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

REVIEWS

Cinema, DVD and Blu-ray reviews

Four Horsemen (DVD)

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It’s very rare that something actually makes me angry, but Four Horsemen did. The documentary tries to deflect criticism by saying during the voiceover that some will dismiss it as socialist when it isn’t, but my problem with it wasn’t with its viewpoint, but that as an argument it’s absolutely hideously constructed and an altogether frustrating experience.

Made in the wake of the banking collapse and economic crisis, Four Horsemen attempts to explain what happened, why we haven’t learned any lessons from it, and why western society is on the brink of collapse and unable to come to terms with the fact its version of civilisation may have peaked. Much of it is stuff many will have heard before, especially as the economic collapse has been picked apart in detail by numerous different voices. It doesn’t help that Four Horsemen has little new to add, and most of what it does have to say has been said better by others – the wonderful The Shock Doctrine and Inside Job spring to mind. [Read more…]

Hardcore: Bare Naked Talent (DVD)

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I have to admit, my expectations weren’t high for Hardcore: Bare Naked Talent. A British mockumentary with an inexperienced cast, first time director and which was made in 2005 but only coming to DVD  now; it didn’t exact fill me with confidence. Even the fact it’s about the making of a porn movie suggests lowest common denominator trash, but I’m very pleased to report the film is a lot better than you’d expect.

The reason for that is that Hardcore takes the time to surround its tit and bum gags with a plot and characters you can actually empathise with. The core of the film is the journey of ‘Jack Innov’ (Alex Constantine), the pseudonym that a young wannabe filmmaker comes up with when he decides to direct a porn epic called Assanova, in the hope it will allow him to eventually make proper movies [Read more…]

Battleship (Cinema)

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Just picture it – writer goes to see producer and says I have an idea for a movie, “Let’s base it on a game, say Battleship. We’ll make the enemy Aliens (Transformers style), set it in Pearl Harbor – with our allies being the Japanese, of all people – and let’s debut the worlds biggest pop star in her movie debut! You can think of it as Top Gun meets Independence Day!” Producer proceeds to mentally count the cash he thinks he’ll make.

This is basically the premise of one of the most anticipated films of the year – which to be honest isn’t a great state of affairs, if this is all Hollywood can deliver. That said, with an estimated budget of over $200M, you have to hope it’ll do better than last years’ two alien invasion efforts, Skyline and Battle Los Angeles. [Read more…]

Switch (DVD)

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Sophie Malaterre (Karine Vanasse) is excited by the idea of a house swap – where you exchange homes with someone so you both get a holiday but save on accommodation – which will allow her to escape her Montreal life for a while with a trip to Paris. However she hasn’t been in France for long when the police raid the flat she’s swapped into and arrest Sophie while she’s in the bath, carting her off to the station after a decapitated head is found in her room. [Read more…]

Jitters (DVD)

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We don’t get to see a lot of Icelandic movies, partly because as a nation of just over 300,000 people, they don’t exactly produce an endless stream of films of international calibre. However Iceland does make a few films each year and every so often something emerges from the country that deserves a wider audience. Jitters is one of them, a kind of Icelandic Skins, centring on a boy coming to terms with being gay, while his friends have their own issues with teenage life.

Rather than Iceland, the opening of the movie takes place in the UK, where young Gabriel (Atli Oskar Fjalarsson) is on a three week trip to Britain. He shares a room with Markus (Haraldur Ari Stefansson) and on the last night they share a kiss. Once back in Iceland, Gabriel hopes there will be more, but Markus treats it very much as if it never happened. [Read more…]

Texas Killing Fields (DVD)

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Based loosely on a true story, Mike Sounder (Sam Worthington) and Brian Heigh (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) play two cops investigating crime in the Texas bayous. Heigh becomes increasingly drawn to a series of murders where the bodies of the victims are dumped in an area that’s become known as The Killing Fields. Local guy Souder warns New York transplant Heigh against getting too deep into the investigation, partly because it’s outside their jurisdiction and partly because he knows it’s dangerous and you can get lost in trying to make sense of what’s going on.

However Heigh can’t give up and soon attracts the attention of the killer, who starts to seem as if he’s taunting the police with red herring clues. Then a local girl goes missing and the stakes are raised. [Read more…]

Plan B (2009)

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When Bruno sees his ex-girlfriend Ana with her new boyfriend, Pablo, he decides he wants her back, even though she only seems interested in occasional sex sessions. Realising the usual tactics won’t work to convince her – he comes up with a Plan B. He’s heard Pablo has had liaisons with guys, so Bruno determines that he’ll befriend Pablo without letting him know who he is, and then make him fall in love with him. Then, after this causes Pablo and Ana to break up, he can swoop in and be her knight in shining armour when she’s sad and lonely.

Admittedly it is the sort of plan that could go hideously wrong at any moment, but he manages to meet and get in with Pablo, convincing him that he’s not the guy Ana has a picture of on her wall. However while Bruno is convinced he’s being devious and clever, something happens that he never expected; he starts having genuine feelings for Pablo. [Read more…]

Absent (Ausent) (DVD)

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Winner of the Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival – a gong given to the best movie on LGBT themes – Absent comes to DVD fresh from a centrepiece screening at the recent London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in March.

The film is about a teenage boy, Martin (Javier De Pietro), who pretends to have something wrong with his eye so that his teacher, Sebastian, has to take him to the hospital. When they’ve finished with the doctor, Martin comes up with a convoluted story about having arranged to stay the night with a friend that they can’t get in touch with and then gives reasons why he can’t go home. Unsure what to do, the teacher decides to take him back to his apartment and let him stay the night. It’s clear though the student has ulterior motives, being somewhat flirtatious and touching Sebastian’s leg while he sleeps. [Read more…]

Die Hard Quadrilogy (Blu-ray)

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There’s a slightly awkward situation with the Die Hard movies in the UK, where the distribution rights for parts 1, 2 and 4 are owned by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, while Die Hard With A Vengeance is released by Disney (or at least Buena Vista). As a result, getting a box set release of all the movies is a trickier proposition than you’d expect, as you have to get different studios to accept it, and so it’s only now that Fox can bring out a Blu-ray box set containing all four movies, replacing the previous Die Hard Blu-ray set, which lacked part 3!

You’ve undoubtedly seen all four films (and if you haven’t, what are you doing on a film website, reading a review of a Die Hard box set?), but just in case you haven’t, the series follows the exploits of Bruce Willis John McLane, the archetypal right man in the wrong place at the wrong time. [Read more…]

Headhunters (Cinema)

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The antihero can be a difficult thing to pull off. If your protagonist is doing things that would normally be considered the province of the villain, you need to work extra hard to make the audience empathise with them or see them as heroic. You can get round it with something like someone’s family being attacked so they have a reason to go out for revenge, but what if your ‘hero’ is actually a bit of an asshole?

That’s what we have in Headhunters, but it actually manages to make it work, which is no small achievement. [Read more…]