Roger Walker-Dack at www.queerguru.com

Calling a movie Funny Story is rather a brave move which can lead to unfulfilled expectations especially when your plot has its fair share of tragic incidents too. This feature from Michael J Gallagher whose work is usually created for the small screen. is full of good intentions and does at least start off on full of laughs, but then at the end gets way too muddled to be really funny It starts with Walter (Matthew Glave) an aging actor who has coasted a very comfortable living out of once playing an action hero who has now become something of a […]

This very prestigious all-boys boarding school in India which is the setting for The Noblemen is obviously a remnant of British colonial days and the children are still expected to practice the age-old rituals and codes which should have been banished years ago. Here in this very formal setting, the pupils are reluctantly bound by an outdated hierarchal system which too often allows the senior boys to use the younger sons as their slaves. This then is the story of 14-year-old-Shay (Ali Haji ) who, because he hates sports and prefers drama class, is labeled a sissy and gay by other boys.  […]

Ten years in the making this new excellent documentary from filmmaker Erin Palmquist is the engaging story of Ghazwan Alsharif an Iraqi refugee and former translator for the U.S. military.  After years of service helping the American invading forces, he was wrongfully accused of espionage and tortured by the military police in Iraq for some 75 days before being rescued by a US Colonel who he had served and who personally vouched for him. When the Iraqi militia learned of his work with the US Forces they first threatened his family and then bombed his home.  His parents who ironically had been […]

For his debut feature movie, London based Finnish filmmaker Mikko Makela has returned home to tell his compelling tale of a romantic summer encounter between an unlikely pair that literally sizzles on the screen. Leevi (Janne Puustinen ) has been studying in Paris and comes back home to somewhat reluctantly help his estranged father (Mika Melender) renovate their old remote county cottage so they can sell it to help re-finance their ailing family business. The two men couldn’t possibly be more different with their opposing views on practically every aspect of their lives.  The father is a gruff conservative, and it […]

    There is a new Exhibit of the work of PETER HUJAR a quintessential East Village photographer in the  1970’s and 1980’s whose stark black and white images beautifully captured a shifting generation who would soon be almost decimated by the AIDS pandemic, which would kill him too. The show, Peter Hujar: Speed of Life, looks at the work the legend left behind, three decades after his death. It is composed of  140 photographs drawn from the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, the most comprehensive public collection of the artist’s work. Curated by Joel Smith, the exhibition adopts the […]

  There’s nothing better on a cold winter weekend is to stay inside with the heat turned up high and binge watch a whole LGBT Web Series.  We have just discovered a perfect candidate too in POT LUCK a deliciously funny dramedy about three lesbian best friends in Wellington New Zealand. Since Debs (Anji Kreft) had her heart broken six years ago she has taken herself off the dating scene and been going through a self-imposed dry spell.   She is a wonderfully sweet shy butch and is very happy in her work as a security guard.  Mel (Nikki Si’ulepa)is her very dapper best […]

Peccadillo Pictures a leading distributor of LGBT movies in the UK  have just issued no 17 in their excellent series of Boys on Film collections of short movies.  It is something that they really excel at, and in queerguru’s eyes these are by far the best anthologies of queer shorts that we have seen for years. Under the banner Love Is A Drug, Peccadillo have curated nine new short films from around the globe that are aimed at making us laugh, provoking our consciences, testing our tolerances, educating, entertaining and especially  making us want to fall in love. From the […]

16 year old Nathan (Bérenger Anceaux) is the new boy at school, and unbeknownst to him his arrival stirs up some very definite feelings in his classmate Louis (Jules Houplain).  When the two of them are at party at the weekend Louis makes his move and kisses Nathan in a deserted spot in the garden.  They are however not totally alone, and when an anonymous  photo suddenly surfaces online next day Nathan starts to feel the heat.  It is not clear which boy he is kissing, but that doesn’t stop all his homophobic classmates verbally teasing him, and eventually a […]

  A very young set of Brazilian filmmakers have very loosely adapted Shakespeare’s classic love-story Romeo & Juliet and made it a contemporary queer romantic drama.  This web series was also set in the fictional Italian city of Verona, and is now where the Campelos and Monteiros families have vehemently hated each other for generations after a major falling out. Openly gay Romulo (Arthur Chermont) falls for Ramon (João Mesquita) from the family he is supposed to hate,  who it turns out isn’t straight after all. Ramon shares his grandfather’s diary that he has just discovered which reveals the fact that […]

When 14 year old Ulysses’s (Luka Kain) father suddenly dies, his mother (Margot Bingham) has to take on a second job to make ends meet. She somewhat reluctantly accepts an offer from Ulysses’ ultra-conservative Aunt Rose (Regina Taylor) to come to take care of him and his younger sibling after work until she gets home. The teenager is in the throws of discovering his sexuality and identity, and when Rose finds out he has been secretly trying on his mother’s shoes she doesn’t let up on him for one single moment. On a whim he takes himself off on the subway […]