Tag: Four Star Film Review
The latest four-star film review from THEGAYUK.
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FILM REVIEW| I Want Your Love
★★★★ | I Want Your Love is collaborative film between gay porn studio NakedSword and independent filmmaker Travis Mathews.
Jesse is an aspiring artist who feels creatively blocked because of the state his finances and his massive amount of debt. After spending the last decade in San Francisco, Jessie decides to move back home to his parents in Ohio, the Midwest to free himself of the financial pressure.
I Want Your Love is the story of his last weekend in San Francisco with his friends, roommates and ex-lovers coming to his leaving party.
Sex plays an important role in this film and there are uncensored sex scenes from the start. Sex is used to show character development, intimacy, move the storyline along and the development of friendships: those that start with clear defined boundaries but turn into something more – entering that grey area between friend and lover.
Whatever type of man you’re into, you’ll find them in this film and I can guarantee that they’ll be in a graphic, all-exposed sex scene. Whether your taste be: bears, twinks, older, younger, white, black, Asian, muscly, ordinary or just an all-around lover of all.
The film is extremely erotic and at times felt like watching a porn film. There’s even a threesome scene. The obligatory porn “I’m going to come!” scene followed by – well use your imagination, makes several appearances in this film. Arguably the storyline gets lost at times in the incredibly hot, but distracting sex.
Jesse is completely likeable, relatable and discovers that he’s searching for his true self. Over the course of the weekend, he redefines what it means to him to be an artist, gay, and an adult. However, the ending was a bit of an anti-climax.
It’s brilliantly directed and shot in a way that makes you feel like your sharing the characters most intimate moments. I Want Your Love is at times: funny, emotionally touching, romantic and sentimental as well as being abundantly horny throughout.
There were slow scenes of sparse dialogue that were followed by peaks of rampant high-paced sex. There was an annoying character – one who really grated, but luckily he wasn’t in the film much.
Mathews stated that he wanted to give an ‘honest and relevant’ representation of everyday gay life for men in San Francisco. I’m not from San Francisco so I can’t comment, but if that’s what it is really like – get me on a plane!
I Want Your Love is the perfect film to watch with your partner or other very close friends – not only thoroughly entertaining, it will give you plenty of ideas in the bedroom department.
I Want Your Love is available to pre-order/order on Amazon.
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FILM REVIEW | Behind The Candelabra
★★★★ | Behind The Candelabra
According to director, Steven Soderbergh, the Hollywood studios refused to finance “Behind the Candelabra”, so it ended up being made as a TV movie by HBO.
t seems the movie was deemed too gay (post Brokeback Mountain, really?) and so, though it is getting a cinema release here in the UK (out on June 7), in the USA, it will only be seen on television.
If I’m honest, the movie does rather betray its origins as a TV movie, albeit a very enjoyable one with high production values and excellent performances.
Production designer Howard Cummings, and set designer Barbara Munch-Cameron went to great pains to ensure the movie looks authentic, and many of the props, the pianos and the cars, are actually ones that Liberace himself owned, found on extensive scavenging trips to various antique dealers and prop buyers; some on loan from the Liberace museum. Liberace’s Las Vegas mansion and Los Angeles penthouse are revealed in all their lavishly over the top, glitzy, rococo splendour and the costumes, by Ellen Mirojnick, are detailed reproductions of ones worn by Liberace and Scott Thorson.
Not wanting to make a traditional biopic, Soderbergh has concentrated on the period spanning the relationship of Liberace and Thorson, adding a short coda that takes in Liberace’s death from AIDS and his funeral, and is mostly based on Thorson’s book “Behind the Candelabra”. During this period, Thorson gained a lot of weight, then lost it again, and both Liberace and Thorson underwent plastic surgery.
Even if one knows little about Liberace, the story is a familiar one, basically a celebrity marriage that goes wrong. The end of Liberace’s relationship with Thorson is already there in the beginning. When Thorson first meets Liberace, we also meet Liberace’s current lover, a relationship that has obviously soured, so it is no surprise when the scene is replicated later in the film, this time with a young dancer taking the Thorson role, and Thorson taking the role of the disgruntled lover. There is no doubt about the love and affection the two men have for each other at the beginning of the relationship, but things take a bizarre turn when Liberace decides he would like to adopt Thorson, and asks Thorson to undergo plastic surgery to make him look more like Liberace’s younger self.
Having settled into domestic bliss, they have both gained weight, and the idea comes to him after Liberace sees himself on TV on the Jonny Carson show, declaring he looks like his father in drag. He enlists the help of Dr Jack Startz, a plastic surgeon and dietician (brilliantly played by Rob Lowe, with a completely immobile face). Quite how the make-up department achieved the amazing before and after transformations I am not sure, but they have done so brilliantly.
Soderbegh’s direction is not always sure footed, and the film drags a little in the middle, which might be less noticeable in the context of a TV movie. He does however get wonderful performances out of his all star cast. Aside from the aforementioned Rob Lowe, there are some great cameos from Dan Ackroyd, Scott Bakula and Debbie Reynolds (remember her?), but the movie succeeds or fails on the work of its two stars, and both Michael Douglas and Matt Damon give faultless performances. Damon is thoroughly believable as the star struck young innocent who gradually descends into drug addiction, and Michael Douglas quite simply gives one of the best performances of his career.
It would have been so easy, and so tempting, to overplay the role and come up with a clownish caricature, but Douglas completely avoids that trap, and comes up with a performance of great subtlety. If the movie had a cinema release in America, he would no doubt be in line for an Oscar. As it is, surely he’ll walk away with the Emmy.
Available to buy / view on: Amazon | Amazon Prime | iTunes
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FILM REVIEW | Keep The Lights On
★★★★ | Keep The Lights On
Keep the Lights On is a powerfully charged plot following two men from New York City, Erik (Thure Lindhardt) and Paul (Zachary Booth), through an emotional wave of events.
Their initial casual sex encounter forms a beautiful relationship which is explosive, climatic and heart-warming, creating a dichotomy of emotive highs and agonising lows. These fundamental parallels are significant, questioning how one can think they know someone, but at the same time know so little about their drive and purpose. But what are the implications of having casual sex with a stranger?
The movie is set across a period of time, as the storyline gradually increases in momentum. The main couple are easy to relate to, joyfully expressing those heart warming feelings of being in the early stages of a relationship – the closeness, the ecstasy, the contentment. But along with the greatness of any relationship comes the sadness. The film explores the difficulties and strains of alcohol and drug abuse, but how much can a partner support and guide before they can take no more?
The film work is a mature and honest investigation into a couples intimate bond. It doesn’t try to make a point of this being a gay relationship, which is usually my biggest criticism. It is simply a love story full of anguish and confusion like any other. With poignant shots throughout the movie and set to a stunning soundtrack, it has to be placed right at the top of the must see movie category.
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FILM REVIEW | Gayby
★★★★ | Gayby
I had some reservations about Gayby. A lot of these ‘gay films’ are usually clichéd drivel, almost always, an unlikely relationship sparks and then it’s just an hour of plot-holes and bad acting.
Jenn, a yoga instructor, and Matt, a comic book store worker, are best friends from college who are now single and in their 30’s. In agreement with a pact they made in their youth, the two decide to have a baby (“Gayby”) together, even though Jenn is straight and Matt is gay. Jenn’s grandmother set her up with a trust fund for if she ever had a child, so Jenn is confident that she and Matt will have the finances to have one. However, Jenn states that she wants to have a baby through natural conception, so the two begin awkwardly having sex.
Gayby was something very different indeed. I found it to be relentlessly charming in every way, with just the perfect amount of drama peppered in. Superbly written and directed by relative newcomer Jonathon Lisecki, It had something that all these other films are missing… A great script.
The awkwardness of the “Attempted Conception” scenes was genius, with just the perfect combination of one liners, curious glances and the various montages of penetration were just divinely cringe worthy.Possibly the stand out performance of the film is that of Jenn Harris. Harris plays the quintessential fag hag (Jen) to the devastatingly handsome Matthew Wilkas (Matt). Harris brings a depressive vibe into a relatively overused character, which is surprisingly, a breath of fresh air.Although it’s the supporting characters that steal the show, both fag and hag have terrifically bitchy henchmen as it were, the ‘femme-bear’ “Nelson” and the incredibly bitchy “Jamie” (Jack Ferver)
By far the highlight of the film is the fabulous wannabe bear, Nelson, played brilliantly by writer and director Lisecki. The character of Nelson wasn’t particularly appealing to me at the beginning, then suddenly; the character soon manifests as the star of the show. Clearly Lisecki gave himself some of the best lines, yet you don’t really mind, seeing as he pulls them off in the most gorgeously sarcastic manner.
Gayby’s plot isn’t really anything special; it is essentially a romantic comedy in disguise.
It’s the characters that make the film stand out. They are multidimensional and most importantly they’re ‘real’.
Uncompromisingly jovial, I would certainly recommend Gayby to anyone; it has buckets of charm, something that I find to be a rarity in gay cinema.
BUY IT NOW FROM AMAZON | BUY IT ON iTunes -
FILM REVIEW: The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” opens nationwide today.
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FILM REVIEW | Pam Ann Live From New York City
★★★★ | Pam Ann Live From New York City
When I moved to London as a pink faced, wide eyed young lad from the midlands, live cabaret was quite an alien concept to me. In those heady days I’d bounce from bars, where bar boys would be doing camp Steps routines, to club nights where the likes of Mariah and Madonna would play, all whilst supping on a bottle of hooch.
Way back then, Pam Ann was one of the first cabaret acts that I ever saw and even though I’d never even set foot in an airport, let alone on an aeroplane, at that point in my life, I still howled at every bit of her sharp observational humour and the garish persona she had invented.
Thirteen years on and whilst so many things have come and gone, Caroline Reid, the woman behind the potty-mouthed trolley dolly, is not only still commanding packed out venues in London, she has seemingly charted a meteoric rise to fame worldwide. With a world tour in 2011, sell-out performances at the esteemed London Palladium and the Hammersmith Apollo, Pam has set her sights firmly on breaking America and she’s doing a damn good job of it. In her latest DVD, Pam Ann Live from New York, Pam plays to her ‘gays’ at ‘Joes Pub’: a celebrated showcase venue that has seen the likes of Kiki and Herb, Amy Winehouse and Alicia Keys grace it’s stage.
Pam’s knowledge of her subject really is astounding. If you’re going to do stand up focussing on such a niche topic then you have to be on the ball and the devil really is in the detail. Pam gives a master class in it. Rolling off gags about every possible airline you know, and some you have never even heard of; mocking certain mannerisms and nuances that she has picked up and exaggerated for comic effect, whilst also working the audience into as much of the show as she can. The content is fresh and appealing and is mixed well with tried and tested older material; with references to recent aviation developments such as British Airways’ recent initiative, ‘what would Kate do’ and Ryanair threatening to introduce porn to their flights (shudders).
If you’ve never seen Pam before then you’d best buckle up because she doesn’t mince her words and it’s certainly not a DVD for you if you’re at all twee about swearing and sexual suggestiveness. She does love to go on about her appreciation of big black cock A LOT.
A highly entertaining show that will really put a smile on even the glummest of faces. Pam’s unique brand of stand up is as risible now as it ever was.
Available to buy / view on: Amazon
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FILM REVIEW: Undertow
A movie set within the everyday of a small Peruvian village by the sea, Undertow will draw on the pain of its viewer.
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FILM REVIEW: Shelter
Thwarted by his family circumstance and finding it hard to find his place in a small industrial Californian town, heartthrob Zach (Trevor Wright) is a trapped, talented artist.
Stymied by his situation; a selfish and homophobic sister, a loveless relationship with his girlfriend and a father who is next to useless. With Art College and a new life calling him, Zach finds himself suffocated by his life with a hopeless acceptance. However things begin to change when Shaun (Brad Rowe), Zach’s best friend’s brother returns to town. Life begins to click into place when a drunken night together shows Zach a new reality. One that offers a life unlimited.
As the relationship develops between the two would-be lovers, the reality of his new secret life mounts pressure on his daily existence. Zach is torn between the release of who he wants to be and the pressures of his real life. Zach has become a surrogate father to his sister’s five-year-old son, the adorable Cody (Jackson Wurth) in-between his shifts flipping burgers. His small town, wrong side of the tracks existence and expectations battle directly with the possibilities that lay ahead with Shaun, Art College and escaping from his humbler beginnings.
What makes Shelter a wholly charming film to watch is its warmth and honesty. Its tentative steps and its revealing of Zach’s new potential is stunning. You know where you are with Shelter and you know where you’re going and clichés aside, it’s a magnificent film for many reasons. It’s a hazy, sweet, Gaussian, Californian coming out story. Filmed with a sensitivity that’s not often found in queer cinema. The sex scenes aren’t graphic, but leave enough to the imagination. It’s everything you wish your vanilla first time with a man might be. Its lack of reference to the gay scene or to gay culture makes it a film that can be enjoyed by most audiences, who appreciate a good romance. Filled with instamatic – esque shots of the Californian shoreline, crashing waves mix well with a thoughtful and provocative soundtrack.
The camera does linger on Trevor Wright and he deserves the attention. Acting with an introspective knowing, Wright leads the story through and along with Brad Rowe gives great screen. Their chemistry is undeniable, their potential promising. It is an entirely shameful that Wright hasn’t garnered more film success because he is a riveting actor to behold.
Shelter never fails to deliver what you’d expect from a coming out story, perhaps a little less complicated than real life situations, but definitely a film I’d revisit.
Perfect if you like: Rainbows, Hollister and Hollywood endings.
Dreadful if you like: Slings, fisting and earthy dramas.