Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

I had mixed feelings 15 minutes into the film. I was wondering whether this is going to be another trash, budget independent bad movies or will it bring something different in perspective. I have to admit that less than half way into the film, I forgot and didn’t care about the low production quality or even the use of hand help camera at different points. I was engaged in the chemistry of the leads and was just trying to figure out what the relationship between the leads is, because it is never made clear to us until quite late in the film. A complicated but love story would be an appropriate way to describe this film. Sahil, is a young budding musician, who has a huge fight with his roommate(?) Alex before heading to the airport to meet his childhood friend Jai. Jai is now a successful banker and is in India for a meeting and Sahil plans a weekend getaway to Western Ghats with his friend. The two are from very different worlds which we see n first few minutes of the film but des...

One thing gets very clear after you have started watching this film, that this is definitely a book turned into a film. The dialogues seem something like you would read in a book and even otherwise things are not. at a consistent pace and that was my biggest problem with the film. An otherwise beautiful love story spanning over a period of few years gets wasted when you don’t work at all in characters behaviour or clothes or attitude to reflect the changing timelines. The film starts with Benjamin, openly gay 17-year old high school student. He is completely infatuated with a new student Tim in class. Gorgeous Tim is popular, very handsome and apparently straight and so Benjamin stands no chance. An accident when Benjamin trips over him brings the two boys together when Tim confronts Benjamin if he indeed is gay. Soon their love story begins and both the boys are very happy but Tim still can’t come out in open, forget telling his friends about Benjamin. They eventually break-up ev...

What’s happening to me! Why can’t I find a couple of hours at a stretch to watch a nice decent gay film? I hate being busy. But thankfully web series or short TV series dont require a commitment of a couple of hours at a stretch and hence, they come to my rescue. MIQVA is one such series which has 8 episodes, each of about 8-12 minutes in duration. The primary events happens between 4 close gay friends over an evening and our primary man is Juan, who is also the host of the party. He is obliged to attend a family event with a boyfriend. "I imagine that you will come accompanied" (“Me Imagino Que Vendrás Acompañado” thus the abbreviation MIQVA) says his mother, who has accepted him being homosexual but cannot accept that her son is single. This happens every time and all his friends have already exhausted pretending to be his boyfriend. In the urge to avoid problems and prejudices, he hires an escort as a companion, and gather his friends to give them the news and ask the...

I know I am posting after months. But I have ben way too busy with a lot of things happening in life, and am not sure how and when I will be back to watching and reviewing films regularly. Anyway.. What is happening with this whole series? Something that started off with a brilliant collection of stories is turning into something barely relatable. At least I feel so. Its quite disappointing. Golden (Germany) As a golden boy becomes a golden man, his carefree spirit wanes under the weight of being different. As he grows up he becomes more introverted until, one day he discovers he’s not alone. I had seen this before. Something that shows you may not be alone. Jamie (UK) Shy, quiet Jamie, spends a revealing afternoon with Ben after meeting on a dating app. As they chat, Jamie finds himself opening up and letting loose his hopes and fears in an unexpected awakening. Interesting! B. (Germany) Torn between a cold relationship with K. and her feelings for another woman, shy and i...

This film is very important not just for the black community but also very much for the African-gay people, who like a lot of other communities struggle to be themselves. This film especially becomes important form a US standpoint when politically things are going downhill and people are very quick to judge anyone who doesn’t cater to the social norms. I have been hearing so much about the film, especially after winning the Oscar award, so naturally my expectations from the film were quite high and I have to admit that the film actually meets expectations to a large extent. It is important to understand and relate to what and how a child goes through and how any small thing can infest a kids mind and ultimately shape his or her future. The movie is told in 3 parts and focusses on life of Chiron, a young boy. Drug dealer Juan watches Chiron being chased after by school boys shouting faggot behind him. He rescues a boy but in a manner that doesn’t shelve his self-respect and bring h...

A beautiful and touching film, although not-necessarily a centrally gay-themed one. The film deals with issues of friendship, acceptance, rebel, self-confidence. Equal focus is given on all three primary characters in the film. More than anything it is about friendship and how one kiss could change the lives of friends. Slowly, three of our primary characters are introduced to us. Lorenoz is new to town. He is outgoing, exuberant, very gay and likeable (if you want to). He has been adopted by very liberal parents and brought to town. Parents are ready to fight with school authorities if they have to, to make sure Lorenzo is comfortable with who he is. He becomes real close friends with Blu, daughter of hippy parents. She has been labelled as rebel and slut because of an infamous incident where she slept with her bf and three other friends of him. She gets called names in school, so she prefers to be by herself. And finally we have Antonio, a gorgeous young boy and basketball star ...

A very taboo subject, whenever someone tackle sit, can be very easily met with extreme negative reactions. Although I personally may never endorse the feelings, but I do respect and am ready to give my view point to a film makers motivation on taking up a complicated subject and present it to their audience. Shown us through Nate’s view point and through flashbacks, we are introduced to brothers Steven and Nate. Steven is a year older, and a medical student from out of town. Nate stays local and is a physical trainer in a local gym. Steven returns to town after their mother’s demise. We learn through flashbacks that their father is already dead. Steven stays back to comfort his brother Nate emotionally, who was very close to their mother. But soon enough more secrets are revealed and we find out that both Steven and Nate have been in a secret relationship with each other. Something that started as sexual experimentation in their pre teen years soon evolved in a very very strong lo...

Slash is definitely not a gay themed film but has enough references for it to have a review here on my blog. I’ll try to keep it short and simple for 2 reasons. a) Because I didn’t think too much of the film, and b) My blog is supposed to be mainly about queer cinema but this film falls in a grey area. Neil is an introvert 15 year old, questioning high school freshman. He thinks he might be gay but isin’t sure, although he continues to write steamy fan fiction for his own pleasure. He writes about Vanguard, the brawny, galaxy-hopping hero of a popular sci-fi franchise. When his stories are exposed in class Neil is mortified, but the slightly older, effortlessly cool Julia comes to his defense, who is a fan fiction writer herself on an online “adult” forum. They both become good friends and Neil has someone with whom he feels comfortable with. He feel she is falling in love with Julia. Until Neil grabs attention of Denis thorough the website, who is the site moderator and he invite...

Thanks to one of my blog followers lina, I finally managed to watch the third  season of the show ‘Skam’ which apparently translates to ‘Shame’. My initial thoughts, (a) Why didn’t I watch this series sooner (b) How do I now find time to watch the first two seasons.? For those unaware of the show, like I was till a few days back, this is a hit Norwegian show, a cross between TV/online/web series that focusses on lives on teenagers studying in a high school. Each season focusses on a different character and tackles various issues. The main theme of season 3 is the gay storyline and this is how I came to know about the show in the first place. Its 10 episodes with each episode being 20-25 minutes each. Since I haven’t seen the show’s first 2 seasons, my review will be based on this season as an individual. The main character of this season is Isak, who hangs out with his close group of 3 other male friends. He flirts with one of the popular girls Emma, but very soon we realize t...

Entre Amigos (Mexico) [Between Friends] A quick short film of two teenage friends. One of them is in hospital and THE other one has secret crush on his friend. When the sick guy asks his friend to jerk- him off since he is his friend, things may take a different turn when the other guy will try to go beyonD just jerking off his friend. He has now accepted his sexuality. What will his friend do? The boys were cute and the film is kept at a perfect short length of just abut 5 minutes. 1992 (France) It's 1992. Martin is 17 and he films his daily life with his Hi8 camera. He films anything and everything around him. One day he meets Dominique, 23 and works as a student monitor at Martin's high school. Soon an affair begin between the two. Its also the time when Martin is trying to figure out why his relationship with his father is so strained. Maybe filming him also would help. Bed Buddies (USA) An interesting take on what happens when three gay friends take their rel...

A campy film, I wasn’t expecting much from it to be honest but it wasn’t bad at all. Broadly divided into two halves, the first part is actually a bit of drag (no pun intended) but the film gets a lot funnier, quirky and exactly what you hoped for once we have our main character in drag. Which one us doesn’t like the offensive and insulting one-liners specially from drag queens. This film definitely delivered on that front but how I wished there was more of it. The plot is simple. Richard has been in New York for a while and soon moves to a small town in Texas to teach in a school in the middle of nowhere, as part of the Teaching Ambassador Program. But the stint lasts only a couple of days till the Vice Principal realises he is gay and gets him kicked out. He meets an RJ at an empty bar who soon makes Richard realise that he may have some hidden talents. Richard soon transforms in drag as Bianca Del Rio and applies for a job back at school. The cat and mouse fun games begin now w...

You will never be able to forget the opening of the film. An explicit sex scene is a dungeon of the club is not something many movies start with, but I think this film wanted to make a statement and it sure did. Thankfully the 15ish minute scene, although very graphic (with actual penetration scenes), is never meant to arouse the audience, rather wen the film progresses, you realize why the whole build up. More on that later. Starting in a sex club in Paris, curly haired Theo has his eyes set on Hugo, who is engaged in a passionate sex act with a random boy. You can tell that Theo is so mesmerised with him that he wants him at all cost and eventually he manoeuvres his way through to him in that orgy of the sex club. The two have crazy instant chemistry, physically and passionately (and the scene that depicts this is absolutely fantastic). They both leave club and still can’t get enough of each other. Remembering their passionate sexual act, they soon realise that they had unprotec...

This film clearly falls in the low budget, not much thought to the story, just make a gay-film for the heck of it kinda category; which I have reviewed many a times on my blog before. Thankfully it is not that terrible, well, maybe barring a few actors but at least the movie moves along a decent pace and finishes before you realise that you are starting to get bored. The film follows three parallel tracks set between Christmas day and New Years. We have a married couple Cal & Laslo. They live happily for many years and cannot fathom the fact that all their friends are going the family way adopting kids. Imagine their surprise when Cal’s nephew shows up unannounced at their doorstep after he gets kicked out from his home by his mother for being gay. Even though unprepared, they very sportingly take on their new responsibility of caregivers and family to their nephew. Second story is about room mates Julian and Dylan. Since Julian travels a lot for work, Dylan has been secretly ...

I struggled a bit with the film for two reasons: One, whether this film truly belongs the LGBT genre and second, related to the first is what is the point and message that is being tried to made. I am not by any means saying that its  abad or a confused film. I feel, for viewer like me who wants (or rather prefers) a clear distinction between queer cinema and otherwise gets confused when served with something like this. This film may be promoted as a film about a Korean teenager discovering his sexuality but it is actually a broader story of being a first-generation Korean- American, sense of tradition and responsibility for the family and everything that come with it. We meet a Korean family based in LA. David, a young 18-ish boy uses most of his time helping out his mom and dad running their restaurant. The parents have dreams of him studying hard and making something more successful out of himself but clearly David is not very good at studies. The times are tough and the fa...

At the outset, the film may seem like another coming-of-age story but the treatment of the film is quite different. Bit of style and a bit of fantasy intermixed with the normal storytelling methods makes this film an exciting watch. The way the treatment of the film was done, reminded me constantly of Xavier Dolan’s film. The film may not be everyone’s cup of tea but you will surely be impressed by the novelty of the treatment of the subject. Oscar is really young when his mother decides to leave them & the parents separate. We find out later  the reasons but we see that the once loving father slowly becomes aloof an distant. He is probably gay even as a kid and he witnesses a hate crime happen to one of his schoolmates. On asking his father why did that happen, his father mentions that probably because the guy was gay and this makes Oscar further hides his sexuality. He starts dealing with internalised homophobia, specially also given the fact of what his father has alway...