Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

Even though the summary of the film may say so, I am not sure if I would really call this film as a piece of queer cinema. On one hand, the film is a complex and layered exploration of evolving friendships and how easily they can become romantic under heightened circumstances. And on the other, it also shows us complex relationships within a family and what happens when a little girl suddenly becomes a miracle child. Lino, a delivery boy and Mario, a motorcycle mechanic ar the closest of friends. They are both young, handsome, play soccer, and are looking for new experiences to escape the monotony of their daily lives. Lino lives with his depressed mother and his radiant younger sister Annaluce and has difficulties paying the rent. In the first scene, we see that a dove crashes with a statue of Mother Mary and falls down. Annaluce takes the bird in her hands and it flies again, a sign of the gift of life and suddenly she becomes the patron saint of the district. This creates a weird di...

An Army Of Lovers is a visual journey into the history of queer self-presentation in Sweden. Combining newly shot 16mm and Super-8 material with rare archival footage, this documentary tells the story of the brave activists who in the 1970s picked up their film cameras in order to tell their own truths to the world – defying the ‘illness classification’ attributed to homosexuality and the dominant homophobic imagination. In 1977, the same year that the first liberation march paraded through Stockholm, three pivotal queer films began production: Bögjävlar/Damned Queers, Kvinnan i ditt liv är du/The woman in your life is you and Eva & Maria. For the first time, open lesbians and gay men were granted state funding for depicting their own realities, stories about finding love and community and confronting society’s rampant homophobia and traditional gender roles. In this documentary, rich archive is brought to life and recharged with urgency in dialogue with newly shot documentary scen...

I appreciate that a few Thai writers are trying to come up with something new these days. Everyone likes to talk about multiverse, parallel universes and stuff, but when you involve science fiction, you need to make sure that things make sense and people are easily able to differentiate the two worlds. Also, even if , as an audience I can put my beliefs about science on the side, I should be able to connect to the story. This series unfortunately fails short of the exciting premise it started with. Also, I was also happy to see this lead pair again after 'Until We Meet Again'. (Thinking P'Dean). The show is 12 episodes each of about 40-50 minutes Mum is a bar owner who runs a local business with his best friend, Games. He is a playboy and flirts with girls and sleeps around. Mum's sister is Mint and they are both very close ever since the parents passed away and they both constantly look out for each other. One night, after falling asleep in his apartment 609, he wakes ...

I have been hearing of this film for a very long time now. Touted as the first ever film from Pakistan to feature in Cannes festival, it also won the Queer Palme award and has been getting rave reviews almost eevrytime I have read anything about the film. Naturally my curiosity got the better out of me and I can now se why the film is so special. With a very sensitive story, vibrant visuals, a family dynamics that's easy to relate to; the film is a sublime tale of love, loss and coming out in its own unique way. There are no villains per se, except for the social expectations of individuals and how they are supposed to live. Using Haider, as its main protagonist, the film tries to show us the rigidities of our society, in this case gender and sexuality, and the quiet and painful ways in which they manifest. The story is about a joint family whose younger son is Haider. He is married to Mumtaz, who works in a beauty parlor while he stays home helping his elder brother's wife wit...

Where We Go From Here - Amor (USA) One of the anthology of 3 films: Amor is story of a 49 year old man in relationship with young and carefree latino boy who recently moved to the country. Due to age and experience difference, they have difference in opinion on how to spend evenings and weekends and mostly argue around going to bars/clubs. After one such major fight the older guy lives the club leaving the young boy behind, as it happens to be the night of the Orlando gay club shooting. Our First Time (Thailand) A popular YouTube goes to get a massage for the first time, but since all masseurs are busy, the owner asks his nephew, the receptionist, to massage the guy (which will be first for him as well). The duo connect and bond over this massage. A thoughtful message but very poorly crafted film. More like a first time direction and acting. Cringe ! Mommy's House (USA) When Richard and Carl's car breaks down in the mountains, they find themselves stranded at the opulent mansio...

I did not know what to expect from this film, but man it was good. A gritty yet warm Kiwi coming-of-age drama about boxing, machismo and teenaged sexual identity and discovery. The direction and presentation is a bit artsy but with some very sensitive performances and a strong understanding of small town dynamics, makes this film a winner in my opinion. We don't really get to see movie of queer athletes coming out, and this film doesn't out it straight in your face, but lets us through a beautiful journey of this teenager. Jim is a seventeen-year-old boxer in a small town. He is a golden boy, preparing for a fight that will elevate him to an early professional status. But his father Stan is a demanding coach and a notorious alcoholic. No staying up all night editing music videos out of frolics with his friends, no messing about, pre-bout with his girlfriend. He likes to make videos of nature and water and dunes. Near one of these volcanic sand dunes, he meets Whetu, who is bull...

This film has a very indie feeling and a story idea that had its heart at the right place but execution fails at multiple levels sadly. Also, of many non-Indians it will be hard to identify with the family dynamics and how and why every relative has a say in what goes and what doesn't. We have seen quite a few films about coming-out, but here the focus seems on father an family and the societal pressure rather than the actual dilemma of being gay/coming out and being with your loved one. Sidhu, a young introvert guy is about get married. Preparations are in full swing and it just a couple of days away , but something is bothering him and he doesn't say anything. His father is clearly boss of the house, very dominating and always worried about society and what people will say or think. The film goes on showing us wedding preparations and also the fact that something is bothering Sidhu. Eventually when his uncle comes, he tells him he doesn't want to get married, but never te...

When Boys Fly is a 2002 documentary film about gay circuit parties. I am guessing pretty much everyone in the community is by now familiar with the concept of circuit parties - all-night dance parties with an emphasis on sex and drugs. This documentary follows three men as they attend one in Miami and the people they encounter and what happens over one night. Tone, is a 21 year old student who has attended several of these parties but has also gone out of control because of overuse of drugs. His roommates are worried about him and have delivered an ultimatum: if he "fucks up" at the White Party he will be thrown out of the house and out of his roommates' lives. Brandon, a 23 year old student of UCLA is essentially a loner and have never been to any of these parties. He is very firm in his decision not to use drugs at the party and worries that he will be ostracized at the party for his decision. Then we have the trip of Jon (19), Jason (early 20s) and Todd (mid 30s). Jon ...

Jim Hubbard is an experimental filmmaker who has made films and videos centered around protests organized by members of the LGBTQ and AIDS communities. He co-founded the New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival (now known as MIX) in 1987. He has also been active with other preservation and archiving efforts. A Valentine For Nelson (1990) A short meditation on the nature of building relationships. A long overdue love letter. A relationship is as hard to build as a cathedral -- it takes more than one lifetime. A film in which virtually every shot is intended as a metaphor. Tender, loving and unsentimental.  Blues (1982) On September 29, 1982, police raided Blues, a Black, Gay bar on West 43rd Street across from the New York Times. They brutalized the customers and destroyed the bar. On October 8th, after the mess had been cleaned up, they raided the bar again. It was the last Gay bar in the history of New York City. On October 15th, hundreds of members of the community dem...

This feels like a very indie sort of film trying to make. bold new statement. There ia bit of historical, political context as well, that I important to understand to appreciate this film, which is clearly explained here. Billed as the ‘city of the future,’ Serra do Ramalho was constructed in the 1970s in order to rehouse thousands of citizens that had been forcefully relocated. The setting becomes an important backdrop for this elegant, gentle film which is full of hope for a new generation building their own family of the future. We meet our protagonists. Milla is a young girl, a school dance teacher who is bisexual (we are old later and it's being a girl). Her colleague Gilmar is a god friend of her, but it tuns out he is gay and is in a relationship with younger boy Igor. It feels everyone around knows about this but also still doesn't really acknowledge. Milla gets pregnant by Gilmar who promises to look after her. A hurt Igor visits Milla who assures her that the baby wil...

Its a shame when you know that a show could have been better with proper editing and screenplay, but instead you get the same old drama, where all girls are made to be the bad people, almost everyone's BL be suddenly accepted because of these bad girls. There are almost 3 parallel love stories happening in the high school drama, but suddenly the makers decide to add. A murder mystery sort of elect , which is a total rip off of 'Elite", th famous show. It's impossible to endorse the tacky plots, toxic relationships, and vile behaviour in this show, but there are naughty and some goofy parts also to it which make it a bit watchable. If you don't take the show seriously, you may actually end u finding it bearable and watchable. The show has 6 episodes each of about 50 minutes, with a promise that they will come up with a sequel. Ken and Shokun secretly hook up around school Since Ken is in football team , he doesn't want anyone to know but Shokun has had enough an...

This film was such a half-baked slice-of-life drama intermixed with some sort of a ghost story. Now, my problem with films like this is also that should I really count this film as a queer cinema and review. Sure, our protagonist is a gay actor, but that angle has absolutely nothing to do with the story that this film is trying to say and this character could easily have been straight or trans or whatever and it wouldn't have made even an iota of difference. And to top that the story is weird and I am really not sure what the makers were trying to say. Pablo, handsome young man, is an aspiring gay actor. He has broken up with popular YouTuber boyfriend (but they are friends with boundaries now). To make matters worse his roommate also moves out without having paid last two months rent. Pablo is really struggling with money, so he takes up participating in clinical trials to make ends meet. But ever since the roommate left the house and left one of his sweaters behind, Pablo feels a...

This is what the official synopsis of this documentary say - In the early 1970s, Argentinean homosexuals were tortured and imprisoned by the police or in mental hospitals. Some gays decided to fight. They joined revolutionary groups and founded the Homosexual Liberation Front. But the leftist parties weren’t ready for them. The film takes its name from the FLH manifesto published in 1973, which in the film functions as the center of the story of the hard struggle carried out by the LGBT community from the formation, in the late 60s, of the first group Nuestro Mundo led by Héctor Anabitarte, until crowning with Equal Marriage and the Gender Identity law. From five testimonies of protagonists of those times (Jorge Luis Giacosa, Guillermo García, Valeria del Mar Ramírez, Daniel Molina and Alejandro Modarelli), issues like  marginalization, discrimination and struggle in the most diverse fields are reconstructed. It was an interesting perspective to see a lot of background imagery and ...

A very interesting story about the peppy romance between a young queer man’s first brush with love with his friend's older brother, this film was quite charming. A story split between two decades, its the kind of film which will remind one of films like 'Weekend' which are about short lived love stories suspended in time and how it can make or break herts in ways that you can't imagine or think. And this is my second Australian feature within a few days of each other. The film starts with a frenzy very fast paced scene where the film is set in 1999. High schooler boy Kol finds himself in a frenzy when his dance partner Ebony wakes up stranded near a beach after blacking out. In a mad dash not to miss the big competition, he rushes to pick up her red-fringed gown hitches a ride with her brother Adam, who according to Ebony is the only person available to help them out and who has a car. Adam's presence has Kol both on edge and at ease. A few years older and already o...

Vietnamese BL shows are still going through their multiple phases. While certain production houses are coming up with polished series, some up coming producers are still gonna take some time to reach there. But at least they ar not torturing us with 14 long episodes. Instead this series with only 5 episodes of 20-30 minutes each, is an easy watch and at the end of it, even though you may feel that story is rough around the edges, you don't feel that you have wasted a whole ton of time. The show primarily suffers due to the same BL tropes that Thai shows did few years back. Instead of developing the attraction between the leads, it focuses on tired conflicts, silly jokes, and a scheming love rival. Thankfully we get a romantic finale. Thanh has a fight with his father for joining music school and he leaves and is going somewhere. We also met An, a young man who lives in the city. Begets a call from his aging grandmother asking him to come visit her since it's been over ten years...