Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

I have greatly loved and admired Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Özpetek movies and look forward to them. Hence my expectations for this film were also pretty high. I feel so sad to say, that unfortunately they were not met. There’s a lack of genuine narrative motivation that leaves this very promising film without oomph and substance. More on that later. Pietro is an aspiring gay actor and moves in a big house when he gets lucky with the pricing of the house. Pietro moves in and his life is going in order when he starts hearing strange noises in the apartment. He feels presence of people, whom he can see and feel. It turns out that the house in inhabited by a group of ghosts all dressed in from the 40s. Initially scared to death, Pietro soon realizes that all these ghosts are good souls and they are just stuck in a time-wrap. What can Pietro do to help? He listens to all the pieces of advice they give. To help these people move on, he will have to find out who gave them away duri...

This short film belongs to the genre of family ties. Paul is an artist, his current project is to take photos of the faces of men during orgasm. He lives with Martial, his lover. His sister Camille, who's running the family business, takes Paul to the hospital to see their father, who is dying. Paul hasn't seen him in six years. Throughout his life, he has been tormented by a photograph of himself as a baby. He believes he is incredibly ugly and rejected by his father. When his father is dying, he photographs him lying naked in his hospital bed. This is a form of revenge. After his father's death a box of family photographs is presented to Paul and he discovers the startling truth where he sees pictures of his father loving and kissing him as a baby which means the father never really thought of Paul as ugly. This film is subtle yet disturbing, with a lot more nuances that you will find in some full length feature films. The film depicts how tension and misunderstandin...

A film if done by an experienced director and well known actors, could have done wonders. A sensitive film about the growth of love between two music students with very different characters. One man who is not committed to love finds interest in another boy whose life is only dedicated to music. A very interesting plot can be created with this premise but the treatment also should be equally worth it. Maki takes pain classes and is not very good in it. He is gay and not ashamed about it. The class also has Ruiku, who is the best on the class but is always quiet and never smiles or talks to anyone. Maki starts taking interest in him. Initially only for a hook up, he soon starts developing feelings for him and obsession to get his love. He gets Ruiku to give him piano lessons so that they could come physically together. Maki makes advances on him but Ruiku snubs back even though he likes it, saying he can only love music and nothing else. The music teacher also happens to be a screw b...

This is a movie about the people who live on the outskirts of society. Isolated and frequently shunned by the rest of the world, trans-gender and transsexual people form their own family circle. That fragile little support system is shattered to pieces by the serial killer that targets members of their sisterhood. So far so good- but that's when the problems with this movie start. Transsexual Bo works as an entertainer in a drag club in Brussels. His best friend is Maeva, who performs with him. There is a serial killer and the prostitutes are falling prey to him who disfigures each of his victims in a vicious way. Bo, we learn, left home at age 13, unable to cope with sexual molestation from his father and the suicide of his mother, and lives quietly in a humble apartment. Her interest is peaked when a handsome young Johnny moves in next door and she fantasizes an affair with him. While Johnny appears to be infatuated with Bo, he has his dark side, living with a roommate with ...

Kinky Boots is about shoes and a reverence for footwear of all types. Though it doesn't reach Sex and the City heights of shoe obsession, it's a heartwarming story about how important fashion is in helping feminine people express themselves, presented in a very humorous manner. The film could have been a depressing forced march  on global trade but the director makes this film quirky, cheeky and imminently watchable. Charlie Price is a young man, who has inherited his father's sinking shoe company. He wants to save the company from falling completely apart. He starts firing people and one of his employees, a lovely lady Lauren, gives him apiece of her mind to look for new ideas rather than just firing people. He travels to London for some ideas and has a chance encounter with a sassy drag queen performer Lola, whom he saved from getting harassed by drunken hoodlums. Lola complains that women's shoes don't stand up to the weight of a full-sized man in drag. Charl...

Mostly shot by hand held camera (or at least that's what it seemed like), this film shows the story of 3 individuals who are coming to terms of their individual feels and what effect their feelings will have on the people around them. Did the film succeed in portraying what it set out to? Let's figure it out. Jana is a lonely social worker. She is in a lackluster and boring relationship with David which has no spark left. David spends most of his time at work and avoids Jana. Whenever he meets her, there is no chemistry and together they are both aware of the drifting chemistry, both physically and emotionally. And then we have a young German Turk Nazim, who also tries hard to keep up the appearance of straightness. Night after night he goes out with his homies, dances with girls like Jana and deals with drugs on Hermann Square. It is first jana who ends up sleeping with him. In a different turn of events, Nazim and David end up sleeping together as well. When the three of the...

Started off well, this movie soon became one of those wannabe's bad bad thriller gay movies. The story is simple but then its the acting, execution and just about everything else which makes a huge huge difference.  Three friends are on a cross country road trip from LA to NYC. Johnny is the eldest of the group who does not miss any opportunity to hook up with a stranger on the road. Mikey owns the car and is dealing with a breakup. Apparently he just found out that he is positive too. The third friend is just coming out and wants to live life a little bit. When they are few hours away from the city, they decide to spend the night at a motel and Johnny drags all of them to a bar called 'Lion's Den' where he is meeting a trick from internet. Johnny gets into an argument with his friends who leave him and go back to the motel. It turns out the motel owner duo of husband-wife have some other plans. The husband likes men and the wife tortures the guys while the husband is h...

Was this film a spoof or a comedy or drama? It is so hard to say. A lot of viewers describe the movie as comedy but I saw WTF!! And where was the plot? A lot of scenes were just there for the heck of it. The story idea was good but it was so badly executed. Armanda, is a 40-something gay man who is very popular in the social circle. He sells farm machinery in the countryside. Just when his life was going monotonous and nothing exciting was happening, he meets a 16 year old girl Curly and they both fall in love with each other. The expected restrain from the parents follow and Armanda woos the girl and they go on a run from the parents and the police. Somehow Armanda finds this magic root which can get him hard to be able to perform. Whenever him and Curly get a chance to make out and "do" something, they are always disturbed. Finally they get an opportunity and they make love but Armanda gets bored and now wants to leave Curly. In the meantime Armanda is being pursued by an ...

Somewhere I Have Never Travelled is a deceptive little film. As a slice of life in rural Taiwan it promises many things overly familiar to anyone who's seen more than a handful of films from the country over the past five years or so. It is wrong to classify this film under gay themed, since it is just that one of the 2 characters happens to be gay and is dealing with it. There is nothing much more than that to this. Ah-Guei is a fifteen-year-old girl who comes from a family of misfits -- her father is intellectually challenged and cleans streets for a living, while her grandfather is a neighborhood character known for his short temper. While Ah-Guei seems like a happy and well-adjusted girl on the surface, she was born color-blind and cannot see red or green, a seemingly minor disability but one that sets her apart from her classmates. Ah-Guei's most trusted confidante is her twenty-year-old cousin Ah-Xian, who dreams of traveling the world and owns a large collection of ...

Sometimes when you experiment in the way a story is narrated, it backfires on you, because as a director you become very self-obsessed. Thankfully this film does not fall in this category. It still is surprising that not many people might be aware of this film. It is a shame because I have never seen this way of showing flashbacks sequences. It must have been a difficult screenplay to write IMO. A prisoner Simon requests for a specific priest to make a confession. The preist is surprised but gives in and visits the prison not knowing what to expect. He is locked by the prison priest in the confession room and soon a play begins. Apparently Simon wants the priest to do a confession of his own. The play being played by the prisoners is real life story of Simon's young adulthood days. Simon used to attend all Catholic school and was in love with another boy Valier. Their love was pure and secret until one of their classmates (the now priest) finds out about them. He confronts them. Th...

A pretty good indie film with art-house character study, embellishes some great performances from its lead characters. Mad win s a very small budget. Christopher Plummer deservingly won the academy award for his supporting role in this film. The story of the film is very simple and straight forward. The first half of the movie focuses on Oliver and his ailing father. After his mother's death, Oliver's father told him 2 things: first he has cancer and second he is gay. Oliver is shocked but he still tries to keep his calm and understand his father. Apart from his father's lover, he is always there for his father whenever he needs it, be it for any gay party, gay events or just taking care of him. We see a lot of incidents that Oliver and his father spend time with each other striving to cultivate their relationship and grow it. We also see Oliver's childhood in flashback where the parents are attempting to make the best of their marriage of convenience. After his fa...

No Soy Como Tú ( I am Not Like You) (Spain) A so called straight guy spends alight with a gay guy but refuses to accept his homosexuality. When city drama forces the 2 men to spend some time together, he realizes that he cannot suppress his feelings for long and it is time he opened his heart for some love. But its too late. (7/10) The Tie That Bind Me (UK) 2 men, supposedly straight, get into a conversation on a rainy evening. Filmed in a theatre setting, it has only 2 characters in their whity tights and just talking. And it seems that in the end, one of the guys is coming out. Totally random film. (2/10) First Time (Israel) A young gay guy arrives in Tel Aviv. He is supposed to stay with someone but cannot find him. He is now stranded on the streets. Till he meets another cute guy on a bus stop and after their eyes meet, he just follows him. (3/10) Keel (UK) Two teenage boys get stoned in a boat shed, lie in a boat and make an imaginary journey, until moment of intimacy ...

Hit and Runway was a formulaic film school comedy. A film about budding friendship, it shows how friendship between 2 most unassuming people just naturally grows. The film doesn't take anyone's side. It just shows how 2 people from 2 different world in terms of ethnicity and sexuality are brought together with a common goal: to become a good screenwriter. All actors are pretty unknown and hence the film becomes more believable.  Alex is a budding screenwriter but the reality is that he is not much of a writer. After his father passes away, he is forced to work at his family's cafe. He wants to write this major story but is hindered by his lack of screenplay writing abilities. He meets Elliot, a regular looking Jewish guy, at his cafe. Elliot is there to meet Joey, the server and part time actor on whom he has a crush on. When Elliot leaves his play for Joey to read, Alex finds it and recognizes that Elliot is the only one who can help him write his script. Overcoming his ph...

I am not too sure what the point was behind this film. Agreed the film had a lot of nude scenes, a few penis shots, decent looking boys. You could say the film explores or tries to explore the intergenerational relationships between gay men. Men in their twenties, thirties vs men in old age who rely mostly on prostitutes to get off. Also the constant murders and all were not really explained. Was this all for love pro for money? Vassili is 30 odd something hustler. He meets old men and murders them. The motive is not explained. He meets Angelo, a 19 year old boy, who is beaten up in one such hustling incident. Vassili brings Alex home and they start falling for each other. They together prostate as a couple and sometimes when guys are not into Vassili because he is old, they just go with Angelo. He soon tells Angelo about the murders. Initially shocked, Angelo still stays because he loves Vassili. Once they are out in a club, they see an old man whom he had once attacked and thought t...

This is a very new and different style of film making. A cross between cinema, play and musical setting, the whole arrangement of the film is different. The sets are minimal , modernistic theatre style. I thikn the film is set sometime in future. Even the narration style of the film is very different. Some of the scenes are randomly shown and then we see what happened that followed to that scene. Yes, it does you leave confused at many a times but still makes for a viewing pleasure. The movie has great potential if it is remade as a typical thriller movie with the same story but very different screenplay. After a very artistic start and a very beautiful dance, we are introduced to the 2 lead characters. Ariyoshi seems fragile and passive. He has come here for murder. He murdered his innocence and a man who was using his innocence. He years for love. Kazuki is tough and aggressive and picks up fights with everyone.He acts first and talks later. He is full of pain. The 2 characters are ...