Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

This documentary is the film version of author Vito Russo's landmark book by the same name. It explodes sexual myths and explores how our attitudes about homosexuality and sex roles have evolved through the century. With clips from over 100 Hollywood movies and interviews with many of the filmmakers and actors who created them (including Tom Hanks, Shirley MacLaine, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Curtis, and Gore Vidal), the film was likely quite relevant and path breaking when it came in 1995. Times have since changed and 30 years later, some of this rings are irrelevant and some not. But it still makes for a good historical piece to watch. Gays were everywhere in the movies, right from the beginning–this documentary shows two men dancing together in a short named “The Gay Brothers,” from 1895–and often they were hidden in plain view. Hollywood knew who was gay and who was not, and there were in-jokes like John Ireland’s line to Montgomery Clift in “Red River”: Sometimes di...

Set in mid 90s, this film set in Boston, follows a thirty-year-old gay man who attempts to get his life in order while living with his actress mother. It is a simple coming of age drama, that probably was quite novel for its time back in 96. The story itself is simple, with not much happening and a lot of it can just be watched fast forwarding quite a bit of content, because most of it is around our lead hanging out with queer artists and there is not much from a plot perspective. Rejected by numerous art schools and lacking romantic prospects, gay guy Andrew's life is going nowhere. He still stays home with his theatre actress mother. HIs close friend is his uncle, an artist and a confidant and is also gay. His closest friend is Lucy who works in the art studio with him and is lesbian but constantly bickers with her girlfriend. Andrew decides to enter a contest in hopes of winning a six month stay in Kenya. But neither of his family thinks it's a good idea. He find out about h...

Some films clearly do not age well. This film from 1996 is a colorful but extremely messy satire about a bunch of HIV-positive Asian and black drag queens who decide to take matters in hand and fight the government’s apathy toward AIDS in New York City. It was probably too ambitious in its intent at that time, but is flawed execution makes it a very boring watch. Welcome to the front lines of AIDS activism, where the latest enemy raids are being run by a band of unlikely warriors: two drag queens, an HIV-positive man with tiny gemstones dotting his bald head, and his HIV-positive sister. With their status as “queer outcasts,” these protagonists form a terrorist gang dedicated to the agenda of attacking conservative and homophobic politicians. They stage a series of surprise attacks against conservative politicians whom they believe are collecting secret lists of HIV-positive individuals. The band’s multiracial alliance is threatened when Asian-American Sam, its youngest member is discr...

No matter how many films you have already seen on the whole AIDS situation, there are still films that you watch and they hit you deep. The film was probably tear jerker when it came out over 25 years back and it still is important in today's context. Unlike most other films that reveal the devastation of AIDS, and many other terrible diseases, this film focuses on two people who are far from perfect. Nick and Brandon seem to be the perfect couple who have it all. Nick is an architect and Brandon a is a film director. They’re handsome, in the prime of life, share a beautiful Hollywood Hills home and have been together for eight years. Then comes the day when Nick tells Brandon that he’s tested positive for the AIDS virus. Brandon surprisingly over the next few weeks doesn't take the news very well, and everyday becomes very overwhelming, so much so that Brandon forces Nick to leave their home. Almost a year later, Nick finds out that he has untreatable brain lesions that will d...

It's after a while that I am actually seeing a thriller/action movie with gay characters in the leading roles, it is also to be said that the fact they are gay is almost incidental. This could have been a straight couple and nothing would have had to change. BU the fact that central plot is around a couple who is gay, makes the film more fun and redeemable. Had the film been done with straight couple, I can't see a reason why anyone would watch it. With the setup above, the film can sometimes get goofy, something that you an't take seriously but you also want to believe in. John and Paul are a successful gay couple who are about to adopt a child, the son of Paul’s best friend; a victim of cancer. One day when buying milk John witness a brutal mafia murder and escapes home, but is seen by one of the baddies. To not risk their adoption (because the final decision is in two days), he choses not to tell Paul about this. But things change when the mafia tracks him down. A weird ...

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 was a nice clean fun feel-good film. No over the top comedy, but a funny situation which gets comical with some good acting by its leads and actors. It feels the film was made a on a tight budget but as long as the actors do a good job, who cares! The gags are good, the pace is consistent and a ridiculous but funny plot makes this film quite delightful and enjoyable. 3 gay best friends live together. Carlos is over weight and is conscious of it and struggles to find love, Dani is young and good looking and works as a tourist guide and finally Toni, who works in a karaoke bar. The bar singer Estrella is Toni's friend, married to Miguel whom Toni likes. Threatened by their landlady for not paying rent, they look for 4th guy and in comes Lucas, a hot and handsome muscular guy. The three boys fall head over heels in love with him, and rivalries soon develop. When Lucas is discovered dead one night, panic follows. While the boys decide what to do, their maid Juliana arrives. T...

I had been trying to get my hands on this film for a long time now. Actually ever since the movie came out in 1996 but was never officially released in the country. Thank you to the wonderful person, because of whom I finally managed to see the film. If you can somehow manage to ignore some inconsistent direction and discontinuity, you will actually be pretty surprised at the bold concept of the film. This is not strictly gay but the story of an unusual friendship, journey and love between a transvestite dancer and a gang raped woman who begins to dress up like a man. A village girl is kidnapped on the eve of her wedding. She tries to run away but gets gang raped by 3 men. She meets a transvestite, an outcast, who has body of a man but is truly a female from inside and dances in villages to make ends meet; who ends up taking her under her wings. On the insistence, the girl decides to cut her hair and start dressing like a man and that would be the only way for her to survive. Henc...

This was such a random experimental film. These are the kind of films that make me wonder that in the name of "different" cinema, some film makers are ready to offer all sorts of garbage and expect that audiences should lap it up. Come on.. we are better than that. The film starts with a documentary style focusing on 22-something Chinese gay film maker who talks about his work and love life with an unseen friend behind the camera. The maker also gives an ode to his mother. Before you realize, the film shifts to showing 4 of the directors short films.  "Hysterio Passio" shows images of men's passions. In "Matricide," a lawyer asks a young gay Chinese why he killed his mother on Christmas morning. In "Key in the Heart," a heroine (an Asian man in drag) pursues vampires. In "Fall, 1990," college students meet their roommates, and Jimmy, an edgy scholarship boy without a family, is slowly brought to an understanding of love by the ...

This film portrays the one of the oldest tragedies in the public: Child prostitution. It shows the problems of living on the street, at such young age and how you get exploited. Although this specific documentary focuses on the city of Prague, but I cant imagine the situation being any different in a lot of other places. This graphic film depicts the appalling process by which young prepubescence and teen age boys in Prague are so skillfully lured into the eviscerated life of a male prostitute. This documentary came out in 1996 and interview about 6-8 boys in the age range of 14-17 and their experiences. Each of the boy is asked same questions as to how did they come to Prague, how did they start and why, what are their challenges, issues that they face and the AIDS issue hanging over their head. Every single boy's story is very similar on how they are exploited by older gay men for their pleasure but they also admit that its the easiest money that they can make. They are ulti...

What the hell!! Very rarely have I seen where there is absolutely no character development and the viewers are just left to make up their own version on why a certain individual is behaving the way he is or doing things that he is. This film is unbelievable. Despite having a very good looking man as one of the leads. It was just the huge discrepancy of what this movie could've been and what it ended up being. Lincoln is a 18 year old young man with a happy life with friends and a girlfriend. Except he is also closet gay, which he accidentally discovers about himself after being propositioned by a older man. One such occasion he meets Minh, an Vietnames half black immigrant, who makes Lincoln do stuff that he wouldn't do normally. He forces him to take his father's boat down the river to explore unexplored while professing his love for Lincoln. They bind with each other but soon reality dawns. Lincoln goes back to his girlfriend. Minh continues to look for his ideal boy...

I don't know why I had been pushing to watch this film a second time. I remember watching it before and really liking it but hey, I had to watch it again for my blog. And I am so glad that I did it. This is the finest, most emotional, heart-touching movie about self discovery, coming of age teenage love story, you will ever see. Although the film came out way back in 1996, it is as relevant today as it was then. The characters and situations are perfectly developed and realized, ringing true in almost every scene. Jamie, a teenage guy lives with his single mom,Sandra, who has ambitious plans to run her own pub and string of lovers, current being a hippie named Tony. Jamie's classmate and neighbor Ste lives next door and Jamie has total crush on him. Ste lives with his drug-dealing brother and abusive father. One night when the father ends up beating Ste too much, Sandra brings him home and lets him sleep over with Jamie. Ste and Jamie sleep on the same bed 'top to toe...

This is such a great movie with a very unique and unconventional love story. I am sure I saw this movie before but of course couldn't remember it. The film shot in 1996 is centered around AIDS epidemic. Mix this with dance, the movie was pretty realistic with some excellent performances by its lead actors. Tonio is the lead dancer of a dancing school by Luna who is aging old woman suffering from Alzheimers. Tony lost his lover from Aids a year ago and his best friend and also his dance instructor is now dying. His best friend and dance troupe are always with him because Tonio is also HIV positive. Its just dance that he lives for. A chance encounter with a therapist changes his life. Tonio had seen Jack at his friend's funeral and later finds out that Jack is a counselor. Despite his initial rebuffs, Tonio finally gets around and they start seeing each other. At the same time, Tonio is offered the lead in the dance company's old success 'Indian Summer'. Tonio c...

The first 15-20 minutes of this film were really good and my expectations went soaring high with the film. Unfortunately the film became drama from a comedy and the change was so sudden that I didn't have to digest and by the time it went back to being a comedy, my expectations had already taken a beating. That does not mean that this film is not entertaining. The film is still pretty good with exceptionally great acting. Adrien is in the finance world, a 30 something gay man. His best friend is Eva who owns and runs a gay restaurant and club. They both are very very close to each other. Adrien is in the process of finalizing deal with Alexander, a banker, which leads to him having to bring Eva as his wife. Alexander and Eva feel some connection and they start seeing each other. Slowly Eva introduces Alexander to the gay world, thereby ultimately exposing to him that Adrien is gay and not the straight man that he though he is. When Alexander's wife sees him in a gay club, ...

Cavafy is the biography of one of the most prominent Greek poets, Constantine P. Cavafy. The film revolves around desires and senses of Cavafy in a way that Cavafy's sensualism dominates the film and his poetry gets little scope. Not that I am complaining because even with all this the film progresses at a snail's pace. This film is a classic case of a gay art film. You might like it or not like it. Cavafy is counting his remaining days and is in the hospital which will soon be his last day. He is visited by a young writer who wants his approval to publish a study on the poet's life. The poet begins a journey back in time, gradually remembering all the incidents and all the people that left their mark on his life. Alexandria, where he grew up and was raised and he also worked there his relationship with his mother, his trips to Constantinople, Athens and the awakening of his personal sensuality and hidden sexual preferences are once again being reminded to the aged and exha...

This film definitely was novel in its theme and treatment of it. I have seen many LGBT films (although primarily gay) but still haven't seen anything similar to what is shown here. It was a very touching drama about a post-op male to female transsexual and a former male schoolfriend.  Karl Foyle and Paul Prentice were best mates at school in the Seventies. But when they meet again in present-day London things are definitely not the same. Karl is now Kim, a transsexual, and she has no desire to stir up the past while she's busy forging a neat and orderly new life. Prentice, on the other hand, has charm but is a social disaster stuck in a dead-end job. His main talent is for getting them both into trouble. Amid the squabbles, they start to fall in love. One night, Kim invites Prentice to a romantic dinner at her flat. Prentice, finding the seduction unexpectedly effective, freaks out. He proceeds to make a public display of both of them and winds up in court. Humiliated and angry...

This is a metaphorical story about people's dreams as they search for themselves and some meaning to life. Unfortunately, not much of those metaphors were interesting enough to hold my attention. It seems like people enjoyed this movie but for me, it didn't do much.  Its Christmas Eve and John, a male prostitute has a plan for Christmas which also happens to be his birthday. He wants to make enough money so that he can stay in a luxurious hotel for one night. John works on a street in Santa Monica Blvd in LA trying to make money. One of his close associates is a friend of his barely 18 who left home because he was gay. Interestingly John is not gay. He has a girlfriend. Throughout the film we meet his clients, his friends, his enemies, and we are a voyeur to the problems he faces in his line of work. He's a likeable chap. In al this he also has a $300 dollar loan that he has to pay back to a drug dealer. The film continues to show us what happens in the life of John in that...

Now This one is hard to classify as a genre. I will put it as an artsy film and maybe exploration of one self done in a very artistic way. Its definitely not a conventional movie. A Lan is a gay man, rounded up in a park near the Forbidden City by Xiao Shi, a police officer. The plot involves A Lan's night-long interrogation, involving flashbacks of his hard life. A Lan clearly loves the police officer and I think the officer also through him wants to explore himself and identify his true feelings. Through a series of questions, A Lan talks about his childhood, his encounters with various men at the same time trying to tell Xiao Shi how much he loves him. The police officer shouts at him but is also very amused by whatever he was telling. After a while he lets him go but A Lan refuses to go. The officer then asks him to wear women's clothes. But that also does nothing. Xiao Shi is struggling a lot with himself, whether o 'cur' the gay man or to just give in for the love...

Age old formula where a gay guy falls for a straight man and eventually straight guy turning gay has been done so many times. BUt it seems so unreal. Finally a straight guy who is definitely straight. This movie deals with the chemistry between a gay man and a confused sexist cop beautifully. Chris Schwenk is a regular macho policeman whose partner is Mike. Chris' girlfriend one fine day just dumps him. Getting too drunk that night, the next morning he finds himself in bed with a guy called Edgar. Chris doesn't remember what happened and Edgar refuses to tell although he invites Chris t stay with him if he wants. Chris refuses for obvious reasons but after his car also gets stolen , he has no choice but to come and stay with Edgar. Their bonding slowly gets stronger. Meanwhile another cop in training Helen joins the team of Chris and Mike. She also has a broken love behind her and slowly she gets a liking for Chris but just cannot understand her. Edgar deals with stolen cars a...

So what was this film about? We have seen various films who deal with the whole gay life style including the Aids epidemic but ws there anything special about this movie? Unfortunately, NO. Guy and Philip meet at a garage sale where both of them try to buy a plaid green shirt which either one of them is shown wearing at different points in the movie. They soon get together and develop a relationship. They share an open relationship wherein they can have sex with outsiders but cannot fall in love. Jerry and Devon are Philip's best friend who are with the couple most of the time. Everything is fine till one day Guy is detected to have Aids. Philip tries to take care of him. Both of them even buy a house together. At the same time, he is also looking for opening his own business. Things get harder. Meanwhile Guy meets someone else and moves out of the house but soon he realizes that his true love was with Philip. At the same time it is shown how Jerry and Deven are both HIV+ and are d...