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

GAY INTEREST MOVIE REVIEWS

The latest gay interest film reviews from BGPS

Because Of A Boy (You’ll Get Over It) (DVD)

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Vincent (Julien Baumgartner) is a French teenager who’s fairly popular in his school and a member of the swim team. However he’s also secretly coming to terms with being gay, despite the fact he has a girlfriend. When new boy Benjamin (Jeremie Elkaim) turns up, who has a bit of a reputation as a bad boy, Vincent is soon attracted to him. After Vincent’s attempt to kiss Benjamin turns sour, the new boy inadvertently lets Vincent’s secret out.

The teen turns up to school to find graffiti calling him a ‘fag’ scrawled next to his locker and plenty of people ready to laugh and try to intimidate in. As his outing spreads from school to his family, Vincent must face a lot of prejudice, but also begins to realise that maybe not everything about being open about your sexuality is a bad thing. [Read more…]

C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005)

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C.R.A.Z.Y. follows the first 20 years of young French Canadian Zac’s life, who was Born on Christmas Day 1960. Always striving to please his father, Gervais, this becomes more difficult when his sexuality comes into question. As Zac struggles through his teenage years, will he and his family ever come to understand each other?

What’s the point of Quebec? After all, this is the place that gave us Celine Dion, so it’s got a lot to answer for. However, while not traditionally thought of for its film industry, it came to international attention in 2003 when Les Invasions Babares won the Best Foreign Film Oscar, and now C.R.A.Z.Y. also got a fair amount of attention when it was released in 2005. [Read more…]

Redwoods (2009)

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If you like melodrama, then Redwoods is the film for you, which lays it on so thick you could almost choke on it, although thankfully has its heart in the right place. Everett (Brendan Bradley) and Miles (Tad Coughenour) are a gay couple who’ve lost the spark in their relationship but are held together by raising their autistic son.

When Miles and the kid head off for a week to visit his grandma, Everett is left alone to work and reflect. He soon bumps into Chase (Matthew Montgomery), who’s visiting Redwood country as he travels around writing a book.  The two men’s relationship soon blossoms into an affair, with Everett suddenly regaining the passion that’s long been missing from his life. However he knows at the end of the week his boyfriend and son will return, but the temptation is to leave them. Will he stay, go and will he even have the choice? [Read more…]

Mysterious Skin (2004)

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Gregg Araki made a name for himself with gay-themed, rather anarchic generation-X flicks like The Doom Generation and Nowhere, but 2005’s Mysterious Skin sees him in a more controlled mood. It’s definitely a good thing and it’s probably no coincidence this film is his only novel adaptation, something that helps keep his more random ideas in check.

As a boy, Neil was abused by his little league coach, leaving him rather confused about boundaries and what’s suitable behaviour. Now in his late teens (and grown into the form of Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Neil is defiantly gay and working as a hustler in the small Kansas town he grew up in. However he has dreams of making it in the big city, which will hopefully also allow him to forget what happened to him as a child. [Read more…]

Walk On Water (2004)

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Etyan Fox’s follow-up to his LGBT Israeli hit Yossi & Jagger follows Mossad agent Eyal, who is assigned to pose as a tour guide when young German Axel comes to Israel to visit his sister, who’s working on a kibbutz. Axel’s grandfather was a Nazi war criminal and Mossad wants Eyal to gather info on whether the old man is still alive.

A friendship begins to develop between the two men, although cultural differences soon raise their head, especially when Eyal discovers Axel is gay, something he’s not comfortable with. When the German makes friends with an Arab, Eyal reaches the end of his tether. However eventually he decides to visit Axel in Germany, which may also give him a chance to lay to rest his guilt over the death of his wife. [Read more…]

The Skin I Live In (2011)

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Pedro Almodovar rarely makes a bad movie and The Skin I Live In is no exception. Antonio Banderas plays a doctor called Robert Legrand, who’s known for his advances in artificial skin and sex change operations. However he hides a secret, because locked away at home is a woman (Elena Anaya) he’s been doing surgical experiments on. She wants to get out, but Robert has a sophisticated security system and a dedicated mother (Marisa Parades) to keep her in. But is he keeping her in because what he’s been doing is illegal, or is there more going on?

The Skin I Live In is the sort of film where I don’t want to say too much about the plot or it’ll spoil the film’s slow reveal, but suffice to say things are not as they appears, and it all has to do with former tragedies in the doctor’s life and the destruction of his family. And it’s no coincidence the woman looks like Robert’s deceased wife. [Read more…]

This Is What Love In Action Looks Like (DVD)

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It’s always good to see people standing up for a cause they believe in and forcing some change, especially when it so often seems there’s not much small groups of people can do. However with the right cause and the right way of doing things, you can make a difference, as this documentary proves.

In 2005 the friends of 16-year-old Memphis teenager Zach were shocked to find a series of MySpace posts saying that following his parents reacting badly to his telling them he was gay, they were sending him to a Fundamentalist Christian live-in programme, Love In Action, which would try to turn him straight. With Zach having already been packed off to the organisation’s centre, Zach’s friends decide to organise a protest. Their peaceful attempts to raise awareness of the centre’s existence and to try and help Zach soon become a major news story, forcing things to change. However with Zach inside the centre, he knows little about what’s going on in his name. [Read more…]

Nightbirds (Blu-ray & DVD)

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Until relatively recently Nightbirds was thought to be a lost movie from cult director Andy Milligan, who’s best known (although he’s not known that much, as his cult is pretty small) for slightly bizarre horror flicks. However at least one print remained, which Drive director and Milligan aficionado Nicolas Winding Refn managed to get hold of. He then approached the BFI about giving Nightbirds the first proper release it’s ever had, as it hardly even saw the inside of a cinema when it was first made.

This proved trickier than you might expect, as Refn’s solitary print was missing several key scenes, which had literally been cut out of it to make the six-minute trailer. However working with a company that had a copy of that trailer, they’ve managed to put the movie back together and create this new Blu-ray and DVD release. The real question though, is whether it was all worth it? [Read more…]

Boys On Film 8: Cruel Britannia (DVD)

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Read our reviews of the other Boys On Film short film collections here

After two weeks in which we’ve been reviewing all the Boys On Film gay short film compilations, we’re finally come right up to date with Cruel Britannia. As the title suggests, all 10 shorts on the disc come from the UK and cover a broad range of gay-allied themes, most of which tend towards the darker side of life.

It’s a great selection, showing there’s a lot of talent out there in the UK working on LGBT themed film projects. Here’s what we thought of the shorts. [Read more…]

Boys On Film 7: Bad Romance (DVD)

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Read our reviews of the other Boys On Film short film collections here.

With Boys On Film: Cruel Britannia out on Monday, we’ve been busy working our way through all eight of Peccadillo Picture’s great compilations of gay short films. You’d think we’d have had enough of them by now, but the series keeps coming up trumps, and this seventh outing, Bad Romance, is no exception (we’ll bring you our thoughts on Cruel Britannia tomorrow). With a loose theme of love gone wrong, these 10 films from around the world cover everything from horror to teen romance, and there’s even an Oscar winner thrown in for good measure.

Here’s what we thought of the shorts: [Read more…]