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

Mommy (Cinema Review)

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Just when you think you’ve had enough of well-meaning films featuring disabilities and heroic struggles along comes one that completely restores your faith. Queer filmmaker Xavier Dolan’s film is a tour de force, an emotional power-punch that slowly makes its way into your head and then into your heart. It may deal with a lot of clichés but finds a winning way to tell its story.

Anne Dorval is Die, a handsome but tired-looking woman who has lost her husband three years ago and is now stuck with looking after her son Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon). He has severe ADHD, a problem when he is such a strapping lad on the brink of discovering sex, and he loves a drink, a smoke and a fight. Die rescues him from an institution where he has apparently started a fire, and she determines to make a new life for them both. But boy, is he a handful, constantly swearing, eyeing up girls and unable to sit still to study. [Read more…]

Appropriate Behavior (Cinema Review)

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Appropriate Behavior is a proper audience divider. Desiree Akhavan’s Shirin is narcissistic, self-obsessed and shallow, but convinced she’s deep, complex and misunderstood. However, how you take the film depends on how self-aware you think it is. Is it on Shirin’s side and lauding the life of the tragically hip, or is it well aware of her shortcomings and essentially satirising it?

I’d safely say it’s the latter, but I can see why have assumed the former, as the film’s humour is dry as a bone and so it’s not too shocking some viewers have missed it. [Read more…]

Backstreet Boys: Show ‘Em What You’re Made Of (Cinema Review)

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Well done making me feel old Backstreet Boys. It was recently their 20th anniversary, which makes me feel ancient, as I can remember when they were the new kids on the block (who were constantly compared to the New Kids Of The Block). This documentary was made as part of the celebration of that milestone, as well as to chronicle a new page in the Boys’ book, with the return of Kevin Richardson to the group, along with a new album and tour.

It’s the sort of documentary project that could have been far too laudatory and vain for its own good, but it turns out Show ‘Em What You’re Made Of is much more interesting than that. The film mixes showing us what is happening with the boys as they record their new album – including some major bust-ups and Brian having massive issues with his voice – with the history of the band. [Read more…]

Love Is Strange (Cinema Review)

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Just in time for Valentine’s day, a film that genuinely shows the complexities, subtleties and nuances of us complicated human beings. It happens to be about two men of advancing years, but really its central themes could apply to anyone of any age. It’s a rich, rewarding experience that will haunt you for a long time.

John Lithgow and Alfred Molina are the central couple, two hugely liked and popular men who decide to get married after being together for so long. The story opens with their marriage day, a happy occasion with lots of laughter, wine and song. This bliss doesn’t last for long. [Read more…]

Inherent Vice (Cinema Review)

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If you demand coherent plots and comprehensible dialogue from your movies, look away now. There is not one scene of Anderson’s sprawling behemoth of a movie that makes any sense whatsoever. It’s a stoned, fug-smoked, labyrinth of a film noir that takes pleasure in its baffling structure and dares you to go along with it. Frankly after an hour it’s too much effort, and the pleasure switches in watching great actors revelling in show-off roles soaked in dreamy Californian sunshine. [Read more…]

Kingsman: The Secret Service (Cinema Review)

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The idea of updating James Bond and making him a younger character has been done before – witness the Alex Cross films and even Jason Bourne. Matthew Vaughan’s attempt, with a script by Jane Goldman, could have worked in theory, but it doesn’t, because of disastrous shifts in tone, and dreadfully cynical product placements. Director Vaughan seems to have become so carried away with his Kick-Ass franchise that he has transposed the idea to Britain, but used pretty much the same formula. The result leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth, which is a shame, because there are a few strengths on display here. [Read more…]

Foxcatcher (Cinema Review)

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So that’s the Best Actor Oscar sorted then. Steve Carrell, that lovely chap from the US Office and 40-Year-old Virgin, has gone deep to play the deeply disturbed, and disturbing, John du Pont, and the results are stunning. The film itself is impressive on many levels, if a little one-note, and not quite satisfying, but Carrell’s performance is utterly mesmerising.

The charming, likeable, warmly funny persona is utterly gone. In its place is a portrayal of du Pont, the heir to a vast chemical fortune, enormously wealthy but painfully lonely. His mother, Jean (Vanessa Redgrave), looms like a huge dark cloud over his life, her disappointment in her geeky, fragile, unattractive son all too obvious. She pours her love into horses, he into the sport of wrestling – horses are stupid, he says, all they do is eat and shit. His love of his pastime is so great he decides to basically take over and run the US wrestling team to train them for the 1988 Olympics. Top of his shopping list is Mark and Dave Schultz (Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo), brothers who won Gold in Los Angeles in 1984. [Read more…]

Into The Woods (Cinema Review)

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Ah, Stephen Sondheim, writer of amazing tongue-twisting lyrics, flat tunes and dark themes. That’s been his formula for many a year – the flat tunes aren’t deliberate presumably – and they are all present and correct in this film version of his adult take on fairy tales. Adult is certainly the word here, the underlying theme being human beings’ reluctance to grow up and face the real world, and the terrifying prospect of sex, while superficially there are blindings, stabbings, a prince whose eye wanders, an absent father, and plenty of death.

Throw in a top-notch cast – and James Corden – and you get a polished, great-looking and sounding, entertaining fable. The story itself peaks a little early and there are longeurs in the story of the giant, but overall it’s a successful adaptation of Sondheim’s stage musical. [Read more…]

Exodus: God & Kings (Cinema Review)

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Ridley Scott is one of the most revered directors of our time. While he’s worked in all sorts of genres, he’s had particular success with ground-breaking classic sci-fi such as Alien, as well historical biographies or fiction, which often turn out to be masterpieces such as the multi award winning Gladiator. There is no doubt that Scott is one of cinema’s greatest storytellers.

This time Ridley Scott brings to our screen possibly the third greatest story ever told (after the birth of Jesus and Noah) – the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. This Old Testament tale of Moses was immortalised by Charlton Heston in 1956’s The Ten Commandments, but who could possibly fill this famous pair of sandals this time? Well, none other than Batman himself – Christian Bale. [Read more…]

The Circle (Der Kreis) (Cinema Review)

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When I started watching The Circle, I slightly wondered whether I’d got the wrong film. I’d been expecting this to be a fictionalised look at being gay in the 1950s in Europe, but the movie opens in documentary mode, with two older gents talking about their past.

What ensues is a mixture of documentary and drama, involving people talking about being gay in Switzerland 60 years ago, and actors playing the younger version of these men, re-enacting the story of the heyday and decline of the titular Circle. [Read more…]