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

Stud Life (DVD)

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There aren’t that many movies about British black lesbians, so this film has an underserved and worthwhile subject going for it to start with. The film follows JJ (T’Nia Miller), a self-described ‘butch dyke’ who’s trying to find love and happiness in London.

She spends much of her time hanging around with gay best friend Seb (Kyle Treslove), who also acts as her assistant in her wedding photography business. JJ starts to date the more lipstick lesbian Elle (Robyn Kerr), although the road to true love certainly doesn’t run smooth. Elle is rather temperamental, takes umbrage at JJ’s friendship with Seb and has a few secrets about what she does for a living. [Read more…]

Broken (Blu-ray)

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Broken won Best Film at the British Independent Film Awards and got much praise on its cinema release. However I couldn’t help feeling it’s one of those movies where grittiness and being a bit of a downer is taken for it being ‘real’ and worthy. It’s certainly dramatic and very, very well-acted, but it’s still pretty contrived and looked at objectively, the events are fairly soap opera-ish. [Read more…]

Red Dawn (2013) (Blu-ray)

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Red Dawn was shot in 2009, before Chris Hemsworth became Thor and Josh Hutcherson made The Hunger Games, but it got caught up in MGM’s bankruptcy, resulting in the movie only now arriving on Blu-ray and DVD. While there was a decent reason for the delay, the fact is that like many movies that have sat on the shelf for a while, it’s not great – although it could have been a lot worse. [Read more…]

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (Cinema)

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On February 21st 2012, five members of the Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot decided to put on a performance at Moscow’s Christ The Saviour Cathedral. While a service was in progress they went up to the altar – dressed in the band’s trademark balaclavas – and started to sing. While they were stopped by security, footage of the event was soon turned into a video called, ‘Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!’, which protested what they see as the increasingly oppressive regime of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Othodox Leader’s support for him. [Read more…]

Out in the Dark (Cinema)

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Nimr (Nicholas Jacob), a Palestinian psychology student, has been granted permission to study in Israel.  While on a night out in Tel Aviv he meets a charming Israeli lawyer called Roy (Michael Aloni) and the two fall in love.  It seems things are going well for Nimr,  but when Israeli secret police threaten to expose his sexuality to his deeply conservative family, should he refuse to supply information on his dissident brother? Nimr finds his world falling apart and his life in danger.  Roy is the only hope Nimr has, but will the secret truth about his brother’s extremism come between them? [Read more…]

Oliver Stone’s Untold History Of The United States (DVD)

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The fact this is ‘Oliver Stone’s’ Untold History Of The United States should give you a hint that this is not a series to toe the party line. Through its 10 episodes, Stone is determined to be as contrarian as possible, often to great effect but sometimes taking things a little too far. To be fair it’s an inevitable by-product of the project, which sets out to give the other side of US history – or at least what Stone seem to think is the other side, even when he’s saying things that most people now agree is true but which he seems to think is hidden knowledge. [Read more…]

Stoker (DVD)

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Stoker was a real audience divider on its cinemas release, with some feeling that Oldboy director Park Chan-Wook’s first English-language film was an underwhelming bore, while others went as far as to call it a horror masterpiece. To be honest I can understand where both sides are coming from, as your appreciation of the film completely depends on whether you fall for the film’s endlessly dripping style. If you don’t, it’s difficult not to notice the plot is slightly wanting. [Read more…]

The Guilt Trip (DVD)

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Barbra Streisand hasn’t taken a lead role in a movie since The Mirror Has Two Faces in 1996, so there was a fair amount of anticipation for The Guilt Trip. Unfortunately though, she should probably have spent a bit more time picking through scripts, as this certainly isn’t a triumphant return.

Seth Rogen plays Andy Brewster, an inventor who’s come up with a revolutionary cleaning product. He’s on a trip around the country trying to sell it to retailers, but nobody seems that interested, largely because his pitch is dreadful. He stops off to see his mom, Joyce (Streisand), and after she tells him a story about her first love, he decides to invite her along on the trip with the idea of secretly reuniting her with that old boyfriend. [Read more…]

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (DVD)

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Alex Gibney has made his name with often angry, slightly polemical documentaries such as Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room (about the corruption behind the then biggest bankruptcy in US history), Taxi To The Dark Side (about torture practices at Guantanamo) and the upcoming We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (which you won’t be surprised to hear is about Julian Assange and his website).

With Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God he sets his sights on the Catholic Church and their response to decades of allegations concerning priests molesting children. It does this by focussing on the St. John School for the Deaf in the Milwaukee and Father Laurence Murphy, who taught there from 1950 to 1974. Eventually it was determined that he molested at least 200 boys in that time. [Read more…]