Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

This movie was definitely a surprise. Closing night film of the Q-Fest, somehow when I read the synopsis, I thought this film be more on the lines of a wannabe comedy but I was very wrong. This film was actually very realistic, to an extent scary as well specially for actors who wanna make it big in the big bad world of hollywood. It shows the dark realities of what goes on behind those closed doors, how people exploit one another and how once you get sucked in, there is no way out. Adam has recently moved from NY to LA and is living with his best gal-pal Candy, who once used to be a wannabe actress but all she now does is think of obscure projects to make more money. Her finances are stabilized only because of her fiance. Once the fiance storms out in anger, Adam becomes permanent room mate and now he needs to find a job. He tries a couple of jobs but none goes well. When he is cruised by Nick at the gym, he offers him an office job at a gay porn film office where Nick works as a p...

The Q-Fest this year has definitely been better than last couple of years. Surprisingly, the number of lesbian and transgendered movies have also seen a raise in this years film festival and thank god that most of hem have been good ones. I will see these movies any-day over crap, really pathetic gay movies. FTM transition and a love story woven between this, the film is definitely a great debut from the director. This film shows us the mindset of people transitioning and how it affects their relations with family, friends and of course how they go about finding love. This has been done in a very subtle manner. Lucas is a 19 year old FTM. He is on hormone replacement therapy and still has breasts that keep him bound and hidden. He is invariable put in a female dorm while doing community service. He is stressed there and wants to move to male dorm as soon as possible. In this time, his lesbian friend Ine is always with him and keeping his secret safe with her. Lured by Ine and his new...

I am still not very sure why was this film shown as part of the LGBT film festival in Philadelphia. A couple of characters are gay but hen that has become a very common phenomenon in recent films. It is no big deal. In any case, that doesn't take away from the fact that was a guilty pleasure to watch the trailer park white trash story which brings smile to your face and often brings the house down with laughter as well. I am glad they did make Mangus' character a pity boy.  Mangus has always had one dream; to play Jesus Christ in the musical spectacular in his high school drama thereby following the footsteps of his dad and grandfather. He lives with his father and step mom (who by the way is hilarious in a weird way in the film). When he gets selected for the part, he celebrates with his friends and get in an accident which leaves him crippled and thereby he looses the part to a gay flamboyant son of the mayor of the town. When his father has to leave town for war, the step mo...

I read somewhere online that this is a thriller but of a different kind. I can't disagree more. This is nowhere close to being a thriller. It is a tale of a mother looking for her son and in the process discovering things about him, his friends and even her own relationship with her son. This film ultimately ends up being a soul search rather than a search for an actual person. Not sure how many actually this kind of genre in the gay cinema but nevertheless it was a decent viewing. Simon has been missing for only a week but it is enough to get his mother Valerie worried. She has travelled from Germany to South France and has also called her son's ex boyfriend Jens to help her out in searching for her son. High-strung and fearing the worse, Valerie has barely accepted her son’s gayness and having his former boyfriend around only adds to her stress. Jens has his own mixed feelings for his ex. He takes excursions in search of nightly casual sex where he encounters an Arab boy who...

Gender identity has rarely been explored with tender care and nurture in queer cinema before. This is such a sweet, heartfelt story of a young girl who just wants to be a boy. She doesn't understand the implications etc but just wants to be a boy. The film is poignant and humorous at times and filled with very believable performances.  Ten year old Laure, is moving with her parents and 6 year old sister to a new town. She spends time baby sitting for her sister because her mother is pregnant. She usually dresses up like a boy. Looking to play with the children from the same apartment complex, she meets Lisa to whom she tells that her name is Mikael. They both start hanging out and even with other kids of the building and a mutual crush develops. Mikael is now enjoying playing with boys, manly games and even taking his short off while playing. Soon her kid sister also joins the fun and addresses Laure as her brother in front of other kids. When the mother finds out about this, she ...

First of all I fail to understand why would this film be shown in a LGBT film festival. Agreed that one of the 2 characters happens to be gay but still the story is primarily about Danielle, a perfectly straight girl. The gay guy just happens to be his side kick and yes there is a mall parallel track. I have nothing against the movie, at least not till I finish writing the review but I was disappointed by the choice of this film for QFest.  Danielle is a dirty 'slut' girl in the Oklahoma high school. She does not mind sleeping with every boy in the class. She is angry at the world specially her mother because she never mentioned to Danielle about her father. She meets Clarke, a fat and obese gay guy whose father gives him a hard time for everything he does and fail and specially anything to do with being gay, when the two of them are forced to do a school project as a team where they have to act parents to a flour bag and write a project report. Danielle suggests that they run ...

I dunno why but I had very minimal expectations from this film. Somehow the title, story or even the actors were connecting with me after watching the preview but of course I still had to watch this film. It was actually not all that bad. Set in 80's film takes a hilarious look at a group of friends. Agreed that this is no oscar worthy movie or anything but I have seen much worse gay cinema, so in comparison this one did not turn out to be bad at all. he setting is a Texas college circa 1982 where big hair, loud shirts and cowboy boots are considered high fashion. Kevin is a straight frat-boy who enjoys bonding with fellow schoolmates. He does not even mind helping out his friend Justin once a while. But things change when he meets sexy and charming openly gay Cesar. Kevin starts hanging out with him and his heart starts beating for him and of course Cesar is also falling for Kevin. Too many encounters suddenly make Kevin confuse and he sets out for a weekend full of beer and wome...

These brainless dead "comedies" are the kind of films that sometimes makes me wonder why do I come to these film festivals. This is an excellent example of a wannabe film. Except a few laughs here and there on some dialogues, this film is a pretty bad attempt at making something illogical and ridiculously absurd. Just putting in hot men, some hot scenes and a real life full on plastic surgery commercial actress in the end will not bring the audience. But at the same time I think that many gay men have not really branched out to see all the beautiful wonderful gay films out there that the expectation they have is very low and they enjoy these mindless , so called entertainers.  Marshall and Gabriel have been together for 7 years and now their relationship is getting stale. Marshal is cocky and very physical but Gabe always pretends tp be tied and busy and has to work. He is also turning 30 and needs some thrill and something new in life. He starts looking online and finds an a...

The moment the producer of this film introduced this film is a full length feature version of the short 'Postmortem', I was super excited because I had no idea. That had been one of my most favorite shorts and for some reason had stuck with me. I was super excited to watch a feature version and when I saw that 2 of the principal characters were retained from the short, it was all the more better, The actors just suited the part so well in the short that I would have hated to see someone else play those parts. I would strongly recommend the short also to people to watch it.  Jonathan and Raul are a very happy couple of few years. They practically live together though Jonathan still has his apartment. Raul is married to Jonathan's best friend so that once the immigration goes through, they can have Raul stay in the country so that they both can live happily. Enter Troy from Spain who is planning to move back to LA. Troy and Jonathan were ex-lovers and apparently Troy broke Jo...

Set in modern day Tehran in Iran, this beautiful story focuses on two attractive rebellious high school friends. The girls dare to dream in an otherwise orthodox world. Watching this film definitely opened up my mind a little bit about some of the notions that I had about women in Iran. But at the same time there was so much hype around this film, that it ended up turning out low on those. This is what happened earlier too. I think that is why it is very important to watch films without expectations because they tend to surprise you quite a bit. Atafeh is a privileged daughter of an educated well to do family but her friend Shireen is not so lucky. Despite this they are very good friends. Over a period of time they have learnt about the vibrant maze of underground parties where they can be free, head uncovered, drinking, dancing, skin show. They once in a while have also defied the morality police and are enjoying and having fun. One night Shireen tells Atafeh that she loves her ve...

I have never ever seen such a long scene of sexual tension built up as it was shown in this movie. And at the same time, I have never been in a theatre with such pin drop silence because there are no scenes that evoke laughter. You are just waiting and watching as to whats going to happen next. I dunno if it is right to call this film as a thriller but there is a different thrill that you feel while watching the movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it. 16 year old Martin finds his swimming instructor Sebastian very attractive. One day he fakes of an eye injury in the class, and Sebastian take him to the hospital. Martin has already planned in his mind a web of lies for why he cannot go back home and finally succeeds in getting an invitation from Sebastian to sleep at his house. But thing are not simple as they seem. The night seems pretty long where neither of them is able to sleep really well. Sebastian next day finds out that Martin's parents were looking for him all night. He also finds ...

When I finished watching the film, I wondered what would this film have been like if it was done in US by an independent film maker. It would visualize a raunchy, really bad film , something like a couple of ones that I recently saw in the film festival. This is not to say that the UK version was any better. The film was simple but there was something about it that saved it from being a cheap thrill vs a decent attempt at a satire comedy. The story is pretty simple and straight forward actually. Seb and Aaron have been together for a while. Suddenly now they find themselves in huge debt because they both lose their jobs. Aaron has been hiding about his unemployment from Seb and has been engaging in internet porn for about 3 months now. This crisis forces them to channel in their entrepreneurial skills. Aaron secretly starts filming their sex life and uploading on internet. Soon he finds that people are actually paying to see them. When Seb finds out, he is initially quite disturbed bu...

The first thing after you finish watching this film is that the director has handled the subject with such compassion for his characters (all 3 lead actors). The film beautifully displays sensitivity towards a character whose sexual identity is evolving. The film is a wonderful emotional roller coaster, and shows how in a family when we love someone, we want to do everything that we think is right for them and we dont want them to go through pains in their life. Enrique has just been released from the prison after 3 years and he needs to keep his act in control be it drinking, smoking, drugs etc or he will go back to jail without any warning. He feels a little oddball between his wife Angela, who he soon finds out that she had been having an affair with another Latino and his son Michael who is in the process of transforming into Vanessa, a transwoman. When Enrique finds out about Angela, he warns her to not do that since he is now back home. They have their issues to deal with since ...

You can have a very decent idea on paper and it does sound very exciting when you start working on it. But when it comes to execution, the impact goes completely missing. This is exactly what happened with this film. On paper, it would have sounded quite new and nice, and to an extent it came out fine on screen as well but in totally this film was missing a lot of things, the main thing being the connection with me. I just was not able to connect to the film. I will write more on why it failed to do so. Its been 2 years since Aiden and Max broke up but Aiden is still hung up on his old love. Meanwhile Max found Forrest and they are about to get married. When Max's best man bails out at the last minute, his only option left is Aiden who after initial reluctance agrees. He realizes that he cannot go to the wedding alone and he needs a boyfriend. With help from his female roommate Janice, he convinces blond, cutie twink Lance to go with him. But things are not exactly what they seem...

Some films just surprise you. You hardly expect anything from them and then they spring out like something totally worth spending your time and money on. This Chilean drama is beautiful poignant and even sad. It shows what love is all about, it doesn't have to by mushy but it is all about what you feel internally. Hugo has just lost his mother and leading a very mundane life. He soon becomes captivated by a boxer Octavio who is diagnosed as epileptic. Although Octavio keeps his tough and masculine facade, it is he who make the first move on Hugo. Life in a small town in southern Chile is hard for the two, for they can never be accepted in their community, and work is very hard. After Octavio finds out that if he boxes again he might die, Octavio and Hugo pack their bags to start a new life in the capital of Chile. Octavio gets a job as a barber and Hugo also manages to get a job. There he meets this girl who gets instantly attracted towards Hugo. Meanwhile, Octavio get s a boxing g...