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

DVD and BLU-RAY REVIEWS

The latest reviews from the world of home entertainment

A Hologram For The King (Blu-ray Review)

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Alan (Tom Hanks) is a middle-aged businessman whose life isn’t turning out how he planned. His boss doesn’t think he’s particularly good at his job, he’s divorced, and feels a bit of a failure towards his daughter as his debt means he can’t afford to pay her college tuition fees. However, he now has a new opportunity, heading off to Saudi Arabia to give a presentation about a holographic IT system to the King.

He expects to be a stranger in a strange land, but finds that in some ways things are more similar that he expected, while in others they’re more strange. He gets into a bit of a Waiting For Godot situation where he spends much of his time being palmed off and ignored as he waits for the arrival on the King, who may never turn up. He also discovers the massive city his company is hoping to get the IT contract for, is nothing but a welcome centre in the desert, waiting for other building to come along. [Read more…]

Legends Of Tomorrow – Season 1 (Blu-ray Review)

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While Marvel has had great success in cinema but struggled more on TV, it’s generally been the other way around for DC. Arrow was soon joined by The Flash, then came Supergirl, online animated series and now Legends Of Tomorrow, with more shows planned. Legends certainly came with a lot of promise when it was first announced – a sort-of time-travelling equivalent of The Avengers – filled with lesser-known heroes (and villains), most of whom had been introduced in other DC shows.

Arthur Darvill plays Rip Hunter, who’s had a promotion since playing luckless companion Rory in Doctor Who, as he’s now a Time Master (not Lord), with his own equivalent of the TARDIS. Hunter comes from a future that has been taken over by the evil Vandal Savage, a 4,000-year-old immortal. Although he’s been banned from meddling in the past, Rip goes rogue, commandeering a time ship and heading to the 21st Century to put together a band of heroes, who will travel through time with him, trying to find Savage at various points in history so they can destroy him. [Read more…]

Jane Got A Gun (Blu-ray Review)

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Jane Got A Gun has had a few problems. That included a revolving door of actors getting involved and then backing out (including the likes of Jude Law, Michael Fassbender and Bradley Cooper), and director Lynn Ramsey leaving the production so late in the day that they didn’t know she was gone until she didn’t turn up for the first day of shooting. She was quickly replaced by Gavin O’Connor, who didn’t have a huge amount of time to prepare, which may explain why Jane Got A Gun isn’t all it might have been.

Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman) is a woman living on the rough, tough, wild west frontier of 19th Century America. Her husband (Roland Emmerich) returns home riddled with bullets after a confrontation with the violent Bishop Boys gang, led by the brutal John (Ewan McGregor). They know the Boys are going to want to track him down to finish off the job. Jane decides she needs help and so decides to enlist her ex-lover, Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton). [Read more…]

Eye In The Sky (DVD Review)

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When people talk about modern warfare, it tends to be in rather black and white terms. It’s either people concerned about collateral damage who tend to ignore the moral quagmire that killing a few innocent people may end up saving many more, or the more gung-ho attitude that ignores the guiltless that get caught up in it. Eye In The Sky attempts to explore the grey areas.

In Nairobi, a British and American task force are tracking some Islamic extremist terrorists, but are mainly doing so from afar, using drones controlled from the US and other tech piloted by a local (Barkhad Abdi) on the ground. They discover that three of their most wanted targets are together in a house. However, plans to capture them quickly change to the need for a possible kill-strike, when they realise there are bomb belts in the house and a suicide attack is imminent. Things get even more complex when a young girl enters the kill zone and they realise a strike is likely to kill her. [Read more…]

The Huntsman: Winter’s War (Blu-ray Review)

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The Huntsman: Winter’s War was always going to have an uphill struggle with critics. Most of them didn’t particularly like the first film, Snow White And The Huntsman, and it was very difficult to see the point of making a follow-up. When Winter’s War arrived, it turned out not that many other people could see the point either, as it didn’t exactly set fire to the box office.

That’s almost a shame though, as the rubbish-ness of the first film is undoubtedly a drag on this movie and something it attempts to get around with only partial success. If this was standalone film without that millstone, and if a few structural issues were sorted out, it would have gotten a much reception. [Read more…]

11.22.63 (DVD Review)

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For decades now, Stephen King has been getting away with premises that in most other people’s hands would have people rolling their eyes and saying it’s ridiculous. However, he manages to pull it off more often than not. That’s certainly true of the idea behind 11.22.63, where there’s a closet that takes people back to 1960. Why? Well, just because there is, of course.

That’s just one of a series of arbitrary rules around which this JJ Abrams produced eight-part adaptation of King’s novels weaves a story of time-travel, love, espionage and the Kennedy assassination. Jake (James Franco) is a high school teacher who discovers that there is indeed a portal to 1960 in the back of a diner. The owner of the restaurant (Chris Cooper) has been using it to try to prevent JFK’s assassination, something he believes will makes the world a better place. [Read more…]

Sing Street (Blu-ray Review)

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John Carney had great success with the Oscar-winning Once, but his follow-up, Begin Again, wasn’t so well received. However, he’s back on top with Sing Street, a great, Irish coming-of-age flick, which like his earlier movies is infused throughout with music.

Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is surprised when he’s pulled out of his private school and sent to a local Catholic school, which he soon discovers is more like a containment zone for out of control kids than an educational establishment, not helped by the fact it’s run by an overgrown bully. After the culture shock settles, Conor decides to do what many before him have done to attempt to impress a girl he’s met – start a band. [Read more…]

Eddie The Eagle (Blu-ray Review)

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Anyone British who was around in the 80s will probably remember Michael ‘Eddie’ Edwards, the unlikely figure who became an international sensation at the 1988 Winter Olympics, not due to the fact he was so good, but because he defied what you would normally think an Olympian would be when he took to the semi-suicidal slopes of the ski jump. Eddie The Eagle gives us a fictionalised take on that story.

Eddie (Taron Egerton) has long wanted to be an Olympian, but coming from a humble background he doesn’t have some of the advantages of others, and nor does the British Olympic Committee thinks he’s Olympic material – or at least that he’s not posh enough. His father (Keith Allen) thinks he should just give up and become a plasterer like him, but then Eddie has an idea – to become a ski jumper. Britain hasn’t sent a ski jumper to the Olympics since the 1920s, and under the rules in the 1980s, that means he should get an automatic place if he signs up to compete. [Read more…]

Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice – Ultimate Edition (Blu-ray Review)

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As they say, ‘The higher you climb, the further there is to fall’. That’s a fair description of Batman v Superman, a film that you certainly can’t fault for its ambition, but which can’t reach the heights it strives for despite its best efforts. After an exceedingly mixed reaction at cinemas, the film comes to Blu-ray in an Ultimate Edition form, which adds in an extra 30 minutes of footage and adds back in some of the violence that US censors wouldn’t permit to get it a PG-13 certificate.

Some hoped this new version would rectify all the flaws of the theatrical cut. It doesn’t do that, but it does help a little, particularly with some of the subplots where the theatrical version had bits of them, but where they either petered out or didn’t make a whole lot of sense. It does add a couple of extra problems though. [Read more…]

Supergirl – Season 1 (Blu-ray Review)

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DC Comics may be having a slightly bumpy ride building a cinematic comic book universe, but it’s certainly having plenty of success on the small screen. Arrow was joined by The Flash, which last season was joined by Supergirl and Legends Of Tomorrow, all taking place within the same universe (and there’s also Gotham slightly off to one side).

As you may have noticed, Supergirl is the first of those that has centred around a female hero. She’s a character that hasn’t had much luck on the screen before, partly because there’s previously been a tendency to treat her like the pretty damsel in distress, even though she’s got lots of superpowers. This new series tries to reverse that, and early on spends a bit of time commenting on the potential sexist problems, from that fact she’s a Super ‘girl’ rather than ‘woman’, to journalists asking her whether she’s going to start a family. [Read more…]