After.Life (2009)

Co-writer/director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo's feature film debut was this mystery drama/thriller, actually a sophisticated and elegantly visual horror film of sorts, that was shot in less than a month. Christina Ricci was fearlessly nude through about half of her film role. One of its earliest sequences was a love scene between the two main characters:

• Anna Taylor (Christina Ricci), an elementary school teacher, and an anxiety-prone pill-popper with strange hallucinatory visions
• Paul Conran (Justin Long), Anna's boyfriend/fiancee, a lawyer

The two unhappy individuals were making love - Anna was lying almost comatose and unfulfilled beneath him as he pumped away. While she took a shower afterwards (and experienced a nosebleed), Paul asked the rhetorical question of whether she was happy:

"I just want us to be happy again. Are you happy?"

Later following a verbal argument and misunderstanding with him at a restaurant during dinner (when Paul was supposed to propose marriage between them), she frantically drove off in a rainstorm. When distracted using her cell phone, she experienced a deadly crash. She woke up in a red slip on a cold slab in a funeral home, attended to by soft-spoken, calm, solemn psychic mortician/funeral director Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson). He claimed that she was 'dead' when she asked where she was:

"You're in a funeral home. You're dead. You were in a car accident. You hit a truck loaded with metal pipes. ...You were pronounced dead eight hours ago. Your blood no longer circulates through your body. Your brain cells are slowly dying. Your body's already decomposing."

But she thought otherwise: "I'm not dead!" Anna was protesting and pleading: "I can't be dead. Just let me go, please!" The mortician believed she was "in denial" about her mortality ("You're still in denial. You have to trust me. I'm only here to help you"). Deacon began to sew up her forehead wound and prepare her for an open casket to look "beautiful" for her funeral. He kept injecting her with hydronium bromide to relax her muscles and keep her body from experiencing rigor mortis, so he could work on her - and so that she would remain "radiant" and "beautiful."

Later when she protested, "Why are you doing this to me?" Deacon responded: "They're all the same. You all blame me for your death as if it were my fault...The others, they just see you as a dead body on a slab. Only I can see you as you really are." He asked for her height: "I need to know your height, for your coffin."

He claimed that he had a special gift that allowed him to see her and speak to her. (Later in the film, he murmured to himself: "It's not a gift, it's a curse!") He promised that he would assist her in accepting her reality and transitioning from life to the after-life, although she thought she was still breathing:

"You died, Anna. Everyone dies....You're talking, not because you're alive but because I have a gift. I can talk to those between life and death...to help them make the transition...You're here so I can bury you...You're a corpse, Anna...Your opinion doesn't count anymore...Ah, you people! You think because you breathe, piss, shit, you're alive? You clutch onto life as if your life was worth clutching onto. Was your life worth clutching onto, Anna? Was it? Maybe you died a long time ago. I'm surprised you're still arguing with me. You don't have much time left. Your funeral's in two days, so you're gonna be enclosed in a coffin and buried in the ground. No one can hear you then. No one can speak to you there."

Questions immediately arose:

• Was the crazed mortician terrorizing her and holding her as his prisoner-hostage in a locked room by drugging her, and planning to bury her alive? (There were hints that she might possibly be alive - i.e., her breath condensed on a mirror two different times, and it was conjectured that she was only 'dreaming' that she was dead, etc.)
• Had she really expired, and he was legitimately preparing her for burial and transitioning to the afterlife?

Paul hallucinated (in a nightmare) that a naked Anna in his shower ripped out her still-beating heart from a gaping slit down her torso, with blood dripping down her body from the massive wound.

As she laid naked on the morgue table, she asked the mortician:

"Is it always like this?...I thought when you died you wouldn't feel any more pain. You wouldn't have to struggle any more. But it just never stops, does it?"

Anna Taylor (Christina Ricci) Naked In the Morgue

While final preparations were made to dress Anna before her funeral, she told Deacon how she had tried to change her life for the better, but she had so many regrets:

Anna: "I tried. Nothing ever seemed to change. I woke up every day, shower, drove in the same traffic to work, went home, went to sleep, woke up again. Nothing was ever different."
Deacon: "What did you really want from life?"
Anna: "I wanted to be happy."

She finally admitted that she had wanted love since she was a child, but her cold, unloving mother had hurt her, and she learned to pull away and not love anymore ("so I decided not to love anymore") - and therefore pushed Paul's love away. She was relieved that she was dead: "I'm glad I'm dead. I'm glad it's over."

As Anna was being buried alive, she heard the dirt clattering onto the top of her wooden coffin. One last story hint suggested that she might still be alive. She dug her nails into the top of the coffin (and its inner satin lining) - in futility, she desperately tried to scratch and claw her way out ("Let me out!").

To calm his suspicions one last time, a slightly inebriated Paul (during the wake) drove to the cemetery to prove to himself that she was really dead one last time, after being challenged by the mortician. A bright white flash of headlights during his hurried trip signaled that he had also suffered a horrific accident. An ambulance passed by with its siren blaring. At the cemetery, he dug up the coffin, pulled out Anna's corpse, and he hugged her limp rag-doll body as he told her: "I came back for you." He asked about a noise, and Anna explained: "It's just the scissors for your clothes. Eliot just put them on the table."

Suddenly Paul found himself on Deacon's lab table in the funeral home with a bloodied shirt. Eliot was standing over him as his shirt was being cut off. Deacon explained what had really happened:

"You're in a funeral home. You're dead...You had a car accident. You swerved off the road and you hit a tree... You never made it to the cemetery and you never saw Anna. You're dead... You people. You all say the same thing."

Paul kept insisting - as he cried out repeatedly in anguish: "I'm not dead!" - the film's final line, as Deacon inserted a long trocar into his abdomen. The screen faded to a searing white and then to black for the ending credits.

American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (2009)

Also known as American Pie 7, this was the 7th film in the long-running 'series' of teen sex-comedy AP films (original series and a series of sequels) stretching over 10 years. The preceding films in the original series included:

• American Pie (1999)
• American Pie 2 (2001)
• American Wedding (2003)

This film came directly after American Pie Presents: Beta House (2007), and was the fourth of a string of direct-to-DVD/video releases. As with many of the previous R-rated (or unrated) films, it was soundly denounced as exploitative, crude, and unfunny, with lots of excuses to project breasts (often unnaturally enhanced) at the screen.

The full series of American Pie Presents films included:

• American Pie Presents: Band Camp (2005)
• American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (2006)
• American Pie Presents: Beta House (2007)
• American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (2009)
• American Pie Presents: Girls' Rules (2020) - the fifth installment of the American Pie Presents film - a stand-alone sequel and straight to DVD release

Note: American Reunion (2012) - the 4th film of the original series brought together many of the original stars from American Pie (1999) to continue the tale of the teens 13 years later - now struggling with sex at middle-age

This film's tale was an overly-familiar re-run of three insecure, virginal teen males in high school in Michigan who sought to exercise their manhood:

• Robert "Rob" Shearson (Bug Hall) - he was enamoured by virginal-but-sexy library buddy Heidi (Beth Behrs), especially after she suggested: "So, you want to do it? Are we on?" - and he became lost staring staring at her breasts, but she was referring to meeting her later to study in the library, and then he found her partly undressed and with someone else; although Heidi was interested in Rob, she later betrayed him a second time during a party when Rob found her in bed with Stifler, but by film's end, they eventually slept together

Rob with Heidi (Beth Behrs) During Opening Credits

During School, Rob Stared at Heidi's Breasts in Low-Cut Tank Top

By Film's End, Rob Finally Slept with Heidi

• Nathan Jenkyll (Kevin M. Horton) - he attempted to score with reformed girlfriend Dana (Melanie Papalia) who had now vowed chastity after losing her virginity; after he gave her pleasurable oral sex in the back of a mini-van in a parking lot (with explicit directions) (below) while she kept her eyes closed, she became angry when he expected sex in return: "Faster. Okay. Now, slower. Yes, yes! Slower. Tickle the bunny. Yes, yes. Oh, God, the man in the boat is out. Paddle, paddle, do the alphabet. Swirl! Back to the bunny! That's it. Okay. Now, more to the left. More to the left!...My left! "

• chubby Marshall "Lube" Lubetsky (Brandon Hardesty) had vivid fantasies about haplessly chose head blonde cheerleader Ashley (Jennifer Holland); he succeeded by the end of the film and slept with Ashley

After discovering a 'holy grail' sex bible ("The book of love"), a mythical guide to sexual success, they believed their luck had returned. Although it was badly damaged, they "reconstructed" it with the help of AP long-timer Mr. Levenstein (Eugene Levy). Their quest involved various young females, sometimes in memorable 'fantasy' situations.

• Ashley attempted to shoplift lingerie (panties) in a store's dressing room by stripping in front of Rob: ("How does this look? Great, I'll take it!") and then stuffing the merchandise down the front of Rob's pants
• Dana displayed her breasts (they digitally-ballooned) in front of her encouraging father who claimed: "It's not right to give a man blue balls. If you want boys to like you, you gotta put out."

Ballooning Breasts of Dana (Melanie Papalia)

Gross-outs included sexual indignities (between Nathan and Dana) broadcast via mobile phone to a church congregation, Rob's masturbation with a peanut-butter sandwich, Scott Stifler's (John Patrick Jordan) sodomy-sex with a CGI-moose, and lethal oral sex with a false-teeth wearing geriatric prostitute named Monique (Giselle Lavande) in a Canadian brothel.

Antichrist (2009, Denmark)

Outrageous Danish director Lars von Trier's controversial, compelling, nihilistic psychological-horror film (with only two characters) portrayed the tortured pain of a grieving, devastated, and unhinged mother.

Although approaching the levels of violent torture-porn (filmed most explicitly with professional porn stars), there was also a perverse beauty in the cinematographic expertise envisioned in the film, shot by Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire (2008) cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle.

The film's minimalist prologue was a gorgeous, silent, black-and-white ultra slow-motion sequence (set to a dreamy Handel operatic aria) of intensely-passionate sex (complete with a close-up, thrusting penetration shot) in the bathroom shower and bedroom between a Pacific Northwest couple:

• He (Willem Dafoe), the therapist-psychologist husband
• She (Charlotte Gainsbourg, the Best Actress prize-winner at Cannes), the wife and mother

At the same time, their one year-old toddler son Nic was in an adjoining bedroom. He climbed up on a window sill - transfixed by the sight of falling snow. Tragically, the innocent child toppled from the window and fell to his death on a snowbound street below (as She climaxed).

In chapter one ("Grief"), after a month in a hospital with traditional treatment and medications, She couldn't erase her self-blaming guilt during an abnormally long recovery period. She accused her husband of being "distant" and "indifferent" to whether their child was dead or alive. When she was released, He found some prideful satisfaction functioning as her therapist, clinically, coldly and analytically struggling to help his emotionally-wounded wife to regain her physicality, and conquer her anxieties and fears.

The sex they now experienced was more gloomy, disconnected and despairing. When she mentioned that she would feel most "exposed" and scared in the dark and frightening woods that surrounded their remote woodsy cabin (named "Eden"), he decided that they would go there by train, to face their self-destructive, worst fears. Both soon realized the difficulty in reconciling their vastly different emotional and intellectual approaches to grief.

As an occult researcher, She had spent the previous summer there with her son, writing her "thesis." When she was imagining in her mind her arrival at the cabin in a harsh greenish light, she laid down on the ground as her husband instructed, and was told to "melt into the green." During their hike toward the cabin, She took a nap while He saw a mother deer with a stillborn baby fetus hanging out of its uterus.

In chapter two ("Pain" (Chaos reigns)), after arriving at the cabin, they both saw a baby bird fall from its nest, covered with ants, causing She to sob. She realized that the previous summer, fear had stopped her from writing her study of gynocide (the systematic mass murder of suspected witches during the Middle Ages in the 16th century). They were aggravated by the sound of dying acorns falling onto their roof, a foreboding of death: "Everything that used to be beautiful about Eden was perhaps hideous. Now I could hear what I couldn't hear before - the cry of all the things that are to die." She screamed at him, claiming that he was arrogant and "this (marriage) may not last," but also confusingly told him about her love and "how happy I am that you're here." She expressed her top fear that: "Nature is Satan's Church," but also said that she felt "cured." Another disturbing sight He saw in the woods was a dying, self-disemboweled fox which spoke in a deep voice: "Chaos reigns!"

In chapter three, ("Despair" (Gynocide)), He discovered in their attic her writings on gynocide (increasingly scrawled and illegible) and her display of old drawings of the misogynistic torture of innocent women. Even He was losing his grip on sanity as he attempted to make psychotherapeutic sense of their misfortune, while relentlessly stripping her of all her defenses and leaving her psyche naked. He struggled to identify her worst fear -- he crossed out various possibilities (Nature? Satan? Herself?) as he revised his diagnosis. When He took the role of "Nature" during a psychotherapeutic game, She described how human Nature had caused people to do evil things against women - the subject of her thesis, although she had interpreted it as proof of the evil of women ("If human nature is evil, then that goes as well for the nature of...all the sisters. Women do not control their own bodies. Nature does"). He was repulsed that She embraced the exact opposite of her original study - and that she believed that women were inherently evil. During sex that night, She demanded that He inflict sadistic pain upon her by hitting her ("Hit me so it hurts"), but he refused - she concluded: "Then you don't love me." Naked, She fled outside, laid on the ground under a tree and furiously masturbated herself to quell the pain, before he joined her for intercourse (and obliged her by grabbing and slapping her) - as hands emerged from within the tree's roots (evoking Hieronymus Bosch).

And then, when He discovered and confronted She with suspicious evidence in the autopsy report that she had abusively contributed to the child's slightly bone-deformed feet (by repeatedly placing his footware on the wrong feet), she angrily accused him of leaving her. In the tool shed, she removed his pants, grabbed his penis, and mounted him. As he laid back mid-coitus, she expressed her long-simmering resentment - partially blaming their earlier sex act for their child's death. She grabbed a large block of wood and crushed his erect penis and testicles with it. Then, while He was unconscious from the pain, she masturbated him until he ejaculated blood and semen from his swollen penis onto her shirt and hands. She then drilled a hole through his left ankle that she bolted with a wrench to a mill grindstone, to keep him immobile. With great effort, He crawled into the woods to the shelter of a fox-hole, where he was betrayed by the sound of a cawing crow.

In the final chapter of the film, ("The Three Beggars"), She located him, apologized and dragged him back to the cabin, where he asked: "Did you want to kill me?" She revealed: "Not yet. The three beggars aren't here yet...When the three beggars arrive, someone must die." Calling herself a "scheming woman" that was "false" in many ways (false in legs, thighs, breast, teeth, hair, eyes), She then had a vision of seeing herself witnessing Nic's death. Afterwards, as she begged: "hold me," She performed a graphic, self-abusive genital mutilation (clitoridectomy) by shockingly cutting off her own clitoris, seen in close-up, with a pair of rusty scissors - and then shrieked in pain.

The night sky revealed the constellation of The Three Beggars (Grief=deer, Despair=crow, and Pain=Fox), but He realized: "There's no such constellation." She declared: "None of it is any use" - and when she screamed, she summoned a hailstorm - a supernatural power believed to be possessed by witches. The three woodland creatures in the constellation entered the house.

As he removed the millstone with a wrench, she stabbed him in the back with the scissors. He dispassionately strangled his wife with his bare hands and burned her body on a large open-air pyre.

In the film's black and white epilogue, He hobbled away from the cabin into the woods, ate wild berries next to the three animals, and was surrounded by a horde of clothed, zombie-like women (with blurred faces) climbing the hill around him.

Broken Embraces (2009, Sp.) (aka Los Abrazos Rotos)

The fourth film combining the talents of director Pedro Almodovar and the beautifully voluptuous actress Penelope Cruz, this brightly-colored, twisting neo-noirish tale was partially told in flashback.

In an early scene before the flashback, aging and blinded filmmaker-screenwriter Mateo Blanco/"Harry Caine" (Lluis Homas) was with a young blonde, blue-eyed model (Kira Miro) in his apartment. She had helped him to cross the road and had just read him the newspaper (he learned about the death of someone from his past - corrupt early-1990s financier-businessman Ernesto Martel). He asked for her measurements (36-26-36) and other aspects of her physical appearance. She obliged by letting him feel her face, kiss her lips, strip off her purple tank top to feel her bare breasts, and then make love on the sofa. Later, he remarked to his concerned female agent and production manager Judit Garcia (Blanca Portillo): "Everything's already happened to me. All that's left is to enjoy life."

Soon after, he described to his curious young assistant and aspiring scriptwriter Diego (Tamar Novas), Judit's son, about how an 'accident' had left him blind many years earlier.

In the story related in flashback about the early 1990s, Penelope Cruz portrayed Magdalena Rivero (or "Lena") - the secretary of rich and corrupt Madrid stockbroker Ernesto Martel (Jose Louis Gomez). When Ernesto found out that she earned money on the side as a call-girl, discreetly named Severine, he desired her services as a client. Forced to pay for her cancer-stricken father's expensive medical care, Lena reluctantly became Ernesto's pampered mistress and began living with him. He became intensely jealous of her activities after the aspiring actress was selected in 1994 to act in a film directed by womanizing Blanco (aka "Harry Caine" - a pseudonym interpreted as the combination of two Orson Welles characters, Harry Lime and Charles Kane, or the Michael Caine/Harry Palmer character in "The Ipcress File").

The film was titled Chicas Y Maletas (aka Girls and Suitcases) and to assure its success, it was financed and produced by Ernesto. Ernesto's gay (effeminate), inhibited son Ernesto Jr. (Ruben Ochandiano), aka Ray X, was hired by his obsessed father during the shoot - to film a documentary of the making of Chicas Y Maletas, and to surreptitiously spy on Lena's secret love of the director, fearing that he would lose her.

Inevitably, Lena became passionately engaged in sexual relations with the director and totally absorbed in the shoots, inflaming Ernesto's jealousy. In one scene after having intercourse with Ernesto, when he had taken Lena away to Ibiza for the weekend, Lena threw up and then remarked to herself that her hair was mussed as she stood naked before a mirror, declaring: "God, I look awful." The aging Ernesto hugged Lena after sex, wanting more: "I wouldn't mind dying after f--king with you for days, weeks, months, years, centuries. I'm crazy about you, you drive me crazy."

After the weekend, she told her director how the "bastard" and "monster" Ernesto made non-stop love to her for 48 hours straight, leaving her frazzled. She was compelled to confess her love of the director to Ernesto, and vowed to leave him. Retaliating, he pushed her down a long flight of stairs, temporarily crippling her. She promised to stay with Ernesto until the film was finished, although continued to suffer his abuse.

After the making of the film, Ernesto and Lena broke up, and the film's Madrid premiere was deliberately held without Lena and "Harry" in attendance. As they drove back to Madrid together after sneaking away and spending a month together by the sea, Lena was killed in a car accident, and "Harry" was seriously injured (and blinded).

[Ernesto Jr. was following them and filmed their last kiss before the crash, but was not responsible for the accident.]

Long after the film's release, "Harry" (now blinded and in the present 14 years later in 2008) discovered that his film had been 'destroyed' by the deceitful Ernesto who "chose all the worst takes" - turning the film "into a monster." "Harry" was determined to re-assemble and re-edit the film, with all of the alternate footage (miraculously saved by Judit), telling Judit and Diego in the film's final line:

"Films have to be finished, even if you do it blindly."

One of the film's other revelations was that Judit's son Diego was fathered by Mateo, when they had a love affair many years earlier.

Chloe (2009)

An erotic, psychological thriller from director Atom Egoyan was a major reworking of Anne Fontaine's Nathalie... (2003, Fr.). The original film starred Emmanuelle Beart as the title character, and also featured Gerard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant as a married couple.

In this more recent film, the two main characters - an upper-class married couple (and stars) were:

• Catherine Stewart (Julianne Moore) - gynecologist
• David Stewart (Liam Neeson) - college music professor

The erotic charge in the film came when the suspicious, emotionally-distant and untrusting wife Catherine paranoically believed that her preoccupied, flirtatious husband was cheating on her. She hired a voluptuous blonde escort named Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), after a chance meeting in a hotel washroom, to test his faithfulness:

"I think my husband would like you...I want to find out, see what he does if you present yourself to him."

She ultimately wanted to trap him in an affair. On a regular basis, Chloe would verbally report back to Catherine with lurid accounts of tempting seduction (progressing from simple flirting to sex, literally seen as flashbacks during the narrative).

Catherine and Chloe also met up in a hotel room, where they soon engaged in provocative lesbian love-making after Catherine asked Chloe how her husband liked to be touched ("Does this turn you on?"). Catherine showered and daydreamed about the tales of sexual encounters.

In the film's plot twist, the prostitute was discovered conning Catherine about the nature of her husband's infidelity (her tales were entirely fabricated), and was actually seducing Catherine's talented teenaged pianist son Michael Stewart (Max Thieriot).

Chloe Having Sex with David's Son Michael

In the film's final shot, Catherine was seen wearing Chloe's hair-piece.

Crank: High Voltage (2009) (aka Crank 2)

Amy Smart reprised her role in this high-octane action-thriller sequel to Crank (2006) as Eve Lydon, now as a club pole stripper.

Her most notorious scene (sometimes with a body double) was making love (she provided "friction") to indestructible hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Stratham) in the stands of a horse racetrack, and then out on the dirt track during an actual horse-race, to restore his energy as a huge crowd cheered them on - until they were hosed down! Actual views of penetration were pixilated out to avoid an X-rating.

Chev Having Sex At the Race-Track With Eve (Amy Smart)

Crossing Over (2009)

This independent ensemble film drama by writer/director Wayne Kramer included interweaving stories, similar to Crash (2005) and Babel (2006). The film was plagued with several re-scheduled release dates and the major editing of sequences due to its overlong, complex nature and too many multi-stranded, non-credible storylines.

Various individuals were struggling to achieve legal immigration status in Los Angeles, California. One of the blackmailed desperate female immigrants was:

• Claire Shepard (Alice Eve), an Australian immigrant and an aspiring actress pursuing her dreams of being a Hollywood star

After a fender-bender car accident, she had bargained with corrupt Immigration and Customs officer Cole Frankel (Ray Liotta) to provide him with unlimited sex (as his sex slave) for two months. She allowed herself to be taken advantage of, while he aided her by bypassing the bureaucracy and obtaining a US green card for her.

As an agent of the 'system,' he had proposed that they spend the afternoon love-making, rather than having her detained in a San Pedro Immigration Detention Center where "some mamma Latina makes you her bitch for a couple of nights."

After a number of couplings in an LA area hotel with the buxom naturally-endowed beauty, with the young actress often filmed naked to provide a sensationalist edge to the story, Cole separated from his immigration lawyer wife (Ashley Judd) and began to have serious feelings for his victimized client.

However, she didn't reciprocate (she had a musician boyfriend named Gavin (Jim Sturgess) who was passing himself off as a devout Jew in order to stay in the country), and then their devious plan was discovered by the authorities. She was deported, and Cole was jailed.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009)

Quantum of Solace James Bond girl Gemma Arterton was featured in this R-rated, low-budget UK crime drama/thriller film as Alice Creed, a kidnap victim.

The taut, methodical, inventive and gripping film with basically three characters (and two sets) was the feature film debut of writer-director J Blakeson.

After elaborate and calculated preparations were made to a non-descript apartment room to transform it into a prison cell, Creed was seized off the street and brought to the sound-proofed room by two ex-convicts:

• Vic (Eddie Marsan), intense, domineering and malevolent
• Danny (Martin Compston), weaker, younger and fidgety

There she was stripped, spread-eagled and handcuffed naked to bedposts with a brown hood over her head. They photographed her naked (with a copy of The Sun next to her tattoo), sent the pics to her wealthy, estranged father, and it appeared that it would be a typical ransom (2 million pounds) for hostage film.

At various points, Alice was stripped, held at knife point and forced to urinate in a bucket. During a topless love scene with bisexual Danny, she tricked him and turned the tables.

In the course of the expositional film, it became obvious that she was not chosen randomly, and there were some unexpected multiple plot twists (i.e., Danny and Vic were gay lovers!), changing allegiances, reversals and deceptive double-crosses.

The film's misleading title became more appropriate when the far-from-innocent Alice "disappeared" at the end of the film - with the money - after killing both captors.

Dogtooth (2009, Greek) (aka Kynodontas)

Writer/director Giorgos Lanthimos' bizarre psychological drama was an official selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. The unusual yet compelling production included incest, unsimulated sexual touching and explicit intercourse, and full-frontal male and female nudity (including a brief glimpse of a male erection in a video).

It told a pessimistic and cautionary story about a strange, perverse and extreme family experiment, similar to M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (2004) - without the plot twist. It involved the following characters:

• parents - a father and mother (Christos Stergioglou and Michele Valley)
• their three college-aged kids (a son and two daughters), often in their underwear - none of them had names:
  • older daughter (Aggeliki Papoulia)
  • younger daughter (Mary Tsoni)
  • son (Christos Passalis)

The dysfunctional parents terrorized their children and kept them ignorant of the outside world - to prevent them from having "bad influences." Their isolated country house in Greece was surrounded by a tall fence, and they were never allowed to leave. Home-schooled with misinformation, the children had been confused by being taught different words for things (e.g., sea = a leather armchair with wooden arms, female genitals = a big light, lick your keyboard = cunnilingus, zombie = small yellow flower) and falsehoods (stickers were currency, and women could give birth to dogs). The teens were convinced to believe that the house cats beyond their gates were ferocious meat-eating predators, who had killed the fourth child (a son). They were encouraged to bark like dogs to fend off the attackers. They were also told that their grandfather was crooner Frank Sinatra singing "Fly Me to the Moon."

One night when their children were asleep, the father and mother sat on the couch (she was topless and lying with her head in his lap, while he was bottomless), to watch late-night hard-core porn (a glimpse of fellatio was viewed).

The only individual from the outside with contact on the inside was security guard Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou) from the father's industrial factory. She was hired (for payment) and brought blindfolded to the home to provide sex for the son. In his stark bedroom, they sat naked on the bed facing each other, and she masturbated him as he stared down at his crotch, expressionless. Once he was stimulated, they had intercourse (his preferred sexual behavior), without any sexual pleasure or touching for her. In exchange for a spangled headband, she sought stimulation by having oral sex (cunnilingus) performed on her by the eldest daughter ("Come closer and lick for a while, and the headband is yours").

A simple act of bringing another present set off a disastrous chain-reaction in which exposure to the outside world encouraged corruption: Christina brought hair-gel to the eldest daughter, but instead was forced to give her another gift -- rented commercial videotapes (Jaws (1975) and Rocky (1976)) from her pack. Soon after, she began acting out various scenes from the films (she borrowed more than two tapes, presumably, including Flashdance (1983)). When the father found out, the daughter was graphically beaten with one cassette tape (taped to his hand), and he destroyed Christina's VCR in her apartment. With Christina fired, the paranoid father wanted to replace her with someone he could trust ("Nobody else will enter this house"). He incestuously decided it would be one of the daughters.

After fondling the breasts and buttocks of both sisters in a bathtub with his eyes closed, the son chose the elder daughter. She was later dressed and prepared by the mother for an awkward and painful sexual experience with her brother. Following sex, she threatened: "Do that again, bitch, and I'll rip your guts out. I swear on my daughter's life that you and your clan won't last long in this neighborhood." (loosely quoting from Rocky?).

Incestuous Sex - The Son With His Two Sisters and then With the Oldest Daughter (Aggeliki Papoulia)

Then, the daughter began to show problematic signs of agitation, first exhibited in a Flashdance-type dance she performed in front of her family. She also bloodily knocked out her right dogtooth from her mouth (with a hand-weight). [The teens had been promised they could leave the compound if they lost a dogtooth (prominent canine tooth).] She entered the trunk of her father's Mercedes Benz.

That same night, the father found the bloody sink and dogtooth, and frantically searched for his daughter. She was unwittingly driven by the father to his factory (place of work) the next morning, still locked in the trunk, as the film abruptly ended.

18 Year Old Virgin (2009)

Named to sound like the wildly-popular The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005), this teenage sex comedy (the "barely legal unrated version"), was directed by Tamara Wilson (with a script by Naomi L. Selfman). The tagline summarized the film succinctly:

"She Has One Night To Lose it All - Not as Easy As You Think."

Told from multiple female points-of-view, the film reversed the stereotypical plot of a horny male teen seeking to get laid. Instead, it comically surveyed the fears and expectations of a teenaged female regarding first-time sexual intercourse:

• Katie Powers (Olivia Alaina May), the "18 Year-Old-Virgin," a senior who was about to have her last day of school

In the film's opening set at 7 am, she dreamt (with the help of a vibrating toy mouse) that she was deflowered in her own bedroom by hunky blonde classmate Ryan Lambert (Dustin Harnish). She had been saving herself for him since 6th grade when she developed a crush on him after a kiss, when both were wearing Halloween costumes (in the present-day fantasy, he told her: "I love you, Katie, I always have and I always will - You are my soul mate").

At the same time, narcissistic and scheming Chelsea (Karmen Elena Morales) was masturbating in a see-through nightgown as she looked at herself in a mirror ("You're so hot") and thought of fellow virginal classmate Spencer (Todd Leigh), while video-gamer Spencer was masturbating in his bedroom as he fantasized about making it with Katie (she told him: "I want to f--k you so bad...been thinking about you all day on top of me, f--king me so hard so you make me scream").

Katie joined her oversexed, fun-loving party-girl friend Rose (Lauren Walsh) for an all-night celebration. Rose was determined to help "total virgin" Katie "go for it" - and encouraged her to point-blank ask Ryan to take her, but he refused (his previous experience with a virgin was "just too much drama"). So Rose proposed that Katie quickly lose her virginity at the party by finding sex with anyone who was willing - so that Ryan would then accept her. Katie reluctantly accepted the improbable idea: "I have to do whatever I can to give our love a chance" and experienced all the awkwardness of sex after asking Spencer to do it with her - in the front seat of his new car. Their fumbling attempt was quickly aborted.

As fate would have it, other numerous sexual misadventures occurred. To enhance her looks, Rose suggested that Katie shave her "pacheechee." During the full-frontal scene in the bathroom, she wore a merkin as part of the set-up when she was trying to shave herself ("Feels kinda good") but then the shaver painfully jammed - and she had to finish the job with a plastic disposable razor. Raw chicken cutlets shoved in her bra helped to fill out her figure. She went upstairs with another eager candidate who first asked for oral sex as he described his genitals for her: "Some of them are ugly. Here, you can kiss it." She was embarrassed by her first glance, calling it "a wild mushroom, the thing has veins and it's purple" - and snuck out when his girlfriend Rachel (Danielle Gatto) suddenly interrupted them.

Next was tantric sex (joining his lingam with her yoni) with long-haired Cisco (Robbie Henke) who advised deep breathing: "Let your body be a vessel for love" and tried various exotic positions: the Cow, the Wheelbarrow, and the Deep Dish, but she bailed because it would take ten hours.

Her next experience was when she came upon a frisky threesome, including Darice (Crystal Baker) and two others, and decided: "I'm so not a lesbian," but was then dismayed when the unknown male orgasmed with the two nude girls and she wasn't the recipient (she asked: "Can you do it again?" but he declined).

With another male named Todd (Alejandro Mora), Katie (now topless and wearing a strap-on prosthetic penis) was asked to whip his naked butt before sex and nastily call him her "bitch." All Katie's friends had the impression that she was becoming "a total slut," but she still hadn't sacrificed her virginity. Fed up, she decided: "I will wait until I am 40 to lose my virginity, if then."

As she prepared to leave, she confronted a nude Ryan in a bedroom who wanted to make love to her. When he removed her bra, he squeezed her "nice tits" and asked for oral sex, under the covers. After she left for a minute to throw up, she found herself in another darkened bedroom mistakenly delivering a blow-job to an elderly comatose grandfather, causing him to smile and be cured "with a new lease on life."

After an unstimulating kiss with Ryan, unlike her 6th grade kiss, she declined his advances, and then was shocked a few moments later when she saw him giving oral sex to another guy. Meanwhile, Rose was happily having sex with Cisco, with her legs up on his shoulders.

The film concluded with Katie reconciling with Spencer after an explosive kiss. The plot twist was that Spencer was actually the one she had kissed in 6th grade. The two lost their virginity together as fireworks exploded behind them, and Rose orgasmed with Cisco.

Enter the Void (2009, Fr.)

French director Gaspar Noe's hallucinatory film (a "psychedelic melodrama"), a heavily-saturated treatise on life after death, came many years after his most-controversial rape-revenge film Irreversible (2002). Although some critics called it seminal, inspiring and revolutionary, others found it tedious and overlong.

Star actress Pas de la Huerta was often naked or semi-nude throughout much of the film. In cinematographic terms, it was shot from the point of view of the main antagonist with the back of his head in the frame (or a third-person view over his shoulder) including some of his eye-blinking, or floating free-frame (Noe has mentioned it was similar to the POV of the film noir, The Lady in the Lake (1947)).

It opened by introducing small-time American drug-dealer/addict Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) - with a specific preference for the chemical hallucinogen DMT, filmed in homage to Stanley Kubrick's kaleidoscopic, multi-colored "Star-gate" light-show from the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). He was also reflecting on and reading the teachings of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He was shot by police in the bathroom of a Tokyo club-bar known as the VOID, where he had been betrayed by his best friend Victor (Olly Alexander).

Thus began a trippy, out-of-body journey as the dead junkie's soul rose out of his physical body and hovered over the neon-lit city. Unable or unwilling to leave Earth, he remained to watch over his younger sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta), reunited and living with him and employed as a pole-dancer/stripper at a club named Sex Power Money. They had an almost-incestuous relationship since their childhood.

As he observed Linda, his main goal was to break her away from her current boyfriend, tough brute Mario (Masato Tanno) and owner of the strip club, and unite her with his friend Alex (Cyril Roy), a disheveled and untalented artist. The film revisited his tragic past and also the present (and ultimately 9 months further into the future in the final sequence), including:

• the violent car-wreck death of his parents (that forced the traumatic split of Linda and Oscar into foster homes)
• Oscar's affair with an older Tokyo woman
• his longings for his mother
• Linda's graphic abortion (with clear views of her vulva and an ending shot zooming into the aborted fetus in a surgical pan) after being impregnated by Mario
• Oscar's own autopsy at a morgue followed by cremation

In the film's ending, Oscar followed Linda and Alex into Tokyo's Love Hotel where an orgy of sorts was occurring in various rooms. Glowing bright lights were seen to represent the aroused genitals of lovers. Oscar entered the mind/head of Alex as he made love to Linda.

His method of reincarnation was via a close-up of Alex's penis entering Linda's vagina (shot from within the birth passage) and the route of the ejaculated semen-sperm through Linda's cervix to fertilize his sister's ovum.

The film concluded with his rebirth as a baby, to his own mother (or to his sister?) - the identity of the 'mother' was intentionally blurred. His umbilical cord was cut, and he was reconnected to his mother's breast.

Of course, all of this may have been Oscar's wish-fulfillment dream in the last moments of his life - because Oscar was high on DMT when he was shot and killed.

Friday the 13th (2009)

This 12th film in the series, Friday the 13th (2009) was a re-imagining or rebooting of the original film from 1980, with an abundance of gory killings, gratuitous sex and three very topless females.

After a short prologue about how deformed/retarded young son Jason Voorhees' mother Pamela (Nana Visitor) was beheaded by a camp counselor, and Jason took revenge with a machete, the film's next 20 minutes or so found five teens camping in the woods near the broken-down, abandoned cabins of the notorious Camp Crystal Lake, initially looking for a secret patch of marijuana plants.

As in all the films, the killings by burlap sack-headed (later hockey-masked) homicidal killer Jason (Derek Mears) began after youthful displays of sex or nudity, and general debauchery (drinking, dope-smoking, etc).

Around the campfire, girlfriend Amanda (America Olivo) opened her shirt and pulled down her bra to display her breasts to boyfriend Richie (Ben Feldman) to entice him and get him to pay attention to her, then poured massage oil over them, and threw her bra at him. The couple retired to a tent, where their rear-entry love-making was interrupted by the sound of twigs cracking outside. Both of them soon found themselves victims of Jason Voorhees - Amanda was burned alive above the campfire while tied inside her sleeping bag, and Richie was caught by a bear trap within view of his girlfriend as she died, and later he was macheted to death through the skull.

In the second part of the film, another seven teens and other characters were introduced for another round of killings. In a side-story, dope-smoking, red-neck hick Donnie (Kyle Davis) was killed after he lasciviously viewed a Hustler magazine centerfold and made crude comments ("Let Daddy have a little lick"). While investigating a noise in the barn's attic, he spoke to a naked female mannequin that he had named Gina (he had lost his virginity to her when he was younger):

"It's been a long time, Gina. You remember that special night we had? You remember when you took my virginity? You're sexy. (He stroked the dummy's plastic face and breasts) You're still tight as ever. I'm gonna f--king pound you so hard."

Suddenly, he was approached from behind, and his neck was sliced by Jason's machete.

In a cabin near Crystal Lake itself where the second group of coeds were partying for the weekend, disobedient couple Nolan (Ryan Hansen) and his blonde girlfriend Chelsea (Willa Ford) took out a boat on the lake for topless wake-boarding. For their irresponsible behaviors, he was shot through the head with an arrow, and she was stabbed in the top of the head while hiding under the wooden dock.

When the menacing threat of Jason loomed in the background, two other coeds were having sex:

• Bree (Julianna Guill), a very provocative blonde
• Trent (Travis Van Winkle)

She stripped while astride him, as he admired her curvy body: "Oh, wow! Your tits are stupendous..." As they had intercourse, he kept complimenting her: "Your tits are f--king --- just...so juicy, dude...You got perfect nipple placement, baby." She filmed them doing it with a hand-held video camera, projecting them onto a large-screen TV display nearby, while he cautioned: "This better not go on the f--king Internet." They were listening to Santogold's "Shove It (Featuring Spank Rock)" as they kept thrusting together, and ignored warnings from the others.

Trent Having Sex With Bree (Julianna Guill)

Shortly later, Bree met her predictable fate, when Jason grabbed her from behind, covered her mouth to muffle her screams, picked her up, and impaled her back-first onto a mounted set of sharp-pointed deer antlers on a bathroom door. Trent was murdered when stabbed in the middle of his chest with Jason's machete, and then impaled on three-pronged tow-hook poles mounted on the back of a tow-truck.

The Hangover (2009)

• director Todd Phillips' vulgar, obscenity-filled, absurdist quasi-comedy/bromance caper was the first of an eventual trilogy, including The Hangover Part II (2011), and The Hangover Part III (2013)
• the first installment told about the outlandish adventures of four guys in "Sin City" Las Vegas in mid-October of 2009 during two nights of a debauched bachelor party and its aftermath, to celebrate the imminent wedding of one of them:
  • Alan Garner (Zach Galifianakis), the bride's socially-awkward, perverted and bearded brother suffering from ADHD, brother of the fiancee Tracy
  • Phil Wenneck (Bradley Cooper), a married schoolteacher, the "Wolfpack" leader
  • Doug Billings (Justin Bartha), the bridegroom, soon to be married to Tracy Garner (Sasha Barrese), daughter of wealthy Sid Garner (Jeffery Tambor)
  • Stu Price (Ed Helms), a nervous and anxious Jewish dentist (Divine Dentistry), in a three-year relationship with a mean, controlling, bitchy and abusive live-in girlfriend Melissa (Rachael Harris)

"The Wolfpack"
Alan Garner	Doug Billings
Phil Wenneck	Stu Price

• before the film's opening title credits, the film actually began with a phone call placed in the Mohave Desert from Phil to Doug's fiancee Tracy only five hours before her wedding, with the confession about their screwed-up bachelor party in Vegas: "We f--ked up...Things got out of control and, uh, we lost Doug....We can't find Doug!"; given the circumstances, Phil predicted that the wedding couldn't possibly take place: "That's not gonna happen"
• in a flashback to two days earlier, the foursome assembled together and drove to Vegas in Tracy's father's borrowed, silver 1965 Mercedes 220SE convertible for a 48 hour bacchanalia; they booked a spacious, luxury hotel "Villa" at Caesars Palace for $4,200 dollars a night; they began the night by celebrating with a rooftop toast with shots of Jägermeister beer; Alan (with a "satchel" or "manpurse" strapped across his shoulder) announced their new nickname - the "Wolfpack" - "Four of us wolves, running around the desert together, in Las Vegas, looking for strippers and cocaine. So tonight, I make a toast!"; to their shock, Alan cut his hand with a knife to become "blood brothers," but the others refused to follow suit; Phil spoke about their collective memory - and stressed that they must keep completely mum about their time together: "Forget everything....OK, good or bad. We don't remember so we got nothing to talk about. Nothing, guys, nothing!"; he toasted: "To a night we'll never remember, but the four of us will never forget"
• the following dawn after a fast-forward, Phil's words rang somewhat true - they awoke in their spacious, now-wrecked and upended hotel villa, with severe hangovers and no memory of what had occurred the night before; their suite was completely littered and trashed; in view was a smoldering chair, champagne bottles set up like bowling pins at the end of a hallway, a clucking chicken, Stu with a slightly bloodied shirt, and a growling tiger in the bathroom; a female appeared to sneak out of the room without disturbing any sleeping occupants; when he was awakened, Phil asked: "What the f--k happened last night?"

		Stu's Missing Tooth
Bengal Tiger in the Bathroom

• Stu realized he was now missing a front tooth (found shortly later in Alan's pocket), and both Doug and his mattress was missing from the room; and then they heard a crying baby in a closet that Alan named Carlos; the threesome began a search for the missing Doug; they remembered the rooftop toasts, dinner at the Palm at about 10 PM, and craps at the Hard Rock, but then everything went blank for about 12 hours; Stu had an ATM receipt from the Bellagio Hotel Casino at 11:05 PM for an $800 withdrawal, and Alan had a Caesar's valet parking stub (stamped 5:15 AM), while Phil realized he was wearing a hospital arm-band or bracelet; as they waited for the delivery of their valet car, they saw Doug's mattress impaled outside on the arm of a Caesars Palace statue; and when the valet service brought their car, the Mercedes had been swapped with a stolen Las Vegas Metro Police cruiser
• the threesome first retraced their steps to the hospital at about noon-time where they questioned the doctor who remembered that the foursome had arrived at 2:45 AM without a baby; Phil was treated for a non-life threatening head concussion and bruised ribs, and a blood work test revealed he had a large amount of Ruphylin (or Rohypnol) (aka "roofies" or the "date-rape" drug) in his system
• the doctor suggested that they visit Vegas' THE BEST LITTLE CHAPEL because they had talked about a wedding; the chapel's wedding organizer Eddie (Bryan Callen) warmly greeted them and with official photos of the ceremony to prove it, he told how Stu had been married and hitched up with a stripper/escort named Jade (Heather Graham) who was the single mother of baby Tyler found in their suite's closet
• as they were leaving the parking lot, they were violently assaulted by two Asian thugs who demanded the return of some person ("Where the hell is he?"), smashed the windshield, and accidentally wounded Eddie with gunfire; they sped off in the cruiser to Jade's apartment where she was happy to see Stu and her baby again; after her late night work at the strip club, she had been in the "Villa" with them in the early morning when they were all passed out, but after leaving for coffee, she returned and they had vacated the room; Stu became perturbed when he noticed that he had given Jade a ring to wear - his grandmother's 'Holocaust' ring; Alan wondered: "I didn't know they gave out rings at the Holocaust"

Jade Happily Reunited With Stu and Her Baby Tyler

• the group was interrupted by two arresting police officers who barged into the apartment with guns drawn and took them in handcuffs to a police station; with his one phone call, Phil called Tracy and lied that they had been 'comped' an extra night and would be staying two nights at the hotel, although the wedding was the next day; they were told by Officer Franklin (Rob Riggle) that their impounded Mercedes vehicle had been found in the middle of Las Vegas Blvd at 5:00 AM; to avoid being jailed until a hearing before a judge on Monday morning (after the wedding), they agreed to volunteer to be tasered by stun-guns as test subjects for a touring group of schoolchildren, to demonstrate how the police subdued suspects (the sadistic Officer after Phil was felled: "Right in the nuts! That was beautiful")
• as they drove back to the hotel in their released Mercedes from the impound yard, they were again attacked by a strange, naked, feisty and gay Asian gangster Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong) who was discovered locked in their Mercedes' trunk; he jumped out and began beating them up with a crowbar; as the naked guy (with a small penis hidden in massive amounts of pubic hair) wielded the weapon and threatened Alan, Alan shouted out: "Nobody's gonna f--k on you! I'm on your side! I hate Godzilla! I hate him too! I hate him! He destroys cities! Please! This isn't your fault. I'll get you some pants"; Alan was also struck with the crowbar before Chow ran off
• feeling guilty, Alan admitted how he had drugged the rooftop drinks with "Good Morning, Cinderella" - what he thought was Ecstasy that he had bought at a liquor store - but it was a strong drug known as Ruphylin that had completely wiped their memories; Stu was upset at the results the drugs had brought for him: "I lost a tooth, I married a whore"
• back at the hotel, they were confronted by legendary boxer Mike Tyson (Himself) and his bodyguard; the boxer first encouraged them to briefly join him in a sing-along to Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight, but suddenly punched out Alan; the angry bodyguard demanded that they return Tyson's pet Bengal tiger (in their bathroom) that had been stolen from Tyson's mansion - within 40 minutes time
• by nightfall, the tiger was tranquilized with a raw steak (spiked with 5 roofies) and driven in the backseat of the Mercedes to Tyson's home, but during the trip, the animal awakened and clawed Phil's neck before the three managed to scramble out of the car after some fender-benders; as they pushed the car to Tyson's home a mile away, the tiger completely ripped apart the car's interior; security camera footage confirmed that the foursome (including Doug) had kidnapped the leashed animal at 3:30 AM and put it in their stolen police cruiser; Tyson approved of the theft: "Nice, high-five that one"
• on their return trip to the hotel, the now-clothed Chow with some Asian gang members broad-sided their vehicle with their SUV; he demanded: "I want my purse back, assholes" - referring to $80,000 dollars of stolen Bellagio casino poker chips (eventually discovered in Doug's purse); he then accused the group of kidnapping him and putting him in the car trunk; the gangsters revealed that they had a head-covered hostage in the SUV (the guys wrongly assumed it was Doug!), and gave a deadline of sunrise to return the money to Big Rock in the Mojave Desert, in exchange for the hostage
• that night Alan cheated at blackjack (by counting cards, but evaded being caught for illegally gambling) to win the $82,400 that was to be used for the exchange in the desert, but when the hood was removed from the hostage's head, it wasn't Doug (Alan: "The Doug we're looking for is a white"), but an African-American who was called: "Black Doug" (Mike Epps) - he was the drug-dealer in the liquor store who had sold Alan the bad "roofies" advertised as Ecstasy, and he had hung out with the group shooting craps at the Bellagio
• --- the flashback ENDED!! -- the scene returned to the frantic phone call to Tracy about the missing Doug
• as they raced back to their hotel room, Stu surmised that Doug - on the rooftop - had tried to signal his whereabouts by throwing his mattress onto a statue below; he had to have been on the roof, since the windows were inoperable in any of the rooms; they discovered that Doug was severely sunburned and trapped for a day and a half on the roof of Caesar's Palace; Stu remembered that Doug had originally been moved there as a practical joke
• they checked out of the hotel, and before leaving Stu made plans to meet up with Jade for a dinner date the following weekend; the group drove the beaten-up, ruined Mercedes back home to Los Angeles in only three and a half hours, during which time Doug found the $80,000 in chips in his pocket; on the freeway, they were tossed wrapped-up packages with phone-ordered tuxs from The Tux Shop before arriving late, but just in time for Doug to marry Tracy
• during the outdoor celebratory reception, it was long overdue for Stu to drop his demanding girlfriend Melissa in front of a large audience, when he admitted he had joined his friends in Vegas: ("I think, in a healthy relationship, sometimes a guy should be able to do what he wants to do...You're such a bad person! Like, all the way through to your core!"), and that he knew she had cheated on him with a bartender during last June's cruise; after the wedding, Doug was pleasingly shocked and relieved when told that his new bride's father had gifted him the Mercedes (not knowing it was destroyed)
• Stu's discarded digital camera found by Alan in the back seat of the car revealed what had happened during the previous night - ("Some of it's even worse than we thought") - the group decided to view the pictures together only one time - "and then we delete the evidence"
• there were hilarious out-takes in the final credits sequence (to the tune of Flo Rida's and Kesha's Right Round); the images included Alan passed out next to a topless female, enjoying a lap dance and also having his fat belly pierced; Stu and Phil also cavorted with strippers and lap dancers, and Stu had pulled out one of his front teeth with a pair of pliers as part of a dare from Alan; the group played craps at the Bellagio casino and brought Phil to the hospital with a concussion

Alan Passed Out	Stu with Strippers	Stu with Jade
Phil with Lap Dancer	Alan Enjoying Lap Dance	Stu's Pulled Out Tooth With Pliers
Gambling at the Craps Table	Alan's Piercing At a Tattoo Parlor	Phil in the Hospital

A Heavenly Vintage (2009, NZ), (aka The Vintner's Luck)

New Zealand writer/director Niki Caro's fantasy - a romantic costume melodrama set in 19th century France was an adaptation of Elizabeth Knox's novel of the same name. It was critically panned by reviewers after it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. It featured Keisha Castle-Hughes (known from Caro's earlier Whale Rider (2003) as the youngest-ever Best Actress nominee) in a few nude scenes.

In the story, a married peasant couple in early 19th century France were:

• Sobran Jodeau (Jérémie Renier), an aspiring peasant wine grower who was struggling to create the perfect vintage
• Celeste (Keisha Castle-Hughes), his beautiful wife

Desperate, winemaker Sobran made a deal with winged angel Xas (Gaspard Ulliel), but misfortunes, trials, and tribulations overcame him.

Celeste became jealous when Sobran became friendly with baroness-heiress Aurora de Valday (Vera Farmiga) and entered into a wine production partnership with her - but she ultimately suffered from breast cancer and was operated upon for a mastectomy.

The Last House on the Left (2009)

Director Dennis Iliadis' horror film was a remake or reworking of one of the better-known, notorious Wes Craven films, The Last House on the Left (1972) (based on Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece The Virgin Spring (1960)) - with Craven serving as this film's producer for Midnight Entertainment and Rogue Pictures. Its total (domestic) gross at the box-office was $32.8 million, and $45.3 million (worldwide).

Most reviewers thought it was an improved film for mainstream audiences with a glossier feel (less cheap and raw looking than the original and more technically proficient), with less sadistic humiliation of the victims, although it followed the predictable, slick pattern of most cynical Hollywood remakes. Many critics found the sexualized or eroticized violence too overbearing and revolting, similar to 'torture porn.'

Two differences from the original were that Mari survived in this film, creating more tension in the conclusion, and a sympathetic Justin took the side of the brutalized Mari and her parents.

The suspenseful horror tale told about how two older teen females had a fateful encounter during one summer:

• Mari Collingwood (Sara Paxton), an innocent blonde
• Paige (Martha MacIsaac), Mari's shop clerk friend

The pair were abducted by a three member gang:

• Krug (Garret Dillahunt), the leader, a vicioous and sadistic prison escapee
• Francis (Aaron Paul), Krug's brother
• Sadie (Riki Lindhome), Krug's girlfriend

Sadie provided much of the film's nudity. Tagging along was Krug's teenaged son Justin (Spencer Treat Clark), who had lured the two girls to the gang's hotel room with the promise of marijuana.

Sadie (Riki Lindhome)

During an escape attempt from the gang in the woods, Paige was stabbed to death in the abdomen (in slow-motion), and Mari (after being stripped) was gruesomely raped from behind by Krug (a scene that was shortened and trimmed in order to acquire an R-rating), before she was shot in the back while swimming away in a lake. She was presumed dead, but barely survived and eventually made her way back home to her parents' secluded lake house.

During a fierce storm, the gang members were also forced to seek refuge in the lake house of Mari's well-to-do parents, Emma (Monica Potter) and John Collingwood (Tony Goldwyn). The parents sought cruel, barbaric and savage revenge on the gang members by outright fist-fights (employing a wine bottle, knives, an in-sink garbage disposer and a hammer) when they discovered their bruised and wounded daughter - first to die was Francis, and then Sadie.

Finally in a gratuitous, cathartic sequence, medical doctor John told Krug that he had been paralyzed after surgically operating on him: "You're paralyzed from the neck down. I didn't have any rope or duct tape." Krug was killed when his head was stuck in a microwave oven and exploded.

My Bloody Valentine 3-D (2009)

This R-rated US slasher film remake of the 1981 Canadian horror film was noted for its 3-D release. It told the story of a surviving miner named Harry Warden (Richard John Walters) in a cave-in in the town of Harmony, who was discovered to have axed his fellow miners in order to survive.

A year later on the following Valentine's Day, Warden (who awoke from a coma), went on a killing spree before he was shot by the local sheriff Burke (Tom Atkins), but then was killed (or escaped back into the mine?).

Ten years later at a seedy motel after having wild sex with married, bald truck-driver lover Frank (the film's screenwriter Todd Farmer), slutty, high-heeled Irene Sparco (Betsy Rue) confronted and argued with Frank about his secret recording of their love-making, as he confessed:

Frank: "I make these for my own personal collection."
Sparco: "I am no hooker."

He tossed her a bill and told her: "You are now." She angrily followed him into the parking lot with a gun and confronted him there ("Frank, you son-of-a-bitch"), demanding the tapes while stark naked. As he was about to get into his truck cab, he told her:

"Irene, two things: one, I don't want you anymore, and two..."

Irene (Betsy Rue) Naked in the Parking Lot

Abruptly interrupted, she witnessed Frank murdered by a pick-axe-wielding, gas-mask wearing individual, after she had memorably faced the camera for an unabashed set of full-frontal (and bare) nude scenes. Terrified, she raced back to the motel's office and into its back room, and was ultimately killed, still naked, by the slasher after hiding from him under a bed and trying to protect herself behind the bed's upended wire-spring frame.

Now and Later (2009)

Left-wing writer Philippe Diaz directed this unrated, steamy erotic drama that pushed cinematic boundaries with its many soft-core sex scenes (with full-nudity sex). During the credits was a quote from Wilhelm Reich:

"A sexually repressed society will resort to violence."

The sex-laden film was unnaturally cerebral and preachy (by the female lead) - mostly left-wing polemics about American imperialism, covert CIA activities and assassinations, the hypocrisy and corruption of the American government, and uptight attitudes toward sex.

As the film began, a passionate encounter would soon occur between its two principals in Los Angeles, involving politics, religion, philosophy - and sex:

• Angela (Shari Solanis), nicknamed "Professor Now," an undocumented, illegal immigrant, a waitress in a small, East LA Spanish-speaking restaurant and a volunteer nurse's assistant at a clinic for low-income families; during her traumatic childhood in Nicaragua, American-supported Contras murdered her parents during the time of the Iran-Contras affair, and she was raised by her grandmother
• Bill (James Wortham), nicknamed "Mr. Later," a disgraced and depressed ex-investment banker; he had been convicted for fraudulent activities (involving ten years of international trading speculation and debt-buying and selling schemes in other nations "to cripple the economy of another country" - what he called 'dirty work' - he had been accused of buying "without authorization" after the bank stopped the failed project); he had jumped bail before sentencing (8 years in prison) and was now a fugitive on the run; he had filed personal bankruptcy, was rejected by his family and divorced from embittered, red-headed wife Sally (Marcellina Walker)

Angela offered the seemingly-unintelligent and unengaging Bill her single-room place to stay for the night when his transport driver Luis (Luis Fernandez-Gil) was detained. Bill was en route to Nicaragua where he planned to hide out from authorities. Bill told Angela that he believed in "bad luck." In downtown East LA at her cheap upstairs room above a transient hotel, with a door out to the rooftop, there was a prominent wooden fertility statue. She described her place: "Welcome to my living scrapbook." She added: "I believe in hell on Earth. I see it every day." From her vantage point, she pointed out where all the levels of society lived (poor people, middle class people in condos, and the financial district).

She proposed that he sleep in her bed: "Don't worry, you don't have to have sex with me" - she added. For the first night, he chose to sleep on the floor on a sleeping bag. Later, as they sat on a futon and talked on the rooftop, over Tecate beers and burritos, she began to massage him and suggested that he enjoy it, since he had "nothing to lose." She unbuckled his pants to reveal his erection, then gave him oral sex, after which they continued their conversation. When they went inside later, she sat on her bed, enticing him to join her.

When she first came to the US, she explained, she lived with liberated hippies in San Francisco, but then said: "I don't have blond hair or an American body. I'm not even pure Latina. I'm just a mutt." She wasn't sure he would like her if she became naked:

"Does nudity bother you?...(She undressed after turning down the lights) For most people, life is not very beautiful. I just try to make every moment as good as possible. See, I'm exactly the opposite of what men like you are interested in...You people are such Puritans....'Huevones.'...It means 'Big balls, no guts.' It's only you and me here. Nobody to judge you. Show me. (He undressed) Bravo."

After he stripped, she urged him to kiss her breast, touch her, and then: "Come inside of me," after putting a condom on him, and they had full-frontal and rear-entry intercourse (probably unsimulated). As they laid together afterwards, she talked to him about her political views on repression, hypocritical US attitudes toward violence and sex, and the importance of living in the present moment:

"Research shows that a lack of sexual pleasure leads to frustration, bitterness, anger, violence...You Americans are such a bunch of frustrated hypocrites, like, I can't believe it. You can show body parts and heads being blown away on TV, movies, video games. It's like, life is no value whatsoever, but you can't talk openly about masturbation. I mean, I don't get it. Doesn't everybody have sex? Doesn't every boy or man masturbate and have erections? Why should it be hidden?"

Her personal philosophy was "Drink now, Live now, F--k now." Over the course of the next few days, he and the free-spirited, free-loving Angela participated in numerous, garishly-lit, consensual sexual encounters (eight in total) - her mission was to personally liberate him and provide him with pleasure - in the now.

On their last night after they had anal sex on the rooftop, she told him that she believed in free love, and that she was a dreamer:

"Free love is the only true love. It's the love that you keep on testing with others, and the love which endures. That is the only form of love - we should liberate the ones who live it rather than limiting their freedom."

Their further graphic activities included:

• viewing Angela rocking and masturbating on a hammock (afterwards, she let him lick her fingers)
• cunnilingus
• an aborted threesome with her male friend Diego (Adrian Quinonez) (Bill declined: "I'm sorry, I can't")
• anal sex
• and '69' (a deleted scene)

When they finally said goodbye to each other on a sidewalk, she reminded him: "To exist is the only thing that matters. To exist here and now." He responded: "And nothing else." He slowly walked away from her, looking back a few times. Then she turned and walked in the opposite direction from him, as the film ended.

Observe and Report (2009)

This sick and shocking gross-out dark comedy from writer/director Jody Hill told about bipolar mall security guard Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen) whose main objective was to prove himself vigilante-style.

His goal was to capture a rain-coated flasher who was exhibiting himself to shoppers on the mall's property (witnesses described his flopping penis, and Ronnie had a frequently-shown Polaroid photo of the pervert's genitals).

He also became interested in dumb-blonde makeup counter-girl Brandi (Anna Faris). She became inebriated one night and a victim of date-rape by Ronnie. When he stopped coital thrusting because of concern for her - she emerged from unconsciousness and surprisingly asked (while vomit/droll came out of her mouth and her eyes remained shut):

Brandi: "Why are you stopping, mother-f--ker?"
Ronnie: (apologizing for pausing) "Oh, I'm sorry!" (He continued thrusting)

Road Trip: Beer Pong (2009)

The sequel to Road Trip (2000) was director Steve Rash's direct-to-DVD/video titled Road Trip: Beer Pong (2009).

The film, dubbed by NPR as "a chauvinistic movie about bimbos, breasts, and the eponymous beer drinking game," caused something of a controversy when it was filmed near Atlanta at the all-girls Agnes Scott College. The uproar came to light when student extras were solicited for a scene in which they were to act as lesbians.

It told about college guy Andy (Preston Jones) who was searching for ex-girlfriend Jenna (Julia Levy-Boeken) - now a beer pong model in a competition called the National Beer Pong Championship.

It was filled with numerous breast-revealing scenes (from unknown actresses including topless strippers providing lapdances, topless bartenders, and pillow-fighting 'beer pong' girls), and raunchy sex talk.

Taking Woodstock (2009)

"3 Days of Love and Peace" (the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival) at Max Yasgur's (Eugene Levy) rural 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, NY was the Catskills setting for the historically-legendary rock concert in the summer of 1969. The locale of most of director Ang Lee's off-center, bland and unmoving retrospective/biopic film was at the nearby unincorporated hamlet of White Lake, where the run-down El Monaco "Resort" Motel was situated - headquarters for the concert staff.

Regarding the large numbers of unknown cast members who were hired to appear naked, producer James Schamus and director Ang Lee noted the difficulty of locating young actors whose naked bodies were neither overly fit (with "chiseled abs"), nor overweight, nor unnaturally hairless (with "landing strips"). As Lee put it: "We had to cast them a couple months ahead so they could all grow their hair back."

The backstory centered around the experiences of closeted gay Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin) - adapted from Elliot Tiber's 2007 memoir, Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life and his involvement in arranging for the concert to be held in the area (after the permit for the event was denied at nearby Wallkill, NY) - and the subsequent salvation of his Russian emigrant parents' failing motel.

Most of the R-rated film's display of graphic full-frontal nudity (without sexual connotations) came from an itinerant avant-garde troupe of new-agey, hippie-thespians named the Earthlight Players who had rented the El Monaco's barn for the summer. When afro-haired producer Michael Lang's (Jonathan Groff) helicopter first landed on the front lawn of the El Monaco to strike a deal with Elliot - the head of the local Chamber of Commerce, the group surrounded the chopper and then doffed their skimpy gold loin-cloths.

The same troupe also disrobed in front of shocked locals on a performance stage erected at the El Monaco just before the Woodstock concert commenced, and taunted the audience to join them.

[Note: Even major star Emile Hirsch in his role as a traumatized Vietnam War vet ran up to the stage, stripped off his clothes, and was briefly glimpsed full-frontal.]

The Earthlight Players Disrobing On Stage at the El Monaco

The third major instance of nudity was also at White Lake, when hordes of carefree skinny-dippers happily frolicked in the water.

Van Wilder: Freshman Year (2009)

Although universally-reviled as an unfunny and vulgar comedy, this recycled, direct-to-video prequel was actually the third film in a series of Van Wilder films (previous entries were in 2002 and 2006). The main actors from the original film were substituted with other lesser-knowns for this predictable 'uptights vs. party animals' tale. The two main stars were:

• Van Wilder (Jonathan Bennett replacing Ryan Reynolds), a freshman student at Coolidge College
• Kaitlin Hayes (reality-TV Laguna Beach, and The Hills star Kristin Cavalleri), a prudish co-ed, the girlfriend of ROTC-rival Dirk Arnold (Steve Talley)

After delivering a Thornhill High-School commencement speech while being pleasured under the podium by his female co-valedictorian, Van Wilder selected the undergraduate school because of the long tradition of other Van Wilders who had previously attended, and after he arrived learned of its reputation as Playpen's # 1 party school in 1979.

However, he found the school ultra-conservative, chaste, Christianized, and pro-military, run by iron-fisted, uptight and self-righteous Colonel Dean Charles Reardon (Kurt Fuller). The new rules were: "No drinking, no fornicating, and no partying, period."

Religious zealot coed Eve (Meredith Giangrande) initially told him: "Alcohol is the devil's mouthwash" and "Orgasms are the devil's heroin. Just once and you're hooked." Later, the converted "devil woman" begged for sex:

"I need to talk to God...I need to feel him inside of me. Don't you wanna help me find God?...Just f--k me!"

Van Wilder took it upon himself to liberate the puritanical school ("We shake things up a bit") with parties, drinking, sex, and shenanigans, while trying to impress Kaitlin, the girlfriend of his rival Dirk Arnold, and win her over. His efforts almost backfired, when he defended her with coarse language to the Dean:

"That girl's got bigger balls than you, me, and my freakish dog combined."

The unrated version (as well as R-rated) was due to its emphasis on sexual innuendo, bare breasts and other gross-outs, including:

• the theft of an assortment of female masturbatory devices in dorm rooms (while one busty blonde co-ed (Sarah Oliver) found herself holding a substituted cucumber) to be used in a later sex prank (the remote-controlled vibrators were activated under the chairs of female choir members during a church service, causing them to cry out: "Amen!")
• the sexy modification of Coolidge's cheerleader outfits to help the football team score with promises of a raucous "victory party"
• poop, excrement and penis jokes, profanity, blatant homosexual and racial stereotypes (one Asian was named Yu Dum Fok (Jerry Shea))
• a hands-on Sex 101 education class (with busty assistants enacting sex positions, including one coed with marked-up breasts (Farrah Fisher) who demonstrated a breast-handling technique called "flanking")
• a dog named Colussus with huge testicles that licked peanut-butter applied to the Dean's privates by Asian hottie Dongmei (Irene Keng) who promised a "mouth massage"

The film concluded with war-games between two competing teams - with Wilder defeating Reardon via beach fun and party games, including tempting skinny-dipping. A coed (Sarah Oliver again) reported:

"Sorry about your troops, Chuck, but they decided to make love, not war."

Wargames Co-ed (Sarah Oliver)