Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

The idea on paper might have been interesting. A narrative to explore what happens when two gay men in a disintegrating relationship leave the city to spend some time alone, together in nature. But the end result in this case is a modern artsy soft porn lasting more than an hour long over a stretch on never ending monologue. A couple hitchhike to a remote seaside beach hoping that a holiday away from the city will help them mend and strengthen their relationship. With a background narration by one of them, we get to learn how the couple met, how they fell in love, how slowly the insecurities of one of them with respect to money and career had started to bring distance between them despite the strong love that they shared. One man wonders if the other one truly loves him or not. The love is fragile and eventually the two of them have that big confrontation chat where the emotions are bared and the love that kept them together stays strong for the journey forward. There are a lot ...

When the film started, I had high expectations from the film. The actors looked good and acted alright, the production quality seemed good and somehow I was getting a good vibe from it. But somehow just through halfway I could feel that the plot was getting convoluted and unconvincing. I feel somewhere, the film tried to deal with a few themes and in the process failed to focus on the mystery element which was supposed to be the core of the movie. Joseph is a young naive gay lawyer from Manhattan who has just arrived to `fire Island for the very first time in offseason weekend for personal and romantic exploration. But he is soon drugged and mugged by a would-be hook-up and in his drugged state, it seems like Joseph may have witnessed a murder. He is found by Cameron, a young handsome sympathetic gay man, who's renting a big house along with his best friend Rafael. As Joseph gets to know Cameron and his friends and the two men have a mutual attraction, Rafael comes into pictur...

This series comes of age with ten uplifting and powerful tales recounting the lives of everyday heroes with no special powers except striving for their own identities and fighting for the right for us all to be ourselves. Daniel (UK) Read here Buddy (The Netherlands) Read here Half A Life (Egypt) Pairing the intimate narration of a young, Egyptian gay activist with a highly stylized animation, Half A Life brings the streets of Cairo to life through this firsthand account of the increasingly oppressive social climate of Egypt. Undress Me (Sweden) When Micke meets Mikaela on a night out, he is immediately attracted to her, as he can sense that there’s something different about her. When Mikaela explains that she is trans he gets confused, aggressive and also curious. Undress Me examines and challenges our perceptions of gender. The Colour Of His Hair (UK) Based on an unrealised film script written in 1964, when homosexuality is still illegal, The Colour of His Hair merg...

Sisak (India) A silent film, set in bustling Mumbai local train system, Sisak details a romance that develops between two men, slowly and intoxicatingly, nestled in the silences and quiet comforts of the end-of-day train journeys. A return to the unspoken, unsaid and universal expressions of love, on the path of subtlety and humanity, Sisak is the result of the belief that if love knows no bounds, it need not be bound with words, either. Absolutely Brilliant !! Attention of Men (Canada) Colt, an aspiring writer meets Ely, a wealthy man. Their relationship quickly evolves into a complex dynamic of father and son. As Ely's demons unravel, Colt tries to manage but fails. A random film about two men, their choices, fights, past, secrets and forms of freedom. Bruderliebe (Czech Republic) [Brotherly Love] A melancholic film about two brothers, an incestuous incident & obsession, abuse, and guilt. Na Hory (Czech Republic) [On the Mountains] Awareness film on how ...

This could easily have been a simple straight forward film focussing on the closeted life of a famous movie star, but there are a bunch of ancillary storylines introduced here which, in my opinion, just introduce confusion to the overall plot and takes away from the focus of the main story. Also, I feel, ambitions of the film were too high but the treatment was done at a very basic level with minimal production qualities which fails to give it a realistic film at all. Brian is a famous movie star who comes to Miami for a film shoot and is staying at a hotel. He has everything that one could ask for, except he is in closet and cannot be openly gay. The hotel bartender David flirts with him and they both start an affair. There is a journalist who is watching every move and is looking for the big story when he finds out that Brian might be gay. Then we have all these other ancillary stories of the bartender's best friend who is also gay and has a religious famous father, who has ...

Its been a while since I saw a LGBTQ rom-com. This genre can be a hot or miss. To be honest, I used to be a big fan of this genre but with age, my taste is starting to get better. lol Thankfully, this movie wasn't outrightly bad. It wasn't amazing but given that the film has pretty much only the 2 actors playing off each other for the entire duration of the film, does manage to hold your attention besides a few hiccups here and there and we will talk about it. Tyler is a young gay writer suffering from a peculiar medical condition called 'Analysis Paralysis'. With this condition, one cannot help but imagine all the possible ways that a possible choice or a situation could go wrong. And if not tackled head on, this condition will lead Tyler into a state of complete inaction. His therapist asks him to deal directly with it by facing his biggest fear, which in this case happens to be his crush on his neighbor Shane. Fighting his anxiety, Tyler manages to ask Shane out...

This is not a typical queer film as such. This is more about exploring one's sexuality. But given since our central character was gay, it does make sense to have it reviewed in my blog here. The film is essentially about orgy. Yes, that's correct, but by no means this is a porn film. The orgy serves as the setting through which we see about 10-15 characters besides the main leads and how they are deprived of affection. Milo is paraplegic and gay. On his birthday he returns to his huge big old mansion with pool with his best friend Gus who was just trying for Milo to have a good time. To make his birthday memorable, Gus texts his sassy transgender friend to throw him a birthday party at the mansion–more specifically, an orgy pool party. And this is where it all starts. We meet all kinds of random strangers and slowly we see a few stories start to develop. A straight couple are going through boredom in their relationship. An older woman, looking for someone, is constantly hi...

I would call this film more of an arthouse film in the LGBT genre. The film doesn't judge you for your sexuality, in fact it keeps it fluid, without asking or providing for labels. The film is more about friendship, love and issues that we all have in our lives and the past we can't bury and the future we wanna get. Four friends are spending a relaxed weekend in a summer house: Francisco owns the villa and is supposedly straight (or bi), who is with Joanna. Joanna is best friends with Simao, a screen writer, secretly writing his next film on the lives of himself and his friends and finally Vasco, a romantic at heart who doesn't believe in hook-ups and has been in an online relationship with  married man, who hasn't met him yet. In morning, they are all surprised to individually have received a call from an old friend David, who is in town and wants to visit them all. We gradually learn about their reasons for being excited and/or scared by his announced visit. Davi...

Thomas14 (Short Webseries) (Denmark) 14-year-old Thomas has just moved to new school. In his new class, he meets Mads and Emma. Mads thinks Thomas's drawings are cool, Emma is more interested in Thomas himself but Thomas feels huge surge for his sexuality thanks fto mads and Emma's hot brother. Portret Izgubljenim [Lost Souls of Tommorow] In this Slovenian film, Tom and Noah discuss their friendship on the last sunset before Tom leaves. What they wanna avoid is to talk about that one drunk night. Never Again (Thailand) Nhai keeps switching boyfriends who never last more than a month. When he meets Tae, things are not the same. He feels different. He worries that Tae will dump him because his karma will get back to him especially since Tae happens to be friends with one of Nhai's ex. At 40 minutes long, this film addresses that love can happen more than once, you just have to look. Thing work out eventually. De Vuelta (Spain) [Back Again] The story of two ch...

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...

At less than an hour, this tiny little film came out in 1998. I guess it was made for TV but I could be wrong. Anyway its about two flamboyant gay teenage boys (who totally are in denial about their sexuality) who can't wait to grow up and get out of New Zealand take a trip to Rangitoto Island and recall their friendship. Jamie and Lemmy meet at school and become fast friends after a rather weird gay bashing teenage incident. They both are rather effeminate, yet neither self identifies as gay yet. They are rather rebellious, often cutting class to go on adventures. Their families find their friendship odd but they really cant do much about it. They are both drawn to homosexuality but then they both always make lewd and horrible comments about gays and how they should not be here and all that. In fact they even go to public restrooms to create troubles. They fight it to the point of doing some horribly obnoxious things to those they suspect are gay. However, when they start exa...

Of most of the Thai LGBT stuff I have seen, they have few things in common. Cast usually has a lot of really cute boys and also they take forever to come to the point. Additionally, they also have plenty of side storylines that don't do much justice to the overall story line in progress. This little film is a very cute feel good love story with its share of ups and downs. It focuses mostly on love and friendship and how it evolves overtime. Nack is a 17 year old boy living with his single mother. His focus is solely studying so he can get in a nice university. He has close friends but he still feels quite lonely. And now also feels pressure of studies. An openly gay boy in his class for some reason bullies him indirectly. As time passes, Nack starts to understand the feeling of sex and love. Especially when one of the cute guys (supposedly straight) makes a move on Nack in swimming, but that goes nowhere. Enter Toy, the class Maths topper who take a fascination for Nack and sl...

I am not sure why this film is being targeted as a romantic comedy drama about coming out. It is actually neither of these things. No comedy or romance as such and definitely not coming-out. If anything, its a story about friendship between a gay and a straight man and where does life and situations take them through over a period of a year of their friendship. Todd and Russ are in the same literature class and soon become friends. Actually Todd is gay and has a crush on Russ and secretly hopes that Russ is gay too. But thats not to be the case. They bond over their common interest of foreign films and jazz music. Things go south slightly when Russ realizes that Todd is openly gay and that he has crush on him. Todd tries to explain but the friendship gets sour only soon to be mended around when Russ' grandfather passes away. None of Russ' friends and family approves of Todd as a friend and in fact even Todd's sister and her family don't approve. But they stick true...

This is one of those films thats stretched beyond reason and the story could easily have been told in a short story format. In this film I can easily snip off almost 60m minutes worth of scenes and as an audience you will not miss a single thing about the film. Long minutes of silences , awkward advances and just random memory flashbacks. I guess I am not going through a good time of watching decent films. A young man finds himself waking up to no memory. He is at Miguel's house and he doesn't remember a thing about who he is, where he is from and how did he get there. He starts to panic but after being calmed down he decides to stay in the apartment as he attempts to piece his memories back together. Almost an hour into the film and 3-4 days later is when the young man asks Miguel on how he got there. Miguel tells him that they met at a nightclub and he come home with him , had sex and slept but the young man remembers none of it. Flashbacks to sexual encounters and viole...

I understand when film makers think they know every thing about art and they wanna use a new medium to show us what their version if art is, ultimately becomes very exhaustive for audiences. And when you take a gay theme subject on top of that, the line between soft-core porn and pompous art-house cinema grows ever finer. This film is nothing but a sensational film making. The story is pretty thin. An aspiring gay actor Adonis has blind trust in his agent. He has an ailing mother and he is also supposed to take care of her. Keeping faith in agent, he agrees to work as a nude model a few gay art films which ultimately gets sold as porn films. He eventually joins porn and prostitution as well since he has to make money. We see various "artistic" scenes including Adonis getting raped by some 30 odd men for a film. Once his mother dies, he opens a bar with his agent to serve gay clientele and he also meets a caucasian man and falls in love. A tragic end awaits for Adonis whe...

From the very first dance number, I knew this film was going to be bad. But I wasn't sure how bad it will be. It was very over the top as you would expect from a movie of this genre and a poster like this. I wonder if this was supposed to be a trashy spoof comedy, because it would have been so much better. Sadly, I had to bear the ungodly story, acting and the overall premise for almost an hour and 45 minutes. The mother-daughter duo of Helen and Luella run a gay bed and breakfast far away form the center of the town. Its the weekend of the biggest party in town and we meet 5 gay/lesbian couples who are forced to stay in this BnB because they did not make prior arrangements. We have all stereotypes covered. A leather daddy and his boyfriend who happens to be the drag queen, a twink with a richer and older troll, an upscale gay couple with their annoying fag hag, an entrepreneurial lesbian couple and finally a singer and a tomboy lesbian couple. Luella also likes girls but Hele...

A compilation of short films exploring first love, revenge, new beginnings and more are unwrapped in this exciting collection from first-time directors from Portugal, Taiwan, Belgium, the UK and the USA. This collection, as expected is a very mixed bag of short films. None of the films really stood out for me. CIGANO (Portugal) : Wealthy young Sebastian finds out he has a flat tyre and ends up accepting help from a Gypsy passer-by. When Sebastian offers to give him a ride home, their expected destination is not what it seems. I am not sure what was the gay connection here. TALKING TO MY MOTHER (USA) : A young Asian man is trapped in a culture clash where traditions stunt his quest for personal happiness. He has a boyfriend but is expected to marry a girl who also is a close friend. The film shows the struggle to open up to his mother with the truth but maybe its too late now. DAWN (USA) : On an evening commute, Tye detects racism from another passenger's glance. In revenge...

Don't let the poster or dvd cover of the film fool you. This is a very unconventional film. Sadly, not a very good one. It is very artistic with less focus on story but more on the unusual treatment given to it. Its a case of style over substance, disguised with wordy dialogue and random narrative turns. It was really hard to keep your interest intact during the narrative. Albert is an ageing and eccentric painter who lives by himself in a very old and dirty house. He is visited by his friend who asks him to help her troubled grandson because he seems very sad all the time. I guess Albert is also a psychiatrist. When Ben visits Albert, we find that he had a boyfriend Adam, who dumped him and thats why he is sad, lonely and depressed. Albert tries to help but also at some stage is afraid of being alone himself. He knows he is growing old and through Ben, he tries to hold on to his youth. Using unconventional methods, he tries to cheer Ben and actually make a friendship. Albert ...

Though I have seen a similar themed film in the past and reviewed it here, this film does work on its own merit and sensibilities. This is a very sensitive film, that some may find slow, but its a beautifully directed and scripted drama without going over board at any stage. A beautiful setup of two main characters who come close to each other but then there is an invisible gap that comes between them and how it is handled. The film starts with an accident, in which Soo-hyun goes into coma. His friend Yoon-hoji survives and then we go into flashback. Soo-hyun lives with his mother whose husband left her and it was 4 years ago that Soo-hyun introduced Yoon-hoji to his mother as his friend. As the friendship grows, Soo-hyun's mother soon finds herself to be a motherly figure for Yoon-hoji also. Time progresses during which individually both the boys spend time in college and then Soo-hyun goes to mandatory military service, but during these times, Yoon-hoji makes a point to meet...

There are very few gay thrillers out there which are even half decent. The few that I have reviewed were years ago. And of late, the ones I have seen in last couple of years have been horrible. So, I had my reservations while watching this film. Thankfully, it was not terrible as I had begin to expect from movies of this genre, but it wasn't also super exciting that I would go back and watch it again. Marc and Fred are a married gay couple returning to a bed-and-breakfast after they won a court battle exactly a year ago against Josh, the owner of the establishment who is too religious to accept queers. There is an obvious tension when they check in and do not get a very warm welcome. Josh's teenage son Paul confides in Fred that he is gay and he has to deal with lot of issues because of his homophobic father. Tensions get higher when a mysterious Russian comes to B&B. Marc thinks he is gay but Fred believes that Josh has invited him for gay bashing. Meanwhile somehow P...

I found this web series while randomly browsing on Youtube and I am surprised not many people know about its existence. I have to admit that. initially it took me a while to warm up to the characters and the over-the-top acting by its characters, but slowly I got sucked into the lives of the characters and must say I thought it was quite decent. There are few shows that show show queer African American community the way this show does. Our main actors are Spencer and Jayden. They meet one night at Spencer's roommate Alex's birthday party and hook up. Its only the next day they realize that Spencer was actually the blind date that Alex had invited over. Alex is a player and just sleeps around but after this incident doesn't leave any chance to make Spencer guilty of stealing his potential love. Jayden and Spencer meanwhile are getting close and quite like each other. We also meet Jayden's sister, who is very supportive but is also dealing with own personal men issue...

At its heart, this film seems like a coming-of-age family drama centered around a love triangle. On paper this is a good story with a lot of drama and opportunities for conflicts, but good actors and direction makes all the difference. This is not a bad film at all, but needed a more mature film maker who could have done complete justice to the story. David is a young 22 year old dancer who has just been accepted to a dance company of his dreams. He wants to go but is hesitant because he has feelings for Jules, who is a married man that David has been having an affair with. It turns out that Jules is actually married to David's sister Jane. Slowly David starts to understand that Jules cannot reciprocate the love that he expects of him and as a rebound hooks up with a guy Sam in a club. They both get along well and as David is starting to get serious with Sam, Jules misses him and wants to do something about it. He becomes irritable and picks fights with Jane all the time. Jane...

I just reviewed the second in the series of the Male gaze recently, so I went and looked for part one to watch and review it here. This collection of short stories brings together five shorts that are based around men experiencing romantic and/or sexual interaction with other men for the first time. From regret to introspection to fighting back and all-out laughter, a confection of emotions await. Naked (Sweden) Straight friends Erik and Anthony sleep together after a night of drinking. In the aftermath Erik continues his relationship with his unsuspecting girlfriend while Anthony starts to consider that he may not be the person he’d always thought he was. Its time to confront his true feelings and likings. Pria (Indonesia) This is reviewed earlier here . Walk With Me (USA) While walking his dog, Eric bumps into the confident and carefree Ryan. Taking a nervous leap, Eric accepts Ryan’s invitation to walk through the city en route to a concert. In the next six blocks, the t...