2015 was no different than the four previous years - many boundary-pushing, premium Cable-TV series continued to reveal more nudity and sex than any mainstream feature films.

Nudity and Sexual Scenes in Cable-TV Dramas and Shows
Banshee HBO Lili Simmons	Banshee HBO Lili Simmons	The Vikings HISTORY Channel Karen Hassan	The Vikings HISTORY Channel Gaia Weiss	The Vikings HISTORY Channel Maude Hirst
Ray Donovan SHOWTIME Andrea Bogart	Ray Donovan SHOWTIME Christy Williams	Orange Is The New Black NETFLIX Ruby Rose	Orange Is The New Black NETFLIX Taylor Shilling	Orange Is The New Black NETFLIX Taryn Manning
Shameless SHOWTIME Sasha Alexander	Fortitude PIVOT TV Sienna Guillory	Masters of Sex SHOWTIME Emily Kinney	Masters of Sex SHOWTIME Lizzy Caplan	Masters of Sex SHOWTIME Betsy Brandt
Game of Thrones HBO Rosabell Laurenti Sellers	Flesh and Bone STARZ Sarah Hay	Flesh and Bone STARZ Emily Tyra	Flesh and Bone STARZ Irina Dvorovenko	Casual HULU Eliza Coupe

Anarchy Parlor (2015, Lithuania) (aka Parlor)

This gruesome torture-porn slasher horror film - the directorial debut of its co-writers Devon Downs and Kenny Gage, was a combination of Eli Roth's Hostel (2005) with Turistas (2006), including some gratuitous topless sex scenes (a number of the actresses were models)

It was about six friends backpacking, partying and vacationing in Vilnius, Lithuania, who ultimately ended up as chained and carved victims of an unnamed tattoo artist in The Parlor. He was intent on the kidnapping, murder, and the flaying of human skin of his captives (to be used as canvas for his masterpiece-paintings):

• Amy (Tiffany DeMarco), timid, innocent, level-headed nice girl
• Brock (Ben Whalen), obnoxious, macho party-animal
• Jesse (Jordan James Smith), angry
• Kelly (Claire Garvey)
• Stephanie (Beth Humphreys), loose
• Kevin (Anthony Del Negro), nice guy

During their visit, while in a strange club, Amy uncovered an intriguing series of portraits owned by the Cuzas family. Brock was able to convince Amy to join him in a tattoo parlor, after meeting up (at a large mansion's wild party) with tattooed blonde Uta (Finnish model and tat artist Sara Fabel), the sexually-aggressive and seductive mentor of the mysterious, "world famous" tattoo artist involved in the dark arts - known as The Artist (Robert LaSardo). The parlor's basement was actually a dungeon, where Brock was taken prisoner. While speaking to the menacing Artist, Amy was drugged and also imprisoned. She was forced to watch as Brock, laid next to her on a slab, was tortured and murdered - the skin from his back was removed to be used as the Artist's canvas.

Soon after, the other four friends realized that Amy and Brock were missing, but could not find them. During a second visit to the tattoo parlor, Kelly, Stephanie, and Kevin were also taken prisoner by the Artist, while Jesse went off to a strip club, where he was entertained by busty dancer Zala (Joey Fisher).

By the film's conclusion, Stephanie had been killed by Uta after a botched flaying of her skin, and Kevin was tortured (fate unknown). After she escaped, Kelly was shot in an alleyway by the Artist, and Zala (who was brought to the tattoo parlor by Jesse to have her clitoris pierced) was also captured and later tortured.

It was then revealed in the surprise ending that Jesse was part of the Cuzas line, whose father insisted that he have a portrait of himself done on human skin as part of their family tradition. Brock's flayed skin was used for the painting, delivered by the Artist to a wealthy benefactor - Jesse's father! In the final sequence, Amy had become the Artist's new apprentice of torture and scalpel-wielding, after killing both Uta and Jesse.

Bound (2015)

Writer/director Jared Cohn's and Asylum's BDSM softcore, low-budget production was taglined: "NO GREY. ONLY BLACK AND WHITE" - an obvious reference to the same year's blockbuster S&M film Fifty Shades of Grey (2015). In one sentence, it referred to the other film's lead character Christian Grey, and the name of its own male lead, Ryan Black. [Note: This film was unrelated to the Wachowski siblings' lesbian crime flick Bound (1996).] Asylum has a reputation for mercenary piggy-backing and knock-offs of other productions, a practice known as 'mockbusting.'

44 year-old Charisma Carpenter (famed for appearances as Cordelia Chase in TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996-2002) and the spin-off Angel (1999-2004) many years earlier) decided to bare her buxom beauty, beginning under the opening credits as she made unsatisfying love with her boyfriend George (Mark McClain Wilson) - she soon dumped him.

She played divorcee Michelle Mulan, a workaholic LA real estate broker who also was looking for sexual satisfaction. At a bar, young and domineering Ryan Black (Bryce Draper) was soon assertively providing her with oral sex right after their first meet-up at his place, and shortly later (without knowing anything about him), she stripped and allowed him to tie her up in his brick-walled, red-lighted sex dungeon while she submitted to him. He told her: "I now own you" and instructed her to respond to his domination with the words "Yes, master." He blindfolded her and took her from behind. Afterwards, she admitted: "I liked it." Later, she even allowed him to control a purple-colored, remote-control vibrator egg that she put in her underwear during a charity event led by her father. Ryan activated it while she was discussing (and stuttering through) a possible merger proposal with an important client.

Daniel Baldwin (only 10 years older than Carpenter) co-starred as Michelle's father Walter, the head of the real estate firm where she worked. The film reached a turning point when Michelle found Ryan wasabout to have rapist sex with another Internet hookup - her own tied-up underage daughter Dara (Morgan Obenreder) in her own home and bed. She was especially enraged when he said: "Your daughter really looks like you. I would love to see you two kiss." She threw him out after he called both of them "weak." She was angered by a recurring text message from Ryan: "I can still taste your daughter on my fingers."

With intense rage, she hunted him down at his place, punched him and beat him unconscious with a camera tripod, then bound his wrists from the ceiling with handcuffs and sexually tortured him ("I want to send a very clear message that I can and will kill you.") She painfully clipped both of his nipples, and tightly cinched up his leather crotch pouch. She ignored his request for forgiveness and whipped him until she drew blood. She left him with a possible broken ankle, and with the police on the way to arrest the pedophile for unsolicited sexual messages to Dara located on his hard drive.

Finally, she was able - as a stronger woman - to set her mind to saving her father's real estate firm with a professional proposal.

Charisma Carpenter and BDSM Scene in a Sex Dungeon

Carol (2015)

Director Todd Haynes' R-rated romantic melodrama (from a script by Phyllis Nagy), was based on Patricia Highsmith's 1952 love story titled The Price of Salt, her second novel. Due to its scandalous subject matter at the time, it was originally published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. The title was changed to Carol when it was republished in 1990, with Highsmith's name attached to it.

The story about friendship, love, marriage, and illicit passion was set in the early 1950s at Christmastime in NYC (with authentic production values and set design) - an era of repression during the Eisenhower presidency. It followed the development of a secret (and forbidden) lesbian love affair between:

• Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara), a 20-something, both quiet and innocent, slightly bohemian, an aspiring photographer, and sales shop-clerk in the toy department of Frankenberg's (at the doll counter); she was discontented in a relationship with pushy boyfriend Richard Semco (Jake Lacy), and was also pursued by another suitor named Dannie McElroy (John Magaro)
• Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett), an elegant, sophisticated, poised, middle-aged blonde suburbanite from New Jersey, a member of the chic upper-class and wealthy due to marriage

Unhappily married Carol, who had a spoiled four year-old daughter named Rindy (Sadie/Kk Heim), was in the midst of a messy divorce from hard-drinking, boring, cold, and possessive husband Harge (Kyle Chandler).

Carol had ended a five-year relationship with lover Abby (Sarah Paulson), her best childhood girlfriend - one of the many reasons for her crumbling marriage. Therese met Carol over lunch, after they had first encountered each other related to Carol's store visit (and the misplacement of her gloves). Subsequently, Carol invited Therese to accompany her for a drive to the Midwest during the holidays.

Their sexual affair was initiated in Waterloo, Iowa, in a hotel room on New Year's Eve, in one of the film's central sex scenes (non-gratuitous). It was documented on audiotape by a private detective Tommy Tucker (Cory Michael Smith) hired by Carol's abusive husband, to discredit her during their custody fight for visiting rights with Rindy. He could use the charge of 'lesbianism' against her as a "morality clause," characterizing it as a mental illness. The film's concluding sequence provided hope that their relationship would survive the issues and challenges they faced.

The Danish Girl (2015)

This was the year of Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner's transgender transition, and Amazon's TV series Transparent, so the subject matter of British director Tom Hooper's highly-acclaimed drama wasn't altogether shocking. The melodramatic biopic (with a script by Lucinda Coxon) was based on David Ebershoff's 2000 fictionalized novel (derived from the 1933 non-fiction book "Man Into Woman" - Lili Elbe's autobiography). The unusual love story, a beautifully-filmed period drama, told about the transitioning of Lili Elbe (portrayed bravely by Eddie Redmayne), one of the first to undergo sex reassignment surgery in the 1930s.

An amateur artist from Copenhagen in the mid-1920s, Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander) had married landscape artist Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne), and they had already shared a conventional married life for six years. Then, during his first posing session as a model for Gerda, Einar substituted as a live model for her drawing of a ballet dancer friend Ulla (Amber Heard) who was absent. After Einar doned a pair of silken stockings-tights and jeweled ballet slippers, his femininity was reawakened or rebirthed.

Sexually-adventurous and open-minded Gerda encouragingly proposed that he dress as a woman (with wig, dress, and makeup) for the annual artists society ball, and pretend he was an alter-ego cousin. Surprisingly, he attracted the attention of persistent suitor Henrik (Ben Whishaw): "You're different from most girls" - and it would be a life-altering event for both of them. Later, Einar called his encouraging wife a "beautiful, shameless girl" when she, already naked, undressed him down to his slip and made love to him. From then on, she was forced to balance her need for a husband, with her empathic desire to liberate him.

In the film's full-frontal male nude scene, Einar/Lili explored and viewed his body in front of a mirror, before experimenting with looking like a female. He tucked his genitals between his legs to hide them from view.

Einar/Lili Exploring Sexuality in Front of Mirror

In a later scene, one of the film's most exquisitely realized, Einar/Lili visited a naked prostitute (Sonya Cullingford) at a Parisian peepshow who teased him through a glass panel. He timidly studied her sensual female movements.

Striptease Artist (Sonya Cullingford) during Peepshow

The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015)

Director/co-writer Marielle Heller's (her directorial debut film) unconventional romantic drama, a brutally-honest and raw coming-of-age story, was based upon author-artist Phoebe Gloeckner's 2002 semi-autobiographical graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures, which originally ran as a stage play for 6 weeks in 2010. Similar films about female coming-of-age sexuality, told from the teenage protagonist's point of view, include Smooth Talk (1985), Thirteen (2003), and An Education (2009).

In England, the controversial film (with an R-rating in the US) was given an 18 rating by an all-male BBFC panel. The BBFC stated the 18 certificate was given due to "strong sex scenes including mechanical thrusting, breast and buttock nudity, and implied oral sex" and a scene that included "a brief sight of a pencil drawing of a young woman with a penis in her mouth." In fact, the only scene of full-frontal nudity of the female protagonist was non-sexual in nature, in a scene when she viewed and traced the contours of her body in front of a mirror. The rating was adamantly appealed by the film's writer, producer, and director - all females, who argued that their film explored female sexuality with boldness and honesty in an un-exploitative manner.

The explicit, non-judgmental, and uncompromising drama began with the line: "I had sex today. Holy s--t!", voiced by grinning, 15 year-old, slightly overweight teenager Minnie Goetze (22 year-old British actress Bel Powley) as she walked through Golden Gate Park. Sporting a Betty Page hairstyle and wide-round eyes, she was living in the mid-1970s in San Francisco (in a time of sexual revolution) with her bohemian, free-spirited, cocaine-abusing, hard-drinking divorced mother Charlotte Worthington (Kristen Wiig), while her well-off former stepfather Pascal (Christopher Meloni) was living in NYC. She had a younger, nerdy, and naive sister named Gretel (Abigail Wait), who reflected an earlier incarnation of Minnie herself.

Minnie was an aspiring comic-book cartoonist who idolized Aline Kominsky (an animated presence voiced by Susannah Schulman) (best known as reknowned counter-cultural cartoonist R. Crumb's wife) and her Twisted Sisters comix, and was beginning to experiment with sex and drugs.

Her first risky sexual encounter (clearly initiated by Minnie who asserted: "I want you to f--k me"), during which she lost her virginity, was with her mother's laid-back, misguided ex-hippie - 35 year-old boyfriend Monroe Rutherford (Alexander Skarsgard). Unloved and insecure, but thrilled about her hedonistic sexual awakening ("This makes me officially an adult"), she began to document her life in an audio-recorded diary - her drawing notebook (hidden underneath her bed in a shoebox), and became obsessed with sex. Minnie also had an unfulfilling affair with her rich high school classmate Ricky Wasserman (Austin Lyon), and engaged in a brief lesbian relationship with teenage junkie Tabatha (Margarita Levieva).

She also shared her promiscuous, all-consuming sexual experiences with her best female friend, sexually progressive Kimmie Minter (Madeleine Waters) who often boasted of delivering blow-jobs. At one point, Kimmie joined Minnie (they both posed as prostitutes) to provide oral sex for two random males in a bathroom toilet for money, and the two had a threesome with Monroe. By the film's conclusion, the precocious teen who had tested her formative boundaries and sexual powers had become more aware of her bad choices and mistakes, and her limits.

Dope (2015)

Writer/director Rick Famuyiwa's fast-paced comedy crime-drama about class and race was taglined: "It's hard out here for a geek." The coming-of-age tale told about working class African-American Malcolm (Shameik Moore) who grew up in the Bottoms - a rough area of gang bangers and drug dealers in the predominantly black community of Inglewood (near LAX in California):

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Malcolm Adekanbi. I'm a straight-A student with nearly perfect SAT scores. I play in a punk band with my friends and I'm a 90s hip hop geek. A bad day for most geeks would be being the butt of jokes but when you live in the Bottoms, a bad day could look like this.

His two best friends were also ostracized geeky nerds, who were smart, academically-oriented, obsessed with early-'90s hip-hop - and unstereotypical "white things":

• Jib (Tony Revolori)
• Diggy (Kiersey Clemons)

One day as a favor, Malcolm delivered a message to local hood Dom’s (A$AP Rocky, or Rakim Mayers) would-be girlfriend Nakia (Zoë Kravitz), and the high-schoolers ended up at Dom's birthday party in a nightclub, where a violent drug raid by a rival gang dispersed everyone.

The next day, Malcom found drugs (nicknamed "Molly") and a gun stashed in his backpack. In jail, Dom ordered Malcolm to meet with "AJ" (Austin Jacoby (Roger Guenveur Smith)) - and at the address given, they met AJ's son and daughter: Jaleel (Quincy Brown) and his sexy sister Lily (Chanel Iman), first seen swimming totally naked in the outdoor pool. When everyone else left to get food, she offered herself sexually to Malcolm - "I'm bored as f--k...Will you play with me, my little boyfriend from the hood?...How about we play 'Mother may I?'" Standing behind him, she provocatively asked: "May I take off my clothes?" When he answered positively, she unzipped her pink coverup and stood behind him topless, wearing only panties. She then asked: "May I walk over to you?", "May I touch you?", and "Are you a virgin?" He nervously admitted that he was.

After she went to pee - but warned: "I want you ready when I get back," he caught her in the bathroom stealing and snorting the drugs in his backpack, after which she straddled him on the floor and suddenly vomited in his face. Eventually, Malcolm decided to sell the drugs online, using Bitcoin for payment so they couldn't be traced, and thus began a series of adventures.

Entourage (2015)

Writer/director Doug Ellin's bromance drama was the feature theatrical version of HBO's popular premium-cable series - executive-produced by actor Mark Wahlberg (with a short cameo in the film), and based loosely on Wahlberg's real-life experience as an up-and-coming movie star. Many critics considered the film nothing more than a padded or extended episode of the premium TV show that ended in 2011 after eight seasons.

The film was peppered with over two dozen celebrity cameos or short roles from the likes of Armie Hammer, Jessica Alba, Emily Ratajkowski, Kelsey Grammer, Liam Neeson, Jon Favreau, Pharrell Williams, Mike Tyson, Gary Busey, Bob Saget, TI, David Spade and Warren Buffett.

It was a recycled extension of the story about young A-list hunky actor Vincent "Vince" Chase (Adrian Grenier) arriving in Hollywood in 2004, freshly married (and divorced after nine days) to Vanity Fair writer Sophia (Alice Eve), and becoming interested in Sports Illustrated starlet Emily Ratajkowski (Herself). A male quintet was completed with other self-centered characters including:

• Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven), Vince's agent, now a studio head at Warner Bros, and married to "Mrs. Ari" (Melissa Gold) (Perrey Reeves), working with colleague/movie executive Dana Gordon (Constance Zimmer)
• Eric "E" Murphy (Kevin Connolly), Vince's best friend and manager-producer, with pregnant ex-fiancee/girlfriend Sloan (Emmanuelle Chriqui), and also engaged in numerous affairs
• Salvatore "Turtle" Assante (Jerry Ferrara), Vince's driver, with a liquor business, and wooing UFC fighting champion Ronda (Ronda Rousey)
• Johnny "Drama" Chase (Kevin Dillon), Vince's older delusional half-brother, the star of an animated series called Johnny Bananas

Topless Yacht Girl (Noa Lindberg)

Paula (Christine Donlon)

Paula (Christine Donlon)

Vince had been allowed to star in and direct a remake titled Hyde, a big-budget $100 million dollar, futuristic sci-fi version of the classic Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. The studio's co-financers, Texas oil baron billionaire Larsen McCredle (Billy Bob Thornton) and his spoiled son Travis (Hayley Joel Osment) were consulted when the film went $15 million over-budget. The main hedonistic activities included parties, beer drinking, weed-bong hits, and sexual conquest. The abundant misogynistic T&A romp included intercourse, oral sex, and lots of topless babes. In addition, there was lots of infective-laden cursing, drinking, and drug use.

Ex Machina (2015, UK)

Writer/director Alex Garland's directorial debut film, the sci-fi thriller Ex Machina, asked the essential question: "What constitutes true artificial intelligence?" It contained elements of Frankenstein, Fritz Lang's Maria robot in Metropolis (1927), the Prometheus myth, the Bluebeard tale, the Bible (names of the main characters) and even a 1969 Star Trek TV episode entitled "Requiem for Methuselah." The film also had a 6-7 day timeline, familiar to the Biblical act of creation and the Garden of Eden story - and a climax in which the Creator was killed by his Creation.

In the story (involving a love triangle with only three speaking characters), mid-20s coder-programmer Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) won a contest and was invited by Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), the eccentric, hard-drinking, billionaire CEO of a search engine computer company named BlueBook (a hybrid of Google and Facebook), to visit his isolated and reclusive mountain "research facility" (with walls of glass) in Alaska for a week, where he was studying artificial intelligence.

Nathan called his project "the greatest scientific event in the history of man." There was only one other person there - Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), the unspeaking Japanese housekeeper.

Caleb was tasked to administer the Turing test to Nathan's newly-developed android - a walking, talking, expressive humanoid robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander), to evaluate her emotions, thoughts and reactions - her humanity and consciousness ("the challenge is to show you that she's a robot, and then see if you still feel she has consciousness"). In other words, 'how do we know when true artificial intelligence (AI) has been achieved?' She would pass the test if Caleb forgot that she was a sentient being (and wasn't human) during their daily sessions:

"Ava was a rat in a maze, and I gave her one way out. To escape, she'd have to use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, empathy, and she did. Now if that isn't true A.I., what the f--k is?"

As the tale progressed, Ava - encased circuitry with a metal skeleton and human face/hands/feet, was able to encourage Caleb to be attracted to her. In particular, she played on his emotions to manipulatively convince Caleb that she was being confined and abused, and wanted to experience the outside world. There were a number of revelations:

• Kyoko was also a robotic humanoid. She peeled back parts of her skin to demonstrate to Caleb that she was actually not human, but robotic like Ava.
• Nathan had a hidden agenda and ulterior motives - he wanted to become god and control his Modern Prometheus - his main objective was to see if Ava was human-like and intelligent enough to persuade Caleb to be deceived into helping her escape from the confines: (Ava knew of the deception and told Caleb: "You shouldn't trust me, you shouldn't trust anything he [Nathan] says")
• normally, during one of Ava's induced power-outage blackouts, the surveillance systems would shut down, but all of the doors would automatically lock
• during an escape attempt in which Caleb aided Ava's efforts to leave by reprogramming the security system, Ava ordered Kyoko to lethally stab Nathan; in the struggle before Nathan was knifed in the back by Kyoko, Ava's left hand was cut off by him. Nathan then disfigured Kyoko with a blow to the jaw and disabled her. Ava removed the knife from Nathan's back and stabbed him in the chest, and shortly later, he bled out and slumped dead to the floor
• victorious but needing to repair herself from Nathan's damage, Ava borrowed body flesh and components mostly from the stored, deprogrammed remains of older android prototype Jade (Gana Bayarsaikhan) to create a new, undamaged fleshly exterior. She stood to admire herself with naked flesh in a mirror.

Alicia Vikander as Ava Becoming Human - Borrowing Flesh and Other Pieces From Earlier Android Models

• she then dressed herself as a real human woman - wearing a wig and a white dress with high-heeled shoes; she took one last look at Caleb, and fled from the facility in a helicopter (arriving to pick up Caleb); she basically ignored Caleb who was left imprisoned and locked inside a room in the facility to die of starvation? (although potentially able to escape if he could recode the lockdown procedure and create a power outage)
• Ava had indeed proven that she had been emotionally manipulating Caleb (as Nathan had predicted) so he would facilitate her escape
• Ava slipped into a crowd on a busy street (figures were seen in shadowy silhouettes), and then disappeared imperceptibly to mingle with humanity.

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

E. L. James' 2011 trashy, erotic romance novel Fifty Shades of Grey, which sold over 100 million copies, was adapted into this 2015 controversially-sexy film directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, a pop cultural phenomenon about a sado-masochistic relationship. Before its Valentine's Day release in 2015, the movie sold more advanced tickets than any other R-rated movie in history, and it was the widest R-rated opening ever. It set a new February record with its $85.2 million opening weekend debut. As of late April, it had earned $166 million (domestic), and a whopping $569 million (worldwide). It became Universal Pictures' highest grossing R-rated international release, topping the previous original R-rated comedy, Ted (2012).

The movie, which cost $40 million, attracted an audience that was overwhelming female. It was clear that the film would spawn a few sequels - unusual for Hollywood which has recoiled for years from films about sex. Its effective advertising slogan was "Are You Curious?" Initially, it was quite a phenomenon at the box-office (especially internationally), but then faltered due to horrible reviews and weak word-of-mouth.

Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson)

In the story about sex and bondage, Audi-driving, domineering, kinky, rich playboy bachelor Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), 'took' the virginity from innocent, wide-eyed, naive VW Beetle-driving, submissive English literature university student Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson). As part of their compact to see each other, Anastasia had to sign a master-slave, non-disclosure contract for consensus - one stipulation was that she had to be in Grey's Seattle Red Room at his command for sex (bondage and dominant-submissive style), for spanking and mild bondage. In exchange for her submission, she was offered materialistic goodies: a new car, a laptop computer, couture dresses and private helicopter rides. By film's end, with her consent, he abusively punished her and she submitted to more extreme S&M activities, including gagging, ass paddles, whipping with a belt, chains, a cat o' nine tails, etc., before she walked out after realizing that his practices were excessive and deviant.

It was widely reported that both lead performers wore modesty coverings over their pubic areas for the short 10 minutes of sex scenes in the two hour movie. Dornan had a penis cover while Dakota Johnson had a pubic patch that also went around her whole body. In post-production, pubic hair had to be added digitally. There was also a butt-double for Johnson, to not reveal her tattoos. One scene was borrowed from 9 1/2 Weeks (1986), the ice-cube scene.

Following its release in the US, many other countries, such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Kenya, banned the film (for its racy dialogue), even though all of the nudity was cut out of the film and sexually explicit scenes were toned down. Merchandising of the film was rampant and profitable, including bath oil, vibrating love rings, lubricant, condoms and blindfolds.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (2015)

This raunchy, awful time travel comedy was a sequel to the original 2010 hit film, in which a group of losers used a malfunctioning hot tub to travel back in time to the mid-1980s to improve their lives. Now, in this obnoxious follow-up five years later (without the presence of John Cusack and others from the original), the main rich and famous stars have become amoral and exploitative cheaters (due to the benefits of the time machine):

• Lou Dorchen (Rob Corddry) - a contemptable, entrepreneurish scumbag who created an Internet search engine known as "Lougle" (a copy of Google), and has become lead singer of rock band Motley Lou; he was married to drug-addicted Kelly (Collette Wolf)
• Nick Webber (Craig Robinson) - a successful yet plagiarizing song writer, borrowing from singers such as Lisa Loeb and Nirvana
• Lou's nerdy "son" Jacob Yates (Clarke Duke), working as a butler in his father's mansion

After jumping in the hot tub again after Lou was lethally shot in the genitals during an orgiastic party, there was a mix-up and they didn't go back in time, but went 10 years into the future (to the year 2025) into an alternate universe - to find the assailant and save Lou's life.

Sophie (Bianca Haase)

And in a nightclub in the future, stripper Christine (Christine Bently) enticed Lou, who wanted to get a little action: "This one's mine...Touch me, you filthy vagrant." He flickered as he reached out to touch her breasts. She asked: "How did you do that?" Jacob warned that Lou was threatening his own existence: "You can't be here, cause you're jeopardizing your future."

One of the more vulgar scenes in the film was one of forced virtual anal sex on a TV game show.

I Smile Back (2015)

Director Adam Salky's dark addiction drama, an adaptation of Amy Koppelman’s 2008 novel, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. In a riveting, breakthrough starring role, comedienne Sarah Silverman bravely portrayed Laney Brooks, an erratic, self-destructive and unstable cocaine addict, who also found relief with illicit sex and helpings of vodka. Part of the reason for her downward spiral was unresolved "daddy issues" regarding being abandoned by her father as a 9 year-old girl.

Although a upper-middle-class suburban New Jersey housewife married to successful, patient and loving Bruce (Josh Charles) and with two children Eli and Janey (played by Skylar Gaertner and Shayne Coleman), she was conducting a cheating affair of afternoon hotel trysts with her coke dealer Donny (Thomas Sadoski), a married restaurateur and the husband of a close family friend, and her marriage was crumbling. Forced smiles and faux happiness on her face were the reason for the film's title. Her husband often woke her up with a kiss and the phrase: "Rise and shine, beautiful." He kept asking her: "You have to decide what it is you want. I just want you to be happy, Laney, like you used to be. Don't you want to be happy?"

Her depression caused her to replace her lithium medication with alcohol, drugs, and sex. In one scene, she attempted to admire her nude body in a mirror (instead of judging it, but wound up trying to uplift each breast with her fingers), and in another scene of degradation, she masturbated with her daughter's teddy bear between her legs. Although she appeared to have successful rehabilitation, she reverted and relapsed back to her former behavior. When she visited her estranged father (Chris Sarandon), she was startled at his loving fathering of his current daughter, compared to how he had abandoned his family when she was younger.

Masturbating with Her Child's Teddy Bear
Illicit Sex

Knock Knock (2015)

Co-writer/director Eli Roth's horror film, an erotic morality tale, was the "first official" remake of the psychological thriller Death Game (1977) by director Peter Traynor. [Note: An unofficial remake was the erotic thriller Viciosas al DesNude (1980, Sp.) (aka Vicious and Nude).] Its premise was similar to Hard Candy (2005).

It was taglined: "ONE NIGHT CAN COST YOU EVERYTHING."

Keanu Reeves headlined as Evan Webber, a devoted family man and CAD-design architect who was left alone in his home during a Fathers Day weekend. His blonde artist wife Karen (Ignacia Allamand) and two children (the perfect family) had taken a beach vacation, while he was working under a strict project deadline. After smoking some marijuana, he was confronted by two soaking-wet, flirty seductresses during a rainstorm at his Hollywood home's door, claiming that they were lost looking for a party:

• Genesis (Lorenza Izzo, director Roth’s real-life wife), brunette
• Bel (Ana de Armas), blonde

He allowed the two hyper-sexual females into his home, where they dried their clothes in his dryer as he provided them with towel-robes, and they waited 45 minutes for a Uber driver. During small talk, the two girls discussed how open they were about sex:

Bel: "When I'm with a guy, I want him to have the time of his life. No rules."
Genesis: "...If our bodies are capable of doing it, then they were meant to. Right?"

Inevitably, they engaged in a sexy threesome which began when he found them naked in his bathroom, when he was delivering their dried clothes at the same time that the Uber driver arrived. In unison, they greeted him in the nude: "Surprise!" They told him: "The car can wait." They literally attacked him sexually and unzipped his pants ("Just relax and enjoy it" and "Have you ever had two girls do this to you before?") and he couldn't resist. They shared a shower and had sex together.

Then, they stayed the night to wreak torturous havoc on him and his home, vandalizing his wife's sculptures and paintings, and ultimately they incriminated him with uploaded sexual recordings posted to Facebook. They revealed that they were underage and could ruin his life ("You've been a very bad boy, Evan"), by accusing him of being a pedophilic predator who committed statutory rape. Bel claimed she wouldn't take a shower and had 'evidence' of sperm inside of her.

Although he drove them away, they soon returned and knocked him out. With his wrists tying him to a bed's headboard, Bel seduced him in a role play - wearing his own daughter's school uniform ("Every girl's first love is her daddy") and removing her pink panties. While having intercourse with her (secretly recorded by Genesis), Evan was able to break free and he knocked Bel to the floor. But soon after, Genesis stabbed him with a fork in the shoulder, and they tied him to a chair with electrical cord (he called them "crazy f--kin' bitches"). They tortured him by turning up the volume on earphones strapped on his head. Eventually, they played a deadly game of hide-and-seek, and buried him in a hole in the yard up to his neck. When Evan's wife and children arrived home to the scene of chaos, Evan's son simply blurted out: "Daddy had a party."

Legacy (2015, UK)

Co-directors/co-writers Davie Fairbanks and Marc Small's graphically-sexual teen-oriented comedy (their directorial debut film) had a very limited run and was seen by very few audiences.

Its tagline stated: "ONE WEEK TO GO. THE PARTY OF THE YEAR. WHAT WOULD YOU DO TO GET IN?"

It was about dueling nightclub-party establishments. After a group of five teenagers had been disallowed from a London nightclub named Chrome, headed by local gangster and party promoter Damien Chase (Steven Cree), the ostracized group decided to host their own rival party. The effort was spearheaded by Sean (Franz Drameh) and his four teenaged friends, along with tomboyish girlfriend Dani (Amy Tyger).

The tagline was illustrated in the film's first few minutes. Two teens (Teen 1 (Victoria Beth) and Teen 2 (Sasha Bayer)) who didn't have an ID to the Chrome club, willingly stripped down to their thongs on an open balcony, and one of them (Teen 1) performed oral sex on Damien to gain entry.

Yasmin (Olivia Chenery)

Dani lived with her stripper sister Yasmin (Olivia Chenery), who often loved to strip and cavort around naked - with very little provocation. In one scene, she stripped off her black dress (over her head) to offer it to Dani, as she reasoned:

"Don't be silly, it's only a body. It's freeing. You should try it....It's a naked body. It's natural. You're beginning to sound like this idiot who thinks smoking anywhere is fine, but breast-feeding in public is disgusting."

In another scene, she stripped down in front of Dani and Sean on a date, and responded to her embarrassed friends: "Oh my God, repressed much? I'm sure you've seen a naked woman before."

Love (2015, Fr./Belg.)

Argentine/French director Gaspar Noé's controversial fourth feature film was Love (2015), following after other provocative and challenging arthouse works, including I Stand Alone (1998), Irreversible (2002), and Enter the Void (2009). When screened at the Cannes Film Festival, the film was referred to as "Noé's 3D porno." It again raised the question about what constituted pornography and what constituted art.

The director was quoted as saying: "I just wanted to portray sexual passion as much as possible, because in real-life it's very common, but you don't see it properly portrayed onscreen." The undeveloped film, the director's first in English, and basically an example of self-gratification filmmaking, was reminiscent of Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs (2004, UK).

In the non-linear film's opening wordless prelude backed by a classical soundtrack, a couple was in the midst of lengthy mutual masturbation until the male experienced an orgasm. [The two were later identified as Murphy and Electra.]

The male anti-hero was aspiring film-maker student Murphy (Karl Glusman) (Noé's screen surrogate), an ex-pat American living in Paris with his girlfriend Omi (Klara Kristin) and their two-year-old son (named Gaspar). In voice-over, the character described his unhappy, regretful, and bitter life of boring domesticity, visualized with short flashbacks.

Earlier, he had been passionately involved in a predominantly sexual relationship with art student Electra (Aomi Muyock). Not realizing the effect it would ultimately have on their relationship, Murphy and Electra invited their cute, blonde 16 year-old neighbor Omi into their sex life for a brief threesome.

Threesome with Omi (Klara Kristin) and Electra (Aomi Muyock)

Later, during a trysting weekend when Murphy was cheating on Electra, his condom broke and he was forced to face the consequences of Omi's pregnancy. Following the news of the pregnancy, Murphy's relationship with Electra abruptly ended, and she disappeared. A troubling voicemail from Electra's mother expressed fears that Electra may have committed suicide in the interim.

The film tracked back to the start of his doomed and tortured relationship (amour fou) over a period of two years with the unstable and troubled Electra.

The tedious film was marked with numerous unsimulated sex scenes (in 3-D! and mostly unchoreographed), involving endless fondling, thrusting, pumping and grinding, including ejaculation (one was full-frontal), numerous shots of an erect penis, fellatio and cunnilingus.

Lumberjack Man (2015)

This oddly comedic, low-budget, horror slasher film by director/co-writer Josh Bear was part of a relaunched After Dark Films Horrorfest series of "8 Films to Die For" in 2015, including:

• Re-Kill (2015)
• Murder in the Dark (2015)
• The Wicked Within (2015)
• Lumberjack Man (2015)
• Suspension (205)
• Unnatural (2015)
• Bastard (2015)
• Wind Walkers (2015)

The unabashed, self-aware satirical film, an 80's throw-back, was about a group of sex-starved, drug-using, obscenity-spewing, nudity-loving teens - serving as staff counselors, who were engaged in a week-long retreat ("Fun Under the Son") during Spring Break at the Good Friends Church Camp, in the remote fictitious town of Big Timber Texas. The camp reportedly sat "on the sinkhole from Hell."

The main characters were:

• Faith Fitzsimmons (Ciara Flynn), a strong-willed, good-girl, also street-smart (the "Final Girl")
• Jacqueline (Jasmin Carina), very innocent
• Reggie (Jarrett King), the black camp cook
• Doug (Adam Sessler), the over-zealous and odd-ball camp director
• Theresa (Andy San Dimas), Doug's camp assistant
• Dr. Peter Shirtcliff (Michael Madsen), a local doctor who witnessed mass murders years earlier

Doug's strange rules at camp included: no masturbating, and no laughing like a liberated woman.

They didn't know that a hulking, revenge-seeking, 7-foot "Lumberjack Man" (aka Nehemiah Easterday) (Brandon Ford) (with glowing red eyes and tree wood-bark for a mask) had been resurrected from his sap boiler and was taking vengeance on them. Wielding an axe and saws, various killings included smashed heads and bodies, beheadings, impalements, severed limbs, Doug's bi-sectioning with a tree saw, a brutal breast implant extraction through Theresa's back (and then using the implants as deadly projectiles), and a heart extraction.

According to the town's urban legend, the demonic logger's family recipe for flapjacks had been stolen by JT Jeppson (the future "pancake king of Texas") from reclusive lumberjack Nehemiah Easterday, who Jeppson drowned in a vat of maple syrup. Easterday, now a bloodthirsty and vengeful "demon logger," returned every 30 years, on a certain Tuesday, to exact his revenge for the tragedy that had occurred many years ago in 1892. He dragged behind him a rolling wagon containing a large stack of oversized pancakes in need of syrup - the blood of his victims.

During the opening credits, Lumberjack Man prepared pancake batter and poured two circular pancakes onto a griddle. The objects transitioned into the round breasts of a girl's chest, as two male counselors on the camp bus ogled at her: "Look at those flapjacks."

In the first twenty minutes, two bimbo hookers were picked up by cocaine-snorting driver Leon (Arthur Simone), after the empty church schoolbus had left the camp. The two were toplessly texting (and having sex with the bus driver):

• Chiffon (Vanessa Veracruz)
• Darlene (Nikki Seven)

Lumberjack Man emerged from the woods with his wagon, climbed into the bus, and cleanly chopped off both of their heads with one swing of his axe. Afterwards, Leon's head was impaled into the school bus roof.

There were numerous other opportunities for the female counselors to frequently strip naked:

• Theresa was voyeuristically viewed (and filmed as a soft-focus male fantasy) by Stanley Kellenberger (Chase Joliet) and Jeff (Alex Dobrenko) at her window as she rubbed lotion all over her bare chest after showering; then, she reclined on her sofa and poured the entire remainder of the bottle of moisturizing lotion onto her bare breasts in the shape of a cross before continuing the massage herself
• Kendra (Raven Rockette) convinced reluctant blonde Courtney (Athena Paxton) to join her for skinny-dipping and removing their bikini tops; she argued: "To be unashamed is to be without sin"; the two were watched by overweight and perverted peeping tom Ernie (Zach Guerrero) from the shore before he was crushed by a falling tree trunk
• Danielle (Amanda Moon Ray) had sex with male counselor Trevor (Tyler Mount) in the woods

Afterwards, as Trevor was order to go get cigarettes for her, he was beheaded. Danielle complained when he didn't return, and demeaned his manhood:

"I swear, you're the most spineless, ineffectual piece of s--t I've ever met. And guess what, your dick is small. Yeah, yeah, I bet you heard that, didn't you? And you don't please me and you probably can't please anyone, 'cause you're a pussy."

Soon after, when Trevor's head was thrown at her feet, Danielle was also attacked and killed by Lumberjack Man. Her body was folded into the shape of a table, but when he couldn't use her disfigured and mangled body as a breakfast table (with a tablecloth thrown over it), it was hurled against a tree.

In the finale, after Faith had located a missing barrel of syrup from the mess hall in the Lumberjack's cabin, she completely drenched her body in syrup. Dr. Shirtcliff had inanely reasoned with her to strip down to her purple underwear and cover herself in the gooey substance:

"You've got to take your clothes off. Strip down naked...Get your clothes off and douse yourself in syrup...It's the cotton. That's the death fabric. It absorbs the syrup - Just get naked in the name of God. Do it!"

Then, Faith yelled at the Lumberjack Man to come after her, which he promptly did when he smelled her flesh covered in real maple syrup. Faith revealed herself to be the great-great granddaughter of JT Jeppson, and she faced off against the Lumberjack Man - chastising him for his "total lack of business sense" with pancake sales. She called him "an ignorant, back-woods hick."

"Final Girl" Faith (Ciara Flynn)

After an intense struggle, it was believed that she killed him by strangling him (his red eyes dimmed) with her syrupy hands - sizzling his head and throat. She strolled off with the other two survivors Reggie and the doctor, noting that the camp would be closed, but eventually would reopen: "And when it does, it'll be a place where women and children can dance and laugh and play in the sunshine, rather than in the shadow of monsters." But the monstrous Lumberjack resurrected itself and explosively blew up the cabin as they jumped for safety.

My Golden Days (2015, Fr.) (aka Trois Souvenirs de ma Jeunesse, or Three Memories of My Youth)

This poignant, French coming-of-age love story (a meditation on past love) by director/co-writer Arnaud Desplechin was comprised of the three stages of the tempestuous life of middle-aged, 50 year-old anthropologist professor Paul Daedalus (Mathieu Amalric).

At the present time, Paul was returning to Paris after living in Tajikistan (stationed with the French Foreign Office) for the past eight years. He was detained when there were problems with his passport, so he was compelled to remember his past.

The director's film techniques included voice-overs, split screens, shots with the iris-effect, and characters directly addressing the camera (breaking the fourth wall).

The three stages (played as a teenager and young adult by Quentin Dolmaire) were:

• Childhood - his unhappy and troubled childhood (played by Antoine Bui), including the suicide of his psychotic mother (Cécile Garcia-Fogel)
• Russia - his adventures in early adolescence in Russia as a 16 year-old teenager, a Cold War spy-thriller segment when Paul, during a class trip to Minsk, a good friend, Mark (Elyot Milshtein) smuggle money and passports to Russian Jews
• Esther - his days as a 19 year-old lyçée (college) student in Paris, where he pursued a long-lived if fruitless, on-again, off-again affair for ten years with his first love - attractive, mature, precocious, and self-confident 17 year-old Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet). She was his sister Delphine's (Lily Taieb) friend and classmate. When Paul first met her, he told her: "My eyes eat you up." She replied: "I always do that...I'm exceptional" - and they shared a few vivid sex scenes together. She was coquettish and charming at first with pouty lips, until their turbulent relationship turned volatile.

While he was pursuing his career in anthropology in Paris, he also developed a relationship with Gilberte (Melodie Richards), the girlfriend of the young man who was housing him.

One Wild Moment (2015, Fr.) (aka Un Moment D'égarement)

Director Jean-François Richet's romantic comedy-drama was a remake of the comedy In a Wild Moment (1977, Fr.) (aka Un Moment D'égarement) by director Claude Berri. The original male leads in the earlier French film were Jean-Pierre Marielle (as Pierre) and Victor Lanoux (as Jacques), with Agnes Soral as Francoise (the Louna character), and Christine Dejoux as Martine (the Marie character).

The 1977 film inspired the American remake Blame It on Rio (1984) by director Stanley Donen, starring Michael Caine, Joseph Bologna, a very young Demi Moore, and an often-naked Michelle Johnson.

In the story, two friends brought their daughters with them on a long summer beach vacation in Corsica, and soon found themselves in a very awkward situation:

• Laurent (Vincent Cassel), a cool, hip, middle-aged divorced dad, was accompanied by his 18 year-old teen daughter Marie (Alice Isaaz)
• Antoine (François Cluzet), Laurent's best buddy, an overprotective, and controlling father, but was clueless that his friend Laurent had become romantic with his own attractive 17 year-old teen-aged daughter Louna (Lola Le Lann in her first film role)

Louna's (Lola Le Lann) Teenaged Seduction of Middle-Aged Man

Antoine was on the search for the man who may have defiled his daughter with an indiscreet liaison, not knowing it was Laurent.

Laurent had his first glimpse of Louna naked, when she flashed her right nipple and breast at him, and deliberately left herself exposed, while the group was outfitted in wetsuits.

Then, Louna seduced Laurent one moonlit evening when they went swimming together in the warm waters. She playfully removed her red T-shirt, her cut-off jean shorts, her red bikini top, and then her bikini bottoms - and threw each item of clothing at him. As she waded into the water, he stripped down to his red and white striped underwear briefs and joined her. After she attempted to pull off his briefs under the water, she took a leap at him and kissed him.

After returning to the shoreline, she began to express sadness, and then nuzzled up next to him. Before long, she was on top of him and kissing him. As they hungrily kissed, she urged him to touch her bare rear end by moving his hand there. After having sex, they continued to lie in each other's arms.

Strangerland (2015, Australia/Ire.)

Director Kim Farrant's debut feature film was this dramatic and suspenseful psychological thriller and "who-dun-it." It was notable as star Nicole Kidman's first lead role in an independent Australian film since Dead Calm (1989).

It had two taglines:

• "To Find the Truth, They Must Lose Themselves"
• "When the Dust Settles, Their Secrets Will Come to Light"

This 'missing persons' story set in the outback of Australia and centered around the dysfunctional Parker family. The four members of the family were:

• Matthew (Joseph Fiennes), a hard-working and stoic pharmacist; impatient, brooding and volatile
• Catherine (Nicole Kidman), a melodramatic, nervous, free-spirited and emotional housewife
• Tommy (Nicholas Hamilton), afflicted with sleepwalking (midnight walks); often quiet, upset, and anxious
• Lily (Maddison Brown), a blatantly sultry 15 year-old teen, boy-crazy for local skater punks

They had reluctantly moved from Canberra to the remote, dusty desert town of Nathgari (fictional), following a mysterious scandal involving the seductive-looking, promiscuous daughter. She had a series of behavioral issues, including a sexual encounter with one of her Canberra teachers, Neil McPherson (Martin Dingle Wall), causing disturbing rumors and forcing the family to leave Canberra.

The wife Catherine became disturbed and her fragile marriage even more threatened when her two children Tommy and Lily disappeared one night, just before a violent dust storm enveloped the town. Did they deliberately run away or were they kidnapped? By-the-book Detective David Rae (Hugo Weaving), with a girlfriend named Coreen (Lisa Flanagan), was assigned to the case, and had a number of likely suspects:

• Steve Robertson (Sean Keenan), with a serpent tattoo
• Slug (Morgan Junor-Larwood), another local youth
• Burtie (Meyne Wyatt), the Parkers' slow-minded and mentally-challenged, but good-hearted aboriginal handy-man; also Coreen's brother

During the ordeal, Catherine went off the deep end and became delirious, dealing with her grief or anxiety through sex. She unsuccessfully attempted to seduce Detective Rae, and afterwards wandered into town - stark naked.

The film ended ambiguously and open-ended, without a resolution (Tommy was located, but Lily's fate was unknown). It was probable that the missing Lily had been taken by someone in a car - and then murdered.

Welcome to Me (2014 or 2015)

Director Shira Piven's bizarre, dark comedy about mental illness (and a desire to be famous on reality TV) opened with a quote from Michel de Montaigne:

"I study myself more than any other subject. That is my physics. That is my metaphysics."

The main character was:

• Alice Klieg (Kristen Wiig), a disturbed female with borderline personality disorder who was living on disability

Her lonely, reclusive life was mostly composed of watching TV (continuously on for 11 years) - including old catalogued episodes of Oprah on VHS, and a late-nite infomercial on fake, no-mess parakeets (Perfect Polly). To the dismay of her long-suffering therapist Dr. Moffat (Tim Robbins), she stopped taking her medication, and instead followed a high-protein, string cheese diet treatment.

Then, she happened to win a California Sweepstakes lottery jackpot of $86 million, and quickly reported her winning to the lottery board by phone ("I'm a winner"). When she appeared on a local TV show to talk about her amazing good fortune, she was abruptly censored when she mentioned using masturbation as a sedative since 1991.

She took up residence in a reservation casino's hotel with her best friend Gina Selway (Linda Cardellini), who was employed at a gym. She also used her recent wealth to write and star in an autobiographical talk show, taking her cue from Oprah's advice about following one's "true calling." Her crazy, narcissistic idea was to reinvent herself - by financing a live 'vanity' TV show, titled "Welcome to Me," initiated by a $15 million check to station co-owner/manager Rich (James Marsden) and his brother Gabe Ruskin (Wes Bentley) of a low-rent Palm Desert TV studio/station. Her sum of money was enough to pay for 100 two hour episodes (she claimed: "It's a new era, $86 million dollar Alice").

The film's tagline referred to her show:

"Alice is going to be on TV whether you like it or not."

She made a grand entrance on a large white swan. Some of the oddball episodes from her past were titled: "Smelling Things Before They Happen" and "Someone Has Been Tampering With My Makeup Bag," or live shows about neutering dogs, cooking episodes featuring meatloaf cake (with mashed sweet potato icing), and crazed reenactments of childhood betrayals and traumas.

As time went on, Alice's pain and loneliness increased. She became more and more of a problem mostly as a result of giving up her medication, and eventually she experienced a nervous breakdown.

In the most dramatic and fearless scene of the film, she walked stark naked through the main floor of the casino before being covered by a blanket.

Youth (2015, It./Fr./UK/Switz.) (aka La Giovinezza)

Written and directed by Italian film-maker Paolo Sorrentino, this was a follow-up film to his well-deserved Oscar winner The Great Beauty (2013) (aka La Grande Bellezza), the recipient of the top prize for Best Foreign Language Film.

This visually-beautiful drama about mortality, nostalgia and aging starred A-listers Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz and Jane Fonda (as aging Hollywood diva Brenda Morel in an abrupt, scene-stealing cameo).

The expressionistic setting was a posh Swiss spa resort in the Alps, where two old friends were staying for a holiday:

• Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine), a widowed, retired British maestro-conductor and music composer
• Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel), a fading director preparing for his final film (that would feature Brenda although she declined)

Fred's daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz) was in the midst of a divorce to Mick's playboy son Julian (Ed Stoppard) who was romancing eccentric pop-star singer Paloma Faith (as Herself).

The two 80 year-olds shared company at the luxurious hotel with Hollywood actor Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano) (who was annoyed when only recognized for playing a robot in a sci-fi flick), and the beautiful, newly-crowned reigning Miss Universe (model turned actress, 26 year-old Madalina Diana Ghenea).

In one of the film's most stunning sequences, highlighted in one of the film's poster images, Fred and Mick were caught unawares by a very-nude Miss Universe who joined them in the warm waters of the spa. The two were incredulous:

Fred: "Who is she?"
Mick: "God. What do you mean, who is she? Miss Universe."
Fred: "But she looks a lot different. Unrecognizable."
Mick: "She's been transformed from watching all those robot movies."