Movie Reviews -
Gay Themed

Yes, one more of those macro vertical dramas stitched into movie versions, the English BL format. I think I should take a break from here because things are starting to mix up now. Having said that hat, these are good fun for guilty pleasure viewing, easily done on phone, so I shouldn't really be complaining. After you have seen a few of these, you really know what to expect. Brian has had a crush on Terry an upcoming football star from his teen days. Now adult, Terry is a very famous football star and Brian is his manager, very good at his job. Terry knows that Brian has had a crush on "someone" for 7 years and that he is gay, but Terry never guesses that it could be him. HE is also extremely flirty with Brian on many occasions and doesn't like when someone doesn't treat Brian right. But Brian has had enough and one day he resigns, forcing Terry to think of his actions. Soon Terry's game starts to suffer. The agency rehires Brian again, but. This time to mana...

Art Johnston and Pepe Peña, LGBTQ+ rights leaders and owners of the iconic gay bar Sidetrack in Boystown, are the subjects of a documentary. It follows their love story spanning 50 years and the history of the Sidetrack bar amid their fight for LGBTQ+ rights in Chicago. It tells the story of long-term gay marriage/partnerships as the partners weather health battles, senior-citizenship, and some of the difficulties (and rewards) of becoming elderly together. The film documents Art and Pep’s arrival to Chicago from small-town Illinois and Cuba respectively. The two discovered bar culture, and how precious it could be to those marginalized communities who craved a safe haven all their own. When the pair fell fast in love, an opportunity arose that took their lives in an altogether new and exciting trajectory: opening their own bar would allow Art and Pepe to continue celebrating the freedoms they found in Boystown as well as make a positive impact on their community. We witness their role...

I had no memory of the first Arisan film, so I had to go back and read my review to get some context before I watched this second part. As the original source material, this film is not queer per say, in fact it is so much more about a group of female friends, but the stories of the prominent gay characters continue here as well and I think it deserves a mention rightly here on my blog. The film kicks off 8 years after the events of the first film happened. The gay couple Sakti and Nino have broken up. Meimei is now divorced and Andien is now a successful person after losing her husband. We have a few new characters who join as well. The film starts with Meimei anther young son (or is it her friend's) spending time on an island getting therapy from a doctor Tom. The two have connection but we are later told that Meimei has cancer and is dealing with her issues. Nino now has a much younger boyfriend and this makes Sakti not happy, He has still not completely gotten over his ex. His ...

One more of those vertical mini series but this time not from Drama Box. This series is US based and like most of the previous ones, this one is to be seen just for pure entertainment. It has all the usual 'masala' like drama, kisses, love, misunderstandings, hot hot guys, lot of abs and with a title like this, we do get to see a lot of skin with our headliners spending most of the time in speedos or swim shorts.  The two leads here are Aidan and Will. Aidan's father used to run a store that got hammered by a bog corporation incidentally run by Will's father. Because of this Aidan's father left and disappeared and now his mother is very ill and he needs to take of the bills. They are both in swim team and even though everyone wants the hunky Will to become captain, it is Aidan who become captain. Even though Will occasionally teases Aidan, but he always protects him from being bullied by his friends which confuses Aidan. When Will finds out about Aidan's need fo...

Yet another horror comedy genre, this time mixing drag queens, queers and zombie world. A group of queer characters find themselves trapped in a Bushwick nightclub, fending off a horde of the living dead. Sounds familiar? Yes, I have seen at least a couple of films, more recently in the Canadian film Slay. I feel like this genre has specific viewers and is targeted for them. I have to be honest that I was quite enjoying the first half of the film, but then it just felt. Ike it is dragging on for no reason. Also some of the gags were really not as funny as they were likely on paper. Needing a last-minute cover for her half-dead party, Dre hesitantly calls on an old friend, Sam (who I snow a nurse and has been out of scene for a while now), to fill in the stilettos of the headliner for the night. After getting reacquainted with some old faces and butting heads with some new queens. Sam meets Ginsey, Sam’s drag mother and mentor; wannabe performer/dealer Nico ; and Lizzy’s plumber brother...

Set in a small town middle America, the film likely had an interesting idea with them but the execution of the film is so drab and boring that you just can't wait for the film to finish. Also, when you take a subject that has some medical ailment behind it, it's always advisable to do some research, which clearly this film failed to do. Alzheimer's rarely is a death sentence and more often than not the patients lead a long life. Anyway, back to the film now. Michael is in his mid 40s and is a gay romance novel writer. He meets James at a bookstore and dating/romance soon follows. Michael has been feeling bouts of sickness where he suddenly forgets things and stuff gets blocked out. When he gets checked, he is told that he has early onset Alzheimer's and that he will need support of people around him, who love him and will see mood swings and that his life expectancy is only about 6 years. He keeps the information to himself but confides in a couple of friends. One of wh...

This film is the kind of slapstick comedy of errors, and to some extent, terrors, that occasionally bring a broad smile to the viewer’s face. Not to be taken seriously at all, a film like this is purely for entertainment purposes and entertainment it does provide. A light-hearted comedy with high farce, mildly progressive messaging, broad humour and slapstick gags, which also happens to have a ghost, this film brings laughs that are mostly effective. This film is remake of the Taiwanese film “Marry My Dead Body”, which I quite enjoyed actually. After waking from a nightmare, the late Titi’s grandma is told by a spiritual advisor that her son has unfinished business, which is likely getting married to a man. She’s instructed to leave a red envelope that fate will deliver to the right groom. Enter Menn, a hapless police informant whose love life is even more tragic than his career. He stumbles upon the envelope and is almost forced in to the marriage. On their wedding night, Menn is stun...

Squared (USA) When hopeless romantic Tate, prepares to get hot and heavy with a man he meets off a phone app, things take a turn for the worse when they both discover they’re both tops. What starts off as a potential bedroom tango ultimately ends up in a battle of wits and strength to prove who’s pitching and who’s receiving. A bit racist since the white guy assumes that Asian guy will always bottom. The competition goes into muscle, who is hung, wrestling etc. Nao Precisa Pedir Desculpa (Brazil) [You Don't Have To Apologize] Rafa is a young transgender and gay man living in a small town. He has resigned himself to the belief that he will never find another man who accepts him, until he meets Henrique, a boy from São Paulo who seems to see Rafa for who he truly is. However, after the events of one night that lead to Rafa's death and subsequent return as a supernatural being, he realizes that he will never be accepted by cisgender society. Fueled by this realization and the circ...

This film is supposed to be a thriller crime drama, which an intersex lead at the center of it all. The person is dealing with their childhood trauma and young adulthood 'trying to survive' stuff. Depending on how you see it, is either a film exploring nonbinary gender identity or a mesh-mash of a crime movie with a radically unorthodox queer protagonist. I wanted to like the film, but I felt like this film was trying to be a lot of things.  The film starts with us being introduced to Ponyboi, (who I first thought was trans female), who is a part time sex worker for New Jersey truck drivers and later arrives at the second job of laundromat. Ponyboi's best friend is the pregnant Angela, whose boyfriend Ninny also happens to be the pimp for Ponyboi (fucking them on the side). He is charming, sexy, alluring but also dangerous. It's valentines day and he asks Ponyboi to "tale care" of one of his clients with home cooked drugs. Things go wrong when this man dies be...

This mini series is a tender ode to young love with individuals struggling with their identity and hopes. Told over 6 episodes of a total runtime of about 70 minutes. The series is about Elly and his first summer after high school and people he meets. We are not spooned on what is Elly's background. All we know is that he has been dealing with some sort of depression and some sort of estrangement from his mother.  Series starts with Elly’s best friend, Rowen, picking him up at the hospital. Elly is going to be staying with her for a while. The setting is a very small town. Here Rowen introduces Elly to Yonah, same age and a recently out young man. ON Rowen's insistence the two boys start to hang out, despite initial reluctance by Elly but Elly starts too slowly enjoy this. Yonah is not doing anything to cure his depression but the company helps. Yonah is a dreamer himself, who likes to read books and write poetry and dreams of traveling. Elly meanwhile had been  painter and ha...

This film felt like an independent film with a runtime of just about an hour. On the plus side, the film just focuses on the story it wants to tell without having to stray into side plots. Sadly that is not enough to keep the focus of viewers. It felt like this could have ben a very good short film. The attempt, though noble, feels amateurish at various places. Despite the fact that the film doesn't drag, it still feels it could have ben tightly edited to make for a far better impact. The two good looking leads hold the film tightly together. The film is about the bond that forms between Ara, a local MMA fighter, and Kossi, a soccer player from Togo who faces hardship in Argentina. Ara, a local fighter notices an injured Kossi and somehow gets fascinated by him. It turns out that Kossi came here from Togo with a promise to join an elite football club that could change his life. But not only did the agent turn out be fraud, but now with the injury, he doesn't have place to live ...

This documentary film following one survivor and his lawyer as they pursue justice through a public trial focusing on one perpetrator in particular, Father William Hodgson "Hod" Marshall, a retired priest and teacher, who several years ago pleaded guilty to sexually abusing 16 boys and one girl at schools in Toronto, Sudbury and Windsor. What distinguished the case was that the defendant was seeking punitive damages, for the first time in Canada, from a Church institution. The crux of the matter was that Marshall’s crimes had been reported a half-dozen times over the years, yet he was allowed to continue working, and abusing students. Most of the documentary focuses on the lawyer and the one survivor Rod MacLeod going through deliberations and how they want to have the church pay for what they did. They are both aware of plenty other situations where the church did out of court settlements but Rod wanted none of it. The doc takes us through the journey of the lawyer preparing...

Honestly I wouldn't call this a gay film at all. Categorizing this in BL genre is also pretty much borderline. There is no BL or romance as such, this film is more of a comedy that uses queer themes to explore a dangerous dynamic between the vampire and the boy. Adapted by a manga and an anime series of same name, I would not wanna see the anime now, especially since, there is in't too much of BL content here. Yes, it is funny but thats about it. Mori is a 450 year old vampire. Injured one day, he is taken home by a 5 year old boy Rihito. Since then, Mori has lived with Rihito and his family. He was given a cleaning job at their bathhouse. Mori works at night, rests during the day, and keeps a low-key routine. Mori has told the family he is vampire, but they all joke about it and cal it his 'persona'. Years have passed and Rihito is now 15. Mori always craves for young virgin blood and has his eyes on Rihito since he will turn 18 in three more years, but he also loves h...