Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

Xavier Dolan's movies always invoke mixed emotions. One thing is for sure in all his movies thatchy are not straight forward. There is a whole lot of read between the lines and he does try to invoke complex relationships like never before. Sometimes these things work and other times they don't. Trying to comprehend a strange relationship between an actor and an 11 year old child, eventually according to me, this film ended up being a coherent mess despite some of the very biggest names starring in this film like Kit Harrington, Natalie Portman, Susan Sarandon etc. A young 11 year old boy Rupert who lives with his mother in London is obsessed with a handsome television star, John F. Donovan. The film starts with grown up Donovan who has just released a book with his letter correspondence with the actor when he was a child. Through two time frames between flashbacks and current times, we get to see the story of how this friendship blossomed. We see Rupert's strange relationsh...

Tales of the city, More Tales, Further Tales.. these three series along with Queer as Folk were some of the very original series that were an introduction for me to the whole world of queer content available on cds and TV. As an individual who came out late in life, I was quite fascinated and in awe of these shows and what they represented of this community. They were very helpful in making things normal for me and help me deal with all internal struggles that Iw as going through. Naturally when I saw this Netflix limited series coming out which will take some of these characters forward, I had mixed feelings. I was scared of my memories being impacted. What if, I didn't like it, or what if the characters didn't end up the way I wanted them to, and others and this was precisely the reason I delayed watching this show for almost two years. Finally I got through watching it last week and it has taken me some time to gather my thoughts. But to present time and we are back in Barba...

If you thought you had seen all terrible gay movies out there, wait till you see this one. If you are feeling generous enough, maybe you may classify this as a soft porn, but the tragedy is that the makers are under an impression that they have made a cult classic. A young teenager comes to America from Vietnam in search of his father, who is touted to be this 1th richest man in the world. While waiting for his father to accept him, he ends up spending a romantic night in the woods with a stranger he met. Lots of sex follows but in the morning they are found by 3 guys who beat him up real bad. The father, who is a kung fu practitioner will go to any length now to avenge his son. The midst of all this, there is this homeless young attractive boy who is gong around sleeping with random strangers in return for their kindness and at some point some guy (not sure if that's the same young guy or someone else) reaches out to the kung fu to revenge his sister who was rapped by a priest. Tr...

Told in two very distinctive narrative styles in the first and second halves, this autobiographical movie from our director Wes Hurey takes sometime to getting used to. But once you are win, you will be hooked and quite enjoy seeing what unfurls in front of you. I had literally even hopes after 10-15 minutes, but I'm so happy the movie improved and how! Using a number of devices, including aspects of magical realism, Wes Hurley tells the tale of a young boy whose life is turned upside down, whilst at the same time trying to come to terms with his own sexuality. Growing up in a collapsing USSR, young teenager Vasili’s life is turbulent. He lives with his single mother who works as a prison doctor  who calls him 'Potato', and together their future looks bleak in their country. They get continues visits from their grandmother. Potato starts to realize his attraction towards men and both mom and son desire to move west. The mother applies to a mail-order bride service it looks ...

This film is supposed to be to be a psychological thriller drama about a guy who fails to come to terms with being rejected by his boyfriend. But the film fails miserable to go deep into the subject. Instead the constant use of shaky hand held camera, we get a protagonist who is hard to sympathize with. David, 15 and Jonathan, 17 are boyfriends. On the eve of Christmas Jo says they should break up and explore outside since they are so young. This break up doesn't sit very well with David who goes back to his home, where he lives with his grandmother and make s a shrine in his room for Jonathan. For the next few hours, he initiates an attempt to win him back through desperate text messages and Skype calls. When reuniting seems impossible, he embarks on a mission to broadcast to the world the love that his ex-lover just threw away. We follow David through his trysts of clubs and his obsession leading to a fatal ending for himself. I am not sure what the point of the whole movie was. ...

A slice of life film about four friends is how this movie can be described. Even though the focus on on the members of the circle, on of our protagonists clearly gets more footage which is ok. I do not think the makers are going for any message here. I wasn't too hopeful at the beginning of the film and thought it was gonna be one more of those poorly made independent gay films, but it was slightly better than that. What happens when life throws unexpected change son our face and how we respond to that and take decisions is what essentially this film is about. Joe, a single gay man and a writer is in his 30s. His ex and only girlfriend Delia, now married to Rodrigo have just discovered that they cannot have baby because of Rodrigo being sterile, and who happens to go to Spain for few months for work right after this. And finally we have Herbert, a nerdy gay man, who has given up hopes on finding love. One drunken night of partying Joe ends up sleeping with Delia who ends up getting...

This film wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. By no means, I am saying this was good or that I would recommend it to watch, but when your expectations are so low, sometimes some movies end up surprising you. This film seemed more like a spoof of comedy/horror genre. German speaking film, set in New York City, where everyone speaks German itself just feels like an anomaly, and with a title like that, you should know wheat you are getting to. But oh well!! When in a seedy motel Quickie, a condom bites of the penis of a professor trying to harass his student, things get set off. Gay detective Luigi, who is hung like a horse sets to find out truth. When he lays his eye on the young hustler Billy, they both wanna get on the action and hire the same room where this incident happened. Right when they are about to get on to it, The killer condom attacks the officer and Luigi ends up losing one of his nuts. “Nobody bites off a Mackeroni’s jewels and gets away with it. Nobody and noth...

This film is so pretentuos that it's almost laughable. I understand when story writers and directors have a certain vision of the product that they wanna build but its very frustrating for audience when all you get to see is an utterly confused film that comes out more of a piece of arrogance. The story seems simple. Three gay men are in a throuple relationship. An impulsive trust fund rich boy Sutton,a neurotic super fast speaker Patrick and younger more in the moment Frankie. When Frankie gets diagnosed with a mysterious illness, the trio argue on what to do. Frankie wants to move to west coast and even buys a condo there. Initially three is not interested but they decide to road trip to west coast hoping to find a cure for Frankie's disease. How the three men manage their interpersonal relationship, power dynamic, their financial stability and the sexual dynamic forms the film as a whole. There is a whole section of about 30 minutes towards the end where they have a party wi...

Thanks to my friend Sailor Man, who recommended that I should watch this series sooner than later, I am so glad that I did this. Because the way things are going, and the list L shows that I need to watch are rising every single day, it would have been easy for me to miss out this amazing story from Thailand until months later. This is the kind of BL drama thatI had been waiting for a while. A lot of my complains that I have normally had in my previous reviews, especially the Thai series, have all been beautifully handled and taken care of in this show. More on that later. The story is actually pretty basic. Pat and Pran are in Engineering and Architecture faculties who are supposed to be rivals. It turns out that not just that, both their families, who are actually neighbors are staunch rivals and all the kids have ever heard is to take everyone from the other family. So you can imagine that the two boys have nothing but hatred for each other. Although through multiple flashbacks, we ...

A film like this that was made for TV in 2000, has its heart in the right place. But it gets so repetitive with its fallouts and redemptions so often that it gets tiring to watch. With all the positivity that the film tries to evoke, these factors take away from the film to reach higher goods. This is a story of redemption which tries too hard to make people cry and manage that with having a lead character being a famous drag queen. Holiday Heart is a very famous drag performer who is yet to get over her boyfriend's death. She hopes to go to Paris to restart her life. One day he meets teenage Nikki and her mother Wanda who are being abused by Wanda's boyfriend, and Holiday invites them to live in the next door spare apartment that he owns in a building. The three eventually become a unit and start living happily as family. The sis until,Wanda falls for Drug dealer Silas and ultimately reverts to her habits if using drugs, prostitution and being a good for nothing mother. After ...

This is one show which really didn't need a sequel. Honestly I wasn't impressed with the first season anyway and sadly, all my problems with season 1 continue to exist in season 2 as well. More on that later. The basic concept of Monos (color blind) and Probes (the soulmates who allow monos to see vivid color) continues on this season.  In season 1 we see how a mono Yeon-Woo finds his soulmate in Yoo-han after this mother's disappearance. This season starts with Yoo-han also being kidnapped and is disappeared and both Yeon-Woo and his aunt are still looking for answers for his lost mother. Yeon-Woo begins a personal investigation. Soon a classmate Sehyun joins him, who we are later told has feelings for our lead. Turns out that eye's sister was also a mono and had died under mysterious circumstances. They soon find out that there is a secret organization who are trying to experiment a probe surgery on monos and if that succeeds monos will no longer need probes to comple...

A mystery psychological queer thriller bordering on small town horror, tis small little film had a nice story to tell but it keeps getting lost in multiple repetitiveness and a heavy handed execution that make you question shot's really going on. Which in a normal circumstance is fine, but even if by the end of the film, if the questions go unanswered, then we have a problem. Mixed race gay couple Aaron and Malik move away form the city to a quieter suburban neighborhood with Aaron's teenage daughter Kayla who feels she has been abandoned by her mother. They moved because of Aaron's job. And Malik is stay at home, freelance writer, ghostwriting the book of an advocate for gay conversion therapy. But not everything is what meets the eye. We meet Tiffany, the very sunny neighbor, her work-from-home husband and their son who is trying to befriend Kayla. And then there is a weird old grandfather who lurks around creepily around their house. Malik feels there is something off ab...

This is not a gay film and if you know me, I like to make some things clear right at the onset. The reason I am reviewing it here is that our lead is a gay man who is struggling a little with choice of his love and also because this film gets circulated in the queer library. But at its heart it has nothing to do with our lead's sexuality. The film is rural, rustic and set in a time period, which I am not very sure, because just when you think everything is in early years in rural setting, you see something modern and so you are not sure what's going on. There is a group called warriors, who help lords in catching of thieves, bandits, kidnappers act in the rural towns and jungles etc. When the most wanted bandit kidnaps the daughter of a wealthy landowner, who reigns over the shepherds of the area, its time to track him down. Fogo is the lead warrior who is pretty popular for his quick results. He teams up with two other warriors with other unique qualities to team up with him. ...

A Korean slow, moody film set in Thailand, this film had decent story but the treatment, editing and the direction of the film leaves a lot to be desired. As individuals we all are dealing with some sort of baggage in life, some accept it and some prefer to deal with it. This film focuses on three such individuals who are interconnected and how they are dealing with a trauma that joins them. Min-ki has just arrived to Thailand to look for his brother's boyfriend Jae-hee. We are told through series of flashbacks that Min-kiss brother was harassed a lot by his seniors in military. He couldn't take it anymore and committed suicide. Min-ki believes that had Je-hee been there for his brother, the outcome would have been different. Jae-hee on the other hand is spending time in Pattaya with his sick step-brother who is soon going to die. The trio just get into a weird dynamic where Min-Ki wants Jae-hee to apologize but he wouldn't. Eventually Min-ki realizes that what his brother ...

I am new to Mattioli Productions and I don't think I have seen any of their collection of short stories before. Bouncing around from genre to genre, this stellar new collection of short films from showcases some of the most cutting edge recent gay cinema from the United States and Australia. Overall, I really wasn't impressed by any single short film from this collection. Hopelessly (USA) Darren is determined to find a connection, no matter how many people he has to go through. When his girlfriend and his boyfriend don’t have time for him, Darren goes on an adventure to find love again. Explore a day in the life of a polyamory relationship, in all its awkward beauty. Innocent Boy (USA) Off a lonely Texas highway, a group of hustlers prey on the desperados who come for sex and drugs. As the boys begin to fall one-by-one, a young trans boys finds himself caught between a cowboys lustful rage, greed, and corruption. Mass (USA) Gay, HIV-positive and lonely in New York City, Trey (w...