acapella adventure

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When the plot of a sequel is that the characters are being sent off on a holiday, it’s usually a good time to start to worry. It’s typically the point in a franchise when the makers have run out of ideas and so they put the characters in a new environment in the hope that people won’t notice that they couldn’t really decide what the movie should be about.

That’s pretty much true of Pitch Perfect 3, where the former Barden Bellas get the opportunity to participate in a USO military tour, performing with other bands in different countries. To add a little random competition to the mix, the best of those bands will be chosen by DJ Khaled to open for him on his tour. That’s the cue for the Bellas to go into crisis of confidence of mode as they realise that being the best at acapella-ing doesn’t necessarily mean they can go toe-to-toe with an all-female pop-rock group, a country artist and a couple of rappers. [Read more…]

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Ferdinand (Blu-ray Review) – A little bit gay or just a load of old animated bull?

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I sometimes think the people who panic about ‘the gay agenda’ really ought to pay more attention to kids’ movies. If you’re looking for queer narrative – that never say its queer – you don’t have to look much further. For a start, nearly every animated movie revolves around the theme of being true to yourself. You also have numerous movies about parents finding it difficult to accept difference in their child, that child being a misfit who’s not the same as others and is often bullied for it, and who must will eventually win by accepting themselves and being proud of it.

All that could just be coincidence, but then there are things such as the fact a lot of animated movies consciously deal with ideas about chosen families, something you normally only hear about in a queer context. It was this that got me considering the queer side of Ferdinand. Partway though the titular character is insisting the dog he grew up with is his ‘brother’, while the dog he can’t be the family of a bull because that’s not the way things work. Ultimately that becomes the main theme of the movie – a bull rejecting the toxic masculinity other bovines believe is their only choice, and learning that you can choose your own way and your own family, and it doesn’t matter if others think it’s ‘queer’. [Read more…]

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