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

The British Guide To Showing Off (DVD)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

The British Guide To Showing Off is a feature-length documentary that looks at artist Andrew Logan and his anarchic creation, The Alternative Miss World Show, which has been going since 1972 and seen a heady mix of eccentrics and artists taking part and, well, showing off.

The movie follows Logan as he rather leisurely tries to organise 2009’s pageant, as well as charting the history of the event, which has seen everything from David Hockney judging the first, David Bowie not being able to get into the second and the whole thing even being won by a robot. At one point it even got into a court battle with the Official Miss World organisation, who objected to Logan’s event’s name (Miss World lost). [Read more…]

J. Edgar

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

There’s an old adage on the standup comedy circuit that the only thing worse than complete silence to greet your routine is a couple of stifled chuckles. This, they say, indicates that not only has your material failed, it has done so in such a way that the audience’s only response is to laugh at its failure.

Had Clint Eastwood, the director of J.Edgar attended the screening of his film that I did, he might have had a similar feeling. The last thing one would expect from a serious political biopic is moments of unintentional hilarity, but from the minute Leonardo DiCaprio appears on screen in an unconvincing elderly prosthetic, that’s exactly what you get. [Read more…]

Summer Storm

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

Summer Storm (or to give it its proper German title, Sommersturm) is a Teutonic addition to the ever-expanding gay movie subgenre of coming out flicks. It’s little surprise it’s such a popular subject, as coming out in one way or another is one of the few things nearly always gay people share and which becomes a pivotal moment in their lives.

Teenagers Tobi and Achim are best friends who are heading off for a summer camp with their rowing team, ahead of a big competition. The boys are extremely close, even going as far as to wank off together, and believe nothing could ever come between them. [Read more…]

Shock To The System

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

The second of four Donald Strachey movies starring Chad Allen (following Third Man Out) sees the gay actor back as the gay detective, this time delving into the exceedingly dodgy world of ex-gay therapy. Strachey is hired by a young man, Paul Hale, who almost immediately afterwards turns up dead, after apparently killing himself. While Donald isn’t sure exactly why he was hired, he starts to investigate the death, which leads him to the door of the Phoenix Foundation and its director Dr. Trevor Cornell, who practices controversial techniques that attempt to turn gay people straight. [Read more…]

The Terence Davies Trilogy

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date:

Terence Davies recently returned to the director’s chair after an 11 year gap with The Deep Blue Sea, but he started out behind the camera with this trilogy of short films made in the late 70s and early 80s. Together the three short films make an intriguing piece, with each film having its own style but following the same central character at different stages of his life, from childhood to death, with a heavy interest in the nature of memory.

The trilogy kicks off with ‘Children’, about a young adolescent boy called Robert Tucker. The film show us vignettes of his life as an outsider at his school, as well as his burgeoning sense that he may be gay. At home his father is presented as a strange and rather terrifying presence, with Robert having conflicting feelings about his death. ‘Madonna and Child’ sees Robert as a middle-aged man, still living his mother (who he’s devoted to) and working in a dead end job. [Read more…]

Gay Sex In The 70s

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

The documentary Gay Sex In the 70s both does what it says on the tin and completely fails to at the same. Joseph F. Lovett’s doc is a mixture of interviews, vintage photos and footage that look at the idea that the gay rights movement in the 1970s led to increased visibility and a more stridently upfront attitude, which resulted in an explosion of gay decadence and sex, with men screwing each other all over the shop. This was then brought to an abrupt end by the emergence of AIDS in the early 80s.

It’s a potentially interesting subject, and indeed this documentary isn’t the first to paint the 70s as some sort of halcyon age of gay free love that’s gone forever. Its problem though is that it never seems to get to the heart of anything, merely hinting at things that it doesn’t develop. [Read more…]

We Were Here (DVD)

By 1 Comment

Starring: ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

Although it’s a bit of a shame We Were Here didn’t hit DVD  last week, just in time for AIDS Awareness Day on December 1st, the powerful documentary about the impact of HIV and AIDS in San Francisco in the 1980s has now been released. It’s already received plenty of plaudits, including being shortlisted for the Best Documentary Oscar.

We Were Here consists of interviews with San Franciscans who lived through the early years of the emergence of AIDS, giving testimony about its effect on them and those around them. For a younger generation for whom HIV has largely seemed like a manageable condition (whether that’s the truth or not), it’s sobering stuff. [Read more…]

Eating Out: Drama Camp (DVD)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: , , ,
Director:
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

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)

By 1 Comment

Starring: , ,
Director: ,
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

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)

By Leave a Comment

Starring: ,
Director: , ,
Running Time:
Certificate:
Release Date: ,

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…]