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

Locke (Blu-ray Review)

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Locke is the sort of film that was always in danger of seeming gimmicky. It is after all an entire movie where the only visuals are a single man, Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy), in a car driving along a motorway, with the ‘action’ playing out in real-time.

However thanks to a truly impressive performance from Hardy and the strong hold of writer/director Steven Knight it’s surprisingly gripping, smart and entertaining. [Read more…]

Goddess (DVD Review)

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Elspeth (Laura Michelle Kelly) is a young mother who’s been transplanted along with her family from the UK to rural Australia. However it’s not proving the idyll she’d hoped, as with her husband James (Ronan Keating) constantly away at sea she’s having to raise young twins alone. She doesn’t even have any friends.

When James gives her a webcam to help them keep in touch, she decides to let the world into her kitchen with a webcast where she sings ‘sink songs’. The idea becomes popular and soon catches the eye of a Sydney marketing whizz (Magda Szubanski), who wants to make Elspeth a star. However as she gets caught up in a whirlwind of possible fame, she risks losing her family. [Read more…]

Mindscape (DVD Review)

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With a largely British cast, a Spanish director and a mix of American and European money, it’s fair to say that Mindscape (released as Anna in the US) is a pretty international production. It follows John (Mark Strong), a memory detective who is able to use technology to go into other people’s minds and see their memories. However following the death of his wife and then suffering illness, he’s no longer at the top of his game.

To help him out he’s given what should be a relatively easy assignment – to go into the mind of 16-year-old Anna (Taissa Farmiga) to find the psychological root of her refusal to eat. Her father seems certain his daughter is dangerous and needs to be locked up, but very quickly from what he sees in her mind, John begins to suspect there might be something else going on. [Read more…]

Tom At The Farm (DVD Review)

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This is Xavier Dolan’s fourth film as a director, and he’s still only 25. It’s difficult to know whether to be impressed or whether to dislike him on principle. Indeed that’s true of much about Dolan – he has a supreme confidence that is simultaneously exciting and a little exasperating, his grasp of plot and theme is both engrossing and frustratingly underdeveloped, and he manages to imbue his films with a hipster vibe that is too pleased with itself and yet gives his films an unexpected vibrancy.

Bound (Blu-ray Review)

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Back before they were the directors of The Matrix and when Lana was known as Larry, The Wachowskis took the indie film world by storm with the stylish neo-noir Bound. Now the film has come to Blu-ray with a crisp HD print, which is perhaps a little duller than you might hope for a film where splashes of vivid colour are so important, but stills looks extremely good.

Corky (Gina Gershon) is an ex-con working as a handyman in an apartment when she meets the next door neighbours, the Mafia-linked Caesar (Joe Pantoliano) and his girlfriend Violet (Jennifer Tilly). The two women become lovers and hatch a plan to steal $2 million of the mob’s money that Caesar has in their possession. While they think they have everything planned out, the scheme starts to go awry when Caesar doesn’t act as expected. [Read more…]

Killing Season (Blu-ray Review)

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It’s always a shame when you can see what a movie so desperately hopes to be, but it falls incredibly far short. Killing Season wants be a tense cat and mouse thriller, with a serious backdrop looking at the horrors of war and the way it affects people after the battle is over.  Unfortunately it ends up just being a bit silly and over the top.

It’s a particular shame as this is the first time Robert de Niro and John Travolta have appeared on-screen together. [Read more…]

I Am Happiness On Earth (DVD Review)

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The run of gay-themed films involving dancers as major characters (such as Test and Five Dances) continues with the Mexican drama I Am Happiness On Earth. The film comes from director Julian Hernandez, who found acclaim with earlier queer cinema arthouse faces such as Broken Sky (2006) and Raging Sun Raging Sky (2009). His new movie doesn’t veer off too far thematically from his earlier work, but once more offers an intense, erotically charged look at love and sex. [Read more…]

Test (DVD Review)

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The TV show Looking has given us an insight into being gay in San Francisco in the 2010s, and now Test takes us back to the city as it was three decades ago, just as AIDS was emerging. Although documentaries and films such as The Normal Heart have tended to look at the advent of HIV on the entire community and the panic it caused, Test takes a smaller, more personal approach, where it hovers in the background of one man’s life.

Frankie (Scott Marlowe) is a young dancer, who’s practicing to be the understudy in a new piece. He’s heard the stories of gay men coming down with a strange illness and that there’s a new test for the disease. Slowly AIDS goes from being fairly distant to something that’s creeping ever closer to his own life, so he must decide whether to go in for the test, knowing that things he’s done could have exposed him to the virus. [Read more…]

What’s The T? (US VoD Review)

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There’s little doubt that in 2014 trans* people have gained more mainstream prominence than they ever have before, with the likes of Orange Is The New Black star Laverne Cox making it onto the cover of Time magazine and Conchita Wurst winning the Eurovision Song Contest. However it’s also true that the majority of those who are fully supportive of trans* people don’t really know much about the issues that those who don’t fit into the traditional gender binary face, or even that ‘pre-op’ and ‘post-op’ are not the main types of trans* people. [Read more…]

Starred Up (DVD Review)

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Eric (Jack O’Connell) is transferred from a young offenders institution to adult prison, and while he feels as if he can be a king in this new place, it soon becomes clear that he’s been thrust somewhere far more brutal and dangerous than he’s used to. The young man knows that his father, Neville (Ben Mendelsohn) is in the prison, and is hoping for a reunion.

It’s an awkward reunion though, as while Nev is keen to protect his boy, he is a violent, dangerous man and the two have very little common ground, especially due to the anger Eric barely seems to realise he harbours against his father. [Read more…]