Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

This is one of those BL series where story is c coherent mess, the characters behave irrationally most time, is a guilty pleasure to watch because clearly the focus was on skin, hot bodies and a lot of sex (with a little bit of story throw in). Combined with bad acting, it was entertaining here and there but overall was just bad and stretched for no reason at all. The series had 10 episodes of 50-60 minutes and I special episode and still the makers did not know how really they wanted to end the show. A young man Kyle returns to his hometown, heir to sardine family business after many years returning from Manila trying to take a break from financial scandal and his ex-boyfriend and former business partner. Estranged from his father and burdened by the past, Kyle tries to lay low by immersing himself in the company’s operations. He is sent to see to see how the operations are handled and there he mets hot and handsome Andre, a lowly labour who works on the board. He is a humble fisherma...

As you can likely guess by the poster itself, this film is over the top. But at the same time its very heartwarming family-comedy film that never overstays its welcome and makes its point across with sharp wit and humor. It perfectly blends heart and humor, offering audiences the kind of feel-good entertainment that leaves you smiling long after the credits roll. The title means "stepmother" Victor “Beki” Labrador finds out that his love of his life Enrique has passed away. He travels a long distance to make sure he attends his funeral. At his will reading, he is shocked to fund out that he has left him half estate and stake in family business with one condition that Beki must move in his mansion and live with his two sons and their stern grandmother as the stepmother. What follows is a heartfelt and funny journey as Beki confronts the past and tries to win over a family that wants nothing to do with him. Through flashbacks we learn that Beki met Enrique in school in country ...

This is a very ambitious series made on a very grand scale. You can imagine when you are to try and showcase palaces, royalties, games, elaborate stunning costumes, ornate jewelry, royal rivalries, and forbidden romances.etc; so in that way it succeeds in doing all that. There is deception, fights as well which I will talk about in a while and a few steamy sex scenes between our prince and his royal guard too. But overall there is much les romance here and more about the whole royal family story, which could be interesting for some while others may feel cheated with not as much of BL focus. The makers have tried to capture way too many subplots here. With a long run tome of over one hour every episode, this 14 episode series takes a lot of commitment to watch with the last episode going over 90 minutes in duration. We are introduced to a kingdom of Emmaly in Thailand. There are 4 big clans who take turns running the kingdom deepening on which family proves to be a worthy successor. We ...

I was wondering what happened to Alan Carr's series follow up season. I didn't realize that I was late to the party. Having just finished the Celebrity Traitors UK version, it reminded me ho wI enjoyed this series. Thankfully getting ny hands on season 3 turned out to be easy. I just did not know it was already out. Season 3 returns to Northampton in 1989 and to a 13-year-old Alan Carr navigating the awkward currents of adolescence. The series draws directly from the comedian’s youth while keeping its themes instantly readable. This season centers on Alan’s emerging sexuality and an intense crush on Jake, a handsome classmate. This season we witness Alan having a crush on his classmate Jake. When he sees him working in a local store and then later at swimming pool. Unlike other boys, Jake is not dismissive of Aland and is friendly and of course Alan sees this as a sign of friendship. While the underlying theme is that of Alan finally growing into a teenager, every episode conti...

This period drama set in the 80s in Chile battles bigotry with both vengeance and compassion. In the Chilean desert, eleven-year-old Lidia grows up in a loving queer family pushed on the edge of an unwelcoming dusty mining town. They are blamed for a mysterious illness that's starting to spread -- said to be passed through a single gaze. I guess it's a metaphor for AIDS pandemic but I am not sure tbh. There is a commune of transgender women who live in a Chilean desert. As a new plague begins taking hold, rumors run wild about how prolonged eye-contact or a loving gaze, shared with a gay man or transgender woman can lead to infection. Eleven-year-old girl Lidia is bullied about this by her male friends, since her mother Flamingo is a trans woman belonging to a close-knit community of “transvestites” and is sort of the beauty queen there. She herself is sick at this point. The girl take their revenge on the boys by beating them up. One night around cabaret performances, a man na...

Mirroring the gay dating situation in today's life and taking a cue for its title courtesy the many gay dating apps, this film focuses on a 20 year old boy who is obsessed with Grindr. Tired of it and not finding anything suitable, the film focuses on just one night where our lead protagonist starts obsessively looking for a real experience in the Buenos Aires nightlife. The film starts with 20 year old Santi meeting a guy at his apartment for hookup. The trust doesn't go how he planned to, so he goes back to work and share all details with his best friend at work Karen. Santi is constantly on Grindr looking for hookup, posing for and posting photos, as well as swiping and texting profiles and waiting for someone to message him. The film presents him as a lonely, horny, young gay man searching for someone and something. We are not sure. Santi sets up a date to met another guy at a bar but after few minutes of conversation, this guy tries to arrange some intimacy in a bar bathro...

Toad Song (China) Eight-year-old Letian is called to bring his parents to school after getting into a fight and bringing tadpoles. He feels he now needs to find new home for tadpoles, but in the process he realizes the strange setup of his family. Mom and dad don'ts sleep together and an "uncle" stays on. One night he sees his dad with the other guy and he is confused. This new info while working on finding new home for tadpoles brings this small family closer. In the film makers words - "a child helping a tadpole find a home, a story of a child growing up in a marriage of convenience and defining what 'home' means to them" The kid was great and its nice beautiful film. My Senses Are All I Have to Offer (Portugal) Lourdes and Lana met telepathically using “sensory pills,” a technology that allows access to other people’s sensations from a distance. After months of relationship, Lourdes decides to visit the country house of her gay parents, Vicente and Ca...

Supposedly a dark comedy about two friends trying to get by in this economical crisis and housing situation, this film is situational fun while two friends come up with a scheme to spend an entire year living “rent free” with the help of friends, family and strangers alike in a rapidly changing Austin. Ben and Jordan, twenty something, have been close friends since childhood. Ben has sold away all his belongings to begin his New York era and is staying with. Friend and his wife. Jordan joins Ben on a trip to New York to see his friend off, and spend some time in the big city. And as they assuredly know, New York can be ridiculously expensive. Ben is a Gen-z gay squatter who tries to sleep with the friend he is staying with which does not go well and they ask him to leave. Finding themselves suddenly homeless, Ben has no option but to return to Austin with Jordan. Jordan's girlfriend is not too happy about this, especially since Jordan has not paid his share of rent for. A few month...

Spanning the five-year period after an intense teenage break-up, this Danish film is an unconventional coming-of-age tale, where the film focuses on the lead protagonist's inability to get over his first heartbreak. The past lovers details are slowly revealed, but also never fully explained on why the breakup happened, but in the process we are shown a fraught modern gay love. We meet 20-something Christian, a university student, who spends his time between studying and clumsy casual sex using the app but he seems to find no real release in his trysts. He’s awkwardly torn between feeling bad when his hookups leave right away and freaking out when guys want to take it slow and get to know him. The entire film focuses on him meeting many new folks but hardly making connections, but he was not like this always. Through multiple flashbacks we are shown how he was extremely happy with his then boyfriend Aske. Form his first date with him to full of romantic ideas, he used to be a very p...

This steamy, unapologetically queer hockey romance on HBO has become of the surprise hots of the year. In fact, I have been reading that it is the platform's biggest success this year; which honestly surprises me a little. Based on a book, this 6 episode, one hour each series is filled with very explicit sexual scenes, which of course add a lot to the viewership, but thankfully the show is not just about sex (although there is a lot of it). It is about how these two rivals eventual get emotionally close from just physical intimacy, talks about cultural barriers, and the terrible price of living in the closet. Canadian hockey star Shane Hollander and Russian hockey star Ilya Rozanov are rivals on the ice; something that media also plays with. But somewhere there is a spark that gets stated with Rozanov initiating an invite to Shan win his room. What follows is a night of very sexual passion and the affair continues for 7-8 years playing different games.  They have the best sex and t...

Ex-Wales rugby star Gareth Thomas came out as gay in 2009 after hiding his sexuality for years. He admitted it almost drove him to suicide after his wife Jemma left him when he told her the truth. Thomas said unless homophobia in football was "policed as stringently as racism is policed, then it will always be a problem". The former Cardiff Blues player looked at the issue in a documentary for BBC Wales. When Thomas was assaulted because of his sexuality, he has been seeking to include homophobic abuse in the 1991 Football Offences Act so it is dealt with in the same way as racism on the pitch. While he had already been lobbying for the change for years, he said the assault made him realise quite how harmful hate speech can be and it further spurred him on. The documentary starts with him trying to get an idea of history of using gay abuses and hurls towards both players and fans and how it was always considered ok and non-offensive. But times have changed. He goes into locke...

Yay for a full on BL series from China. My friend mentioned that the series is getting very popular in this year, so naturally I was keen of watching it. And for various multiple reasons it took me more than 2 months to finish it. Not because t is bad or anything, but I had various personal commitments, I would start it and then pause again. And the fact that the show has 24 episodes of 40-45 minutes each demand that you need to invest a lot of time in this one. It is rewarding but it is definitely one of the longest Asian BL shows I have watched. And we know China is known for tightly censoring BL content, so I was quite surprised to see that this show isn’t wishy-washy when it comes to the sexuality of its primary characters.  Story starts off pretty simple. When a young and poor-ish Wu Suo Wei gets dumped by his girlfriend, he finds out that she dumped him for money and is now seeing the rich tycoon Chi Cheng who loves snakes. He hatches a plan where he thinks that he will seduc...

This is a Japanese comedy series primarily focusing on a fujoshi, who is totally shipping two of her office male colleagues and imagines them in all kinds of torrid situations. Oh man!1 I laughed so hard in almost every single episode. The female lead is brilliant, and her boundless enthusiasm propels the funny antics. I wouldn't call this strictly a BL because we are never really told about the real relationship, but honestly I don't care. Breezy 25 episodes of each just 5 minutes were so much fun to watch, that I will be going around recommending this show.  Oto is a female accountant in a sales office. She often sees Daichi (one of the youngest sales employee who has a very outgoing and perky personality) and Hong (a 32 year old more mature man and also boss of Daichi) working together a lot and helping each other. She lets her imaginations run wild and totally dreams about them being in love and doing things together. The two men are close friends with chummy interactions, ...

The summary of the film says "A stone-broke gay actor and a privileged fuck up with a failing business cross paths on a winter night and join forces in a quest around London to find a meaning to their miserable lives, but when their unlikely connection turns into something deeper, fears and demons from their past come to jeopardize the whole mission." I thought this sounds interesting and should be a good watch, but oh man! was I disappointed! The execution of the film is so bland and uninteresting, it just feels like it's going nowhere.  Brash and cocky, Oliver enters an empty bar asking if someone could buy him a pint? Sitting at the bar nursing his beer is Lukas, who wants none of the entitled fratboy energy this loser is giving off. What Oliver doesn't know is that before he ended up drinking alone on Christmas, Lukas came dreadfully close to jumping off a bridge (which we find out much later). The two men happen to meet again in a bus a short while later. Oliver ...

Just when I thought I will take a break from these vertical short format mini series kinda shows, they keep coming more and more (just like Asian BL's) but sadly they are all starting to mix up now. Yes the plots are different, but they all follow same template of one or the both guys being "straight" eventually falling for another guy because "love shouldn't care for gender'. And then there will be an evil girlfriend, there would be some money involved somewhere either through mafia or business deals, there will be misunderstandings and all is well that ends well. This series is no different. Miles is a med student, who finds out that his girlfriend is cheating on him. He decides that he will kiss someone else to prove that he is cheating so he can break up. But instead of a planned friend, he ends up kissing a man. He politely asks the guy to play along and he does. Only later Miles finds out that the guy is Hunter who happens to be the CEO in the company h...