THEGAYUK

Tag: Movie Genre Romance

  • FILM REVIEW | I Do

    I followed the twitter feed on this movie well before it finally arrived on my doorstep to review. David W Ross, the star and force behind the movie, has an engaging twitter presence – playing on his good looks and obvious talent, and witty banter.

    David is a former member of ’90’s boyband Bad Boys Inc and no stranger to the spotlight. Here, he takes on the role of a Brit abroad in New York, living an almost ideal life with his brother, American sister-in-law and a good job/loft/sex life – basically, the good life.

    This is shattered, and I’m not going into details as its one of the films best and most unexpected moments. The film then goes on to investigate what happens when your life is torn apart, only to have it further complicated by eminent deportation. It reviews the bureaucracy surrounding green cards, sham marriages and real love. What happens when your best lesbian friend agrees to marry you so you can stay in the country and shoulder your supposed responsibilities, only to turn jealous when you find true love in the shape of a gorgeous spanish architect?

    The film isn’t a gritty docu-drama, it’s far to good looking for that, it doesn’t do a warts an all expose of sham marriages for green cards, it’s too engaging for that – David has managed to do a balancing act of making a film that highlights issues but is still a bloody good story, and cinematic too.

    The film captures New York and makes it almost another character, the people, the streets, the apartments… for those of us this side of the pond, it all feels familiar enough but we can empathise with the “Englishman in New York” syndrome.

     

    BUY ON AMAZON | BUY 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 | Elliot Loves

    Elliot is an idealistic 21 year old gay man living in New York. (more…)

  • 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.

     

     

  • FILM REVIEW | Weekend; Quiet, unhurried and self assured

    FILM REVIEW | Weekend; Quiet, unhurried and self assured

    It’s the kind of movie that Hollywood would run a mile from, and that’s a good thing.

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  • FILM REVIEW | Shortbus

    ★★★★★ | Shortbus

    You’ll never look at a splatter painting in the way away again.

    If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to have you face stuffed into a film’s never regions, then Shortbus is the film for you to see. Stat.

    Director John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig And The Angry Inch) bravely circumnavigates the world of sexuality in this stylist, almost uncomplicated observation of sexual dysfunction.

    Shortbus is a New York club where the focus is sexual liberation with a heady blend of punters. Transgenders, aging homosexuals, hot young boys, a straight female sex therapist all looking to get their rocks off – a bit like Piccadilly on a Thursday night but more scintillating.

    The creators and actors of Shortbus have genuinely created and sustained characters the viewer can befriend and have some feeling for. It’s almost as though you can see that the actual actors forged a real relationship with each other, which gathering from the DVD’s ‘extras’ they had to, as part of the film development process was having sexual relations with each other.

    Shortbus did give me a tingling sensation. Not just because you get to see: self sucking, a blinding rim job, a 3 way, the national anthem sung into a sizable cock and Mr Cameron-Mitchell himself being sucked off by an extra (no really) but it caused me to think of my own sexuality and my relationship to it. If you’ve ever wondered how the standard British sexual sensibility is compared to an American one – go to New York, hook up with a bar tender and you might understand the discomfort that this film might create. Sex is ‘in your face.’ It is about sexual roles. It’s about ‘this moment, now’ Being British and naturally reserved such talk and this movie is better left after 2 bottles of Chablis and a handful of bar nuts.

    Some fantastic performances and an introduction to one Jay Brannan – who I suggest you get yourself into – socially so to speak. He has a Facebook, twitter, albums and tours his music about regularly.

    If you’re sexually revolutionize you might watch this and think, whats all the fuss about, but worth a punt anyway. You can pass it of as porn with a story line and real actors. No mention of rusty pipes than need a lube down.

    If you’re a fan of the slightly psychedelic, smash colour, animatic world of John Cameron Mitchell you’ll like this movie. It isn’t one however to watch with your Mother. You get to see quite a bit of peen!

    Available to buy / view on: Amazon

  • FILM REVIEW | Brokeback Mountain

    As a poignant and touching love story, Brokeback Mountain deserves to help revive an ailing genre..

    After a short stint trying to re-craft the comic book blockbuster in his own image, Ang Lee returns, gloriously, to more familiar ground. Based on Annie Proulx’s celebrated short story, Brokeback Mountain is a grand epic, a heartbreaking love story of two Wyoming ranch hands who fall for each other.

    It’s remarkable to see a movie about a gay romance told in such a determinedly straight fashion. In fact where most contemporary rom-coms perform all sorts of contrived narrative somersaults to keep its lovers apart, in Brokeback Mountain, the circumstances of a hostile society that conspire to separate Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist and Heath Ledger’s Ennis Del Mar are utterly believable and genuinely painful.

    But it’s not just the boys you end up rooting for. One of the reasons that Ang Lee’s film come across as so incredibly human is his reluctance to introduce a villain into the piece. The female leads could easily have been two-dimensional obstacles to true love. Instead, they’re almost as tragic as the men; it is not, after all, their fault that they unwittingly married blokes who were secretly spoken for.

    It will be interesting to see how these themes will play in the queer-fear conservative heartlands of America. There’s a very real possibility that the idea of gay cowboys will threaten the middle class majority; those who are more comfortable when gay people are safely stereotyped as queeny LA fashionistas.

    As a poignant and touching love story, Brokeback Mountain deserves to help revive an ailing genre: studio wisdom has it that sweeping romances spanning 20 years are a dead idea. On this evidence, they really should think about doing it more often.

    Anticipation: Some kind of Priscilla, Queen of the Ranch, right?

    Enjoyment: By the end you’d sell your own grandmother if it would help make things alright for them.

    In Retrospect: As soon as it ends you’ll want to watch it again. Even if it meant putting yourself once more through the emotional wringer.

    Available to buy / view on: Amazon

    Brokeback Mountain (text) by Catherine Wray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

  • FILM REVIEW | Dream Boy

    Nathan is a quiet but different boy, who lives in a very quiet town in the USA.

    Nathan falls for the boy next door, Roy – and their relationship blossoms into a gay adolescent love affair with an unhappy ending.

    The story is based on a novel by Jim Grimsley and delves into a world of child abuse, rape and the coming of age. It’s a very slow paced movie – think Brokeback Mountain and then slow it down some.

    Unfortunately for this film it lacks any of that Brokeback Hollywood treatment. No breath taking vistas, no Jake Gynenhall. Un-hyped and grassroots look at gay life for a teenager in Louisiana.