Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

This seemingly long stretched film is like one big hallucination. In almost 80% of the film, there seems to be no point of story. Its just events that are joined together, not easy to follow at all and whats up with all the video game flashes, neon images etc. Sadly you don't even get to see the faces of the leads properly. I mean, why would anyone make such a film. David sees Lucio at a dance party and it catches his eye, But Lucio disappears and they meet again one year later but this time David disappears. He has a girlfriend who lives far away. Using her help and exorcism, David tries to find him in parties and similar situations to that of their first encounter. Yes, thats pretty much the summary of this one hour long film. The film has lot of voiceovers, weird topographies including mountains, karaoke, parties, discos, video games etc. and none of these make any sense whatsoever. Is this about time travel or space travel or just a weird imagination of film makers. I se...

Something New (USA) After breaking up with a cheating ex-boyfriend Jonah has been satisfying his sexual needs with a hot man he met on Grindr. But Jonah is thrown when the man asks him on a "real date." Is Jonah really ready for something new? L’Américain (France) A chance encounter unexpectedly leads to an unlikely friendship when a young, reserved Parisian takes in a mysterious American backpacker for a few days. !Que te den por culo! (Spain) [Get It Up Your Arse] One night he boyfriend tells his girlfriend how a friend asked him whether he’d take it up the arse, for a huge sum of money. And this is when the girl starts asking the same question for him to prove his love for her. Tell Me How (Canada) Damien and Matt have been romantic for a couple weeks But Matt identifies as straight or bi and his flirting with a girl leads to a fight that will challenge their future commitment for one another. They find themselves fighting for their love but who knows what...

Amit Khanna is back with the sequel to his mostly entertaining web series All About Section 377 which I reviewed here . Both that and this series and freely available on youtube to watch. The series comes at a time when India's supreme court gave a verdict in favour of LGBT community decriminalizing homosexuality in the country. This series continues from where it left. Rohit's partner Sid is back in his village and has no courage to come out to his parents. He breaks up with Rohit over phone and agrees to marry a girl. On his cousin Suresh's insistence (who now has become a TV star), Rohit, Suresh and Chhotu decide to come to the village to win back over Sid. Sid lives in a joint family and the bride's family is in the neighbourhood. Slowly, Rohit takes over himself to win hearts of everyone in the family while hiding the actual relationship between him and Sid. Sid's girlfriend slowly realizes the truth and supports them. After a bit of drama, the relationshi...

This is the first LGBT film from Kosovo on my blog. I am not sure if this is the first LGBT film from the country itself but if this film is any benchmark, then I will have to look for more options. This film, by the way, was Kosovo's official entry for Oscars. I will talk about this in details, but the chemistry between the lead actors is something I have not seen in a long time in movies, especially between two male leads. Also what's important to understand is that the film is set in and after the Kosovan war. We meet Bekin and his fiancé Anita in an opening scene where Anita is looking for her missing parents. The dead bodies come from Serbia. This sets the history of the contested nation-state of Kosovo. Bekin and Anita are soon to get married and are very happy and in love. Through a couple of flashback scenes we see how they met, started courting and have reached this point today. Enter Nol, who has just returned from Paris, where he is a successful musician and the...

I am not sure if I should roll my eyes after watching the film, laugh at the absurdity or actually applause the makers for trying something different in the queer genre. Probably part of me wants a little bit of all three and hence the confusion. This film uses a lot of sex and porn to dive deeper into the themes of desire, abandon and sexual repression. Set in 1979 in Paris, we meet Anne who is a gay porn film producer. She has just broken up with her editor girlfriend Louis and pours all her energy into work. We realize that her porn films work because she takes a leaf out of real life situations and turns them into gay porn. One of the make actors from her films is murdered pretty quick and the police calls her for interrogation. She uses that situation and creates a porn film out of it. But soon there are 3 more murders in quick succession and her cast and crew start questioning her on how can she not be affected. Since investigating murder of gays is not a police priority, sh...

This was surprisingly a very interesting film. It was mainstream, it was emotional, touching and a story of obsession and love. Interestingly, the topic if depression has become quite mainstream all over the world, and seeing a queer film handle the topic interwoven with a gay love story makes it even more interesting and something very novel. It is slow, but a film of this subject needs that focus as it was given. The story is about Kevin and Jamie. Kevin is the kind of boy who gets bullied in school all the time. His only close friend is Jamie, but even Jamie does not acknowledge their friendship in front of rest of the classmates. When Kevin tells Jamie that his mother has decided to move to Australia, the two boys finally give in to their feelings and kiss each other. Their passion is broken by local cops after which Jamie decides to play it safe. Years later, Kevin is now in a group home dealing with depression in Australia. Jamie makes a surprise visit. The two old friends r...

I can see this movie being a talking point way back when it came out in 1995. But so much has evolved since then in stories, story-telling and overall cinema that it is hard to sustain interests of today's audience. This film explores the underground, less explored territories of desire in its darker manifestations and hence makes for an uncomfortable watch. Also the events sometimes don't feel linear. The film constantly goes back n forth between present and past and makes it difficult to keep a track. Dennis is big time into S&M. He is on this path between what is real and what we can only hope is surreal. We get to follow his journey that he has written to his friend and former lover Julian and his younger brother Kevin, an object of desire to Dennis. We are told how as a teenager he is drawn to the extremes of porn and sex via a bookstore owner Henry. When he hears that Henry has been the victim of a grisly murder, Dennis fantasizes carrying out increasingly elabor...