THEGAYUK

Tag: Movie Genre Gay

The latest reviews for gay movies. Read all of THEGAYUK’s reviews.

  • FILM REVIEW | Drown, a film that sinks to new depths

    ★ | Drown

    Three lifeguards pal around until things turn ugly one night in the new film ‘Drown.’

    ‘Drown’ is a film with very ugly overtones. And it’s not even a positive portrayal of a young gay man who continues to get beaten up and up by an evil homophobic asshole. Handsome Jack Matthews plays Phil. He’s the newby lifeguard in a team that includes the unpredictable and very volatile Len (Matt Levett). They form a trio with fellow lifeguard nick-named Meat (Harry Cook), and together all three bond, in some sort of strange way.

    Len has some kind of strange fascination for Phil, it’s either because Phil is gay and Len doesn’t like it or because Len is secretly attracted to Phil, though won’t admit it to himself. Len is also jealous of Meat, because of his very large penis (not shown unfortunately). But when Phil beats Len in a Lifeguard competition, it causes Len to fume with anger and more jealously because he was beaten by a homosexual.

    Len’s anger grows even more after Phil’s very handsome boyfriend Tom (Sam Anderson) enters the picture.

    Drown is told in flashbacks beginning with their night out to celebrate Phil’s win. But it’s a night out that turns out to be both dangerous, and extremely absurd.

    In flashbacks taking us away from that night out, we see Len beating Phil up, but Phil denies Len ever doing so, and we’re not told why. Surely an extremely homophobic lifeguard with sadistic tendencies needs to be shown the door? And perhaps arrested? Meat is an accomplice to Len’s evil doings – he’s the bitch that Len seems to desperately want. Len even orders Meat to take off injured Phil’s clothes off on a deserted beach? Including his underwear. And most of the time the dialogue is ridiculous, especially in the moments when Len and Meat are discussing Meat’s large penis.

    I was just hoping Len would either put it in his mouth or take it up his arse, just to relieve some of his sexual anxiety. And while there are beautiful images of the men swimming, and sunsets, and a woman who swims and swims out to the ocean with the likelihood that she won’t be coming back used as a metaphor for Len’s personality, it all makes for a highly uncomfortable and almost unwatchable 93-minute film.

    Available from Amazon

    Order Drown from Amazon | Amazon Instant | iTunes

  • FILM REVIEW | Do I Sound Gay?

    When journalist David Thorpe found himself single again in his mid-forties he started to angst as to what could possibly be so wrong with him that he should be dumped so unceremoniously. His immediate thought was that the problem must be his voice, that he had always hated, and how it must now be a turn off for other men too. It propelled him into jettisoning his job working for a non-profit housing association and embarking on a journey to ask the world at large the question that had been nagging him for years… do I sound gay?

    ★★★★★

    Thorpe’s somewhat light-hearted investigation starts with him accepting that he dislikes gay-sounding voices, especially his own and he wonders if with professional help it can in fact be changed. A very pushy speech therapist has him working on his ‘nasality’ and long vowels to get a ‘go-too’ voice whatever that maybe. She, thank goodness, is not the only figure that Thorpe seeks advice from and his interviews with some legendary gay figures make both sound, and also hilarious, contributions to his quest.

    Satirist David Sedaris admits that his own remarkably effeminate sounding voice means that he is regularly mistaken on the phone as a woman. Disarmingly frank Sedaris confesses that he actually feels good when a stranger tells him that he doesn’t ‘sound gay’ even though he had believed himself to be ‘beyond all that’. Project Runway’s Tim Gunn says he was appalled when he first heard his voice, but has learned to live with it and love it even. ‘If people hear my voice and call me gay, I’ll say thank you. I’m proud of it’.

    Sex columnist Dan Savage adds a touch of seriousness to the topic by commenting that ‘hating your voice is the last vestige of internalised homophobia.’ On the other hand actor Jeff Hiller handles the reality of the roles that his ‘gay voice’ will limit him too with remarkable good humour and a healthy dashing of some wicked wit. ‘If the gay role is a meaty part, they will always cast a straight actor. If the part is a gay guy with a hot body then I obviously cannot play that. So I just play the sad self-hating bitter queens’, he says roaring with laughter and adding ‘ I’ll take those ugly girl roles because at least I get to work.’

    Thorpe sprinkles his immensely watchable documentary with some lively vox populi, and also his own friends are on hand to lend their voices too even though they do not share his concern that the subject matter is really that important. When at the end he pushes them to give an opinion of his newly trained voice they all tell him that they cannot notice any difference in how he sounds at all. However what they (and we) perceive by now is that his voice didn’t change, but he did.

    As his most entertaining journey draws to a conclusion Thorpe realised that there was nothing wrong with sounding like he does, and equally there is nothing wrong with being a gay man having a gay voice. He was very content to have taken on his quest summing it up his reasoning of ‘if you cannot handle the answer then it’s a question you’ve got to ask.’ We’re glad he did.

  • FILM REVIEW: Kink, The no-holds-barred documentary on Kink

    KINK.com is the largest producer of online BDSM porn movies in the USA and was started by Peter Ackworth, a Brit, from his Dorm Room at school in the UK in 1997. Now based in an enormous defunct Armory Building in San Francisco with many of the original facilities untouched as they make prefect sets for a lot of the perverse activity that now fills the building.

    Kink produce movies for the 30 odd different sites they now operate and they cover the whole Bondage and Sado Masochism spectrum from slave training, rope bondage, femdom, gay public Sex, bondage gangbang, female domination, submissive women, lesbian bondage, shemales, naked wrestling, pissing, and sex machines etc etc. And in this no-holds-barred documentary you get to witness several of the extreme films being made …. I hope the participants were acting in part at least because what they allowed their bodies to be subjected too looked awfully painful from where I was sitting.

    Filmmaker Christina Voros set out to go behind the mystique of the industry and as she is being shown around the building there is a hilarious scene where she cannot make herself heard above the din coming from the other end of the floor, Ackworth explains there is an orgy underway… not something you hear every day. She interviews several of the directors who, with the odd exception, are very matter of fact about their work and how they want to simply be the best in their genre. Occasionally one will try to intellectualize what they are about, but when they tried to align this to an art form, they get twisted up in more knots than the models on set.

    There is also something rather wholesome about the big family atmosphere that permeates throughout the whole company… and it is rather fascinating to watch the directors and management have their monthly meeting to discuss their success. Why they ask, have the ratings for ‘Divine Bitches’ soared whilst ‘Electo Sluts’ is on the decline? Why indeed, but evidently there are fashions and trends that must be watched even in the sex industry.

    The fly on the wall approached worked well and Ms Voros allowed us to witness it all without narration and more importantly, without judgement. Was it shocking? In parts, yes but not the graphic sex but more the aggressive bondage parts in particular. Did we learn anything? Well, yes… thanks to a Dominatrix we know how to stand on an erect penis in stiletto heels without causing any pain. Was it entertaining? To an extent, but it is essentially one big Advertorial for the Kink sites, which lessens its impact and certainly its importance as a general essay on the S + M industry. Would we recommend it? Certainly if you want to be reminded how boring your own sex life really is.

    One our favourite anecdotes was when one of the models had just finished a very intensive hardcore slave/submission movie and dressed in his white terry robe he walked into the main office and was politely asked how his scene had gone. He replied very matter-of-fact “I got f***ed good”. And there you have it.

    by Roger Walker-Dack

  • FILM REVIEW | Heartbeats

    ★★★★★ | Heartbeats

    If you have ever had an unrequited love, especially one in your (distant) youth then this wonderfully witty tongue-in-cheek movie from the remarkable multi-talented filmmaker Xavier Dolan will really appeal to you.

    The story is of a love triangle. Twenty-year-old best friends Marie and Francis spot Nicolas, a stunning Adonis, at a dinner party, and they both fall for him big time. Nicolas adores attention so encourages them to the point where they destroy their close friendship and become bitter rivals to win his heart. Nicolas is very self-absorbed and affected and it is impossible to tell if his androgynous personification will eventually reveal whether he is gay or straight. The three of them have sleepovers in Francis’s bed but nothing at all happens, and then one day they ago away to the country for the weekend, and after this life, for them, all will never be the same.

    As the story progresses Mr Dolan edits in some hilarious anecdotes in interview form from strangers whose love lives also fell part. The man definitely has a way with words.

    There is something totally entrancing about this second feature from Canada’s wunderkind filmmaker and as much as one can pick holes with annoying (and almost clichéd) touches like some of the slow motion scenes, you really sense that this is no ordinary movie from any ordinary director. Mr Dolan’s first movie I Killed My Mother a totally stunning and hilarious semi-autobiographic piece won 3 Awards at the Cannes Film Festival (and another 23 other Awards around the World) in 2009 when he was a mere 19-years-old.

    Sadly the US Distributor went into financial difficulties and the movie, trapped in legal no-mans-land, has never been seen beyond the Festival Circuit to date. Now at the ripe old age of 22, he has written, directed, starred, co-produced, edited, and designed the sets and the costumes for Heartbeats, which also picked up an Award at Cannes last year. He is an enormous precocious talent and I think this, his early work, shows that he is going to be one of THE most important filmmakers of the future.

    You would be a fool to miss this one.

  • FILM REVIEW | Kissing Darkness

    ★★ | Kissing Darkness

    New gay film Kissing Darkness can be summed up as summer camp meets the Twilight movies.

    Five college boys decide to skip the gay pride festivities in their hometown of Los Angeles to spend the weekend in a cabin in the woods. They are young, cute, sexy and believe it or not one of them is straight Vlad (the very hot Nick Airus). He’s vile, unhappy, homophobic and luckily for us spends more of the film with his shirt off. Why he would want to go on a camping trip with four other gay men is beyond me. Of course, all of other men fancy him, but Vlad’s nipples aren’t the only things lurking around. There’s also Malice Valeria, a local woman (ghost?) who, after catching her boyfriend in bed with another man decides to bite Vlad (and the rest of boys one by one) to turn them into her slaves.

    In between all of this we see the men in the house in various states of undress, it’s pleasing to the eye and takes away from a story that’s pretty bad. Unfortunately, it’s all Kissing Darkness has going for it – the eye candy (did I mention how hot Airus is)?

    The plot is quite ridiculous, the acting mediocre, and luckily for us it’s only 87 minutes. Gay Director and writer James Townsend, who plays one of the boy’s lover in the film (he shows up near the end), has put together a film that’s so bad that it’s not even good. Hey, but at least there are lots of young male bodies to look at.

    The tagline of the film is ‘Love Has Never Been so Cruel’ – that pretty much says it all!

  • FILM REVIEW | Three In A Bed, Where is the chemistry?

    ★★☆☆☆ | Three In A Bed
    three in a bed film review

    After his mother dies, twenty-something-year-old struggling musician Nate has taken on her mantle and the responsibility of looking after his two self-centered sisters.

    When both of his sibling’s lives take a turn for the worse: one finds out her live-in boyfriend is cheating on her and the other discovers that the married man she has been dating has got her pregnant, they move in with him in his small one-bedroom apartment. It doesn’t give him much privacy or independence at a crucial time in his life when he is slowly discovering his sexuality.

    The object of his affection is Jonny the boy-next-door who quickly falls in love with a confused Nate, but when the going soon gets rough, Jonny runs off to France to drown his sorrows by getting a job erecting tents! Nate discovers that not only does he miss Jonny, but also that he finally has something to write a song about.

    This micro-budget romantic comedy set in Manchester and funded mainly by actress Jody Latham who plays one of the sisters, is full of good intentions and a great deal of enthusiasm. Sadly that does not make up for the painfully weak script or some extremely lame acting that makes one wince instead of smiling much of the 81 minutes. What was particularly disappointing was the lack of any real chemistry not just between the two men but with the siblings too and all the other characters.

    The movie has a happy ending for Nate but not necessarily for us. When there are three in a bed, sometimes that can be at least two too many.

  • FILM REVIEW | This Is What Love In Action Looks Like

    ★★★★ | This Is What Love In Action Looks Like

    When evangelicals try to forcibly make gay men straight.

    In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Later that same year Love In Action was founded by an evangelical Christian ministry specifically ‘to restore those trapped in sexual and relational sin through the power of Jesus Christ’ i.e. to forcibly make gay men straight. As the oldest established ‘ex-gay’ organisation in the US, it based its whole creed on lumping pornography, sex addiction and homosexuality together but the latter was considered by far the worse sin of all.

    In 2005 their Refuge Program specifically designed to ‘cure’ young teenagers of their ‘gay addiction’ hit the national headlines when 16-year-old Zach Stark’s heartfelt cry for help appeared on his MySpace Blog. Zach had ‘come out’ to his parents and in return, they sent him against his will to be an inmate at the Camp. His plea hit a real nerve and quickly became a rallying cry for a small group of other young people, both gay and straight, who’s regular protests outside the Campus started a snowball effect and very soon caught the attention of the national and local media.

    On one hand, Pat Robertson was preaching his usual hate-ridden rhetoric, whilst on the other, more mainstream TV channels Zach ‘s story and the whole Love In Action oppressive authoritarian regime was covered by the likes of Diane Sawyer and Paula Zahn. Most of them quoted L.I.A. Executive Director John Smid, an ex-gay now married (to a woman). who bitterly defended his organisation tooth and nail not conceding to any of the real concern now being raised about these young men’s welfare.

    Stark was released after 8 weeks and initially obeyed his parents’ instructions to delete his blog and make no public comments to further fuel the fire. But by the time this documentary was made, Stark was now 18 and ready to speak up and to confirm that despite all that he went through he is now a happy and reasonably adjusted gay young man.

    In 2007 the Program was halted and not only did the Rev. Smid resign his post, but he actually took the unprecedented step of publishing a public apology to anyone who may have been harmed by the program.

    Morgan Jon Fox’s film bears witness to this shameful time in recent history and is most compelling when the interviews are with ex-patients/inmates and you can see the real pain that they were forced to endure in what are essentially the most crucial years in their growing up. It’s a testimony to their strength that they survived the ordeal, and equally a credit to the determined band of protesters who proved that standing up to be counted on when one encounters an injustice, does really work. And it’s a witness to all those poor souls that the disbandment of this whole movement came too late for.

  • FILM REVIEW | Last Straight Man

    But will he remain one, if Lewis gets his own way?

    It may be every gay man’s dream to sleep with a straight man and it’s even hotter when he happens to be your best friend too. Closeted Lewis has always had a secret crush on his best friend Cooper but has never ever let on until the night before Cooper is about to marry his girlfriend and the two-man have just drunk a wee too much at the stag party and their conversation turns to sex. All the other guys have left and as Lewis and Cooper start to clear up the hotel room where the party had been held, the talk gets dirty and personal. Well-endowed Lewis is keen and Cooper is curious and so the two end up in bed together after discovering that they both love blowjobs.

    Next day Cooper gets up and goes and gets married and lives happily ever after with his wife. Until the same time next year that is, and the two men meet up back in the same hotel room and take up where they left off. This anniversary tryst becomes an annual date in their calendar and for one night a year Lewis, previously self-identified as bi-sexual, transitions into gay, and straight Cooper still refuses to accept that he is anything else even though he lets Lewis penetrate him as he insists that they never kiss.

    What is clear though is over the next 12 years that they are both very much in love. With each other that is. One year Cooper tries to fight his feelings and refuses to show up for their date, claiming he doesn’t want to put his marriage at risk, and then in a later year when he has not only overcome his resistance, is imploring Lewis to f**k him as hard as he can. It just so happens that he may have left it too late as perpetual bachelor Lewis finally has a boyfriend and is anxious not to do anything that may jeopardise his new relationship.

    In this very likeable boy-lit movie it is interesting that although this may have started out as Lewis’s crush, it is, in fact, Cooper who is living out his fantasy. As their relationship develops it makes both men question their feelings and emotions and they learn that they cannot be easily defined in a conventional way as they accept their love for each other. It’s helped with very convincing performances from the two handsome leads Scott Selland Mark Cirillo who look comfortable in and out of the clothes.

    Be warned though before you get to the scenes of these two hunks thrashing around naked, you have to sit through the scary opening moments of the movie when the stag party stripper insists on pushing her mammoth naked breasts way to close to the camera. And I won’t even tell you about her party trick where she can pick a coin up by her … well, you can imagine.

    This cute wee drama is entertaining and amusing, although trust me, Cooper really is anything but ‘the last straight man’.

     

    by Roger Walker-Dack

  • FILM REVIEW | Me, Myself And Mum

    ★★★★ | Me, Myself And Mum

    Guillaume has to ‘come out’ to his entire family but that’s no easy task in this quirky French comedy which has a neat twist on this perennial situation. His problem is that they all pronounced that he was ‘gay’ from birth and have treated him as an effeminate camp boy ever since. The trouble is that he now has to risk their disappointment and wrath by revealing the truth. He is actually 100% heterosexual.

    Allegedly based on the true story of Guillaume Gallienne the director/writer/star of the movie who was a real mommy’s boy. Born into a wealthy aristocratic family, Guillaume dotes on his mother who seems to do little beyond reading and smoking cigarettes looking very bored. stretched out elegantly dressed on chaise lounges, and who insists on treating him as the daughter she never had. He has perfected all her mannerisms to a tee and sounds so much like her that he often gets mistaken for her when people hear his voice. His father is in total despair about him and so lavishes all his attention on his two older athletic sons who he globe-trots with as they follow their very masculine pursuits whilst leaving Guillaume at home. Or worse still, sending him off to a very rough looking town in Spain to learn flamenco dancing as befitting a girly boy.

    Guillaume thinks his mother does know best so he goes along with her firm belief that he is gay and even has a crush on a football jock at the British Boarding School he is banished too. That is until of course he actually realises that he doesn’t really lust after other boys like he should, and it’s quite a shock to even him when he does eventually fall in love.

    Gallienne is a much-loved actor/writer and a member of the prestigious Comédie-Française, and this movie is adapted from his own play with which in fact, he uses to start this film with. With his really odd appearance, this 40-year-old actor not only convincingly plays teenage Guillaume BUT also, by channelling Catherine Deneuve, actually plays Maman too. Both are really joyous performances and simply the reason why this oddball comedy works so very well.

    There are some wonderfully funny passages thanks to Guillaume allowing us to observe him being humiliated so often. And taking all the abuse that is heaped on him in such good humour. This very unusual take on sexual identity does leave you grinning an awful lot.

    Winner of 2 Awards at Cannes Film Festival, this crowd-pleaser of a movie also picked up 3 Cesars (French Oscars) and is now set to hopefully wow Francophile British audiences too.

  • FILM REVIEW | Eastern Boys

    ★★★★★ | Eastern Boys

    Filmmaker Robin Campilio’s disturbing new thriller sharply contrasts two different sides of society in contemporary France with a very chilling effect.

    The first chapter of his four-part story is a near cinéma vérité scene of the Gard de Nord where a gang of Eastern European youths is trailing the platforms and aimlessly but obviously set on something illegal. One of them is a skinny baby-faced hustler who catches the attention of a 50 year-old businessman with whom he plays cat and mouse game throughout the station environs. When the youth allows himself to be cornered, they strike up an arrangement to meet at the man’s apartment the next day.

    What wealthy Daniel thought would be a hot date with this young Ukrainian turns out to be a frightening home invasion when the entire gang arrive and strip his luxury apartment completely bare. Taunted by the cocky Russian ringleader Boss with some overtly sexual advances, Daniel seems both terrorized and aroused at the same time.

    The third chapter opens with the surprising return of Marek the hustler … the time on his own … who offers to have sex as they originally had arranged. Despite the boy’s total indifference as he lays naked and motionless on bed Daniel still penetrates him, but the moment that it is over Marek quickly dresses and leaves without uttering a word. What is assumed would just be a one-off visit, is in fact repeated. At first its infrequently and then quite regularly but just as the youth starts to experience real feelings for Daniel, the older man decides that he wants to develop what they have into a non-sexual friendship.

    It is obvious that both of them are still threatened by the hold that ‘Boss’ and the gang have over Marek, who still lives with them in a hotel full of other illegal immigrants in the suburbs. The only way for them to ever be free of the menace is to move away, but Boss has Marek’s only papers … his passport …. stored away in his safe. Their concern that trying to retrieve this will be nigh on impossible and extremely dangerous proves to be well-founded.

    The relationship between Daniel and Marek is powerfully erotic especially as this sharp-suited savvy business man who has been viciously robbed by the boy and his thuggish pals, is yet somehow still attracted and is prepared to expose himself to potential danger again. And the different relationships that both of these men have with the charismatic but completely scary and unhinged Boss is both mesmerizing and unnerving.

    The movie, which picked up the prestigious Horizons Award at the Venice Film Festival, was beautifully filmed, and had stunningly convincing performances from all three protagonists. (Olivier Rabourdin who looks like he could be Kevin Spacey’s twin played Daniel).

    The morality of portraying all the immigrant boys in such a stereotypical manner is questionable, but that aside, this excellent drama will definitely rank as one of the best gay themed movies of this year.

    Available from Amazon | iTunes

  • FILM REVIEW | The Circle, Der Kreis

    The Circle (Der Kreis) is a Swiss docudrama written and directed by Stefan Haupt. The film depicts the social scene that revolved around Der Kreis, a gay publication in Zurich in the 1940s and 1950s, which was used as a scapegoat for the murders of several gay men in the city. Der Kreis (The Circle) was a Swiss gay magazine that was published from 1932 to 1967 and distributed internationally. ★★★★

    CREDIT: The Circle
    CREDIT: The Circle

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