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

The Program (Blu-ray Review)

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Over the years, numerous movies about Lance Armstrong have been in the works but never got made. Indeed, one was about to move forward just as he admitted he had doped for his entire career. It’s almost a shame we don’t have a movie from when he was almost universally admired as a hero, so we could compare it to the darker world of The Program.

At the start of the movie Lance (Ben Foster) is an okay but unexceptional cyclist, who few think will ever do anything special. After overcoming testicular cancer, he returns with a passion to win, and knowing the world of cycling is riddled with cheats taking performance-enhancing drugs, he decides he will do the same, enlisting the help of Michele Ferrari (Guillaume Canet) to allow him to set up a ‘Program’ that will help him win, as well as arranging to have a team built around him that will ensure a Tour de France victory. [Read more…]

Bill (DVD Review)

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I doubt that when the team that created the TV version of Horrible Histories were putting the show together they thought that what they were making would not only became one of the most popular children’s series in the UK, but would also have massive crossover appeal, with adults tuning in for the educational silliness. The same team then went on to create the puppety fantasy of Yonderland, and have now gone cinematic with Bill.

While Horrible Histories was careful to stick close enough to the truth of the past to ensure it could teach youngsters a few things, Bill features plenty of real historical figures but takes far more liberties with the truth. [Read more…]

Hotel Transylvania 2 (DVD Review)

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Hotel Transylvania was a far bigger success than many people expected. Indeed, even Sony Pictures appeared to be taken by surprise, but it didn’t take them long to decide a sequel was needed. That follow-up quickly takes us through the next few years of the story, which sees monsters and humans starting to get along better across the world.

Dracula’s daughter Mavis marries slacker boyfriend Jonathan and they have a child, Dennis. As Dennis is only half-vampire, it’s not clear whether he will end up being a monster or not, but Dracula is determined that before he’s five, his grandson will spout fangs, as he knows that otherwise he will remain human forever. Mavis meanwhile feels that if Dennis is indeed more human than monster, perhaps it would be better if they went to live in the ‘normal’ world. [Read more…]

Macbeth (Blu-ray Review)

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A rebellion is underway against Scottish King Duncan (David Thewlis), and it looks like it may be the end for his reign, until Thane Of Glamis, Macbeth (Michael Fassbender), scores an unexpected battlefield victory. However, before he can go back to Duncan, Macbeth and his friend Banquo (Paddy Considine) are visited by three witches, who tell the former that he will be King, but that it is the latter’s children who will reign in the future.

Goaded on by his ambitious wife, Lady Macbeth (Marion Cotillard), Macbeth kills Duncan and seizes the throne. However, his greed and aspirations begin to slowly consume him, as he attempts to consolidate his power and ensure that the witches’ prophecy about Banquo’s children will not come true and that his own line will rule Scotland. After the supernatural ladies have a few more things to say, Macbeth makes a decision that could spell disaster for everyone. [Read more…]

The Walk (DVD Review)

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It’s the 1970s and Frenchman Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a small-time street entertainer in Paris, dreaming of something big. He believes that he is a wire-walking artist and that he is bigger that drawing a chalk circle and balancing a few feet off the ground.

He decides that the ‘coup’ that he must achieve is to walk between the still uncompleted Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. It is a completely crazy idea – he doesn’t even know how far apart the buildings are – but after achieving a stunt to walk between the towers of Notre Dame, he begins to put his idea into action. [Read more…]

99 Homes (Blu-ray Review)

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After he can’t get paid for a construction job and ends up unemployed, single father Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) gets behind on his mortgage and ends up being evicted by Rick Carver (Michael Shannon), a man for whom the human cost of taking people’s homes isn’t as important as the amount of money he can make. However, after an angry Nash goes to Carver’s company hoping to reclaim tools he believes have been stolen, he ends up getting employed by Rick.

Initially he thinks he’s just going to help with clearances after the people have been thrown out of their house, but as he gets deeper into Carver’s world, he becomes involved in a web of morally bankrupt real-estate scams and downright theft, taking advantage of both normal people and the government. Conflicted about what he’s doing he keeps his new role secret from his child and mother (Laura Dern), but he cannot keep it under wraps forever, especially once he starts evicting people who never had a chance to pay back their loans. [Read more…]

Legend (Blu-ray Review)

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There are quite a few people who don’t like the glamorisation (almost fetishisation) or The Krays and London’s East End gangsters of the 1960s, feeling these were nasty, vicious men and should be treated as such. If they were hoping this new biopic of the Kray twins would burst their legend, the title should have given them a hint that it wouldn’t (although it does also suggest the film knows it’s helping cement a fantasy of their lives).

Tom Hardy plays both Ronnie and Reggie Kray, with the movie picking up after the twins have already started making their name as gangsters, running nightclubs and operating an expanding protection racket. The film follows their continuing rise and fall, framed by Reggie’s romance and marriage to Frances O’Shea (Emily Browning). While their growing notoriety and the edge of glamour ensures they have the sort of high connections that gives them a certain amount of protection – and perhaps a sense of invulnerability – it also makes them bigger targets for those who would like to bring them down. [Read more…]

Bad Bromance (The D-Train) (DVD Review)

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When Bad Bromance (under its original title, The D-Train) first debuted at film festivals, it was met with surprise largely for a single scene, which it appears no one watching was expecting. Indeed, it is perhaps the playing down of that scene that’s contributed to the film making little impact.

Jack Black plays Dan, who’s living a dead-end life in the same town he grew up in. He has no real friends – people actively avoid hanging out with him – and very little to get excited about. He is however the chair of the 20th Anniversary High School reunion committee, but he’s having difficulty getting anyone to attend.

Then he hits on an idea – talking Oliver Lawless (James Marsden) into coming. Oliver left the town behind for LA and now stars in a national TV commercial. Dan is convinced getting him to attend would ensure plenty of others would also turn up. To put his plan into action, Dan concocts a fake business trip to Los Angeles to woo Oliver. [Read more…]

Everest (Blu-ray Review)

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It’s climbing season in the Himalayas and Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) is planning to lead a group of adventure tourists to the summit of Mount Everest. While he keeps telling them how dangerous it is and how many people physically cannot make it, many are gung-ho to get to the top. As they make their way higher up the mountain, Rob decides it’s going to be best to team up with a rival company, led by Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal), in the hope of keeping things as safe as possible.

After facing illness and other issues that prevent some of them getting to the top, a group of them make it, only to be hit by an extremely nasty storm, which threatens to ensure that none of them will make it back down again. As the team gets separated and faces ever greater threat, it becomes increasingly clear that not everyone is going to make it back alive. [Read more…]

The Visit (Blu-ray Review)

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After a strong start with the likes of The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan has certainly had an up and down career. With his latest, The Visit, he’s stripped things back to the basics, with a relatively little known cast, low budget and ‘found footage’ premise. However, this being Shyamalan he still has a go at trying to surprise the audience and keep them guessing.

In order for their mother to be able to get away for a much needed break, Becca and her little brother Tyler are sent off to stay with their grandparents for a week – despite the fact they’ve been estranged from their daughter for many years. Becca is an aspiring filmmaker and so plans to document the entire trip on her camera, hopefully finding out what happened between her mother and grandparents along the way. [Read more…]