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

10 Cloverfield Lane (DVD Review)

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Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is having a bad time. She’s just left her fiancé and is heading away from their apartment when she gets run off the road by another vehicle. Things get even worse when she wakes up to find she’s now locked in a concrete room with no windows, chained to the wall. She discovers Howard (John Goodman) has brought her into this underground bunker.

He says the world has been attacked, pretty much everyone except him and another survivor in the bunker, Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), is dead, and the air outside is toxic. He says that she would be dead too if he hadn’t saved her. Michelle is understandably suspicious that Howard’s actually a madman who’s kidnapped her and is lying. As the trio start to live together in the bunker, Michelle begins to wonder whether, even if the outside is toxic, it’s actually a safer place to be than underground with the temperamental and possibly unhinged Howard. [Read more…]

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) (DVD Review)

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It’s summer in Biarritz and a group of teenagers are leaving their relatively innocent youth behind when they begin to delve into sex and drugs. George (Marilyn Lima) likes Alex (Finnegan Oldfield) and thinks they might be falling for one another after they sleep together a couple of times, but then the rather callous young man rejects her so he can sleep with her friend.

George reacts by inventing the Bang Gang, a game of extreme dare that develops into drug and orgy fuelled parties where everyone is sleeping with everyone else (well, as long as they’re of a different gender, heterosexual and fairly good-looking) and no one bats an eyelid if someone is filming it (these young people and their selfies, after all). However, after a clip of one of the girls having sex gets uploaded onto Youtube and other issues emerge from what they’ve been up to, they each have to deal with the fallout. [Read more…]

High Rise (Blu-ray Review)

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Director Ben Wheatley was certainly ambitious when he decided to take on JG Ballard’s cult, 1975 novel, High Rise. It’s one of those books that for decades many have proclaimed unfilmable, but there’s no doubt Wheatley and his cast and crew have put their all into it.

Set in a dystopian version of the 1970s (or at least a hyper-real 1970s), Dr. Laing (Tom Hiddleston) moves into a new, high-rise tower – supposedly the pinnacle of modernist living. His apartment is on one of the middle floors, while the poorer people live near the bottom, and the higher up you go, the richer and more rarefied the people become. [Read more…]

Allegiant (Blu-ray Review)

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Poor old Divergent. Things started off well at the box office with the first movie, which helped Lionsgate decide they should expand their plans and turn the three books into four films. However, the second movie was slightly muted at the box office, and this one didn’t do well at all.

In Allegiant, Tris (Shailene Woodley) has opened the box, which suggests the city and its factions are part of an experiment, and that despite what they’ve been told, there is more to the world outside Chicago’s walls. Once out (despite many trying to stop them), Tris, Four (Theo James), her brother (Ansel Elgort) and Peter (Miles Teller), meet David (Jeff Daniels), the director of the experiment. He says they have been using Chicago and the factions to eventually find somebody genetically pure – the other people are defective – and that Tris may be that person. [Read more…]

Triple 9 (Blu-ray Review)

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As the cast came together for Triple 9, it couldn’t help but feel this was going to be one hell of a movie. With the director of The Road and Lawless behind the camera, and a cast including Casey Affleck, Aaron Paul Kate Winslet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Gal Gadot, Norman Reedus, Teresa Palmer, Clifton Collins Jr. and Woody Harrelson, it certainly has plenty of pedigree.

However, the result is a rather overstuffed movie, which, as with many of its forebears, confuses grimness with authenticity, and people being miserable and unpleasant to one another with reality. Indeed, there are moments when objectively it’s about as realistic as Lord Of The Rings, but has such a determined po-face that it might convince you otherwise. [Read more…]

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (Blu-ray Review)

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Jane Austen gets an undead mash-up in the film version of Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel, which took the original text of Pride & Prejudice and added in a whole lot of zombies. The movie has had a somewhat troubled history, with various directors and actors coming and going, and with the whole thing looking like they’d given up on it several times. However, finally Lionsgate got it in the can with Burr Steers (Charlie St. Cloud) directing and Lily James and Sam Riley starring.

As you would expect, the Bennet sisters are living in Hertfordshire, with their mother keen to marry them off to eligible men. While Lydia, Mary and Kitty seem keen to take any suitable gent, Elizabeth (James) is more headstrong and independent. While fending off the advances of Parson Collins (Matt Smith), she meets the exceedingly rich Darcy (Riley), who she takes an immediate dislike to, seeing him as rude, judgemental and unpleasant. [Read more…]

Trumbo (Blu-ray Review)

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Ever since it happened, Hollywood has had a rather tortured relationship with the Communist Witch Hunts of the 1950s. At the time the Studios largely lined up with the government and co-operated with something which most felt was wrong, but they were too afraid of what would happen to business if they didn’t. They didn’t think they could risk being seen to be defending possible communists, even if the battle against them seemed to go against American values.

As a result, stars and directors gave names to Congress, and Hollywood drew up a list of names who were blacklisted out of the industry due to their possible communist sympathies. Ever since the tide later turned against those who’d co-operated and especially those who agreed to testify in front of The House Un-American Activities Committee, Tinsel Town has never seemed certain what to do about one of its darker chapters, and has generally given it a wide berth. [Read more…]

The Big Short (Blu-ray Review)

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There’s an odd contradiction at the heart of The Big Short, as it’s a movie where the ‘heroes’ are people who managed to make out like bandits due to the world economy collapsing. Thankfully though the film knows that and is at pain to point out that while the main characters may have realised what was going on before anyone else, they’re also aware that while what they’re doing may be good for their investors, it’s also built on the back of the misery of a lot of normal people.

Based on real events, the ensemble film tells a trio of interwoven tales set during the run up to the economic meltdown of 2008. Christian Bale is Michael Burry, an eccentric hedge fund manager who realises that there’s something strange going on in the housing market, and that the financial instruments that it is now based on are a house of cards that have become increasingly corrupt and that it’s only a matter of time until the whole thing collapses. While these instruments are rising in value and billions are being made from them, Burry knows that many of the underlying loans they are based on are worthless. [Read more…]

Dirty Grandpa (Blu-ray Review)

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I suppose it’s a bit much to expect a film called Dirty Grandpa to be anything except dirty and about a grandpa. However, despite the fact he’s spent most of the past 20 years phoning it in, it’s difficult not to hold out hope that with Robert De Niro onboard it’s going to be more than just a series of slightly random gross-out jokes and comedy that’s more annoying than funny. Unfortunately, it isn’t.

Jason (Zac Efron) is an uptight lawyer, a week away from marrying an equally uptight woman. It’s also his grandmother’s funeral. He gets roped in to driving his grandfather, Dick (De Niro), to Florida for his annual vacation. However, once on the road, it becomes clear the 72-year-old isn’t intending for a couple of weeks of sun and shuffleboard while reminiscing about his late wife – he wants to get laid and party. [Read more…]

Room (DVD Review)

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The Best Actress category in this year’s Oscars was very strong. Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Lawrence, Charlotte Rampling and Saoirse Ronan all gave powerful, committed performances that were finely-tuned, expressive and thoughtful. All of them however were overshadowed by one towering performance, from Brie Larson in Room. She was the favourite, and probably won it by a country mile. Put simply it’s a performance that you won’t see the like of in a very, very long time.

The room in question is the tiny space where Larson’s Ma is being held captive and raped nightly by Old Nick (a 17th century term for the Devil). The only light is from a skylight, the room itself is a squalid collection of cheap furniture and utilities, just enough to keep her alive – a sink, a bed. Her only companion is her young son Jack (Tremblay), who it transpires was born in this space, and therefore knows nothing else. The only thing that keeps Ma going is her young boy, but obviously their relationship is strained and difficult. [Read more…]