Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

In my opinion this is a dark, weird and a twisted film that focuses on fetish. The subject is taboo and disturbing but I am all game for out of the box story ideas. Sadly when the execution fails, nothing for the film goes right. This one falls in the later category. Ton and his boyfriend of 5 years have been living together since they were teenagers. Ton is now a high school teacher and his partner is in some sort of security work. In the beginning we see that Ton gets very sexually aroused seeing his partners sweaty back and shirt and that eventually becomes his fetish. Going through a 5 year itch in their relationship, Ton, invariable gets attracted to one of his students Joe after one day he sees his shirt wet with sweat. This is when he tries to get close to the student and even steals his sweaty clothes, so that he can carry on with his fetish in the privacy of the home. His partner clearly sees that Ton is not invested in the relationship as much as he is. When the boyfrien...

This film may be thin on plot, but OMG! the acting by the lead actor more than makes up for everything. I have to very clearly point it out on the onset that the lead actor is nothing short of being marvelous in a character that shows us varied emotions and what his character is actually going through. He is absolutely sensational as a repressed teenager who has no idea what his heart really wants and yet he is trying to balance to be straight with his friends while hiding his true ‘gay’ feelings. The film starts with Frankie, a young hot teenager, checking out gay dating website and checking out older guys. He says he is not sure what he is looking for (or maybe he cannot admit). And then we get to know him better. He lives with his dying father, sister and mother in a cramped Brooklyn house and he along with 3 of his other friends spend most of their time just walking on the beach, boardwalk, trying to pick girls and just getting high on pills, drugs, smoke and weed. One such gi...

We have seen many films/documentaries on rape with women, this documentary on BBC offered something new. According to the statistics that examined male rape, just an estimated 10% of victims report the crime. With this documentary we hear and see the stories  of three men who are breaking their silence. If one in six men are victims of sexual abuse, then why are so few people talking about it? We hear stories of three men: Tanaka, Neil and Alex. Each of them going through the story of why and how the abuse happened; what made them not go report the crime to the police and how each of them had their own way of coming to terms with what happened and just moving o with their life. Alex, after staying silent for many years, has now set up a charity, Stay Brave UK, in a bid to provide a voice for all rape victims - male, female, LGBT and non-binary. Neil's relationship with his partner at the time, Lloyd, crumbled under the pressure of trying to cope with the assault and he turned ...

A very interesting film that chronicles adolescent emotional questions and longing. What is youthful love all all about? Do you really know what you want, what you like, who do you long for, any gay desires and other issues; these are all pretty universal questions that most teenagers find themselves going through. So in that respect, this film is not completely a gay themed film but touches upon the subject as the prime narrative very strongly and hence definitely deserves a mention on my blog. Ito and Yoshida are close friends but Yoshida is completely unaware of the huge crush that Ito has on him. When a new girl Aihara joins their class, she somehow gets a pang of Ito’s fascination for Yoshida. Initially she taunts him but slowly the two of them become friends, especially given that they are both being treated by same psychiatrist (Ito’s father finds out he is gay and wants him treated And we later find that Aihara was raped in her previous school). Ito is constantly ridiculed...

Only 10 minutes into this is when I realized that I was actually going to be watching a documentary and not a feature film. Not that I had any problem with it, but I feel you need to have a different sort of mental preparation to watch documentary films compared to when you do for feature films. I have seen a few films where the focus is on male hustling, especially, by the so called straight guys to make easy money. This documentary also focuses on this aspect. From a story perspective, it is easy breezy. The focus of this is the Bulgarian Roma guys who are here working in Vienna and looking for living. None of these guys came to Vienna thinking of becoming a prostitute but its the circumstances that made them do it. All these guys get together in a bar/club every night which is where they find most of their customers. They are all straight, have wife and kid back home, even though they are all very young. They know they are young and good looking and they call it 'doing busi...

Yes, we all know that there was a time when being gay was illegal and crime and you could be put behind bars and tortured; but even now when you see films that focus on this, it still gives you goosebumps. It is really hard to imagine for us what it would have been like to live during those times and what people had to go through. It makes you think and thank and respect our seniors for everything that they have done to make the world a slightly better place for LGBT community to thrive and live freely (relatively!) The film follows a docu-drama pattern, which after a while starts working. You need to watch the film with heart and not mind. Peter Wildeblood is struggling with his sexuality. His only companions are Lord Montague and his cousin who he can have discussions with. One night in 1952, he bumps into Eddie McNally, a Navy man, and begins a relationship that will lead to his arrest, trial and imprisonment for gross indecency and buggery. The arrests start with that of Lord ...

Its time, yet again, for another season of bear madness. and just like the predecessors, the idea is pretty clear. 4 bears, a murder trial, lot of sex and some stupid stuff. Although I have to say that this season was lot better in production quality compared to the previous ones and even in terms of storyline. But then these are the kind of shows, where you are not supposed to use your brain too much. Nelson is being his usual annoyed self and is quite jealous of his co-star, who happens to be more popular than him. While shooting for a scene, Nelson shoots at the beloved TV star and he actually dies. The gun happened to be real and so now the trial begins. We also see a flirtatious middle eastern man, who is buying the Inquisitive channel that Reggie works for and they start being flirtatious. Wood decides that he wants to expand his business and venture into porn but soon realizes that maybe its too late for him to continue to be as popular but with the help of his associate Ge...

The biggest problem with these kind of films is that you need to really spend time in trying to understand what the film director was really trying to say. Its definitely not in-your-face very clear story. In fact, you need to watch every scene very carefully to totally understand whats real and what maybe unreal. I have personally always struggled on what do I exactly feel about such films. You dislike it after the first viewing but then you discuss with friends, read posts online trying to decipher the film and then 2 days later, you feel, “OMG! That was brilliant storytelling!”. But was it really? If you had to spend so much time just understanding the film; was it really a brilliant piece of work? Tam is gay and is bullied in school. His family also disapproves of him and constantly accuse him of anything that goes wrong in the house including anything stolen. Tam meets a much confident Phum at a deserted pool area. The two are looking for mutual physical satisfaction. Initial...

The story of this film is interesting yet dumb at the same time. The characters seemed a bit unbelievable and awkward. The story is told via some flashback sequences , which just add a bit to the confusion. Thankfully the movie is not too long and ends after a decent time. A foreigner is found naked by the police by the side of river. Unable to extract any information out of him, he is sent to the hospital. The male nurse, Jiang, forms a bond with this foreigner (Luke). When hospital decides to send this guy to mental asylum since he refuses to speak anything, Jiang decides to take matters in his own hands and smuggles him to his uncle’s village. When the foreigner one night calls a random number on Jiang phone, he tracks the number and meets a girl Ning, who is not helpful at all. But later Jiang finds out the real truth. It turns out that Luke had met Ning and her boyfriend Han at the college campus and they strike a friendship. Unaware to Ning, Han and Luke start an affair. Whe...

It is such a shame when a very promising premise comes alive on screen in a very naive and uninteresting way. Sure this film came back in 2004 but film-making wan’t so ordinary then. Such a film made in 80s would have been a lot more acceptable but I found the screenplay and the treatment leaving a lot to be desired. It seems that makers just wanted to incorporate all kinds of stuff in their film rather than focus on the core story line. The film is told in flashback by means of the lead character Henry by a reporter and the events being discussed happened 6 months ago. Henry, a teenager, is the only son of Republican senator, who is up for re-elections. Being conservative, the senator condemns homosexuality, not knowing Henry himself is gay. The senator plans to kick off his re-election campaign at a luncheon at Henry's college campus and he expects Henry to deliver his introduction so that he can influence the youth of today. Henry doesn’t have a good relation with his fathe...

Margo Berger, one of the co-directors of this film has a super knack of creating sexual tensions. In all his previous films, this was one of the common scenarios, even though the stories he tells are quite different. I remember not liking his first film ‘PlanB’, but I think I have started to appreciate his kind of cinema and vision I went back and watched that film again as well, I would like it. If you break it down to the story level, honestly there is nothing much to it but its the treatment and the homo eroticism that wins the game. Taekwondo follows a group of friends who share an “all boys” summer getaway in a beautiful country house that happens to be of Fernando’s mother. The real soul of the film is however, the building friendship between Fernando and Germán whom he met at his Taekwondo classes, has known him for a year and invites to the vacation with his friends. We are soon told that Germán is gay and has a huge crush on Fernando and he has no clue about Fernando’s fe...