Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

Calling this show 'Gayborhood' in today's time feels a bit outdated and not inclusive, especially given the content of the series. The series is very inclusive in terms of representation of gay, lesbian, drag queens and trans characters. It's definitely not just about gays, so an umbrella term Queer might have been better. Anyway, this is me just nitpicking. The show is primarily centered around a studio owner who rents out the place for shows and the employees working and their friends. This is not the story of just one person but a collective ensemble. Season 1 has 6 episodes of 18-20 minutes each. IT ends on a cliffhanger, so season 2 is very likely to follow. Space Studios is a vibrant LGBTQ+-owned space in Dallas run by Bruce aka drag queen Heather. After a disastrous no-show by the previous manager, Bruce hires Noah, a friendly newcomer, to help manage the chaos. Noah quickly meets Jesse, a nonbinary staff member and handyperson, and gets a crash course in navigat...

Even though a good part of this series set in Northern Thailand was about promoting tourism, but the way it was incorporate din the larger storytelling and a beautiful love story, it did not feel like watching a tourism advertisement (which happens sometimes). The locations and sites were so seamlessly integrated, that most f the times you were either engrossed in the beauty of it all and other times in the romance that was developing in front of you. So overall I quite enjoyed this series about first love and its loss of 8 episodes, each of 45-50 minutes. Tontae and Nankrai have been best friend since they were little. From the very first episode we realize that Nankrai has much deeper feelings of love towards Tontae but he is completely oblivious of his gazes and stares and love and sees the former just as a very close friend. Tontine dreams of traveling the world someday. Since Tontae has understanding of English, he is requested to accompany a Taiwanese visitor Victor to their vill...

This one is yet another campy cheesy horror comedy films, this time with drag queens chasing and fighting vampire bikers and rednecks. Yes, it is low budget, yes it has questionable acting, is cheap, stupid, predictable; the lovers of this genre may actually end up enjoying the film. I will be honest and upfront that these kind of films do not do it for me, so I didn't think much of it, but I can totally see if this fit was released in gay film festivals, it would have been lapped up by the audiences. Slay begins on the road with a performing troupe of drag queens on their way to a gig. The 4 of them believe that the venue is legendary gay bar in middle of nowhere, only to realize they misunderstood and are actually performing at a dive bar. This dive bar is run by an old guy called Dusty, despite most of his clientele being big buffy homophobic bikers. Swallowing their pride and their need for money , they decide to perform. Just as the show starts, the bar is descended upon by a ...

We have a yet another high school teenage romance BL. You will not find anything much different here than what we have already seen numerous times, but the good and refreshing part about this is that there I son forced drama. This is more like a feel good romantic teen story focusing on various couple and depending on their individual situation how they fall in love, manage love and their insecurities. The first half of the show follow on these and in last 2-3 episodes the focus shifts on future universities, what happens to love and friends and life in general. The series is 12 episodes of about 45 minutes each roughly. Since we have multiple couples here. That is how I am going to review. First we have Shane and Kit. Shane is a hardworking student looking for scholarship for further studies. His teacher makes him tutor a student Kit who has been failing in Maths and that he can make some good money. Their initial few sessions are nothing but chaos since Shane is full of fears and ins...

Part of a trilogy, one of which I have already reviewed in my blog, this film is about two colleagues with very different approaches to sex and romance. Honest, thoughtful, and daringly talky as it observes modern dating customs in the age of apps, this may test your patience because it is heavily dialogue focused and a lot of time it also feels like the film maker wants to give an ode to city of Oslo, just like his previous film 'Sex' was. I wouldn't call this specifically a gay themed film, but one of the characters is gay and we do get an insight on gay perspective around sex, love, relationships through his perspective which is interesting. The film starts with Marianne, a physician specializing in urology, giving a patient the news about prostate cancer. The make nurse Tor spots that the patient may not have understood and absorbed what has just been told to him, and makes sure to seek him out to get further clarifications. The subtle scene tells us that Marianne may u...

This 3 part, 45 min each, Sundance documentary series explores the panic and terror caused by a string of murders in 1970s Los Angeles. The series focuses on the discovery of 131 bodies and the subsequent police investigation, which initially focused on a single suspect before revealing the existence of three killers, each with a distinct method. The show highlights the unsettling nature of the crimes and the fear that gripped the city as the body count rose, with some describing it as a "trilogy of terror". From the early 1970s, gay men were being savagely murdered and their bodies carelessly discarded along Southern California’s highways. Through thorough investigations it is eventually found that this is not one serial killer but a trip operating individually. The documentary exposes three sadistic serial killers — Patrick Kearney, William Bonin, and Randy Kraft — and explains the truth behind these horrifying events. EP 1 Trash Bags - In the late 1960s and early 1970s, l...

I had hopes from this film having read the basic premise, but somehow it just did not work for me. It felt amateurish and at times I was wondering if the idea was to make a serious cinema or comedy? It just doesn't hot the right notes, either of love or betrayal to its two main protagonists, which would have been the key to it all. Movie starts with Natalie having discovered that her husband Ernesto is having an affair and invites the person to the house. She is shocked to see that the person is actually a young boy and that her husband was cheating on her with a man. Daniel is a part-time sex worker, and Ernesto paid for his company before love began to bloom between the two as time went on, a love that was conditional on Ernesto continuing with his marriage. Just as she plans to confront him, she gets the news that her husband had had a stroke and is in hospital, she rushes there. Daniel hears it and also goes. Over the course of next few days, these two people connect on the tra...

This was an interesting series in the sense it was hard to like it or dislike it. The story is really barely there and s just paper thin, but look at the guts of the makers that they decided to convert this into 30 episodes each of about 8 minutes to keep the viewers hooked a few days a week to wait for what would happen next. Thankfully, as always I saw it when the whole thing was out.  It is the story of two worlds. Navee is a young man who works at a radio station. At the halloween party, another man dressed in traditional royal clothes catches his attention but disappears. The same guy starts showing up as a ghost at his apartment at regular intervals scaring Navee. Navee tries making offerings and prayers but nothing helps, so he eventually gives in. The man tells him that he is a prince from 2000 years ago and he has not crossed over and it would happen only when Navee remembers everything. Slowly love Strats Tod develop between the two in this world and in small fragments, N...

A very interesting perspective on the sex underbelly life of Manila sex-workers, this film tackles the grittier realities of queer life, where survival often means turning to sex work and petty crime. Manila is almost a character in the film which takes no time to hurl you into its immersive world, an incredibly vibrant and chaotic cityscape with a darker underbelly. Neon lights, street food vendors and frisky rent boys. The sights and sounds of Manila are more than enough to make this engrossing tale of life on the streets worth seeing. The queer road drama, in some ways, could be considered a ‘post-tragedy’: rather than the stories we’ve seen over and over that end in queer sadness. We are introduced to a young sex worker Uno, working on the streets alongside his group of 3 other friends. He is confident, knows what he is doing and he meets a new guy Zion, who seems to have been beaten up. As the night progresses and each of the 4 guys continue to look for tricks to pay their rents, ...

Biographies are tricky, because they may work for the country where the main character is based on, but maybe not in other places. This film is the biography on the life of Peruvian actor and drag queen Ernesto Pimentel 'Chola Chabuca' and a very famous TV show host. As it happens most of the times, I had no idea who this person was. But that did not stop me from throughly enjoying this film. It is one of those well made biographies and is a story that will resonate with most folks irrespective of what you have known this personality or not.  The film starts with Ernesto Pimentel, dressed as 'La Chola Chabuca', about to enter the air to host his first television program, and he faints. Using this scene a few times, we are then taken through the journey and rise of Ernesto. As a very young boy, Ernesto loses his mother and is raised by his grandmother. He also needs some economic stability, so he starts taking random theatre jobs here and there, but is always hard workin...

n00b is a New Zealand coming-of-age romantic comedy-drama television series. Set in the town of Gore, it is primarily about Nikau, a high school student who becomes a social outcast after being outed. He becomes a social outcast and along with a group of "freakish friends and foes" traverses the complicated world of high school, and the internet, in search of the confidence to be his true self. The show is 6 episodes of about 20-23 minutes each. The series is set in 2005 with bad fashion choices, emo music and flip phones, which also serves as a love-letter to the internet. Nikau is a popular high school student and a star rugby player and captain. Secretly he has been writing gay fan fiction stories on the internet. In real life he has a girlfriend Lauren, who dreams of making it big in LA. She is pretty but also like a bitch putting herself always before anyone else. Nikau is finding it difficult to lead double life and Lauren is  getting increasingly frustrated at the lack...

A queer themed time loop story is definitely novel idea. I have seen a few time travel stories so far (primarily in the Asian BL market), but time loop is definitely different. There is a certain appeal to the idea of a protagonist reliving their lives in a loop while trying to figure their way out of it and Spark fits well into this category. It is a thriller love story that makes for a decent watch, but somewhere remains short in keeping viewers engaged for a long time.  Aaron, is the careless, in-love twenty-something caught in an annoying time loop. Every afternoon, Aaron wakes up to their roommate Dani, offering them a glass of wine that has gone horribly off. Dani reminds them her habit to refuse to see red flags in guys and Aaron promises to do better. All that starts to change once he meets Trevor, an intriguing stranger he’s paired up with for a birthday party scavenger hunt. While Trevor at first seems fairly distant and aloof, there is a hint of interest, which is enough...

The second season of this show was pretty messy according to me. Numreous characters are introduced in every episode and after a while it is so hard to keep a track on who's who, what they are doing, what is their motivation etc etc. As it is the show wasn't great to begin with, but Iw as hoping that some of the stories that were left open in season 1 would be tackled and completed here, but I was disappointed. After a point I didn't even care and wanted to just know a little bit more about 3-4 characters who I had connected with in season 1 and see what happens. So in my very brief review here, thats all I will talk about. This season was 6 episodes of about 20-30 minutes. 18 year old virgin Marco finally gets lucky, when his straight friend agrees that he also likes Marco and is open to trying to do something. They both have their first sexual experience , which is both awkward, messy and clearly they were unprepared. Marco is still very much into open, but his experience...

The little mini-series from Vietnam was a decent watch. IT had drama, love, emotion, family, everything in it. Sure, it is really hard to combine all this in a small series, but I would rather have the story move forward fast and crispy rather than it being starched unnecessarily. With only 5 episodes of average 15 minutes each, this is an easy watch. The series starts with a girl introducing her boyfriend to her parents, Hi name is Bao. When her brother walks in, both the guys are surprised. The brother Khanh works a s aTA at the same department where Bao studies. We are told that just a couple of days back , the two had a steamy gay hookup. Also turns out that Khanh has a wife and he is always trying to avoid her. While continuing his affair with Bao, Khanh keeps requesting him to not play games with his sister, but in reality this was all a sham. The sister is actually lesbian and good friends with Bao and they were pretending to do a sham marriage so that eventually she could divor...

This Korean series has its merits and not so good things here. This is a pure romance story between two boys, with their romance unfolding through mutual, conscious choices. There’s no dramatic villain here either; the real challenge lies in balancing public athletic careers with the desire for privacy. It's a campus romance which could have used tighter pacing and a slight more. Eventually, for me it ended up being extremely vanilla and bland. The series has 8 episodes of about 30 minutes each. Ji Won is a retired gymnast who has just entered university. He used to be a popular athlete, so for a change he just wants to lay low and not get any attention. He meet the basketball star of the university Jeong U , and the two cannot look away from one another. They are both aware of each other's popularity as well. Soon. Friendship and an attraction starts to develop and they both make it obvious in their own way. One day when Jeong U finally confesses his love and aspiration to dat...