Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

Had I seen this documentary ack in 2011 when it came out, my reactions would have been different. But I have to say that this one has not aged well at all. Under British colonial rule in 1860, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code criminalized any sexual acts between consenting adults of the same sex, stigmatizing them as "against the order of nature". On 2nd July 2009 the Delhi High Court passed a landmark judgment repealing this clause, thus fulfilling the most basic demand of the Indian LGBTQ community. The documentary uses this premise and basically just introduces us to lives of its three protagonists. The documentary focuses on one gay man, one lesbian and one transgender person. They all have similar stories in the sense of how they were terrified growing up on accepting their feelings, how they confronted their own fears and were ok with it. We hear the poor transgender person on who she still did her duties as the 'son' to provide for her family but she had to...

I had no memory of the first Arisan film, so I had to go back and read my review to get some context before I watched this second part. As the original source material, this film is not queer per say, in fact it is so much more about a group of female friends, but the stories of the prominent gay characters continue here as well and I think it deserves a mention rightly here on my blog. The film kicks off 8 years after the events of the first film happened. The gay couple Sakti and Nino have broken up. Meimei is now divorced and Andien is now a successful person after losing her husband. We have a few new characters who join as well. The film starts with Meimei anther young son (or is it her friend's) spending time on an island getting therapy from a doctor Tom. The two have connection but we are later told that Meimei has cancer and is dealing with her issues. Nino now has a much younger boyfriend and this makes Sakti not happy, He has still not completely gotten over his ex. His ...

This is a badly acted and directed story of sexual deviance and forbidden romance between two tortured men - who like to act out by torturing others. The poster promoted it as two serial killers in love and a wife who is betrayed. Honestly, the story is novel and had a great potential to make one of this slashy horror romance kinda films, but this is so badly acted that I Was laughing at so many places. Andrew, a celebrated gay novelist, is married to Pauline. Their marriage is going through rough patch and Pauline has taken to alcohol. Andrew, meanwhile dealing with wrier's block, goes around paying gay hookers to suck him off but is still struggling. One day he sees a guy murdering someone and drinking their blood. He runs for his life but the killer soon catches him and kidnaps him. His name is Eddie and is a psychotic serial killer. After a few days of torture and sexual activities, Andrew convinces Eddie to let him go and that he will write a novel based on his life. For next ...

This film is an ambitious costume drama with a very interesting storyline at its hand. Sadly, the low budget is very evident and for some reason, it takes away the fun because of it. I can totally see stuff like this happening in olden times when, just a. Whiff of homosexuality could land you in all kinds of troubles. Once you look past the budget, this film is actually not at all bad. Penelope is learning piano and has a crush of sorts on her teacher, but she doesn't control her destiny. She is married off, by her parents, to a shy and introverted Jonathan. They move into his family’s empty estate where not a great deal happens because of Jonathan’s hatred of social occasions and he generally prefers quiet life. The duo haven't even consummated their marriage and day by day Penelope's frustration grows. To her shock, one day when Penelope discovers that her new husband is having an affair with George the Butler, she finally understands Jonathan’s reclusive personality. Geo...

A gay man, his lover, and a diverse band of friends learn to strike a balance between old-world and new-generation values in post-war Lebanon. This film that came out back in 2011 bills itself as the first gay film to come out of Lebanon.  I have no ways to validate the claim, but in my opinion, calling it a gay film might be a little stretch, but two of the main six characters are a gay couple and yes the story does involve a lot around their struggle in the society. Fun fact: The filming of this Lebanese gay-themed film was opposed vigorously by members of the conservative community in which it was shot, with threats and acts of violence a constant occurrence. The film was completed only because of the intervention of military authorities, and post-production had to be done in the United States. We meet 4 friends hanging out. Jason, still traumatized by the loss of both of his parents in a car bombing; Louis , devastated over his recent breakup with his girlfriend; the guitar-str...

Finding love for gay men has never been easy. Even though this documentary came back in 2011 and I am only seeing it now more than 10 years later, a lot of topics being discussed here are still very relevant. I know that most of us gay men are always looking for the next best thing, or we may be dealing with our own childhood issues trying to push ourselves back in the closet etc, which makes it hard for us. This documentary tries to shed light on why many gay men have the desire to be in long-term relationships, but sometimes find it difficult to make them work. Understanding the effort and commitment required, along with the rewards, of a long-term relationship is important for many gay men and couples. Through interviews with gay men currently looking for the "one" and discuss the struggles they find from within the community and themselves.  Also featured are a married couple from Massachusetts who discuss the methods they have used over their long-term relationship, incl...

A story of love and journey of reconciliation between a religious daughter and an estranged transvestite father over the course of one night in the streets of Jakarta. It gives a very interesting perspective from two different angles and doesn't sugar coat anything. The film kept it real with respect of emotions, truth and the bond between the two. The story is simple. A 199 year old girl Cahaya, a deeply religious person with strong Islamic values comes to Jakarta to meet her estranged father who left her when she was four. She somehow has an address for him. To her complete surprise, the father she is looking for turns out to be the face of a stranger, a transvestite man named Ipuy, working as a prostitute in the streets at night. In the initial minutes after encountering each other, both are shocked at the turn of evens. The innocent Cahaya is crushed at her father's choices and hesitant. But over the course of the night they wander in the streets of Jakarta until the dawn a...

This film could easily have been a short film and would have been lot more effective. It is a story of love, loss and redemption, but the film moves at such a slow pace that it really tests your patience. Xue Ping is an out of town war veteran, who on a particular day is on a mission to meet someone. We also meet Ahong, a young 17 year old high school student who just wanders around, plays video games etc. Through flashbacks, we see the old man had a young lover when he was in army but he was captured by enemies. We also see him spending every year with his best friend celebrating retirement from the army. Turns out on this particular day, Sue Ping is actually looking for Ahong. He had seen him exactly a year ago for the first time and he immediately reminded him of his young lover in the army. He keeps following the young student and that day he confronts him and gifts him a portrait picture of a young him and his lover. The young boy completely snubs the old man, lashes out at him an...

I have already seen a few movies/documentaries already on the Stonewall uprising that happened many years back and became a momentous occasion in history as the start of gay rights movement. This documentary shown on PBS TV in 2011, examines the events leading up to what is now seen as the defining moment in the establishment of the gay rights movement in the United States: the riot at the Stonewall Inn in New York City in the summer of 1969. On June 28, 1969, when the police carried out the latest in a regular series of raids at the mob-run Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, young men accustomed to being shuffled into paddy wagons decided to fight back, gathering forces for a three-night war against the police. From spark to embers to flames, a movement that didn’t previously exist suddenly and organically coalesced at street level, and the rest was (and continues to be) an evolving history. The documentary starts with how pre-stonewall the gay life was almost grim, even in cities li...

This horror comedy is one of the most absurd, weird film; but strangely, also very very entertaining and a fun film to watch. You may not find political correctness here and it also probably ridicules and makes fun of almost every gay stereotype, which I can see many people taking offense to, but honestly, I had fun watching this goofy Filipino quasi camp-isa gay film. As a kid Remington runs around his village pointing "Homo! Homo!" to all gay folks in his town making fun of them. One day at a cemetery, he picks a wrong person to mess with. He is a grieving man, who curses Remington that he will be gay when he grows up. Circa 15 years later, the town is seeing murders of gay people. Remington is all grown up and meets a girl whom he starts fancying, but he dreams every day of a monster trying to hill him and over multiple nights, his machismo is being stripped turning him into a feminine gay. On the first night, his goatee and body hair vanish; after the second, he’s prone t...

This film is a low budget attempt to deal with a theme that has certainly been done to death both in mainstream and gay themed movies. Young hopefuls arrive in LA with a desire to break into the big time. The film has absolutely no plot at all. It just readers around the audience watching lives on these three gay young men as it unfold on screen before us. An aspiring dancer named Ben shows up in Los Angeles and moves in with his two best friends Jason and Corey, the three of them looking to find love in the city of dreams while also seeking fulfillment in their careers. He is just coming out and desperate to find love. He meets fellow dancer Craig, with whom he starts practicing a musical piece. Little does Ben know that Craig has an outlook that's more in step with his than he realizes. Jason delivers humorless stand-up comedy routines while pursuing an industry bigwig in the hopes of making it in show business. H indulges in meaningless sex. Things change when he meets a big sho...

I have to say that this film was a total guilty pleasure. It was very straight forward, silly, totally over the top, yet something about it was endearing. The fact that the film didn't take itself very seriously but at the same time focussed on entertainment, stuck with me. Made with probably with little money, it happens all in a simple coffee shop. Rico owns the struggling coffee shop Kape Barako. The shop only has one regular customer, an agin fashion designer who drools over Rico and a lady who orders nothing but ice water and leeches off their Internet connection. Rico is struggling to pay off his mortgage and now needs to pay off 120,000 pesos to keep the bank from foreclosing on the property in 15 days. He feels off his car but is still far away. He even thinks of selling himself to the fashion designer customer but when he asks for "special services", he freaks to and backs off. Luckily, one of his baristas Jek accidentally stumbles on a solution to the shop’s pro...

A dark story of two social misfits trying to make their way and life through this life is how you canniest describe this film. I am not too sure of what I really think of the film. There is a whole lot of context setting for first 75% of the film, which I think is way too long for any of the film and anything, if at all, happens only towards the end. We see 2 parallel stories. Gabriel, a man in his early 30s probably works at a grocery store. But he also works as a prostitute sleeping with men and couples to make money on the side. We also meet Violette, a young girl who lives with her rich parents on her farm, but bitterns out her father has been sexually abusing her. When she gets pregnant, she has had enough and she kills them both. In the meanwhile, Gabriel gets attacked by one of his suitors. Desperately looking for money, he robs one of his patrons and then runs away. The duo end up meeting and slowly become the emotional support for each other. Gabriel's cop boyfriend helps ...

I am not a fan of the documentary style film making, especially which contain a lot of scenes with long stretched out sequences where simple actions play out uninterrupted. I mean, how long cam someone watch a scooter being ridden forever, or a boy taking a stroll in the city. You get my drift! Told as two separate stories which eventually culminate together, I am not very sure what was the end of the film or what was it trying to ay and that frustrates me. Joon works odd jobs here and there including a gas station. His co-worker is a girl named Soonhee, who is an ethnic Korean recently escaped from China, who gets unwanted attention from their boss who tries to exploit them both financially and who also makes moves on the girl. After a violent altercation with the boss, Joon and Soonhee skip out and spend some days wandering the city together. Whether they actually explore the city or is it more of a fantasy, we are not sure. In another roast of the city we meet a young pretty boy Hyu...

Told in tedious flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks, this  minor-key drama about a country-ish band and its closeted gay lead singer is a yawn fest. Everything from story to acting to uninspiring music is bad about this film. And I fail to understand why everyone speaks so slowly in this film. The film would have been half the duration if they all spoke normally. The film starts with the lead singer of an upcoming band found dead in a violent attack in a back alley. We follow the friends and lovers of ‘Handsome Jake’ as they try to come to terms with the singer’s untimely death. As the band travels to Nashville to honor his passing, we discover that there are many Jake’s - the brother, the lover, the poet, the liar and the cruel manipulator. As the band members cross the Midwest with Jake’s ashes on board their Winnebago, they must now struggle to regroup, understand what happened, and find a way to move on. Yes, thats pretty much the story of the film. The characters and t...

Oh God! Such an awful film and unnecessarily stretched for no reason with all kinds of side stories for whatever reason. Set against the time of Prop 8, this film featuring Matthew Montgomery, who has done plenty of gay movies, just looks awful  showing the nerdy side by quivering lips and making faces, which according to me is really insulting. Paul runs an advertising company. Seeing two of his lesbian friends getting married, he also wants to get married. Given that Prop 8 biting is gonna happen soon and gays may no longer be able to get married (this is 2008), he wants to do this, while he has an option, except he has no boyfriend. He sees Jim at the friends wedding and they both like each other. On the side, one of the biggest client that Paul has is a huge supporter of anti LGBT right and pro conservative people. And somehow the money from the client is blinding him from doing the right thing. Also his mom has run away from home, which we only later find out why, and Paul is ...

Oh damn! What did I just see? Worst of worse experimental films. Its like a collage of random scenes, events with some erotica; all thrown in together without any rhyme or reason. Make a very erotic film poster to lure audience and laugh at their stupidity. Touching on some events of Bangkok in spring 2010. Two men are in a fishing boat talking about catching fish. By night, the rubber plantation also comes across as enticing and full of secrets. And this is when random scenes start filling up your screen. An angry protest in the form of a diary, where sexual resistance and erotic fantasies are juxtaposed with randomness. As a young boy in the 1970s, Thunska was already forced to flee Bangkok for the south with his mother. The film poses questions without knowing the answers, providing an unusual insight into an extremely traumatized society. What makes this so terrible is the amateur direction and lack of coherence or background information, taking audience for granted and assuming th...

Private Romeo is a modern take on Romeo and Juliet, set in an all-male military school and hence a gay love story. Another very important thing to know about this film is that this is almost all in Shakespearean English with some dialogues straight from the play.  A small group of cadets at a military school is left alone for a long weekend as their superiors and the remaining students go on a military drill. As they continue with their classes and routine, including reading Romeo and Juliet, the students start to find the play overtaking their lives as they begin to recite the dialogue and embody the characters. As love begins to bloom between two cadets Sam & Glenn, they have to deal with jealousy, feuds, and how they can maintain their love once Romeo (Sam) is expelled. This film is soooooo not for me. I mean I can tell how much hard work and genuine effort in performances and direction has gone into making this film, but my god! The original shakespearean English didn't hel...

And yet another piece of really bad cinema. A humorless and a very unprofessional attempt at making a gay crime thriller, this film feels more like a school project than anything else with amateurishly bad performances. Jason is a medical dropout student, and he wakes up to find a corpse lying next to him. Scared, he won’t go to work and stays holed up in his flat. As he becomes increasingly isolated, losing sense of time and perspective, he begins to have blackouts. Intriguingly, as the blackouts become more frequent so too do the discovery of murdered men and women all over town. But when his TV breaks, he is forced to call co-worker Richard to fix it. All is normal, except when Jason mentions that a friend of his may be dead in his bed. Instead of hightailing it out of the potential murder scene, Richard, who has the hots for Jason, instead not only checks the body but also proposes a homemade autopsy. And when the scalpel cuts the flesh, these two young men are now in it together a...

This film is the fifth and last film in the Takumi-kun film series. After getting side tracked in the fourth film, the makers are back to focusing on the main couple Takumi and Gii. This film is actually a continuation of the surroundings and environments of third film where Misu is Takumi's roommate and Gii is the dorm head. June 15 marks the date of the death anniversary of Takumi’s older brother. In the past, Takumi had been haunted by bitter memories of the pain he suffered from his family. It was only after he met Gii did he find the strength to confront his fears. This year Gii tells Takumi that he wishes to visit his brother's grave with him, it makes Takumi very happy as he has intended to invite Guii too. However, on the same day, there is a snooker tournament organised by the school to welcome new students. When Takumi finds out that Guii will be taking part in the tournament, he feels betrayed and upset which sends Takumi into a state of utter disbelief and awaken fe...