Posts Tagged ‘sex’

  • 12 Jul

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    Electronic Tag Removed: Polanski Goes Free

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    Having just about finished everything in Roman Polanski’s directorial catalog over the weekend after watching the slowburn, psych-thriller, The Tenant, I was saddened that it would be quite possible I’d never see another Polanski film if the man was incarcerated. But today comes welcome news if you’re a fan of film (if you’re a fan of law, then maybe not so much). I can happily declare that it’s pretty likely I’m not entirely finished watching Polanski films and that his final chapter on the IMDb has yet to be written.

    According to The Guardian, The Swiss government has decided NOT to extradite Mr. Polanski back to the U.S. (where he is wanted for sentencing for having sex with a 13-year-old girl 33 years ago) on the grounds that U.S. authorities failed to provide confidential testimony about Polanski’s sentencing procedure in 1977-78.

    “The Swiss justice ministry will not extradite Roman Polanski to the United States,” Eveline Widner-Schlumpf, a ministry official said at a press conference in Bern. “The Franco-Polish film-maker will not be extradited to the United States, and the measures of restriction on his liberty have been lifted…Polanski is now a free man.”

    He will now be able to move beyond his garden for the first time. An electronic tag has been removed from his ankle.

    Two words: woot and woot.

    handy timeline of Polanski’s ordeal below the seats…
    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 11 Jul

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    Review: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG

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    One of the most exciting programmes at Fantasia this year is its Subversive Serbia, a showcase of a wide variety of aesthetics and styles in the exciting new wave of Serbian filmmakers. It is stuff like this, getting a major coup over other prestige festivals such as Venice, Berlin or Toronto, that makes Fantasia so much more than a simply a fan and genre festival.

    Mladen Djordevic’s wonderfully transgressive The Life and Death of A Porno Gang is a romantic lust-for-life road movie that happens to be covered in blood, sweat, cum, vomit and more than a few honest tears. In a round about way, the film could almost, but not quite, slot into formula: love and passion broken on the rocks of eastern Europe. But its grungy near-documentary style, it lies somewhere in between The Misfortunates, Ex-Drummer and Dusan Makavejev’s Sweet Movie, elements seemed to loosely evoke the Otto Muehl segments, and manages to tuck some of the more ‘it was our time and place’ elements away from the obvious.

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  • 21 Jun

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    DVD Review: Youth in Revolt

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    Youth In Revolt Movie Poster

    Director: Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl)
    Writers: Gustin Nash, C.D. Payne (novel)
    Producer: David Permut
    Starring: Michael Cera, Portia Doubleday, Jean Smart, Zach Galifianakis, Steve Buscemi, Fred Willard, Ray Liotta, Justin Long
    MPAA Rating: R
    Running time: 90 min.

    (2/5)

    Michael Cera isn’t an actor that shows range. The 22 year old has been playing the oddball geeky kid for a few years now and he doesn’t show any sign of moving on. For the most part his performances work but the films aren’t always good and frankly, the reason to see most of them (to date at least), has been to see if Cera is doing something new but when Youth in Revolt came around, I, and from its box office run, many others, had given up on the idea of seeing Cera in the same old role.

    Youth in Revolt Movie StillThat’s why I skipped it and even the addition of bad boy alternate personality Francois Dillinger wasn’t enough to catch my attention during its theatrical run but on DVD, I was going to give it a shot because who knows, maybe Francois is different but now that I’ve seen it, I wish I’d stuck by my initial reading and stayed well away.

    Miguel Arteta’s film (based on C.D. Payne’s novel) has it’s moments but its no where near as good as Arteta’s crowning achievement to date, The Good Girl. There’s no reinvention of Cera here and if anything, the film feels like a hipster version of American Pie and at its core, the story of a boy who just wants to get the girl and if possible, get laid in the process.
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  • 10 May

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    Review: Daddy I Do

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    Daddy I Do Poster

    Director: Cassie Jaye
    Producers: Cassie Jaye, Nena Jaye
    MPAA Rating: NR
    Running time: 90 min.

    (4/5)

    Sex. There’s a loaded word. Some want it, others have it but everyone wants a say on it. From parents to politicians, everyone has something to say on the subject and a few even have the opportunity to share their thoughts but the discussion that starts with sex isn’t simply about the act of fornication but rather, what comes afterward. It’s the after effects of that romp in the sac that people in high places are worried about. Things like STDs, single parent families, abortion – these are the issues that degrade our social system and show a culture sliding in moral values (or so “they” fear). At the end of the day, it all goes back to sex and education, two things that should go hand in hand but that often don’t.

    Daddy I Do Movie StillCassie Jaye’s documentary Daddy I Do starts as an exploration of abstinence only sex education in the form of purity balls and silver ring/purity movements which discourage sex not through education but through a push of faith. The film continues from here to explore the fallout that comes from the lack of sexual education and though it never makes a case either for or against abstinence only programs, it provides enough data and rope to let the movement hang itself.

    Yet with all of the talk of sex education and what works and doesn’t work, Jaye’s film does something else that hasn’t really been done in any other films I’ve seen on the subject: it opens the door for discussion on what this sort of education and mentality does to women.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 08 Apr

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    First trailer for Sook-Yin Lee’s “Year of the Carnivore”

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    Year of the Carnivore Movie Still

    If you watched any Canadian television in the 90s, you’ve probably heard of Sook-Yin Lee. The West Coast artist/musician/vj/dj has been in the limelight for years with stints both in front and behind the camera but her first full length feature is really getting her a lot of attention.

    Year of the Carnivore has been making its way through the festival circuit since it first played TIFF last year and gaining a bit of love. It’s a quirky story of a girl in search of romance or more accurately, trying to find herself (and her sex life). It’s an unabashed story of women’s sexuality and for that, I give it props even if it did rub me the wrong way (my review from VFF expands on my thoughts). It’s a troubled film and one with a tad too much quirk for my liking but it’s impossible to fully hate a film when it features such a great performance from Cristin Milioti; she’s just too charming to dislike.

    Big kudos to QE for the hookup on the trailer which pretty much captures the wackyness of the feature; it’s a pretty good indicator on what you can expect. The film will open in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal on June 18th.

    NSFW trailer tucked under the seats.
    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 08 Oct

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    VIFF 09 Review: Leslie, My Name is Evil

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    LeslieMyNameIsEvilMovieStill

    While introducing the first screening of his film at VIFF, director Reginald Harkema commented that Leslie, My Name is Evil was a very divisive film. He wasn’t kidding.

    Taken from real accounts and transcripts of the Charles Manson trial, using archival footage and intermingling the entire thing with a wicked sense of humour, this is the type of film that would, by any other director, end as a total disaster. The fact that it not only ends well but that it starts off with a bang is a great credit to director Reg Harkema who manages to create a sometimes serious and sometimes hysterical but always entertaining film which pokes a finger at everything from war to religion.

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  • 26 Sep

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    TIFF 09 Review: Bitch Slap!

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    As a kid, I remember being haunted by a magazine article I had come across which spoke of “very natural” group masturbation sessions among young males. In this phenomenon pubescent boys, apparently in the winters of their respective latency periods, raid their fathers’ and brothers’ smut collections and all have it out together.

    Rick Jacobson’s “Bitch Slap”, which premiered at last week’s Toronto International Film Festival, carries on this rich tradition handily. » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 21 Sep

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    TIFF 09 Review: Enter the Void

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    Enter The Void. The title can pretty much describe Gaspar Noe as a director. His previous films have been dark, wet places where bad things happen, things that stare back at you and darken up your soul for having watched them. Take the infamous Irreversible, which took the current biggest actors-in-their-prime in France (Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci in France, who happened to be married in real life) and had the former commit one of the most graphic onscreen murders I have ever seen (a fire extinguisher to the head of a prone man) and the other raped in long take for about nine single-take painful minutes. So yes, his ‘audacious credentials’ are well established and we are used to grimy, ugly and difficult to watch cinematography.

    So colour me surprised to see him make a beautiful, gliding, movie that never puts off the viewer, but invites them along for the ride. As it stand this is my favourite film caught at the Toronto Film Festival, and perhaps my favourite of the year. It not only offers a unique view of Tokyo, but also tells one of those mega-sized ambitious stories that Stanly Kubrick chews on. Call it the fusion of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Eyes Wide Shut served up as the biggest ‘bread and circus’ act of arthouse cinema I’ve ever witnessed.

    You don’t watch this movie, you experience it; playing the ultimate in cinematic voyeur, looking out of the main characters eyes, getting high in his apartment and then ambling out to do a drug deal. The POV camera is complete with ‘blinking’ (a very convenient, even elegant, way for Noe to hide his cuts. After all this would also be his version of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, a film made to look like a single unbroken cut. Except here the film is nearly 3 hours long and when our main character is shot, it is his ‘spirit journey.’ This is not an interpretation or even subtle, it is indicated specifically by the Tibetan book on the afterlife the central character is reading before he starts his drug-trip and subsequence shedding of his mortal coil. With the camera now ‘attached’ to the liberated ghost, it allows for not only strange and unusual places for the movie to go: inside of light sources, up through the sky into an airplane then back down into a taxi, or even into other peoples heads, but it also allows for a connect the dots narrative which illustrates the karma of how our ‘guide’ got offed in the first place. Ladies and gents, here is another facile (and incomplete) pitch-quote for the film: Rope meets Waking Life.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 05 Aug

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    The Neveldine/Taylor Conundrum

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    Neveldine/TaylorI’m not sure what to make of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (AKA Neveldine/Taylor). The writing, directing, producing duo behind Crank certainly have twisted energy down packed but will they survive Gamer and keep making films?

    If you’d asked a similar question after the release of Crank, it would not be surprising to find that most who saw that film would want to see more from the duo though whether they would get more was doubtful. The film was non-stop action from beginning to end but it was also racist, misogynist and down right dirty. To me, the chances of a sequel looked bleak (not to mention unlikely considering Chev Chelios’ demise) but never underestimate the power of the mighty dollar and considering the film cost all of $12 million to make, an amount that it made back on opening weekend, it came as no surprise when a sequel was eventually announced.

    Before jumping on the sequel bandwagon, the duo wrote Pathology, a film that promised a new twist on the murder mystery. The film reminded me a little of Flatliners but it didn’t manage to be half the fun of that Julia Roberts/Kiefer Sutherland/Kevin Bacon oldie. Instead, it featured more un-sexy sex and a collection of strung together scenes which wanted so badly to be gritty and exciting that when amalgamated came out to nothing more than occasionally nauseating moments shoved between uninteresting and boring story. I was so turned off that I skipped Crank 2 (though it looked even ruder and cruder than the original).

    Now the duo have Gamer. The story of inmates that are controlled by gamers in real, live action warfare (original? A little but I can’t shake the feeling that this falls somewhere between Avalon and The Condemned, perhaps falling closer to the Death Race sequel), the film suggests loads of great action but what more? Admittedly Gerard Butler is great eye candy for the ladies but I was having a hard time getting excited. And then I saw this trailer:



    No, it’s not groundbreaking but until that trailer, I was happy to write this off as a possible rental so what changed my mind? Michael C. Hall. It’s clear what they’re pulling here. It equals the casting of Joan Allen in Paul W.S. Anderson’s movie and is likely to be as lame but damned it if the downy covering on my arms doesn’t rise just a little at seeing Hall’s over exaggerated, menacing face on the big screen.

    It’s very likely that Neveldine/Taylor may have another box office winner on their hands and it looks just as loud and outlandish as their previous movies, if a little higher in budget and though I’ll put down my $10 to see this, I’m less interested in this new offering than in how they will follow it up. Will it be another big budget actioner or the more interesting, politically incorrect fare that put them on the map? I had problems with Pathology and heck, I had problems with Crank too, but I like the fact that they push buttons and manage to do so in a way which I find entertaining. Are they genre film saviours? I’m wouldn’t go so far to call them that but I’m open to entertaining the idea, at least as far as Hollywood mainstream is concerned.

  • 08 Jul

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    Finite Focus: Little Timmy (Your Friends & Neighbors)

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    your_friends_and_neighbors_ver1Neil LaButes savage satire of how upper class professionals relate to one another never pulls its punches. It is a vile, bleak look at the human condition. Three boys, three girls (I’d use the words men and women, but that would be wrong here) looking for something, but getting lost and hurt in their own selfish and confused pursuits.

    Ironically, the one character that seems to know what he wants and what he is, is actually the most creepy. Jason Patric is often known for more pretty-boy roles from Speed 2 to Narc, but here he inverts his carved good looks into a something borderline evil. He is cruel to others, and takes pleasure in the cruelty. A doctor of some sort (god forbid a gynecologist) one scene, early in the film, has him casually tossing the plastic model of an infant from a maternity model in his office while talking on the phone. The scene ends with him football-punting the child offscreen. But that little nugget of insight pales in comparison to the scene below where Patric regales the story of his best sexual encounter to his ‘buddies’ (Aaron Eckhart and Ben Stiller) while in the sauna. Silence follows. AWK-WARD!!! This is only one of many great vignettes (and I’ve left out the real punchline in the locker room after Patric’s monologue) in Your Friends & Neighbors, a film that was overshadowed in the Rated-R adult arthouse zone by Todd Solondz more visually graphic Happiness which was release in the same month. Neil Labute, lately, has been making more straight up studio pictures like Lakeview Terrace, The Wickerman remake (if that can be called ‘straight-up’ with Nic Cage’s batty performance) and Nurse Betty, but his one-two punch of yuppie awfulness directed from his own stage plays (In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors remains his most vital film work.

  • 06 Jul

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    Trashy, Pseudo Porn With a Message? Thoughts on Boxing Helena

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    Boxing Helena Movie StillBored and a little high from having seen the awesomeness of The Girlfriend Experience (our review), I thought I’d prepare for a screening of Surveillance (our review) by checking out Jennifer Lynch’s debut film Boxing Helena. Oh how quickly my afternoon went from uncommon to downright twisted and though the fact that the Lynch marathon started immediately after seeing Soderbergh’s film is pure coincidence, I can’t help but think that I couldn’t have found a better collection of films to watch together.

    But this is about the younger Lynch. The one that started her career with a film that seems to have stunted her career for 15 years. So is Boxing Helena that bad? I’m not sure it is though it does provide a glimpse into Ms. Lynch’s take on sexuality, something which is also present in her recent films.

    My first run in with Boxing Helena was in the mid 1990s on cable TV. Showcase had a tendency to show “risky” films in the late evening and flipping through the channels one night I caught the last 15 minutes of the film and I was morbidly curious as to how the woman ended up with no arms or legs. Lucky for me the film was re-aired immediately and I caught my first and final glimpse of Lynch’s career.

    It stars Sherilyn Fenn (mostly of “Twin Peaks” fame) as Helena, a gorgeous, firebird of a woman who sleeps with and disposes of men like tissue. At some point, she has an encounter with Nick Cavanaugh, a rich but timid man played by Julian Sands who becomes obsessed with her but after much counselling from his good friend (strangely portrayed by Art Garfunkel or Simon & Garfunkel fame) he appears to move on. But he never fully gets over Helena. One night while on a jog, he peeks the woman of his dreams with another man and the obsession resurfaces. He throws a soirée, invites all the right people and to his pleasure, Helena makes an appearance. It’s here that the film takes an interesting turn. A series of events leads Helena to run away (down an embankment) and onto the road where she’s hit by a car and from here on in, we follow Nick and Helena into a twisted world of sexual repression and release.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 01 Jul

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    DVD Review: Two Lovers

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    Two Lovers DVD Cover

    Director: James Gray (We Own the Night, The Yards, Little Odessa)
    Screenplay: James Gray, Ric Menello
    Producers: James Gray, Donna Gigliotti, Anthony Katagas
    Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw, Isabella Rossellini, Elias Koteas, Moni Moshonov
    MPAA Rating: R
    Running time: 110 min.

    (4.5/5)

    Irecall walking away from James Gray’s We Own the Night thinking that I’d just seen the beginning of something special. Though the film was overlooked by critics and the general public there was something about it that sat with me long after the credits rolled. Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as Bobby Green was understated but powerful and Gray’s direction was demure and beautiful.

    Two Lovers Movie StillI instantly paid a little more attention when a new Phoenix/Gray collaboration was announced and when the trailer for Two Lovers premiered, I knew it was a film I had to see even if the trailer was misleading (as I assumed it was). The trailer does this film very little justice.

    Phoenix plays Leonard Kraditor, a man who moved back with his parents after his ex-fiance’s family canceled their wedding. He took the breakup badly, retreating into a world of self abuse and attempted suicides eventually returning home to start rebuilding his life. But months have passed and though he appears to be getting better, his parents are visibly worried and they want him to move on with his life. They devise a plan to set him up with Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the daughter of a local business owner. Things start off well and the two seem to hit it off but things aren’t as perfect as they appear. Immediately after meeting Sandra, Leonard meets Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), his new upstairs neighbor and becomes instantly smitten by both her looks and her personality. In an instant Leonard goes from meek and shy to juggling two very different women in two very different relationships.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

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