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

CINEMA REVIEWS

The latest cinema reviews from BGPS

Young Adult (Cinema)

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Young Adult has Oscar pedigree written all over it. Directed By Jason Reitman (nominated for Up In The Air and Juno) in collaboration with everyone’s favourite hip writer, Diablo Cody (of Juno fame), and with the beautiful and talented Charlize Theron (Oscar winner for Monster) starring.

On paper it would appear that Mavis Gary (Theron) is a successful, beautiful 37-year-old writer living life to the full in Minneapolis, who’s enjoying all the trappings that life should bring a former prom queen. However, it is obvious from the opening scenes that her life is in a mess. She wakes up from a drunken stupor, having fallen asleep on her bed fully-clothed. She shuffles round her dishevelled apartment, drinks Coke for breakfast, prepares breakfast for her and her dog Dolce from ready made packet food, whilst watching The Kardashians on TV. [Read more…]

The Grey

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The first trailer for The Grey made it seem like someone had gotten over-excited about The Tree Of Life. It suggested the film was going to be some sort of weird, ethereal, existentialist drama. Thankfully though, that’s not what it is at all (well, it is a bit, but not too much).

Liam Neeson plays a guy whose job is to sort out the predators that occasionally menace the workers at a remote gas refinery operation in Alaska. On a plane ride with a number of other motley oil workers, things take a rather drastic turn when they fall out of the sky. Normally a plane crash would be the worst part of your day, but the men are now in the middle of nowhere and in the territory of a particularly vicious pack of wolves. [Read more…]

The Descendants

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The Descendants was no doubt Oscar bound at its inception – directed and written by Alexander Payne (of Election, Sideways and About Schmidt fame) and starring one of The Oscars current favourites, George Clooney. With five nominations, the only question now is whether it’ll win.

Matthew King’s (Clooney) wife has been involved in a major accident and is on a life support machine. He is a lawyer as well as the executor of his extended family’s massive estate, even though he’s completely out of touch with his immediate family. The plot centres around Clooney coming to terms with, taking control of and understanding more about his fractured family, whilst also learning about his wife’s infidelity. [Read more…]

J. Edgar

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There’s an old adage on the standup comedy circuit that the only thing worse than complete silence to greet your routine is a couple of stifled chuckles. This, they say, indicates that not only has your material failed, it has done so in such a way that the audience’s only response is to laugh at its failure.

Had Clint Eastwood, the director of J.Edgar attended the screening of his film that I did, he might have had a similar feeling. The last thing one would expect from a serious political biopic is moments of unintentional hilarity, but from the minute Leonardo DiCaprio appears on screen in an unconvincing elderly prosthetic, that’s exactly what you get. [Read more…]

Shame (Cinema)

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Oh my God, Michael Fassbender has a penis! Whoever would have thought it? The fact the actor’s little man makes a more than fleeting appearance in the Shame has received so much attention, you’d have thought everyone has assumed he was a Ken-doll down there before he proved otherwise. It’s a pattern that’s repeated over and over, as if an actress gets naked  it’s either barely mentioned or letched over, while male actors gets epithets like ‘brave’ and ‘bold’ thrown around. That’s not Fassbender’s fault, as he’s just doing his job and doing it well (and I’m sure there are some who’ll more than welcome little Fassbender’s appearance in the movie), but it would be nice if we could treat male and female genitals equally! [Read more…]

The Artist (Cinema)

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I don’t know why people are saying The Artist should win at the Oscars. It’s obvious director Michel Hazanavicius doesn’t know how to make a movie. For a start, he made the film in black and white. Doesn’t he know the world got coloured in during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s? Plus, he’s so incompetent he forgot to record the dialogue, so he just plays some music and occasionally has a caption card come up on screen, as if that’s a sensible way of telling a story.

He doesn’t even manage to make it in the right aspect ratio, as it’s the same width-to-length as old style-TVs. Hell, it’s not even in 3D! Hazanavicius needs to go back to square one, watch some Michael Bay movies and learn how to make real, proper films with explosions and stuff. This is the 21st Century! [Read more…]

Meet Me In St. Louis (Cinema)

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When people complain that modern movies are lacking in plot, I suggest they go watch Meet Me In St. Louis, a film that makes many modern blockbusters look like they’ve got Russian novels full of storyline. However the 1944 musical, which is getting a welcome Christmassy cinema re-release courtesy of the BFI, is proof you don’t need acres of plot to make a movie.

Here’s the story: The Smith family lives in St. Louis and the four daughters are really looking forward to the 1904 World’s Fair, which is due to be held in the city. However their father gets a job in New York and so they might not be able to go to the fair. And, um, well that’s about it! [Read more…]

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (Cinema)

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This sequel has a lot of expectations to live up to. The first Guy Ritchie directed Sherlock Holmes amassed over $524 million at the worldwide box office and remains in the Top 100 grossing films of all time.

As you’d hope, in Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows the original bromance is back with a vengeance! Guy Ritchie has delivered once again (after a few turkeys mind!), as the on-screen chemistry between Jude Law and Robert Downey Jnr. is superb – reminiscent of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The supporting cast is also tremendous in their roles, although some of the parts are just too small. Eddie Marsan as Inspector Lestrade is most notably missing screen time – blink and you’ll miss him – as is the excellent Geraldine James as the long-suffering Mrs Hudson (though I can’t help but think of her as one of the prostitutes from Band Of Gold!). [Read more…]

Puss In Boots (Cinema)

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Shrek spin-off Puss In Boots has already had quite a lot of good reviews in the US, but it’s just the latest attempt by the liberal left in Hollywood to indoctrinate kids. Everyone knows that the natural state of cats is not to be in boots, but Dreamworks Animation and its media colleagues keep presenting this perversion of nature to us as if it’s something we should treat as normal. Not content with using the Shrek movies to warp young minds into thinking that cats in footwear are the equal of regular unshod felines, now they’re giving Puss In Boots a whole movie to himself!

It’s just plain wrong. It’s bound to cause children to start asking awkward questions about why Puss is wearing boots. It should be a parent’s decision how and when to broach such thorny subjects, not forced upon them by the all-powerful pro-shoes-for-cats agenda. Indeed it’s gotten to the point where right thinking people are afraid to stand up for what’s right and openly say Puss shouldn’t wear boots! [Read more…]

The Thing (Cinema)

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From the second it was announced a film was in the pipeline that was somehow related to John Carpenter’s 1982 movie, The Thing, there’s been much grumbling from fans. However this is a slightly unusual case, as while Carpenter fans have been predictably wary of anything tampering with a classic they love, the early 80s film was actually a remake itself, of the 1951 movie The Thing From Another World. As a result it’s tougher to argue here that things from the past should be preserved in aspic and never touched.

What we have here though isn’t a straight remake, but (as the movie studio insists on calling it) a ‘prelude’ to the Kurt Russell movie. Quite why they gave it the exact same name as the other film is a bit of a mystery then, but it just goes to show some of the muddle-headed business-butting-up-against-entertainment thinking that went into the new The Thing. [Read more…]