Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

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...

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...

This film is a coming of age story of the growing pains of a privileged 16 year old teenage but for some reason he despises all that because he feels nothing is real. It is a drama about youth and desire – and destiny, sexuality and class. I am struggling to define this as a LGBTQ friendly film, because in a way it is about this kid realizing about his sexuality, accepting it and figuring out ho to live with it, but this is just one part. The film is so much more than that. 16 year old Enzo comes from a very wealthy family but he is spending his summer at a construction site doing menial jobs. Their son is sensitive, artistic, unused to manual labour; he’s arguably equally unsuitable for it, though he persists, despite the disapproval of his boss. But Enzo insists he wants be there. Slowly we start o realize that this may be for the company of these two Ukranian guys who work alongwith him. Out of these two, Vlad shot more compassion, friendliness and  a sensitivity toward Enzo tha...

I was really hoping that this film will be good. But as its title suggests, it was so vanilla and I wasn't sure what was it even trying to say. The synopsis says that it is a poignant exploration of gay relationships and infidelity between an interracial gay couple. To an extent yes it is, but the film never gos into the extent of details and everything is touched upon just superficially. I didn't connect with it at all. Bastien and Matt have ben together for a while, but they have hot a rough patch, since Bastien slept with a woman 8 months back. They are both now visiting Barcelona hoping to mend this rocky relationship. The communication between them seems strained. As Matt grapples with the lingering hurt and its impact on their intimacy, enter British guy Florent, who catches Bastien’s eye and offers top show them around the city. It is obvious that he finds Bastien extremely attractive and given his infidelity before, this just makes Matt more and more angrier. Of course ...

How can two people spend an entire year together and feel completely different about the situation? One things everything is great, while the other one has a whole different perspective. This is what the film is trying to explore. Over the course of the film we see many glimpses of this couple's relationship right from living together to threesomes to arguments, the entire relationship plays out. Is the viewer supposed to decide who’s right and who’s wrong? Tom and Jero are a gay couple who have become well-known on Instagram. On what would be their first anniversary, Jero comes home to find that Tom has left him. The only item left behind is a pink box with 300 letters that Tom wrote on each day they were together. The letters seek to explain why their relationship reached the conclusion it did, and as Jero works his way through them, he realizes that the relationship was nothing like he thought it was. Flashbacks take us to the early days of their relationship. We don’t really se...

Confusing is the first word that comes to mind while I was watching the series and even after it finished. The idea of parallel universe have been explored in a few other BL series before, but man was this weird or not! Even the ending did not make much sense. If you were to ask me, what really happened, honestly I am not even sure. The show is 8 episodes of 30 minutes each. During this lunar eclipse, Yang You inexplicably crosses over into a parallel universe through a mirror into another world like his own but definitely not his. In what he thinks is a serendipitous encounter, yet it is not, he meets Chen Shi. He realizes that he must be near Chen Shi in this world or he will fade from existence and so he convinces him of his destitution and therefore he needs to live with him. During their time together, Yang You discovers that despite Chen Shi's tough exterior, he is unusually caring toward him. Gradually, Yang You falls for Chen Shi and boldly confesses his feelings. However, ...

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...

This film is intriguing, engaging, erotic yet a mindfuck of a tricky flick. Honestly the first half of the film was quite visually appealing. The makers tried to make this an art film, but what the hell happened in second half. IT was like watching two different movies. Fro the lush landscapes of Brazil in the 80s to modern day times in the city, the film leaves viewers with a lot more question that answers. I mean, I can probably try and read online to make a sense of what it all meant, but then what's the point f I cannot understand while watching the film!! Set in rural 80s, we meet Antonio (a hunk straight out of a leather bar) an isolated farmer who lives a quite mundane life. Fate makes him meet Marcelo, an injured motorbike driver, whom he nurses back to health. A worried affair starts between the two and they are having long slow-mo sex acts shown explicitly but also falling in love with each other with a lingering question of whether Marcelo will suddenly up and leave? But...

I think I am at my peak limit of vertical dramas. I keep saying I need to stop watching these but they are so convenient to watch while running on treadmill that invariable I do end up watching. I am not sure how many of these I have seen already. So here goes one more. It is funny though how all of these series have sort of a [attern to them and you know exactly where the story is headed.  Kit Sterling, a public defender betrayed by his cheating girlfriend, drunkenly declares at a bar that he'll marry the next person who walks through the door. Enter Daniel Finch - sexy defense lawyer and guess what; suddenly the two wake up married. Daniel remembers that Kit is the same boy who many years ago saved him as a kid (Kit has no memory of it). Here starts the drama of will they won't they stay married. Kit's sister is in hospital and Dsaniel's care for her creates a soft spot in Kit for them. The duo keep butt heading in the court in multiple cases that we see and a healthy...

Blackout (UK) In a shoebox flat, Reuben prepares a birthday party for his partner Harry. However, when Reuben starts hearing violent noises from the couple living next door, his morbid curiosity takes over. Harry deeply loves his boyfriend Reuben, but after being humiliated by a failed birthday party, many drinks consumed, shows us that none of us truly knows what we are capable of. For Reuben he comes to realize that violence isn’t always on the outside, sometimes it’s with us all along. A very powerful film. Rainbow Girls (USA) Three young black trans women pushed to the margins of their community decide to push back by staging a robbery targeting San Francisco's most exclusive luxury brands. The movie highlights the pervasive nature of anti-Blackness and, particularly, how the evils of capitalism affect the Black community. An interesting film for sure (based on a true story), but are we justifying the actions here? Meat Raffle (UK) When his visiting son Jackson sits down with h...

This is a sentimental Filipino-Spanish drama about a young missionary uncovering his late father's secret gay love affair. It highlights queer theme with respect and dignity. It doesn't say religion is bad or anything but it does give a perspective on just a very loving father-son relationship but also how it is difficult to be yourself in a very conservative religious setting. It gives. A hint of it but never goes into to many details, because its focu sis on love. Young Seph is giving his speech at his father Otep's funeral, when it is interrupted by a woman, Cecil, whom Seph has never heard of. She screams obscenities and claims that Otep was gay, and that Seph ruined Otep’s life by being born. For a very conservative church going family, this comes as a surprise, especially since Seph is supposed to depart soon on a several-year mission trip, but this revelation sees him beginning to question his church. He decides to met Cecil to know the truth about his father. He lea...