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

Dressed To Kill (Blu-ray)

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For years Brian De Palma has carried around the moniker of being a Hitchcock imitator, and it is perhaps Dressed To Kill more than any of his other movies that’s the cause of that. While it is its own beast, it’s hard to escape the fact that the movie borrows liberally from Hitchcock, particularly Vertigo and Psycho – from killing off the main character partway through to a fascination with sex and perversion.

However it’s slightly like Hitchcock on acid, as it’s far more overblown than the master, which has led to accusations of sexism and transphobia. Various people have tried to explain away these claims over the years, but it does sometimes seem like Dressed To Kill is punishing its characters for not conforming to sex and gender norms. [Read more…]

The Birth Of A Nation (Blu-ray)

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If ever there was a ‘difficult’ film, it’s Birth Of A Nation. The 1915 silent movie is massively important, changing cinema forever by creating the movie epic and hastening the move from short, one-reel films to feature length movies. Directed D.W. Griffith showed the scope and scale of what cinema could be in a way never seen before. In doing so he created the first monster hit, which played for a year (at live-theatre prices) in New York and was re-released pretty much every year for a couple of decades after that. [Read more…]

The Wolverine (Cinema)

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Hugh Jackman returns from flexing his vocal chords in Les Miserables to more familiar territory of flexing his muscles in his sixth outing as Logan, AKA The Wolverine. Jackman stated he wanted to explore who the man was behind Logan – the mutant with Adamantium claws – and he manages to do so with James Mangold at the helm

So after five previous outings as Logan (we’re counting his brief appearance in X-Men: First Class), where can his new ‘vision’ take us? Well, based on an old and much Marvel comic book story arc, this time around Wolverine is enticed to visit Japan by Yukio and summoned to the deathbed of an old ‘friend’, Yashida, who states he can offer Wolverine mortality. Things being to take a dangerous turn when an attempt is made to kidnap Yashida’s daughter, Mariko. [Read more…]

The Newsroom – Season 1 (Blu-ray)

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Aaron Sorkin’s TV shows are loved by some and loathed by others. While some have adored the likes of Sports Night, The West Wing and Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, others have found them pretentious and too concerned with politics – and more particularly promulgating a left wing philosophy that has had some US conservatives frothing at the mouth. [Read more…]

Falling Skies – Season 2 (DVD)

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Falling Skies – Season 3 has just started on UK TV and so to tie into that the second season has now arrived on DVD. The series is set after aliens have arrived on Earth and essentially taken over, harnessing teenagers with their technology and turning them into drones.

Most of the rest of the human population is either dead or scattered, but remnants have gathered together to try to either survive or fight back. This includes the 32 Mass, a ragtag military outfit plotting against the invaders, which also has a civilian contingent under their protection. [Read more…]

Speechless (DVD)

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Set in southern China, a western man (Pierre-Matthieu Vital) is found naked by the side of a river. The police pick him up, but he doesn’t say anything – although it’s not clear whether he can’t or if he’s simply refusing. The doctors can’t work out what’s wrong with him and so decide to transfer him to a mental hospital.

A male nurse takes pity on him though, feeling this man isn’t ‘mad’ and so helps to liberate him from the hospital. Slowly we learn how the man ended up on the riverbank and the dramatic events that took place during his relationship with a young Chinese man. [Read more…]

Robot & Frank (Blu-ray)

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Hunter (James Marsden) is fed up with dealing with his aging father, Frank (Frank Langella), and so rather than having to constantly drives miles to sort him out, he buys him a robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard), who’ll serve as a carer and butler. Frank doesn’t want this contraption, but eventually agrees to keep it while simultaneously plotting ways to get rid of it.

However Frank slowly realises the bot may have a use. Frank is a former jewel thief, and he recognises that the robot can be taught skills such as lock picking, which Frank can use in a scheme he cooks up to rejoin his former criminal profession. [Read more…]

Les Invisibles (Cinema)

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Les Invisibles is an award winning French documentary about 11 gay men and women living in France, whose common link is their homosexuality and advancing ages. Each of the subjects talks about their experiences of being gay in less hospitable times, when anything homosexual was normally met with disdain, mistrust and violence. The film is basically an insight into their life journeys, and how society’s attitudes and the political landscape have changed. [Read more…]

Safe Haven (DVD)

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A young woman (Julianne Hough) is on the run, evading a Boston policeman and heading off across the US. She stops in a small town where she decides to hole up for a while under the name Katie. She wants to lay low and avoid forming any attachments, especially as she knows the cop will still be after her.

Despite her best efforts to keep people away, she starts to develop a connection with a local widower, Alex (Josh Duhamel) and his kids, as well as her new neighbour, Jo (Cobie Smulders). As she falls deeper for Alex, Katie begins to think maybe she’s found a future. However with a nationwide manhunt out saying she’s wanted for murder and a policeman determined to find her no matter where she is, the secrets of her past inevitably begin to emerge. [Read more…]

The Wee Man (DVD)

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Listen up you fuckers, the fucking movie The Wee Man is fucking coming to DVD. It’s full of Scottish gangster fuckers, killing and fucking murdering and swearing all the fucking time.

If you’re shocked by those two sentences, this is not the movie for you, as without very strong swear words this film would be about half as long as it is. Indeed you can probably tell how good or bad a character is by how many f-words and c-words are used before and after their names by other characters. [Read more…]