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

Land Of Storms (Iris Prize Festival 2014 Review)

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Land Of Storms centres around a promising yet troubled and angry football player, Szabi, played with high-quality brooding by Andras Suto. No longer enjoying the beautiful game, Szabi moves back to Hungary to the house he inherited from his grandfather. When he starts to renovate the house, which has become very tumbledown and rotten due to vandalism and lack of care, he meets a young man called Arun (Adam Varga) who lives nearby. Szabi and Arun begin to work on the house together and as they get to know each other, a deeper relationship starts to blossom.

Eventually the extremely religious and intolerant locals, never keen on Arun’s relationship with this newcomer, start to understand that there’s something more than friendship between the two. Add to that the appearance of Szabi’s German friend and possible lover Bernard (Sebastian Urzendowsky), and a three-way dynamic begins to unfold, which the locals don’t like at all. [Read more…]

The Third One (Iris Prize Festival 2014 Review)

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This tale of a modern-day sexual encounter starts with an online flirtation between Fede, a young gay man, and an older gay couple whose relationship is several years old. They flirt on webcam and MSN Messenger, teasing the viewer and each other with a little nudity and eventually decide to meet up.

Fede goes around to their flat and they have dinner together. It’s a very relaxed and unrushed sexual encounter that shows the characters taking a little time to get to know one another, which is nice to see rather than just jumping into bed together. As they talk, the relationship between the older men opens up, as does Fede when talking about himself, and both the characters and the viewer understand a little more about how neither side’s situation is as perfect as it seems from the outside. [Read more…]

The Samurai (Iris Prize Festival 2014 Review)

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The Samurai comes from director Till Kleinert, a previous winner of the Iris Prize for his brilliant short film Cowboy, and with this film he stays in unnerving territory.

The title character in this film is a homicidal maniac wielding a katana and wearing a pretty white dress (played to mind-searingly chilling heights by Pit Bukowski). He’s slowly destroying the community and sanity of policeman Jakob (Michel Dierks), whose dogged attempts to capture and subdue him slowly become an obsession. [Read more…]

Cilla (DVD Review)

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We don’t see Cilla Black too much anymore since she entered semi-retirement. However anyone who was around in the UK in the 1980s will know her from shows such as Blind Date and Surprise Surprise, and they may also remember that before she was a TV host she was a singer. However only those who can recall the heyday of the Beatles are likely to know much about that part of her story.

The three-part mini-series Cilla takes us back to the days when she was Cilla White (Sheridan Smith), a rock ‘n’ roll obsessed Liverpudlian teenager, who was friends with a pre-Beatles Ringo Starr, headed down to The Cavern Club whenever she got the chance and had parents who were proud that she was the first member of the family deemed good enough for office work. [Read more…]

Edge Of Tomorrow (Blu-ray Review)

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I get the feeling there was a bit of ‘I told you so’ going round in Hollywood after Edge Of Tomorrow failed to live up to financial expectations. And in true Tinsel Town fashion they decided the problem was the name. As a result it’s got a bit of a makeover for its home entertainment release, where the cover would suggest it’s called ‘Live. Die. Repeat’ – which to be honest is a much better name than the pretty much meaningless Edge Of Tomorrow.

The fact it barely cracked $100 million in the US certainly isn’t the film’s fault as it’s a great slice of big budget action, which for the first time in several years reminds us exactly why Tom Cruise is a movie star. And in an era of tentpole movies that try to outdo each other in how po-faced they can be (I’m blaming you, Christopher Nolan), it’s refreshing to find one that has a great sense of humour without being as dumb as much Hollywood fare (I’m blaming you, Michael Bay). [Read more…]

Kite (Blu-ray Review)

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Some films manage to take a low budget and use it to their advantage, finding interesting and innovative ways to get around the fact they don’t have much cash and still deliver a full and complete film experience. Sadly Kite is not one of those films. It thinks it is, but it really isn’t.

The movie follows young Sawa (India Eisley) who lives in a scummy, corrupt post-apocalyptic future where she ruthlessly tries to hunt down the people who killed her parents, helped by her father’s ex-partner, Karl (Samuel L. Jackson). Things begin to change when she meets someone she knew as a child – although she can’t remember him due to the fact that the drugs she takes to help her be a single-minded and very successful killer blur her memory of the past. [Read more…]

I’m A Porn Star (DVD Review)

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I know this will come as a shock to many of you, but lots of people enjoy watching one person inserting one of their body parts into the body parts of other people. Even more shocking is that some people enjoy it when two or more men are engaged in such activities, without any women there at all! This is apparently known as ‘gay pornography’, and this arcane, esoteric subject is what the documentary I’m A Porn Star is all about.

Ok, maybe I have heard of gay porn before. In fact I may even have seen some of it – purely for research purposes, of course. [Read more…]

The Secret Path (DVD Review)

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While indie gay cinema has become more diverse in recent years, the genres it’s dipped its toes into are still limited, largely because the often minuscule budgets tend to limit what you can do in arenas such as sci-fi or action. Another genre we very rarely get is period drama, but writer/director Richard Mansfield has found a way to do it by making a film that’s set totally in a forest with only four people ever seen – and just two of them on-screen for 95% of the time. As a result he can do period drama just with costume and character.

In the early 1800s Frank (Darren Bransford) and Theo (Henry Regan) have escaped the Navy and washed up on the shore. They are now on the run from the press gangs and hiding in the woods near a large country house. They plan to get by on crime, perhaps as highwaymen or grave robbers. [Read more…]

Shivers (Blu-ray Review)

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Coming to Blu-ray for the first time anywhere in the world, David Cronenberg’s debut feature gets a sharp HD upgrade. Filmed a full 40 years ago on a fairly low budget, Shivers looks surprisingly good, even if on Blu-ray you can see the edges on some of the effects. That said though, for a movie that helped create so many of body horror effects that became popular after the film, they still work extremely well. Indeed one scene with a creature crawling around under someone’s stomach has never really been bettered.

Shivers is set in the big, modern Skyliner apartment block. A doctor has been experimenting, using a parasite to replace human organs. He tries to end the research by killing the female test subject and then himself. However it’s not enough and soon the parasite is out, infecting residents of the block. The infection causes all boundaries to break down, with everyone becoming sexually voracious as they look for more victims. [Read more…]

Boys (Jongens) (DVD Review)

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Although some people roll their eyes at films about young people coming to terms with their sexuality, as they perceive them as being rather old hat, there’s a reason they’re popular. In a world where the LGBT-experience can seem ever more diverse and yet homogenised at the same time, the confusion of new feelings and first same-sex love is the closest we have to a universal gay experience.

The new film Boys is a touching, poignant look at this time of life, seen through the eyes of two teenage Dutch boys. Sieger is dealing with a strict father who’s constantly butting heads with his wayward older brother. Marc meanwhile is on the cooler, more popular end of the social spectrum. [Read more…]