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

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (DVD)

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Harry Potter has undoubtedly been one of the greatest phenomenons in movie history. It’s managed eight films without a dud, grossed more cash than any other franchise in history, and perhaps most impressively has kept nearly all the same actors throughout its run. It’s been a part of many people’s lives for a full decade, especially those who’ve grown up alongside Harry and co. Indeed, when I saw Deathly Hallows Part 2 in the cinemas I was sat behind a university-aged young man who announced as the end credits began to roll, “Well, that’s my childhood over.” [Read more…]

Eating Out: Drama Camp (DVD)

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A few years ago, the idea that a gay film series could prove so popular that it would have reached a fourth entry, with a fifth on the way, would have seemed impossible, but Q. Allan Brocka’s Eating Out has. While the first film in 2004 was a rather sweet rom com, things have increasingly headed in the direction of farce ever since, particularly since the third entry, which featured a mostly new cast and a more gross-out attitude (only Rebekah Kochan as the very loud Tiffani has appeared in all the Eating Out movies, although her role in Drama Camp is tiny). [Read more…]

Buffering (DVD)

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Bristol wouldn’t spring to most people’s minds as a hotspot of gay cinema, but it’s been getting that way in the last few years thanks to a bunch of dedicated guys who between them have brought us the likes of Shank, Release and now Buffering.

Seb (Alex Anthony) and Aaron (Conner McKenzy) are two young gay guys trying to live out a suburban idyll in their own house full of the domestic niceties. However the recession has hit and unbeknownst to Seb, Aaron has lost his job and they’re way behind on the mortgage. It’s gotten to the point where there’s only a short time to sort things out before the bank comes and takes their home. Things are compounded when Seb loses his job as well. [Read more…]

Uncle David (DVD)

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It’s not often that a film can elicit two completely different reactions from me, but Uncle David managed it. If you asked for my knee-jerk feeling, I’d have to say I hated it. While watching it I found it slow, tedious, rather annoying and more than a little pretentious. Despite this, the movie has stuck in my head and kept me thinking about it for days afterwards.

The plot is relatively simple. David (David Hoyle) is a middle-aged man living with his young lover, Ashley (Ashley Greene), in a chalet in a remote, windy, British seaside town. While their life seems rather basic and deprived, David lives in a world of his own philosophical making, endlessly lecturing the receptive Ashley about his ideas on life, and how nearly everybody in the world is buying into what he believes is a corrupt and corrupting system. [Read more…]

Longhorns (DVD)

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Thing I learned about Texas from Longhorns:
1: If there aren’t any women in the room, all Texan men will have a group wank together
2: If a Texan man isn’t included in the group wanks, he’ll start to feel shunned and will do his best to get an invite
3: While a Texan man will almost certainly be happy to let you give him a blow job or wank him off, your relationship will never be the same if you try and kiss him
4: If they’re not having a group wank, Texan men will find contrived reasons as to why at least one guy in the room should be naked [Read more…]

Harvest (DVD)

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As the gay son of a farmer, Harvest is a movie that should have spoken to me – or at least if it was going to speak to anyone, it should have been me. Sadly though it didn’t.

The film is set on a large industrial farming operation on the very edge of Berlin. The farm takes in interns who learn the ropes and do exams to become fully qualified farmers (and yes, whilst not compulsory, you can indeed take exams to be a farmer – in fact you can take entire degrees in it). Jakob (Lukas Steltner) is one of the interns and while the bosses are happy with his work (despite the fact he spend a lot of time slacking off), he’s struggling with his studies. [Read more…]

Judas Kiss (DVD)

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If you discovered that you’d somehow managed to have sex with yourself, you’d be pretty freaked out, wouldn’t you? I would, but Zachary in Judas Kiss seems amazingly unphased by this and the other temporal peculiarities he faces, other than making a couple of irate phone calls. It’s a bit of a necessary evil in the film, as while Judas Kiss constantly fails to think through the implications of what it’s doing, the movie would stop dead in its track if it did.

Charlie David plays Zachary, a man who after a decade trying to make it as a film director and only managing to get a reputation as the best partyer in town, is now aimless and rather bitter. He reluctantly agrees to fill in as a judge for a film competition at the university he dropped out of years before. His first night back at his alma mater, he meets and sleeps with a young man (Daniel Harmon), only to discover the next day that the kid is one of the competitors he’s meant to judge. [Read more…]

Shelter (Blu-ray)

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The second of TLA’s Blu-ray releases (the other being Latter Days), the 2007 romantic drama Shelter gets an HD upgrade. The film stars Trevor Wright as Zach, a young man finding his feet in life in a small Californian town. Despite a desire to go off to art college, he’s slightly trapped by his sister, who relies on him to help her look after her son and treats him as if he’s obliged to be a surrogate father to her kid and has no choice in the matter.

Things begin to change when Zach’s best friend’s brother, Shaun (Brad Rowe), returns to the town. What initially starts out as a friendship develops into something deeper, with Zach finally finding someone he can express himself with and who seems to believe in him and his dreams. [Read more…]

Gigola (DVD)

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Director Laure Charpentier adapts one of her own controversial books for the screen, with this tale of gangsters, prostitutes and Sapphic desire in 1960s Paris. After her lover commits suicide, Gigola butches up, starts being emotionally aloof and becomes part of an underworld of prostitutes, gangsters and pimps.

Gigola seems to have a power to draw people in, whether it’s a hooker (Marie Kremer) who becomes Gigola new project, an older woman (Marisa Paredes) who falls for her, or a gangster(Eduardo Noriega), who may be the only person who can break through her hard veneer. All this while dealing with her needy mother and opium fiend father, and trying to save her childhood home. [Read more…]

Latter Days (Blu-ray)

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Gay movies go HD, with TLA releasing its first UK Blu-ray (alongside Shelter). This 2003 movie has undoubtedly become a bit of a modern gay classic, largely because it’s one of the few queer cinema efforts that has the slickness of a lot of Hollywood movies, and so it’s easily accessible even to those who cringe at the thought of anything low budget or arty. Latter Days manages its slickness largely because while it was made for very little cash, a lot of the crew have worked extensively on mainstream films and TV, including writer/director C. Jay Cox, whose job immediately prior to Latter Days was writing the Reese Witherspoon rom-com Sweet Home Alabama. [Read more…]