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

Banshee – Season 1 (Blu-ray)

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Alan Ball won an Oscar for writing American Beauty, but since then he’s largely stuck to TV, creating Six Feet Under, True Blood and now Banshee. While the basic plot makes Banshee sound very different from True Blood, they are to a certain extent bedfellows. In fact they could be set in the same world, except nobody in Banshee knows about the existence of Vampires and other supernatural entities (or at least they don’t mention it). [Read more…]

The Little Mermaid (Blu-ray)

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Through the tail end of the 70s and the early 80s, Disney Animation was floundering. Movies like Basil The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company and The Black Cauldron looked pretty but weren’t drawing in the crowds, largely because the company had lost its storytelling magic.

Then along came 1989’s The Little Mermaid, kicking off a remarkable run of critical, commercial and audience success that included Beauty & The Beast, The Lion King and Aladdin. While Disney Animation is perhaps most often thought of for its fairy tale movies, this was actually the first film the company had made based on a bona fide fairy story (this time one by Hans Christian Anderson) since Sleeping Beauty in 1959. They also threw a lot more money, time and effort at it than they had for years, even opening new studios to handle the artistic challenge, not least hand-drawing millions of bubble. [Read more…]

Hannibal – Season 1 (Blu-ray)

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When it was first announced that a TV series was in development based around Hannibal Lecter and the other characters from Thomas Harris Red Dragon, there was a lot of harrumphing that it was a travesty and doomed to failure. However the show has surprised many by being very good. It also makes quite a lot of smart moves, not least that despite being named after Lecter, it doesn’t blow its load and become the cannibal freak show – indeed, it’s never even mentioned he is a cannibal, adding a frisson of excitement to the meals he likes to cook for people. [Read more…]

Blackfish (DVD)

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Since the 1960s millions of people have gone to the various SeaWorld parks in the US, many drawn by the opportunity to see killer whales up close in the famed Shamu shows. Blackfish takes a close look at the parks and its animals, mainly focussing on the largest killer whale in captivity, Tilikum, who’s been implicated in the deaths of three people.

Using interviews with former trainers and various others, the documentary tells Tilikum’s story, surrounding this plenty of footage and other info that questions whether SeaWorld puts profits before the safety of its staff and even whether it’s right to keep these animals in captivity at all. [Read more…]

Nowhere (DVD)

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The third part of Gregg Araki’s Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy, following Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation, is just as nuts and in your face as the earlier movies. Like many of Araki’s films it’s a strange movie that’s difficult to quantify or fully understand. All of Araki’s early film have the sense of him trying to create a screenplay that’s like a net being wafted through the air attempting to capture the spirit of the time. Nowhere is perhaps the most successful of his films at doing that. [Read more…]

All Stars (DVD)

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This is one of those films that grown-up critics almost shouldn’t be allowed to review. It’s not for them. However the eight-year-olds who’ll probably love this aren’t known for their ability to write reviews and so it’s left to us oldies.

Okay, let’s start with the snooty film critic review: All Stars is derivative to the point that it almost feels like they took scenes from about a thousand other movies and merely changed the names. There is nothing in this film that hasn’t been seen many, many times before, which will have many people rolling their eyes at how unimaginative and predictable it is. [Read more…]

I’m So Excited! (DVD)

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In the last decade or so, Pedro Almodovar has become a master of taking ideas and spinning them in unexpected and complicated directions, filling his movies with larger than life, complex characters who draw you into a world that seems slightly absurd and yet uncomfortably close to the murkiness of real life.

I’m So Excited takes him in a slightly different direction as it’s far simpler, a lot camper and more interested in being pure entertainment than most of his movies. This has disappointed some, who were expecting an ‘Almodovar’ movie, but that doesn’t mean it lacks its own small-scale charms, even if it’s unlikely to amaze many. [Read more…]

Beyond The Walls (DVD)

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Sometimes when I watch a movie, I can’t help but wonder if the effect it has on the viewer (or at least me) is intentional or not. Sometimes that’s because it’s done something that’s totally undermined the entire movie, but other times it’s because it’s more interesting and intriguing than it might actually have intended to be. The latter is true of Beyond The Walls, although as it went on I became more convinced it was intentional. [Read more…]

Tumbledown (DVD)

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Todd Verow is a virtual one-man gay film industry. He started making films in the mid-90s and has become increasingly prolific since, with the likes of Vacationland, Between Something & Nothing and last year’s Bad Boy Street. His last few films have been narratively and tonally more ambitious than the ones that came before and that continues with Tumbledown, which is based on Verow’s own experiences (and also stars him in the role of Jay). [Read more…]

Phantom (Blu-ray)

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The words ‘inspired by a true story’ are worth less and less in the world of film as movies drift further and further from the true story and more towards the inspired by. With Phantom we’ve got to the point where they tell you more about the true story in the special features, and it’s actually massively more interesting than the actual movie.

In Phantom, Ed Harris plays a Russian nuclear submarine in the 1960s, who’s about to retire – not least because he’s been having seizures and hallucinations – but is forced to go on one more sub mission. However once out to sea, things go horribly wrong when a radical faction emerges and tries to take control of the vessel. They have a horrifying plan that could alter the course of the Cold War and change the world forever. Only the Captain and the remaining loyal members of the crew can stop them. [Read more…]