2014 was no different than the three previous years - boundary-pushing, premium Cable-TV continued to reveal more nudity and sex than any mainstream feature films. Even broadcast TV got into the act (i.e., How to Get Away With Murder). This sampling below (there were too many to be completely comprehensive) is only a continuation of what came in the three years before:

Nudity and Sexual Scenes in Cable-TV Dramas and Shows
Masters of Sex SHOWTIME Lizzy Caplan	Masters of Sex SHOWTIME Erin Cummings	Masters of Sex SHOWTIME Caitlin FitzGerald	The Affair SHOWTIME Ruth Wilson	True Blood HBO Anna Paquin
The Knick CINEMAX Juliet Rylance	The Knick CINEMAX Rachel Korine	Penny Dreadful SHOWTIME Eva Green	Penny Dreadful SHOWTIME Billie Piper	Ray Donovan SHOWTIME Tori Black
Californication SHOWTIME Camille Chen	Californication SHOWTIME Brigette Davidovici	Californication SHOWTIME Jenny Lin	Californication SHOWTIME Nishi Munshi	Californication SHOWTIME Melissa Stephens
Californication SHOWTIME Megan Stevenson	Californication SHOWTIME Diana Terranova	Hemlock Grove NETFLIX Madeline Brewer	Hemlock Grove NETFLIX Kaniehtiio Horn	Hemlock Grove NETFLIX Loretta Yu
True Detective HBO Alexandra Daddario	Game of Thrones HBO Nathalie Emmanuel	The Americans FX Keri Russell	The Americans FX Keri Russell	The Americans FX Keri Russell
Survivor's Remorse STARZ! Khaneshia 'KJ' Smith	Survivor's Remorse STARZ! Brittany S. Hall	INXS: Never Tear Us Apart (SHINE AUSTRALIA) Lisa McGregor	INXS: Never Tear Us Apart (SHINE AUSTRALIA) Tessa Cash	Silent Witness BBC Daisy Ridley
Black Sails STARZ! Jessica Parker Kennedy	Black Sails STARZ! Hannah New	Black Sails STARZ! Louise Barnes	Black Sails STARZ! Lise Slabber	Outlander STARZ! Caitriona Balfe

Newsmaker Actress Keira Knightley

To make a protest statement, 29 year-old star Keira Knightley went completely topless in the September 2014 issue of Interview magazine, and stipulated that there was to be no Photoshop retouching. She explained: "I've had my body manipulated so many different times for so many different reasons, whether it's paparazzi photographers or for film posters...That [shoot] was one of the ones where I said: 'OK, I'm fine doing the topless shot so long as you don't make them any bigger or retouch.' Because it does feel important to say it really doesn't matter what shape you are."

She added: "I think women's bodies are a battleground and photography is partly to blame. Our society is so photographic now, it becomes more difficult to see all of those different varieties of shape." She had complained earlier in 2012 to Allure: "They always pencil in my boobs...I was only angry when they were really droopy...For King Arthur, for a poster, they gave me these really strange droopy tits. I thought, well if you're going to make me fantasy breasts, at least make perky breasts." She also said: "I don't mind exposing my tits [on screen] because they're so small - people really aren't that interested."

Affluenza (2014)

Director Kevin Asch's drama, set in pre-recession 2008, was about the financial industry, lives of privilege, and the effects of ultra-wealth on affluent rich kids. It was often compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald's tale The Great Gatsby. The tagline was: "Filthy Rich, Morally Bankrupt."

The main character was aspiring photographer Fisher Miller (Ben Rosenfield) from Ithaca NY, actually not rich or privileged himself, who spent the summer with his wealthy Aunt Bunny (Samantha Mathis) and stockbroker Uncle Philip Miller (Steve Guttenberg) (with teenage daughter Kate (Nicola Peltz)) in Great Neck, Long Island, after his parent's divorce. His objective was to establish high-society connections while preparing to transfer into a prestigious art college in NYC, where he was auditing courses.

He was introduced to a decadent and hedonistic lifestyle by his pretty, overindulging and selfish cousin Kate (Nicola Peltz), a high school senior, and even contributed to his own entrance into the wealthy group by being a small-time pot dealer of high-quality weed. He was also swept up in casual sex, drugs and alcohol, and undisciplined and unsupervised behavior. Fisher experienced an unsatisfying flirtation with Kate's sexy friend Jody (Valentina de Angelis).

There were non-stop parties during the summer, including a swimming party in which topless beauty Gail (Argentinian actress Carla Quevedo) came onto him and wished him a happy birthday. She invitingly placed his left hand on her right breast ("How does that feel, huh?"), She was the hostess at the country club’s restaurant.

Eventually, Fisher become wrapped up in a dangerous love triangle between:

• Kate
• Todd Goodman (Grant Gustin), Kate's preppy boyfriend, who also was using Gail as his lower-class mistress
• Dylan Carson (Gregg Sulkin), wealthy but insecure and neglected rich kid/playboy and Kate's former childhood love (who used Fisher to win Kate's heart back)

Alpha House (2014)

The only thing going for this direct-to-video Asylum Film was its wall-to-wall nudity, something the film studio was becoming known for - replacing the National Lampoon or American Pie series reknowned for this kind of frat boy raunch. Its tagline was: "The wildest frat house is going... Co-Ed!"

The weak plot was that an Alpha Frat house of nerds was going to be forced by the Associate Dean to share a house with a Delta Sorority (composed of members who were often nude or semi-nude). Both groups decided to get rid of the other - in order to inhabit the house by themselves.

Abby (Mindy Robinson) - Practicing Strip Yoga	Abby (Mindy Robinson) - Practicing Strip Yoga
Renee (Jacquelina Cardinale)	Renee (Jacquelina Cardinale)
Renee (Jacquelina Cardinale)	Naked Sushi
Abby (Mindy Robinson)	Abby (Mindy Robinson)
Kelly Kramer (Heather Paige Cohn)	Kelly Kramer (Heather Paige Cohn)

Bachelor Night (2014)

This effort was another Asylum film with the tagline of "What happened in Vegas?!"- the 89 minute, low-budget R-rated comedy took advantage of the wave of films about party experiences bound for or in Vegas, including The Hangover films, Bridesmaids, etc.. There were bedroom romps, strip clubs, lap dances, porn movie shoots, lots of bikini opportunities, and many shots of nude or topless females.

The poster was illustrated with a pretty naked woman in a bed (next to a half-seen naked man), covered in stacks of one dollar bills. She had a tattoo on her left upper arm: "I HEART Vaygis." Another pair of long legs emerged from the wads of cash, dangling a pink bikini (or bra) top from one foot.

In the basically non-existent plot, Derek (Skyler Yeast) was about to marry kinky-sex loving Amanda Bryce (Megan Albertus), a sexually-frustrated bride-to-be. During the opening credits sequence, Amanda (with a red rope tied around her neck), was on top of her uptight, less sexually-liberated fiancee, riding him like a cowgirl and screaming: "I love your baby-maker inside of me." She encouraged him to talk dirty to her, spank her, and insert a giant dildo (nicknamed Luther) into her for anal sex.

Domineering Bride-to-Be Amanda (Megan Albertus)

After they had sex, she encouraged him to get wild at his Vegas bachelor party - to let go of his inhibitions:

"Go crazy, let things get freaky and weird. That's what bachelor parties are for...You're never giving 'freaky' and 'weird' a chance....Ever since I met you, I knew you were just this coiled spring of sexual energy ready to be sprung...You are. You just need to loosen up. Go crazy, do drugs, get drunk. F--k bitches. That's your mission....F--k those bitches - for me, please!?"

She also spoke privately to best man Adrian (Andrew Bongiorno) to promise her (as his "boss") that Derek would have a good time in Vegas on the weekend: "Make sure he has a good time and plenty of company. I've given Derek a hall pass." She promised Adrian, actually a partner at her company, a promotion: "Get Derek laid, and on Monday, there's a corner office and a senior junior partner next to your name." She added that she hadn't had an orgasm with Derek for a long time, and "this could save our relationship." She yelled out to the two of them as they drove off: "Now you boys, go on and get your dicks wet!"

While Adrian, Derek, and Mitchell (Lenny Hernandez) were driving to Vegas, Mitchell dreamt of being involved in a fantasy situation at an indoor pool with two topless babes, including masquerade-masked Sue (Magdalena Tcherno). The fourth bachelor friend Frank (Phillip Andre Botello), Amanda's ex-boyfriend, was on a United Airlines flight to the city where he was seen banging Asian stewardess Alex (Angelica Ng). While providing her with oral sex, she was breathlessly on the PA system announcing preparations for landing.

The one-line description of the plot stated that the crossing of paths in Vegas of a four-guy bachelor party and a four-girl bachelorette party would invariably cause sexual friction:

"When a bachelor party and a bachelorette party cross paths in Vegas, only the best man and maid of honor can save their friends from a night of epic 'mistakes.'"

Bachelorettes (l to r): Tatyana, Amber, Casey, Sienna

The Bachelorette Bride-to-Be Casey (Samantha Stewart)

Bachelors (l to r): Adrian, Derek, Mitchell, Frank

In Vegas, the four males met four females (from Los Angeles) at the hotel swimming pool - and the rest was predictable. On Saturday night in the ladies' Las Vegas hotel suite, Tatyana (Anna Beletzki, a Playboy cover model) was complimented by Amber (Melissa Mensah) for her full breasts: "Oh my God, I'm so jealous of your boobs!" as they tried on evening dresses. (Later in the evening after visiting a stripclub with the guys, the two females were seen together on a bed, massaging each other, and Mitchell was encouraged to join them in their bed.)

(l to r): Tatyana (Anna Beletzki) and Amber (Melissa Mensah)

The two groups paid a visit to the Velvet Athaneum, a strip nightclub, to buy drinks and spend time with lap-dancers and strippers, including blonde Providence (Shawn Rougeron) who entertained Derek with a private lap dance, and later gave Frank an equally impressive private showing. Upstairs with Mitchell (who continued to pretend to be gay), the ladies were throwing bills at male strippers. At the bar, Derek hit it off with equally-sexually-reticent Casey who had tired of seeing male "weins" (weiners). She told Derek once she got drunk: "I totally feel you" - and they completely lunged at each other for passionate kisses and then disappeared from the bar. Meanwhile Adrian initiated a friendship with Sienna.

Husband-to-be Derek fell hard for Bride-to-be Casey, who was about to marry Boslov (Louis Iacoviello) - soon revealed to be a menacing Russian Mafia crime kingpin. Incidentally, Tatyana was Boslov's cousin. There were fears that if Boslov found out about Casey's interest in someone else, there would be trouble. There was a frantic wild-goose chase/search for the missing couple (in various parts of Vegas) by all of their dysfunctional friends, once it was learned that Boslov was notified of their relationship.

In the meantime, Boslov pulled up outside Amanda's home in order to enact revenge against her for being Derek's fiancee. In the midst of her own bachelorette party with four friends, Amanda (and her friends) thought that Boslov was a male entertainer specializing in bondage, and she allowed herself to be tied up with duct-tape and gagged: ("I've been so naughty. You can punish me any way you want to"). He kidnapped her by taking her to his car and driving away. One of the friends pondered: "Was that supposed to happen?" As Boslov drove to Vegas with his captive, she provided him with oral sex.

Back in Vegas, the friends learned of Casey's and Derek's passionate night together via security videotape of their love-making in a private sex hotel. The runaway couple were then located at Jack Rabbit's (Jeff Rector) Rabbit Ranch, a brothel, where they were being detained. Adrian and Maid of Honor Sienna (Heather Paige Cohn from Alpha House (2014)) drove to the ranch, and discovered that they needed to raise $5,000 dollars to pay for the services that Jack Rabbit had rendered to them. Adrian and Sienna were forced to agree to being filmed in an amateur porn shoot (a film within a film). She removed her black bra and panties for the nude love-making scene. It was interrupted by the intrusion of Boslov with Amanda. Boslov was knocked out from behind by lap-dancer Providence, one of Jack Rabbit's employees, to save everyone from his threats.

Captive Amanda with Boslov

Derek and Casey

As it turned out, Casey and Derek became a couple, as did Adrian and Sienna. During the closing credits, a topless Amanda was joined by Providence (in black stockings and panties) for another film-shoot. The two knelt at the foot of a bed over Boslov who was ball-gagged and bound. Amanda whipped out Luther, her large dildo and threatened to use it on him: ("Would you like to meet him?"). Behind a camera, Jack Rabbit exclaimed: "Whoa! I love this job!"

Free the Nipple (2014)

A revolution dedicated to the cause - to "Free the Nipple" - was about a movement of topless females in New York City who protested the hypocrisy of gender inequality regarding female nipple-baring. They believed that the female nipple needed to be perceived the same way as the male nipple - non-sexually.

This amateurish docu-drama feature film was based on the difficult real-life efforts of a brave group of women who fought the double-standard body-censor laws in New York which stipulated that only men could be shirtless in public. Societal taboos have always dictated that women cannot go bare-chested in public - the practice has been outlawed as an illegal criminal act in 37 US states. The efforts of a persistent group of females resulted in the 1992 victory and legalization of public toplessness for women in New York City - although women could still be arrested for the offense.

"Free the Nipple" in Times Square - With (Lina Esco)

The women in the film wanted to encourage "societal enlightenment" to influence legislation, and to decriminalize the female body with the rallying cry: "Don't subject me to your shame, about my body!" During filming - some in Times Square in NYC, the actresses were joined by other topless women, activist groups and graffiti artists, in a war against hypocrisy and censorship. They dubbed themselves the "Girlrillaz" (with colorful letters on their naked torsos) referring to the real-life feminist activist group the Guerrilla Girls.

Leaders of the movement against censorship included activist leader With (Lina Esco, the film's writer/director in her directorial debut film), a dedicated blogger-photographer. She argued that acts of violence and murder (in the media, and readily accepted by the FCC and MPAA) were commonplace occurrences, while the viewing of a single nipple on TV or even in films was often blurred or edited out. During the editing of the film after shooting was finished, the film-makers were informed by lawyers that the film had to be censored to avoid an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, a rating which implied pornography. And they were prohibited from posting topless pictures from the film on Facebook and Instagram during an online marketing campaign.

Fearless leaders of the revolution included activist Lola Kirke as Liv (in David Fincher's film Gone Girl (2014)), Casey LaBow (who appeared in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One and Two (2011, 2012)) as Cali, and African-American Monique Coleman (who appeared in High School Musical 1, 2 and 3 (2006, 2007, 2008)) as Roz.

Others not in the film who backed its production included high-profile individuals such as singers Miley Cyrus and Rihanna, actress Lena Dunham, and Bruce Willis' 22 year-old daughter Scout Willis (who protested outdated laws and Internet censorship by parading topless on the streets of NYC and posting her bare images on Twitter).

Celebrity Support
Scout Willis	Miley Cyrus

Girl House (2014)

Canadian actor-turned-director Trevor Matthews' erotic slasher-horror thriller (his feature directorial debut) introduced online pornography into its sleazy and raunchy mix. The film's title was the name of an online brothel site (top-secret in reality, in rural North Carolina), where seductive webcam females stripped down for the fantasies of Internet predators (although the film was fairly minimalist regarding its gratuitous nudity). With an original storyline, it was still reminiscent of The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) and Sorority House Massacre (1986).

The newest camcorder model was cash-strapped college student Kylie Atkins (Ali Cobrin, known for going naked in American Pie's American Reunion (2012)) with a recently-widowed mother, one of many females in the rooms of a hacker-proof "girlhouse" mansion equipped with fifty surveillance cameras that streamed live action 24/7. There were many different POV perspectives in the film -- internet viewing windows, traditional third person views, and various mounted and stationary cameras.

Some of the Housemates in "Girl House"
Janet (Chasty Ballesteros)	Devon (Alyson Bath)
Kylie (Ali Cobrin)	Mia (Nicole Fox)

The X-rated site was created by local pornographer Gary Preston (James Thomas), a wealthy mogul with a limousine calling himself "Hugh Hefner of the 21st Century!", who promised that his webcam girls wouldn't be forced into anything they didn't want to do, but some would be given bonuses for extra levels of sexual activity and debauchery. The biggest danger was the presence of a deviant serial killer, a monstrous, bald, overweight customer named Loverboy ("Slaine" or George Carroll) who was ridiculed for his "acorn-sized penis" when he was a young boy (and threw one of his female tormentors off a bridge with her bike) - causing severe maladjustment.

The slovenly, tech-wiz, basement-dwelling psychopath, one of the online customers, went on a vengeful and violent rampage and killing spree while wearing a macabre rubber sex doll's masked head after he identified Girlhouse's location. Obsessed with Kylie (he had made multiple pictures of Kylie and himself vacationing) but spurned, she eventually became the smart and resourceful "final" girl after he had slaughtered and butchered everyone else.

Gone Girl (2014)

Director David Fincher's positively-reviewed dark crime thriller had the advantage of being adapted for the screen by the writer of the original 2012 best-selling novel, Gillian Flynn (with her debut script). The trashy who-dun-it story and cautionary tale was conveyed mostly through flashbacks, dialogue and plot twists. The five year loveless, dysfunctional, and disintegrated marriage of a young couple on the verge of divorce - with financial problems and frequent domestic disputes - was the kickstarter for the plot:

• Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), a lowbrow, frustrated and failed writer for a men's magazine
• Amy Elliott-Dunne (Rosamund Pike), a privileged Harvard grad wife and icy-blonde Manhattanite with "high standards"

The couple were reduced to lower social status due to stock market crash losses and unemployment for both of them, and they were forced to move out of NYC to Middle America. The story really began when Nick's wife went missing from their fictional suburban North Carthage, Missouri home (Nick's Ozark Mountains boyhood home), and Nick became the prime suspect of foul play in the tabloids. The homicide detectives, led by Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens), uncovered many clues in the case, while tabloid journalists, influenced and spearheaded by shameless Ellen Abbot (Missi Pyle) (a character similar to Nancy Grace), rushed to judge Nick as the major suspect for the murder-disappearance of his wife, although he couldn't be arrested without evidence of a body:

• There appeared to be a struggle (smashed furniture and glass scattered) and traces of Amy's blood in the kitchen - a possible kidnapping? (or worse)
• Nick had been unfaithful with a mistress - teenaged college student Andie Fitzgerald (Emily Ratajkowski, famously topless in the Blurred Lines video in 2013); later in the film, Nick confessed to his infidelity during a press conference, to improve his media image and to be upfront about his failure as a husband (and to detract from accusations that he had killed Amy)
• Nick had accumulated a credit card debt, using Amy's funds
• Amy was reported to be pregnant
• Amy's diary revealed that she feared her husband

Andie Fitzgerald (Emily Ratajkowski) - Sex with Nick

Nick hired a NYC defense lawyer Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry), who sought to prove his innocence - and evidence was revealed that she was sociopathic. It was revealed that she had faked her own disappearance, to frame her husband, in part to seek revenge for him having an affair, among many other complicated reasons:

• Two of Amy's ex-boyfriends both had damning information about her: (1) former classmate Tommy O'Hara (Scoot McNairy) claimed Amy framed him for rape, (2) wealthy and obsessive Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris), who called Amy his "first serious girlfriend," revealed that she had filed a restraining order against him when he unraveled after Amy dumped him
• Amy had faked her pregnancy, and was planning to frame her husband for her murder
• Amy was hiding in a campground resort in the Ozarks, waiting for Nick to be convicted and given the death sentence for her presumed murder
• While hiding out at Desi's lake house, Amy framed Desi, making it look like he kidnapped, raped and abused her, although he was attempting to help her when her runaway plan fell apart; in fact, she seduced him and killed him during sex - a grisly murder sequence when she reached under her pillow and slit his throat right after he orgasmed - (and returned to her home covered with blood to shower)
• Amy claimed to Nick that she had been kidnapped the entire time she was missing

In the unusual and unsatisfying ending, Amy was reunited with Nick, whom she cleared of wrong-doing. And she received no punishment for the cold-blooded murder of Desi. However, she had entrapped Nick - she insisted they remain a couple because she was pregnant (she claimed she had impregnated herself with Nick's sperm from a sperm bank fertility clinic) - announced on the Ellen Abbott TV show.

Nick realized he had to stay with Amy, in part to protect his future child from her. In the film's last line, Nick told Amy (in voice-over) as he stroked her hair: "What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?"

Hide and Seek (2014, UK/US) (aka Amorous)

Director Joanna Coates' romantic drama (her debut feature film), an independent film, was similar to Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003), about a group of young people who set themselves apart to find a playful, idyllic state (living in nature, sharing everything, etc).

Four young Londoners, rejecting normal society, decided to set up a new model home together in an isolated farmhouse cottage (belonging to Leah) in the English countryside of Wales. The four initial participants in the unconventional utopia - ("together, we could move towards paradise") without "obstacles" - were:

• Charlotte (Hannah Arterton), blonde
• Max (Josh O Connor)
• Leah (Rea Mole)
• Jack (Daniel Metz)

The four established a polyamorous commune that abandoned traditional rules of monogamy, and the group became more uninhibited after role-playing, life drawing, truth games, and various performances in front of a large red curtain.

Charlotte (Hannah Arterton)

Transgressive partner-swapping and nudity (of both males and females, including masturbation, cunnilingus, and intercourse) were frequent, although depicted mostly objectively rather than gratuitously. The master bedroom was rotated among the members (with both different and same-sex combinations) to explore non-judgmental, sexual fantasies.

When a fifth person arrived at the cottage, Charlotte's former boyfriend Simon (Joe Banks), the dynamics of the group were dramatically threatened when he failed to become synchronized with their ideals.

Inherent Vice (2014)

Director Paul Thomas Anderson's comedy crime-drama film, a convoluted, meandering, neo-noirish tale (with themes of sex, money, and murder), was based upon Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel of the same name. The circuitous, atmospheric, eccentric drama was set in the psychedelic year of 1970 in Gordita Beach, a fictional town in Los Angeles. Serving as the film's narrator was astrologer Sortilège (Joanna Newsom).

The messy film followed continually-dazed dope-head/hippie Larry "Doc" Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), a private investigator (with mutton-chop sideburns) who became involved in three cases all linked to the disappearance of his alluring, tanned, long-haired, and long-legged former girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (34 year-old Katherine Waterston, daughter of actor Sam Waterston), a quasi-femme fatale vixen.

Before her disappearance, she had moved on to another lover, wealthy real estate developer/mogul and criminally-involved white supremacist Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts). Mickey was married to conniving British-accented Sloane (Serena Scott Thomas) who also had a lover named Riggs (Andrew Simpson). The philandering Mickey, an eccentric Jewish millionaire, was known for his sleazy TV ad commercials.

In the plot, Doc was greeted by Shasta in Los Angeles - she wasn't missing, but had returned from a boat trip up north. In the noteworthy 8-minute nude scene (mostly a one-shot sequence) in his beach house, she appeared at his door, wearing puka shells around her naked chest (and body), gathered from a beach area. She seductively asked:

Shasta Fay: "What kinda girl do ya need, Doc? Maybe a thing for one of those Manson chicks?"
Doc: "Whoa... it depends on what, uh, you sure you want to be doin' that?" (she was playing with herself, circling her finger on her breast's right nipple)
Shasta Fay: "Submissive, brainwashed, horny little teeners who do exactly what you want before you even know what that is. You don't have to say a word outloud. They get it all by ESP. Your kind of chick, Doc?"
Doc: "You're the one that's been stealin' my magazines?"
Shaska: "Now what would Charlie do?"

Doc lit a joint, as she walked over and sat next to him, and began touching herself in the crotch, while stroking his right leg with her bare left foot. She spoke about her experiences with her powerful, animalistic lover Mickey, and how she was made to be submissive:

"Mickey - Mickey could have taught all you swingin' beach bums a thing or two. He was just so powerful. Sometimes he could almost make you feel invisible. Fast, brutal, not what you'd call a considerate lover ....It's so nice to be made to feel invisible that way sometimes....He'd bring me to lunch in Beverly Hills, his big hand wrapped around my bare arms steering me blind down those bright streets into some space where it was dark and cold. You couldn't smell any food - only alcohol. Tables full of them and I'll be drinking in a room that could have been any size, and they all knew Mickey. They wanted, some of them, to be Mickey. He might as well have been bringing me in on a leash.

He kept me in those micro-mini-dresses, never allowing me to wear anything underneath, just offering me up to whoever wanted to stare, grab. Sometimes, he'd fix me up with some of his friends. And I'd have to do whatever they wanted."

As she stretched her naked body over Doc's lap, literally draping herself over him - he asked: "Why are you telling me all this?" She responded provocatively - calling herself a "faithless little bitch":

"Oh, I'm sorry, Doc. Do you want me to stop? If my girlfriend had run off to be the bought-and-sold whore of some scumbag developer, I'd just be so angry, I don't know what I'd do. Well, I'm even lying about that, I know what I'd do. If I had the faithless little bitch over my lap like this..."

She pushed him into violently spanking her, and then he had aggressive sex with her from behind. Afterwards, she said: "This doesn't mean we're back together." He replied: "Of course not."

Shasta described how she was brought along on a boat trip up North as "inherent vice" -- "They told me I was precious cargo that couldn't be insured because of inherent vice." She was referring to an insurance term implying a fundamental weakness or defect in an object that can cause deterioration.

The Interview (2014)

The Interview was the most talked-about comedy film of the year - it was about a plot to assassinate the ruthless North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

The mindless and crude movie featured actors James Franco and Seth Rogen as a journalist and producer, Dave Skylark and Aaron Rapaport, who were granted an audience (interview) with the North Korean leader, and then were enlisted by the CIA and Agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan) to assassinate him ("take him out").

There was a brief nude scene in the movie in which "Four Hot Korean Girls" entertained the two Americans and the Korean Supreme Leader, with limbo stick gyrations, lots of alcohol, spin the bottle, lesbian and gay kissing, fondling of large phallic objects, champagne spraying, and topless basketball:

• Peenkay Tang
• Hazeltine Gariza
• Michelle Kim
• Lia Lam

Jack (2014, Germ.)

Co-writer/director Edward Berger's adolescent coming-of-age drama concerned life's travails from the POV of 10 year-old Jack Niendorf (Ivo Pietzcker), who lived in a dysfunctional and troubled single-parent family. Due to his defaulting mother, he became responsible to care for his younger 5 year-old half-brother, Manuel (Georg Arms) in their Berlin tower block.

The dejected and ignored boy never met his father (from one of his mother's previous relationships) and his sweet but inept, party-girl, 20-something mother Sanna (Luise Heyer) worked (on and off) in the day-time and was out with her girlfriends or male bed partners in the evenings. She was a hedonistic, self-interested and childish mother who in one non-exploitative scene, had sex with a boyfriend in the same bed as Jack. And then non-chalantly, she marched stark naked to the kitchen and sat with Jack at the table, after providing him with an orange drink and a buttered piece of white bread.

Jack's Neglectful Young Mother Sanna (Luise Heyer)

In one pivotal scene, Jack illustrated his inability and inexperience when he accidentally left Manuel in a bath full of scalding hot water. Soon after the accident, authorities were alerted to the mother's neglectful child abuse and he was transferred to a state-run juvenile institution at his mother's request. In the institution, Jack was helped by care-worker Becki (Nele Mueller-Stofen) in the transition but soon found himself bullied by another mean boy. He fled during the holidays (when Sanna didn't appear to pick him up for a home visit) to find his missing mother with Manuel - in a desperate journey that required surviving on the streets of Berlin.

However, once the two finally returned home and reunited with their mother - after seeing her lit apartment window for the first time (a sign that she was home), Jack realized that his dream of harmonious home life was unattainable. The next morning while his mother slept, he left with Manuel to return to the institution - in the film's abrupt ending.

Jailbait (2014) (aka 17 & Life: Jailbait)

Asylum's direct-to-video, semi-exploitative women-in-prison (WIP) film was a lesbian coming-of-age drama from writer/director Jared Cohen. It was replete with sex, gang violence, and nudity, as expected in this kind of grindhouse film. It was a copy-cat of the cable series Orange is the New Black.

The story was about 17 year-old Anna Nix (Sara Malakul Lane, almost 30 years old and married to the director), a gifted cellist whose abusive parents were involved in alcoholism and brutality. One day when her stepfather was attempting to have sex with her, she kicked him away in self defense and he fell backwards and was accidentally and lethally impaled.

She was sentenced for "involuntary manslaughter" to a maximum-security Rendleton Youth Correctional Facility for four to nine years. Inside prison, she was subjected to more degradation, humiliation, beatings, drugs, and abuse, especially from sleazy Warden Baragan (Steve Hanks) who demanded sexual favors. New inmates were strip-searched, hosed down in the shower, and given orange uniforms. She experienced sexual advances from her cellmate Genie (Jennifer Robyn Jacobs), violent assaults from African-American chick Telita (Shannon Walters), and an addiction to crack cocaine.

Life in Prison for Anna (Sara Malakul Lane)

Kody (Erin O’Brien), the tough, bitchy leader of the Low Riders gang, threatened Anna if she didn't join their gang, and forced herself upon Anna for a lesbian sexual encounter.

Kid Cannabis (2014)

Writer/director John Stockwell's true-crime thriller, with the tagline: "Everyone Wants to be a Kingpin," was based on the true story of young Nathan "Nate" Norman (Jonathan Daniel Brown). His tale was published in Rolling Stone Magazine by writer Mark Binelli. The film's tagline was:

Everyone Wants to be a Kingpin

Nate was an 18 year-old, pudgy, bespectacled, high school dropout, who was also a part-time pizza-delivering pothead. He lived with his working-class single mother (Amanda Tapping) and kid brother Philip (Mark Hills) in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

He devised a get-rich-quick scheme - smuggling $68 million worth of pot across the nearby Canadian (British Columbia) border and selling it in his hometown. The enterprising Norman became profitable, working or partnering with 27 year-old best buddy Michael 'Topher' Christopher Clark (Kenny Wormald), Canadian pot farmer-grower John Grefard (John C. McGinley), and bankrolled by Israeli drug dealing mobster and financial backer Barry Lerner (Ron Perlman).

He was able to afford all the anything-goes vices in life: sex, drugs, wild parties, excessive luxuries and purchases - until things went all wrong.

Nate's Short-Lived Pleasures

Maps to the Stars (2014)

Director David Cronenberg's Canadian-German production (his first shot in the US) was based upon Bruce Wagner's dark and satirical script about Hollywood (Tinseltown). The intense and cynical character-study by the Hollywood outsider eviscerated the diseased, hollow, twisted and vain Hollywood town when the characters criss-crossed with each other, and revealed their desperate insanity, bitterness, self-obsession and selfishness. The fascinating set of despicable, egotistical characters mirrored real-life individuals, including Lindsay Lohan and Justin Beiber to name a few.

Burn-scarred, schizophrenic and disturbed Agatha Weiss (Mia Wasikowska) mysteriously returned to California from Florida on a Greyhound bus after a long absence, and with dark secrets. She had been released from a sanatorium for criminal pyromania, and therefore wore long black leather gloves to hide evidence of horrific burns suffered in a fire. With connections provided by her Twitter buddy Carrie Fisher (Herself), and after befriending aspring actor limo driver Jerome Fontana (Robert Pattinson), Agatha took a job as personal assistant for fading, neurosis-driven, needy and narcissistic, blonde-dyed actress Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore).

Havana was hoping to make a comeback and land the lead role in Stolen Waters, a film remake of a movie that originally featured her mother Clarice Taggart (Sarah Gadon), a legendary Hollywood actress who perished in a fire, and continued to haunt Havana with memories of child abuse.

Other characters in the dysfunctional Weiss family included:

• Benjie Weiss (Evan Bird), a repugnant and bratty 13 year-old teen-star (famous from the comedy sitcom Bad Babysitter), in drug rehab for addiction
• Christina Weiss (Olivia Williams), Benjie's fragile stage mother
• Dr. Stafford Weiss (John Cusack), a pseudo-spiritual, self-help TV quack/book author who was treating Havana (with bizarre $1000 massage/therapy sessions)

Siblings Benjie and Agatha were also child stars. Both were damaged by their parents' abuse. The film then revealed that Christina and Stafford were siblings (they had been separated at birth and did not know of their relationship until later) - and therefore their children were the products of incest. Eventually, there was only death and self-destruction in the film's finale:

• Agatha beat Havana to death in the head with her own 'Best Actress' movie award trophy (the Canadian Genie)
• Christina set herself on fire next to a swimming pool
• Benjie and Agatha married each other, using their parents' stolen wedding rings, and afterwards, took extreme overdoses of pills in an act of mutual suicide

The Infamous Lesbian Sex Threesome (Jennifer Gibson & Julianne Moore & Sarah Gadon)

The film's sexiest scenes were the following:

• an infamous lesbian sex threesome between Havana, her film-actor friend Sterl Carruth (Jonathan Watton) (sandwiched in-between the two females), and brunette Starla Gent (Jennifer Gibson), with whom he was having sex from behind; when Sterl received a phone call, he got up and sat in a chair during the conversation, while Starla continued to kiss Havana; Havana reminded him after he hung up: "Mention me when you talk." He replied as he played with himself: "You are so f--kin' crazed! Suck my dick and I'll put in a word." Suddenly, Havana hallucinated being touched by her blonde mother Clarice (Sarah Gadon): "I loved you so much. You were such a beautiful little girl but you lied. How could you grow up to be a monster from lying?"; Havana suddenly departed from the bed, leaving Starla wondering what had happened
• Jerome had backseat sex with Havana
• Christina cried in the bathtub

Nymph()maniac: Vol. I and II (2013-2014)

Controversial writer/director and provocateur Lars von Trier's unrated two-part drama was the third film in a trilogy dubbed: "The Depression Trilogy," following Antichrist (2009) and Melancholia (2011).

It was the recounting of the erotic sex life of a 42 year-old, self-proclaimed, insatiable "nymphomaniac" (or "sex-addict'') named Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The film's title contained a bracketed parenthesis invoking the shape of the female vulva. The sexually-explicit films (four hours in length for the censored version and 5 1/2 hours for the Director's Cut) in the exhausting two-part epic, although mostly tame and simulated, were immediately labeled as 'pornographic.' In the first volume of the film, young Joe was portrayed by 22 year-old Stacy Martin. As expected, the films used body doubles for the genital close-ups, and there were prosthetic vaginas. The most explicit scenes were created with body doubles shot having sex below the waist - and then digitally-imposed post-production onto the actors.

Young Nymphomaniac Joe (Stacy Martin)

The shocking and provocative story of Joe's very personal sexual life, divided into eight stylistically distinct chapters (five in Vol. 1, three in Vol. 2), was communicated to middle-aged, asexual bachelor-loner Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård), by the badly-beaten and bruised woman he found lying in a cold and wet alleyway. In his bare-walled apartment where he brought her and offered her tea, she began to converse with him in an unsmiling tone about her self-destructive sexual experiences ("It will be long and moral, I'm afraid"). He was calm and empathetic as he listened, often interrupting her sexy flashbacks with his comments. She began by being self-condemning of her early youthful masturbation and adolescent promiscuity: "I discovered my cunt at age 2...I behaved reprehensibly...I was an addict out of lust, not out of need." At age 6, she would stimulate herself in a game called "frogs," by sliding face-down on a wet and flooded bathroom floor. She also enjoyed feeling a climbing rope between her legs in gym class.

When an adolescent of about 15, she asked for permission first ("If I were to ask you to take my virginity, would that be a problem?") before losing her virginity to a local, rough-edged mechanic Jerome (Shia LaBeouf) - her maidenhood was painfully taken with eight thrusts into her. The rammings were counted out and displayed in white numbers over the frame (3 + 5):

He shoved his cock inside me and humped me three times. Then he turned me over like a sack of potatoes. Then he humped me five times in the ass.

She also described how she was in a friendly, utterly-naive competition with her long-time best friend B (Sophie Kennedy Clark) to have sex with as many men as possible, for a prize of a bag of chocolates - fulfilled after they dressed up in "f--k-me clothes" during a train ride. B was more sexually forward, fearless and self-assured than Joe, and gave her advice:

Smile. Make eye contact....If you have to talk, remember to ask lots of wh- questions if you want more than a yes or no answer. And then it will just happen on its own. You just take them to the lavatory and you have sex with them.

Joe won with a bonus of five points (added to her score of 6) for an explicit scene of male oral sex and semen emission performed on a married older man named S (Jens Albinus) in a first-class cabin. At her peak, she and B participated in a girls' sex club, with the goal of having as many random acts of sex with men each day as possible (their chant was "Mea Maxima Vulva!")

In volume two, one of mostly dark misery, suffering and violence, Joe eventually fell in love with Jerome and bore him a son - but she lost sensations of sexual pleasure ("I can't feel anything"). Going to great lengths to restore herself in one scene, she slapped her vagina with a wet towel in an attempt to try to feel something. Jerome urged her to experiment sexually to regain her lost sensation of orgasm, and in one instance, she had sex with two well-endowed black African brothers simultaneously.

After walking out on Jerome, she also engaged in desperate, degrading masochism with a professional domineering sadist named K (Jamie Bell), who viciously whipped her bottom with a cat o' nine tails, drawing blood and red welts. Eventually, she had lesbian sex with a young female teen protege named P (Mia Goth). In the film's conclusion, Joe discovered that Jerome was seducing P - she sought revenge by waiting for the two of them in an alleyway with a gun, but it misfired. In retaliation, Jerome beat Joe, then had sex with P in full view - in the same manner that he had performed sex with Joe years earlier. Before leaving her bruised in the alleyway, P also urinated on Joe.

Returning to the present time, Joe had finished the recounting of her sexual escapades and was tired and ready to rest. She awoke to find a naked Seligman trying to have sex with her in bed. As the frame went black, Joe reached for her gun and fired - before fleeing from the apartment.

The film offered:

• three-way sex of mixed races
• a naked and aroused Shia LaBeouf (digitally fused with a body double)
• a montage of about two dozen flaccid penises (a cataloguing of Joe's conquests)
• instances of sadomasochism, pedophilia and homosexuality
• the act of fisting, using a technique (hand-position) called "the silent duck" or "duck-billing"

The Obscure Spring (2014, Mex.) (aka Las Oscuras Primaveras)

Director Ernesto Contreras's grim and bleak arthouse drama about infidelity and adultery was a tale of discontentedness and unhappiness. It told about two lonely and disaffected individuals in Mexican families who met often to have passionate sex, while their own domestic lives remained empty and ultimately fractured:

• Pina (Irene Azuela), a struggling, divorced coffee/tea lady for a corporate office (Megaofi - a company factory that manufactured and sold large photocopiers); she was in a love-hate relationship with her manipulative young son Lorenzo (Hayden Meyenberg) who acted out and blamed her for the breakup with his father
• Igor Pascual (José María Yazpik), a semi-illiterate, manual laborer (plumber), living a monotonous, childless life married to Flora (Cecilia Suárez), a dowdy, short-haired and nervous woman

The film began in the season of winter. In the opening sequence, the two met in a dreary and dark basement (of her building) with steamy pipes for anonymous sex. He was working underground when she approached, nicely dressed in office clothes. After her blouse was unbuttoned, he grabbed at her large breasts restrained by a leopard-print bra and kissed her. He also put his hands and mouth under her skirt, but then abruptly stopped. As she walked away, he asked: "What's your name?"

Soon, their more frequent couplings caused repercussions in their home lives - Igor became disaffected with his wife Flora, and Pina began to become impatient and abusive toward her son. Everything peaked about 45 minutes into the film with two crucial events:

• Pina gathered all of Lorenzo's many scattered toys on the floor of his bedroom, put them in a trash bag, and placed them outside for garbage pickup; when he asked why she did it, she said the toys were "really old" and that it was difficult to walk in the room; she promised: "I'm going to buy you a lot more"
• Igor - without asking his wife Flora or explaining, used all of her savings to inexplicably buy an impractical photocopier for her; he wouldn't answer when Flora asked: "Why did you buy it? Are you starting a business? Where did you get the money? How much did it cost?"; she was flabbergasted to learn he had cleared her account and closed it; to make up for its cost and recoup her savings, Flora resourcefully advertised copying services to paying customers; she intuitively knew that Igor had bought the copier in order to get her to leave, and suspected that he was having an affair

A tragic, enigmatic and devastating ending by springtime was inevitable.

Due to Igor's fickleness and untrustworthiness (and at the same time as the copier ran out of ink toner), Flora decided to move away from him to live with her sister-in-law, without telling him. At the same time, Lorenzo was being taken away to live with his father, without Pina having any input into the matter. Their parting was especially poignant since she had just hand-constructed a lion costume for Lorenzo for his Springtime play, giving it to him as an act of love. With her son gone, Pina awaited the arrival of Pina for love making in her home - followed by an explicit love-making sequence intercut with other devastating events that were occurring simultaneously.

Pina Awaiting the Arrival of Igor For Passionate Sex

During the loading of all of Flora's belongings into her friend Maria's (Margarita Sanz) van for transport to her sister-in-law's place, her heavy photocopier overturned and fell onto her body on the steep apartment staircase and she was crushed to death.

Lorenzo's Lion Costume

Lorenzo Taken Away By His Father

Flora Crushed to Death by Heavy Photocopier

Meanwhile, at Lorenzo's school, a colorful Springtime Festival and play was being performed (without him), with ironic narration by the children on stage:

"Lady Springtime has arrived! A thousand colors she presents. A kind friend in her you'll find, if your love is true at heart. Oh, Lady Springtime, will my love ever bloom? If your love is true at heart, all your blossoms I will rear. See the tulips running free! And the daisies dancing on and on. The violets jump and cheer, because the chains have broken clear. Lady Springtime has arrived. A new life like never seen. Dancing, dancing little birds, Freedom singing without end."

Redlands (2014)

Photographer's Model Vienna (Nicole Arianna Fox)

Writer/director/producer John Brian King, known as a Hollywood veteran of title design, presented his directorial debut with this disturbing horror-drama set in Redlands, California. The visual style of the tragic, cautionary film was to place the camera in one static and unmoving position, and create a string of scenes in one unending take - lingering almost to uncomfortable limits.

The main character was aspiring red-haired model Vienna ("America’s Next Top Model" Cycle 13 winner, Nicole Fox), a 22 year-old Ohio-born beauty who had recently moved to Southern California. She was a video blogger (vlogger) who introduced herself wearing a "Have Faith" T-shirt with a "California Republic" flag hanging on the wall behind her.

Her newest occupation (after being a secretary) was posing as a nude "glamour" model for amateur photographers. One of her regular 'dirty pictures' wannabe photographers (with a cheap point-and-shoot camera) was morose, creepy, newly-divorced, middle-aged Allan (Clifford Morts), a sociopath with a plump, pre-teen daughter, who paid $150 for two hours of photographs. In an early scene, Allan laid Vienna down on a rickety red plastic beach lounge chair, as he photographed her stark naked.

Meanwhile, Vienna's bearded pimp/bodyguard-manager who often escorted her to film shoots was her self-absorbed, misogynistic indie-rocker boyfriend Zack (Sam Brittan), who found arousal by choking his partner. Maggie (Melissa Johnston), the girlfriend of Zack’s friend and bandmate, provided Zack with oral sex - but was forced to gag in a very cruel, long-take. Inevitably, Vienna ended up battered and dead, lying posed on a morgue table in the final scene, where the morgue attendant took photos.

Sex Tape (2014)

Director Jake Kasdan's raunchy R-rated comedy with risque humor was poorly reviewed by the critics. Kasdan reunited stars Diaz and Segel Jake Kasdan, who he had directed together in Bad Teacher (2011). This was smutty, but didn't really deliver in terms of nudity or sexiness (except for a bare backside and one brief nipple slip). It arrived during an era of sex tapes from the likes of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, the practice of sexting, and hacks of celebrity's phone-cameras. Pervasive product placements for Apple's I-Pad were more prominent.

The formulaic, safe unsalacious farce film opened with this voice-over from Annie (Cameron Diaz), talking about her husband Jay (Jason Segel) and their uncontrollable lust for each other, broken up by live-action vignettes:

Do you remember the first time your husband saw you naked? Do you remember what it felt like? Do you remember what he felt like?...Now, this might be a little harder. Do you remember the second time your husband saw you naked?...For Jay and I, the next few months were a blur of constant naked, sweaty, ugly, amazing sex...The erections. Oh, God. Do you remember the erections? Erections everywhere. If the Wind blew. If he ate certain foods. If he watched any movie. If he got sleepy. If he woke up...Sometimes, I swear his erection knew I was in the area before Jay did...Everywhere we went, everything we did, was another opportunity to have sex....It's not that it was just sex. But we knew that there was always more sex just around the corner.

To "get it back" after losing their initial sex spark dimmed after 10 years and two children, she appeared in a doorway in a see-through white T-shirt, skimpy red panties, and rollerskates (similar to Boogie Nights-style Roller Girl), and then suggested an idea: "Let's film ourselves having sex." In the cam-corder sex tape (actually, a digital video file, uploaded via an app he called "Franken-synch"), they demonstrated every position in the venerable book The Joy of Sex.

Although the finished product was supposed to be erased the next morning, it was accidentally uploaded to the eponymous cloud, and disseminated from there to family members, close friends and acquaintances who owned I-Pads that Jay had generously given out as gifts. One recipient was corporation CEO Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe).

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez co-directed this hard-hitting, violent sequel based on the graphic Miller novels, after working together on the original Sin City (2005). The noirish, hard-boiled, harsh film seen in high-contrast black-and-white (with some colors, such as red lips or green eyes, and the addition of 3-D and heavy comic-book prosthetics), consisted of an interwoven series of four connected stories or vignettes about revenge. The episodes were told with live action, CGI animation, weary voice-over narration, striking visuals, and lots of sex and violence. Returning characters in the gritty, hyper-stylized world of Sin City included Marv (Mickey Rourke), embittered, vengeful strip club dancer Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), and Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin, but Clive Owen in the original film), with the powerful, hateful and ruthless villain being Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) who was responsible in the first film for protector John Hartigan's (Bruce Willis) death.

The centerpiece in this film was the voluptuous, goddess figure in the short-story segment titled: "A Dame to Kill For." She was sultry and seductive femme fatale Ava Lord (Eva Green), the personification of "the dame to kill for." In one spectacular scene, she dove stark-naked into a swimming pool - it was filmed Busby Berkeley kaleidoscope-style, as two whitish nudes diving toward each other.

Ava Lord (Eva Green) Floating In and Emerging From a Hot Tub

Street hero Dwight had unrequited love for the cunning Ava in a troubled romantic past - the lying woman had left him to marry a rich tycoon (Damian Lord (Marton Csokas)), but then had Dwight do her bidding. She entreated him with cries for help and sexual advances, fogging him with lust. She had him murder the 'innocent' Damian Lord with a brutal beating. Afterwards, Ava shot Dwight several times, after taunting him and thanking him for helping her to murder her husband in order to benefit financially.

Ava: "What does it feel like?"
Dwight: "What?"
Ava: "Murdering an innocent man. Just wanna know what it felt like. Must have been beautiful."
Dwight: "What are you talking about innocence?"
Ava: "I knew I could count on you. Sex always made you stupid, ready to believe anything. (Chuckled) You've just made me a very rich woman. (She pointed a gun at him.) Do me one last favor, lover? Stay still long enough for me to blow your brains out."

Later, she blamed Dwight for the killing of her husband, calling it an act of jealousy and obsession. Eventually, Dwight became wise to her duplicity and shot and murdered her - during a kiss.

Space Station 76 (2014)

Director/co-writer Jack Plotnick's (his directorial debut feature film) dramatic, but baffling sci-fi (more of a spoof-comedy or parody) was based on an LA stage production that was adapted by its writers for the film's screenplay. It recreated the feel of lots of 70s TV shows and other movies set in space in that era, such as Silent Running (1972), Logan's Run (1976), and TV versions of UFO (1969-1973), Space: 1999 (TV series 1975-1977), the 1979 TV movie Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (and TV series 1979-1981) and the 1978 film Battlestar Galactica (and TV series 1978-1979).

The odd, off-putting and uneven film told about a spacecraft named Omega 76 helmed by frequently drunk, mustached, chain-smoking, repressed, closeted, and suicidal Captain Glenn Terry (Patrick Wilson) who recently hired a new second-in-command lieutenant, Jessica Marlowe (Liv Tyler). The career-focused female replaced his previous lieutenant, Daniel (Matthew Morrison), with whom he was having a secret affair.

The almost plotless story (with a great retro feel, kitschy sets, and superb art production values) was about how all the space travelers were basically living bored, melancholy, lonely, sexually-conflicted, and mundane existences. One loveless married couple, the ship's pot-smoking mechanic Ted (Matt Bomer) (with a prosthetic hand) and manipulative, self-absorbed and drug-addicted Misty (Marisa Coughlan) were estranged. She was engaged in an affair with married astronaut Steve Harrison (Jerry O'Connell) (with wife Donna (Kali Rocha) and a newborn), while Steve became enamoured with Jessica.

Also, Misty, who was instantly jealous of Jessica, was having psychological therapy sessions with small robo-therapist Dr. Bot (voiced by Michael Stoyanov), a psycho-babbling droid spewing empty, nonsensical platitudes and Valium prescriptions. Ted and Misty's lonely and neglected daughter Sunshine (Kylie Rogers) was the only young one on the space station - she was befriended by Jessica (who it was revealed was unable to bear children). In one throw-back scene, Jessica attempted to talk to her father Mr. Marlowe (a cameo by 2001: A Space Odyssey's Keir Dullea) via a newfangled videophone.

The film's most curious and uplighting highpoint was when Ted leered longingly at a naked Tinkerbell-like star angel fairy (Anna Sophia Berglund) randomly floating outside of his window. His last glimpse of her face was as it morphed into the face of his love interest Jessica.

Star Angel (Anna Sophia Berglund) (January 2011 Playmate of the Month)

300: Rise of an Empire (2014)

Israeli director Noam Murro and Warner Bros. teamed to create this gory and bloody, R-rated, action-oriented, historical war epic based on Frank Miller's follow-up to his best-selling comic series, an unpublished and unreleased graphic novel named Xerxes. The main character was originally to be Persian God-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) from the original film 300 (2007) film, when the Persians were victorious over Spartan King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae, and Leonidas was beheaded by Xerxes.

In fact, this film's story was more about Greek General Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton), a unifying and rallying force for the battle-scarred Greeks who had decimated the Persians in the Battle of Marathon. He had defeated the Persian king Darius and his merciless, blood-lusting and vindictive naval commander Artemesia (Eva Green).

Earlier in her life in a flashback backstory sequence, Artemesia, who was born Greek, had witnessed the brutal slaughter of her family by Greeks, and then as a teenager was kept as a sex slave in the "bowels of a Greek slave ship" where she was repeatedly raped, before being abandoned and found near-death on the streets of Persia:

(voice-over) She was discarded and left for dead, where she was found near death by a Persian emissary. Artemesia vowed that day to return to Greece only when she could watch it burn...She was fed, clothed, and trained by the finest warriors of the Persian empire. And no match could be found for her skills and gift with a sword. The great king Darius was impressed by her commitment and she quickly rose to command at his side.

As she told a Greek captive before she beheaded him, she avowed: "Yes, my brother, I am Greek by birth. And I have Greek blood running through my veins. But my heart is Persian." She held up the bloody decapitated head next to her, and kissed its lips.

Darius' vengeful son Xerxes declared war on Greece 10 years later, causing Themistocles to assemble his troops to fight in the Battle of Artemisium. Thoroughly impressed by Themistocles' unconventional fighting skills in the sea battle, the malevolent Artemesia attempted to seduce him - she brought him onto her ship (moored in neutral waters). She threatened that the war would go on for many months ("I can throw forces at you for months..."). Then, she had hateful, rough sex with him - trying to seductively convince him to join the Persians as her second-in-command tactician.

The sequence was one of the nastiest and most disturbing, harshly-delivered, love-hate sex scenes ever filmed - it involved choking, hair pulling, moans, grunts, slamming against a wall, slapping, and many distorted facial expressions. He tore off her dress from behind - then pushed her down and took her from behind. When she fought him off, he squeezed her breasts and again choked her, and they wrestled some more. Her attempt to convince him to her side ("Join me!") was refused and spurned. Knowing that she had been taken advantage of, she spitefully replied: "You're no God, you're just a man." She angrily ordered him from her presence, as she viciously thrust a sword against his throat. He urged her to kill him rapidly: "Be quick with your sword." She instead called for her guards: "You'll not have your death tonight. Guards! Remove this filth from my ship."

The Love-Hate Sex Scene Between Themistocles and Artemesia

Meanwhile, Themistocles' strategy, although the Persians were on the verge of victory, was to buy time hoping that the Queen of Sparta Gorgo (Lena Headey), Leonidas' former advisor and wife, would join the Spartans with the rest of Greece to help them defeat the Persians. As the film ended, victorious Themistocles impaled Artemesia with his sword through her abdomen, and she fell dead at his feet.

White Bird in a Blizzard (2014)

Director/writer Gregg Araki's tale of teen female angst and yearning was based on the 1999 novel by Laura Kasischke. It was a coming-of-age story (and slow-burning dramatic thriller) set in the late 1980s in a middle-class suburban household in Southern California.

The film, sometimes told in flashback or dream sequences, was about a mother-daughter struggle between attractive 17 year-old misfit high school teen Katrina "Kat" Connor (Shailene Woodley) and her unhinged, haunted mother Eve (Eva Green). Kat also felt disdain for her uninteresting, dull and weak, sad-sack, porn-addicted father Brock (Christopher Meloni) - all part of a dysfunctional family. Kat was already displaying her rebelliousness by chain-smoking and wearing seductive, skimpy outfits, causing the aging (once beautiful), alcoholic, slowly-deranged Eve, who already resented her boring, suburban housewife role, to jealously see Kat as a pretty youthful competitor. Kat was haunted by abstract dreams of her mother lying in snow and calling for Kat to help her (the basis for the film's title), and she felt creepy when her wine-drinking mother uttered inappropriate accusations and confessions.

After showering, and standing in front of a mirror one day, Kat dropped her towel, observed her breasts, and mused about her body image, and how she had lost so much weight since her younger overweight days. She was beginning to realize that her tantalizing figure made her mother resent her growing desirability, and caused guys to be turned on:

"And when I hit puberty, my body changed seemingly overnight, the bulk melting off like I was a snowman in the sun. Only, instead of finally pleasing her, that somehow made her resent me even more..."

Then one day, unhappy Eve suddenly disappeared and abandoned her emotionally-repressed family, without a note, trace or proper goodbye, and Kat seemed calmly unaffected ("I was 17 when my mother disappeared. One day she was there, cleaning and making dinner, scowling at me with her featherduster. And the next, she was gone").

At the same time, Kat was becoming very promiscuous. She suggested sex to her next door neighbor boyfriend and dim-witted schoolmate Phil (Shiloh Fernandez): "It's my mom's shopping day and my dad's at work." After they quickly cleared the bed of her stuffed animals and stripped, they hopped naked onto the bed, and in close-up, Phil asked: "You sure?" After entering her for sex (with some obvious pain), she said in voice-over:

"And like that, in a blink, my virginity disappeared. Just like my mother."

"You Sure?" - Kat (Shailene Woodley) Deciding to Lose Her Virginity to Phil

When Phil became disinterested in sex (he was suspected of sleeping with Eve instead), she tested her sexual assertiveness and prowess with the studly cop Detective Scieziesciez (Thomas Jane) investigating Eve's disappearance. When she found an excuse to visit his apartment (to share some information that she had conveniently "remembered"), she was heavily dolled-up in make-up as they sat together on his sofa. He complimented her, knowing confidently that she would allow herself to be seduced:

"Well, you're hot, that's for sure. Your tits are perfect. But you already know that, don't you? Maybe I should come over there and join you. Yeah. This better? Why don't you take this top off, huh? (She removed her top) F--king amazing. Is this what you want?"

The film finally answered the question of the reason for Eve's disappearance in a tacked-on, startling and blindsiding ending with a very surprising twist (although suspicions about Brock had already been apparent). Eve had returned home to find her husband Brock and young Phil in bed together. Embarrassed by being found out, Brock strangled Eve to death, and hid her body in a locked basement freezer. Later after becoming drunk, he admitted that he had murdered Eve, and committed suicide with a sheet in his jail cell after his arrest.

Wild (2014)

Director Jean-Marc Vallée's biographical drama Wild starred 38 year-old Reese Witherspoon (with her second Best Actress nomination) as Pacific Crest Trail hiker Cheryl Strayed on a painful inward/outward journey of grief, drugs, and random sex, topped by a 1,100 mile solo hike. It was based on Cheryl Strayed's own 2012 trip memoirs titled Wild (subtitled From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail), who took the transformative 94-day trek in 1995 when she was 26 years old.

Known more as blue-eyed, blonde, and good-girl "America's sweetheart" for her spunky go-getting characters in Election (1999), Legally Blonde (2001), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), and Walk the Line (2005), Witherspoon admitted she had to take risks and let herself go for this daunting role. She said: "I wanted it to be truthful, I wanted it to be raw, I wanted it to be real." Therefore, she agreed to be filmed having self-destructive, wild passionless sex with two strangers on screen, including rear-entry sex. She said the "sex scenes" were "the hardest thing" for her to do:

"By and far, the sexual aspects of the character were the hardest for me. I'd never done explicit love scenes and they were awkward. It's an uncomfortable place to be."

At one point before filming, however, she told screenwriter Nick Hornby that she thought the film (with promiscuity and drug use) could be very risqué. He recalled: "She assured me that she really did want to do all that stuff. [In fact], she didn't think there was enough sex in it; she wanted me to put some more in."

However, when it came to actual filming, Witherspoon also said this about the sex scenes:

"There were small descriptions in the script, but when he started describing what we were going to do, that's when I started to panic. [The sex scenes were], like, three percent of the movie, but it took up a tremendous amount of fear in my mind because it's daunting. Sometimes I was just terrified. Like a cat on a raft... 'You can't make me do it.'"

She added, "it tells women not to be ashamed or embarrassed about their bodies, any experience they've had." She mentioned that author Cheryl apologized to her: "I'm sorry I was such a slut" - for the more difficult scenes that Reese had to re-enact.

Zombeavers (2014)

In this campy horror comedy (with the tagline: "You'll All Be Damned"), three attractive female sorority sisters, Mary, Zoe, and blonde Jenn (Rachel Melvin, Cortney Palm, and Lexi Atkins) (soon joined by their boyfriends) were planning to be alone in the remote lakeside cabin (in the town of Ashwood) of Mary's cousin. Soon, they were menaced by a swarm of deadly zombie beavers. The beavers had become flesh-eating and zombified after a barrel of toxic medical waste fell into the lake and contaminated a beaver dam.

Before the horrors began, there was a scene of topless swimming by one of the trio - Zoe, who boldly declared with a rich Southern accent as she stripped out of her red bikini top: "If I'm getting anything out of being stuck in the middle of nowhere - a tan without lines. Come on in, bitches!" Then, the entire group swam over to the end of the lake where a beaver dam was evident. As they climbed out of the water and stood there looking at the green slime covered wood sticks, the bare-breasted Zoe was on complete display.

Zoe (Cortney Palm)

Later, as Jenn and her boyfriend (arguing with each other over his apparent cheating and unfaithfulness) listened from the living room, Cortney had wild sex with her boyfriend (wearing a cap), who screamed out as he pumped from behind: "I feel like a Power Ranger...Aw, s--t, you are sweet. You are way too hot for me." When they were finished, they flopped down on their backs on the bed. He said: "That was worth the drive up, for sure." When she asked for an encore, he complained: "I'm only one man. It takes an hour to recharge. Do you not read magazines?"

Soon after, Jenn discovered a rabid beaver in her bathtub - and before it was all over, one of the teens transformed into a human/beaver hybrid, with beaver teeth.