History of Sex in Cinema: 2007, Part 2 |
Movie Title/Year and Film/Scene Description | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Good Luck Chuck (2007) This raunchy, vulgar, and crass romantic comedy was not for prudes due to its frequent foul-mouthed dialogue and sex scenes. It was from first-time director Mark Helfrich and scriptwriter Josh Stolberg who were emulating the successful Wedding Crashers (2005). It was most noted for its frequent nudity from lots of different female characters, due to the racy content and plot. The film told about the main character:
He was cursed with the fact that every woman he slept with would find true everlasting love with the next guy she dated. A newspaper advertised his good-luck charm or 'gift' ("a dentist drill you'll want") - which he wished to find a way to end, but which also allowed him to bed down numerous eager women (unknown actresses). However, he had a more likely chance at a real relationship with klutzy penguin trainer Cam Wexler (Jessica Alba), but feared losing her by sleeping with her. In one early scene, blonde Carol (Chelan Simmons) went topless on a sandy beach with Charlie and provided him with oral sex, although she was angered by his non-loving attitude ("I'm licking the sand off your balls and you say that's nice!"). In another scene, well-endowed patient Pleasure's (Yasmine Vox) boob job was inspected ("Are they even?") by Charlie's sex-obsessed, breast-fixated plastic surgeon friend Dr. Stu Kaminsky (Dan Fogler) - who repeatedly would masturbate with a grapefruit! The film also featured a Kama Sutra-style, split-screen montage of one-night stand sex-capades with Charlie in lots of creative and contortionistic sexual positions and scenes with his many partners including:
There were also lovers, such as the Kitchen Counter Lover Jessica Olafson, Wheelbarrow Lover Eliza Bayne, and Ceiling Lover Elizabeth Schnitzker. |
Carol (Chelan Simmons) Pleasure (Yasmine Vox) |
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Hack! (2007) Director/writer Matt Flynn's work was a cliched, satirical and derivatively 'hacked' horror film. The tagline was: "Reality Kills," while many of the characters were references to famous horror-related names, i.e., Mary Shelley, King, Stoker, Argento, Bates, etc.. Also, the self-aware dialogue came from horror films - such as Scream, The Shining, and more. In the opening, iconic slasher villain Kane Hodder (from the Friday the 13th films) was stalked through the woods and beheaded - the film's first victim. The story was about a wildlife field trip gone awry, after seven unsuspecting, randomly-selected college students sailed on the Orca to the island of eccentric and reclusive Vincent King (Sean Kanan). He lived there with his film-obsessed wife Mary Shelley (Juliet Landau) who always carried a hand-held 16 mm. camera for the couple's "extreme" film-making ventures. Danica McKellar (grown-up from the TV series The Wonder Years) starred as the bookish, sweet and virginal Emily, a biology major who organized the trip. The students found themselves murdered one-by-one, staged in inventive ways by the strange couple, in the warped style of various re-enacted, landmark horror film scenes (from The Ring and others). The students found that they had unknowingly ventured onto the set of a snuff film - the film's main plot point. There was mostly excessive violence in the film including mutilated bodies and butcherings:
The main plot twist was that Emily had lured everyone to the island (she was in cahoots with Vincent and having an affair with him, behind Mary's back), in order to have them participate in the snuff film. The only two student survivors were:
There were only a few instances of nudity from the cast, mostly from Gabrielle Richens as Sylvia. At the oceanside, she pulled up her shirt and flashed everyone, to reveal her implant-enhanced breasts. She also had her top removed while lying down, but was able to escape when her male partner was bloodied by being sawed in half. |
Sylvia (Gabrielle Richens) Emily (Danica McKellar) - Plot Twist Killer |
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Halloween (2007) Rob Zombie's nasty remake Halloween (2007) of John Carpenter's original slasher film Halloween (1978) was much more explicit in terms of female nudity and bloody gore, although it still retained the main thesis that promiscuous sexual behavior usually would lead to death. [Note: The unrated version contained a horrific double-rape scene in Michael Myers' cell, committed by two staff workers at the Smith's Grove Sanitarium.] The film told the backstory of how 10-year old Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) grew up in a white trash family in Haddonfield, Illinois, and went on a family killing spree of three brutal murders - the result of his life of continual torment and teasing. Young Michael's slutty sister Judith Myers (Hanna Hall) refused to take him trick-or-treating, but instead chose to have sex with her long-haired boyfriend Steven Haley (Adam Weisman). Michael soon found revenge through a series of horrific and vicious murders. He first sliced his mean, lazy and lecherous stepfather Ronnie White's (William Forsythe) throat with a large butcher knife after duct-taping him to his lounge chair and then stabbed him to death. Then in the kitchen, he brutally clobbered Steve on the head repeatedly with an aluminum baseball bat. While wearing Steve's grayish, featureless mask, he also stabbed Judith in the stomach and then kept stabbing her in the back as she crawled down the hallway. During treatment at Smith's Grove Sanitarium following a conviction of first-degree murder, the mask-obsessed, psychopathic patient ("It hides my ugliness") was put under the care of psychologist Dr. Loomis (Malcom McDowell) for fifteen years while becoming completely mute and violence-prone, causing his despairing mother to commit suicide by a gunshot. Michael escaped after murdering a few guards ("it's a f--king massacre") and returned to Haddonfield, Illinois as an older, silent homicidal, brutish, hulking 26 year-old maniac (Tyler Mane) to further terrorize the town on Halloween 1978. His targets included 17 year-old high-school senior/babysitter Laurie Strode/Myers (Scout Taylor-Compton) (Michael's orphaned sister!), her adoptive Strode family, and her girlfriends:
Lynda had sex with her boyfriend Bob (Nick Mennell) in the dilapidated and vacant Myers house, and afterwards went to get beer. When he returned, she mistakenly believed that it was Bob. Michael had just stabbed her boyfriend against a wall while holding him up, and was wearing a white sheet and glasses. Michael brutally strangled Lynda from behind and then carried off her fully nude body. Michael's next two victims were Mr. and Mrs. Strode (Pat Skipper and Dee Wallace) in their own home. Michael also came upon Annie, who skipped her babysitting duties to have sex with her boyfriend Paul (Max Van Ville). While they were having sexual intercourse on the couch in the Wallace home, Michael interrupted them and attacked them. He first killed Paul by hanging him by the stairs (and placing a pumpkin on his head) and then bloodied half-naked Annie as he assaulted her throughout the house. She was discovered at the foot of the stairs by Laurie. And then suddenly, Michael reappeared. The film ended with a lengthy bloody confrontation between Laurie and her pursuing brother Michael who had carried her to the Myers home. There, Michael had set up a shrine, placing Lynda's naked body at the foot of the Myers concrete headstone he had stolen earlier from the graveyard. He presented Laurie with a childhood photo (he knew she was his sister, but she didn't understand), and removed his mask for her, but she stabbed him in the chest with his own butcher knife. After further pursuit, the film culminated with Laurie firing one shot point-blank at the face of the evil monster with Loomis' .357 Magnum, as sirens approached. |
Judith Myers (Hanna Hall) Lynda Van Der Klok (Kristina Klebe) Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris) |
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The Heartbreak Kid (2007) The Farrelly Brothers' remade the 1972 comedy classic (with a Neil Simon script) with this raunchier, mean-spirited, and vulgar version that starred Ben Stiller as the commitment-phobic, neurotic, 40-ish Eddie Cantrow (Charles Grodin in the original). In the film's opening set in San Francisco, where Eddie worked in a sporting-goods store, his dirty-minded, orange-toupeed 77 year-old father Doc (Jerry Stiller, his real-life dad) asked about Eddie's sex life: "You been crushing any pussy?... who you booming?" - and then suggested that Eddie not attend the wedding of his ex-fiancee Jodi (Ali Hillis) but instead tag-team with him in Las Vegas: "Maybe we'll get lucky and tag-team a couple of broads." [Later in another scene, Eddie's vulgar father was seen in a Las Vegas hot tub with a big-busted blonde (porn star Kayla Kleevage) whose gigantic breasts floated on the surface.] After finding his blonde dreamgirl Lila (Malin Akerman, closely resembling Stiller's There's Something About Mary (1998) co-star Cameron Diaz, and played by Jeannie Berlin in the original), who Eddie aided during a street mugging, he married her after only a short six-week courtship. His first shock during the wedding reception was that his mother-in-law (Kathy Lamkin) was obese, and happily claimed that she wore the same exact wedding dress that her daughter was wearing on her wedding day. During a three-week road trip, they traveled to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico for a hellish honeymoon. They were obviously mis-matched from the start, and she had annoying habits that became amplified, such as off-key singing to the radio, eating gluttonously, and admitting to having enormous debts and a deviated septum because of a cocaine-snorting habit. She had insatiable, nymphomaniacal demands as a predatory tigress in a hotel room, even before getting to Mexico. She wanted to experiment with different acrobatic positions during sex, and asked for "the inverted corkscrew...it's just like the Swedish helicopter, except you spin me...no, never mind, just jackhammer me!" He stated that he preferred the 'missionary position' instead: "Why don't we just, you know, do, like, a little missionary position for a little bit?...Missionary position. You know. It's like, you know, when I'm on top of you, just a regular guy on top of a girl?" Then she asked naively: "Can you pile drive me from that position?" And then once again in Mexico during non-stop, S&M kinky sex, she cried out: ("Cock me, cock me!... "I've been a bad girl. Now hit me!"). Lila also mocked him for having a 'pussy' and not wanting his nipples pinched: ("Do you have a pussy?...Well, what are you, a faggot, Eddie?...Well, then, slap me! Slap me like this! That's right! What's the matter? I thought little girls liked getting their nipples pinched...Yeah! Oh, I love it! Like it rough! Yes! Yes, Eddie, yes! Cock me! Cock me! Cock me, Eddie!...F--k me like a black guy, Eddie! Come on!"). When she became horribly sunburned, Eddie met sweet Oxford, Mississippi brunette Miranda (Michelle Monaghan, portrayed by Cybill Shepherd in the original film), a college lacrosse coach vacationing with her family - the real woman of his dreams. There was also the outrageous scene (meant to rival the 'hair-gel' scene in There's Something About Mary (1998)) in which Lila revealed her overgrown pubic hair and genital-piercing jewelry when she had to urinate on Eddie's back to soothe a jellyfish sting. The dissatisfied Eddie divorced Lila, but was delayed and unable to rendezvous with Miranda in Mississippi before she was married, because of problems crossing the border. Eighteen months later, he had moved away from San Francisco and was running a surf shop on a Mexican beach where Miranda suddenly reappeared. She was in Mexico for the vow renewals of her Uncle and Aunt, and admitted that she was now single after separating from her husband Cal (Johnny Sneed): "He's a great guy, but we probably should've never gotten married....I guess now I know what you went through on your honeymoon." They decided to have drinks at 7:00 pm that evening. In the film's major plot twist, he turned to speak to Consuela (a cameo by Eva Longoria) - his Mexican wife of one year! (on their anniversary) - and had to explain why he was speaking to another female. He lied to her and claimed she was Gretchen Construbias, the CEO of a water-wear sports supplier, and implied that he might have 'bad news' for her later. His last words to Consuela were: "Love, love, love, love, love," and then he whispered under his breath: "F--k me." By film's end during the title credits in one of the film's many coarse gags, it was implied that Lila had finally found sexual satisfaction with a donkey - she was heard shouting: "Cock me, cock me! Yes, yes! Finally! Yes, you're doing it!" after which she was seen sleeping, while the satisfied animal was smoking a cigarette and seated at the foot of her bed. [Note: The donkey had been seen earlier in the film (visibly aroused) in a carnival sex show behind closing barn doors - reportedly an exhibit of Mexican folk dancing.] |
The Wedding to Lila Lila (Malin Akerman) Jellyfish Sting Urination Miranda (Michelle Monaghan) Consuela (Eva Longoria) (Kayla Kleevage) The Infamous Donkey |
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Hostel Part II (2007) This second installment of the bloody slasher film by Eli Roth was rightly accused of being 'torture-porn' or 'violence-porn.' The tables were turned -- the victims were three American college-aged females who were vacationing in Eastern Europe, where they were befriended and then betrayed by another Slovakian - a beautiful nude model named Axelle (Vera Jordanova). The females included:
The most unsettling scene was the death of the socially-awkward and uptight character of Lorna, in which she was hung naked upside-down by chains from her ankles. She was repeatedly sliced (and had her throat slit) by sick female client Mrs. Bathory (Monika Malacova) with a large scythe below her who wanted to ecstatically bathe naked (in a large bath surrounded by candles) in the victim's blood, 'in the style of Elizabeth Bathory.' |
Mrs. Bathory (Monika Malacova) Lorna (Heather Matarazzo) |
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I Really Hate My Job (2007, UK) This stagey, Oliver Parker-directed comedy/drama (with screenplay by Jennifer Higgie) depicted one day at a trendy London restaurant on the Thames. From its opening to closing, it displayed the lives of five working-class women, including its main star:
In a most notable scene as the brash and loud Abbie broke down in a mid-life crisis, she stood stark naked in the restaurant amidst the patrons. She delivered a drunken, self-absorbed, self-pitying monologue about how she was a debt-ridden, aspiring wannabe actress who was forced to work in the restaurant. She complained about only being offered an "art-porn" role. (She was eagerly anticipating the arrival of a famous Hollywood actor at the restaurant that night.) She also was upset that she was about to turn 30 years of age, and described how she had just broken up with her boyfriend (who continued to send her text messages about the break-up). |
Abi (Neve Campbell) |
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Knocked Up (2007) Writer/director Judd Apatow's R-rated romantic comedy (with a heart) starred two mismatched individuals who had sex during a drunken one-night stand, while celebrating her recent promotion:
When they stripped down and had sex, he mentioned: "You're prettier than I am." Although he pulled out a condom and was fumbling to put it on, he tossed it away. The next morning when he awoke with his large and bare rear end staring her in the face, he hardly remembered their love-making, noting and asking:
When they had breakfast together before she left for work, they exchanged information about their occupations. She was a recently-promoted on-air E! TV show interviewer, while he was 'employed' with his stoner roommates developing a nude-celebrity website (fleshofthestars.com) to tell fans about where in a film an actress (such as Meg Ryan) "shows her tits." He grossly offered: "I'll show you Meg Ryan's bush." About eight weeks later, the results of Alison's multiple home pregnancy tests were shockingly "positive" (although she hadn't been to the gynecologist yet, and wasn't 100% sure). It was an unlikely scenario when Alison became pregnant. The next time they met after the fateful night (and morning after), when she invited him to dinner at a Hollywood restaurant, she shared with him that she was possibly pregnant and that he was the father - the first words from his mouth were "F--k off!" Then, he sputtered about how he wasn't responsible claiming that she had told him not to wear a condom:
When she asserted that she was drunk and didn't mean for him to not wear a condom, he asked: "Was your vagina drunk?" When it was confirmed that she was pregnant during a visit to the gynecologist's office together where they viewed a sonogram, they decided to keep the baby. Their relationship slowly turned from being mismatched and accidental to one of growing friendship and eventual true love and fidelity. In one of the funniest but true-to-life sex scenes, when Ben made love to a very pregnant and swollen-bellied Alison and she demanded him to thrust harder and deeper, he freaked out. He was worried that he was going to damage the fetus:
He stopped when he felt the baby in the womb give him a "warning kick." The tone changed from the typical raunchy penis and fart jokes and a phenomenal 120 instances of the F-word to a heartwarming finale. In the film's climactic birth scene, she screamed in pain for an epidural with Ben at her side, but the baby was already crowning. During the birth, there were insert shots of her vagina (possibly a prosthetic) as the baby girl was emerging when she requested to see herself (in a mirror's reflection), but then decided it was too much to watch. Afterwards, the happy but overwhelmed couple left the hospital in the film's satisfying conclusion with a The Graduate-like "what happens now" ending. Seth drove home, going a safe speed of only 12 mph, predicting that it would take them three hours. |
Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) and Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) |
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The Last Mistress (2007, Fr.) (aka Une Vieille Maîtresse) Controversial female French director Catherine Breillat's unrated film about sexual obsession brought together a period costume drama with raw sensuality from European actress Asia Argento. The film was based on Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly's scandalous 19th-century novel. The erotic drama told about the ramifications of an engagement between a couple in 19th century Paris:
Of course, this presented a challenge to his notorious, sexually-insatiable and ever-ready courtesan-mistress La Vellini (Asia Argento), the femme fatale. The courtesan, with sensually-erotic hair curls, was the illegitimate, earthy daughter of an Italian princess and a Spanish matador. Vellini was involved in a marriage of convenience to an older man. The defiant, smoky-voiced Vellini was shocked to learn of the betrothal, but assertively wished to remain his mutually-obsessed mistress during their 10-year affair. The film, mostly told in flashback, contained explicit sex scenes, and some memorable ones including the enchantress Vellini eating an ice-cream cone in a paper wrapper or attempting to lick the blood from her lover's bullet wound in his chest ("I want to drink his blood. No one can stop me") after he lost a duel to Vellini's wronged husband. |
Vellini (Asia Argento) Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida) |
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Look (2007) Director Adam Rifkin's voyeuristic, fictional feature film was significant for being the first U.S. mainstream movie to depict events solely through the "eyes" and point-of-view of surveillance devices and video cameras. However, it brought up the over-riding and disturbing controversial issue of privacy and the nature of our Orwellian 21st Century post-9/11 world. It opened with a Southern California (Northridge) department store/mall dressing room surveillance camera 'watching' two nubile, topless 15-year old girls (actually two over age-18 actresses):
The two stripped to their thongs and tried on various outfits, gazed at their reflections in the mirror, shook their bare butts (and bounced them together), flirted, and pretended to make love to each other. The blonde then 'shoplifted' by leaving with a garment under her pink blouse, and the two barely missed being apprehended by a security guard when they exited the store. Backing up in the parking lot in the blonde's red sports-car convertible, she ran into another parked vehicle behind her, but didn't stop to report the incident. There were further scenes of stand-up and in-lap sex in the storage warehouse between a salesclerk and various co-workers. |
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Lust, Caution (2007) (aka Se, jie) Academy Award-winning Taiwanese director Ang's Lee's erotic espionage thriller (NC-17 rated) about forbidden love and sexual obsession was based on Eileen Chang's 1979 short story. The film generated controversy over its three non-gratuitous, non-exploitative (yet explicit and emotionally-naked) sexual encounters (sometimes slightly acrobatic) between the couple (an hour into the film), one of which was essentially rape (a beating with a belt). The film was severely edited when submitted for distribution to Chinese government censors, and it was released in both R-rated DVD and un-rated theatrical DVD versions. Set in WWII-era Shanghai, China in 1942 while occupied by the Japanese, the provocative, highly-acclaimed 2 1/2 hour film (in the Mandarin language) told about the complex lives of a sexually-involved couple:
She was transformed into a patriotic resistance movement member and seductive spy when tasked with luring Yee into an assassination trap. She had to succumb to the adulterer's sado-masochistic sexual tendencies, capture his heart, and bring him out into the open. |
Wang Jiazhi (Tang Wei) |
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Once (2006-2007, Ire.) In writer/director John Carney's wistful romantic musical, an unlikely romance developed between:
Their love was particularly symbolized by their scene together in a nearly-empty music store, when they improvised together on his ballad "Falling Slowly" (the Oscar-winning Original Song of the year). Their duet at the piano (with him playing a guitar) was lovingly sexy:
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Persepolis (2007, Iran/US/Fr.) This dark autobiographical animated film was the coming-of-age story of the main female character, told through various anecdotes (based on her own best-selling graphic novels):
It illustrated how political repression during the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran extended deeply into the lives of Iranians. In one humorous scene, she described her hormonal changes at puberty that caused her to fall over top-heavy:
In the young girl's Iranian art class while studying a censored version of Botticelli's Birth of Venus, she attempted to draw a real-life female model - but the woman was completely obscured by an Islamic cloak and veil. |
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Rise (2007) (aka Rise: Blood Hunter) A bloody supernatural vampire thriller by writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez was an excuse to showcase attractive, lusting vampires and necrophilia. In the film's opening, blonde hooker Collette (Cameron Richardson) was hired and then lured by reporter Sadie Blake (Lucy Liu) for $500 to visit an LA mansion to enjoy her same-sex services. When the woman was asked to take a shower to wash her hands, the bars of the shower entrapped her, and she was bound by her feet and hung upside down (topless), with duct tape over her mouth. The unfortunate victim was then questioned by wheelchair-bound Mr. Harrison (Allan Rich). It appeared that Sadie was intending to feed Collette as a blood-gift to the elderly vampire Harrison in exchange for the address and whereabouts of lead vampire Bishop (James D'Arcy), her own nemesis and killer. But then she double-crossed him, shot Harrison with her crossbow as he was about to feed on her, and freed Collette. Then, in a flashback, it was revealed that Sadie was an investigative reporter for the LA Weekly, looking into a case about a cult of goths that drank pig's blood in "feeding parties." She was led to an abandoned Koreatown house, where she was attacked, abducted, murdered and left in a dumpster, and turned into a vampire. For the remainder of the film, she sought revenge for her rape and murder. There was one brief lesbian sex scene between Sadie and Eve (Carla Gugino) in red light. At one point, Sadie found herself stripped naked and hanging upside down in a meat locker by her ankles, with her neck slit as she was being drained of blood. Fortunately, she was rescued and saved by Detective Clyde Rawlins (Michael Chiklis), the vengeful detective father of one of Bishop's first victims Tricia Rawlins (Margo Harshman), so she could continue her quest to track down Bishop. In the film's conclusion, she battled with Rawlins against Bishop and thrust a dart (a silver crossbow bolt) into Bishop's heart and then the same dart was used by Rawlins to kill Sadie when she begged: "Finish it. I can't live unless I kill, and I can't live that way." For a second time in the film, Sadie was dead, placed in a body bag, and taken to the morgue. However, she reanimated for the second time as the film ended. |
Sadie Blake (Lucy Liu) Collette (Cameron Richardson) |
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Sex and Death 101 (2007) Writer/director Daniel Walters' dark and fantasy sex comedy was rampant with nudity, but was a major flop in theatres, earning only $23,000 in domestic box-office. Its story was about a soon-to-be-wed fiancee, a fast food corporation executive named Roderick Blank (Simon Baker), whose receipt of a mystery e-mail list of all of his sexual conquests (101 in all), past, present and future in chronological order, contained the name of his bride, Fiona Wormwood (Julie Bowen) at # 29. # 30 was Precious or Carlotta Valdes (Jessica Kiper), a seductive blonde lap-dancer/stripper at his bachelor party one week before the wedding date, with whom he had sex. Anticipating having sex with the other 71 females, he cancelled his wedding plans and began a compulsive quest to bed them down. [Note: One of the clever inside-joke aspects of the film was about the names of the females, related to characters in other films, e.g., Carlotta Valdes in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958).]
One coupling involved a threesome with a "beyond ultimate lesbian power couple" - party-girl authors wearing fairy costumes Bambi Kidd # 63 (Natassia Malthe) and Thumper Wint # 64 (Pollyanna McIntosh). Another was with Cynthia Rose (Sophie Monk). He met her stark naked in a bathroom in the film's most gratuitous nude scene, but being in the dark and in the wrong bedroom, he had sex with her grandmother instead. Soon, however, he learned that a busty femme fatale vigilante-style serial killer - a sex-crime avenger named Gillian DeRaisx or "Death Nell" (Winona Ryder) was # 101 on his list. Her tell-tale technique was to seduce chauvinistic men before killing them and then leave behind spray-painted feminist notes on the wall. In the film's conclusion, he decided to risk sex with "Death Nell" - and they had sex together with "The End" painted in red behind them. However, in a cop-out plot twist, they didn't succumb by taking an overdose of sedative pills to kill themselves, but instead married and had a child together. |
Winona Ryder (as Gillian DeRaisx or Death Nell) |
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Silk (2007) Canadian director Francois Girard's visually-lush but sluggish 19th century period film - a tale of unrequited love, lust, and betrayal, adapted by Girard and Michael Golding from the novel by Alessandro Baricco, began with a sensual scene of a Japanese female bathing in a hot steamy outdoor bath surrounded by snow (shown more revealing later in the film), with off-screen narration:
Then the film told the story of military officer Herve Joncour (Michael Pitt), a young silk trader in 1862 France, who worked for Baldabiou (Alfred Molina), an ambitious and older silk mill entrepreneur. In an arranged marriage by Baldabiou to give him a new life, he wed gorgeous and loving schoolteacher wife Helene (Keira Knightley), and then took a trading journey - first to Egypt, and then a more arduous trek to a remote Japanese village to purchase healthy, uncontaminated silkworm eggs (since much of Europe was plagued with a strange egg-killing virus called pebrine). His wife, often left at home, was frustrated by their inability to have a child during their first two years - they had three discreet nude love scenes when he was rarely home to try and get her pregnant. During his first trip to Japan, he was enthralled by the beautiful mistress (Sei Ashina) of local Japanese warlord Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho) who gracefully and elaborately served him tea. Due to the successful trade, Herve became a wealthy man and bought a house and plot of land (for a garden) for Helene. On his second trip, the mistress-concubine bathed him, passed a note into his hand, and offered him a second concubine-servant for the night. The servant undressed in front of him, and gave him one night of adulterous, wordless passion. He had a brief glimpse of her the next morning when she bathed naked in the outdoor hot springs and dipped under the water -- but he never saw her again. Upon his return to long-suffering, loving and understanding Helene, he guiltily vowed to himself: "I wanted to tell her everything" but never did ("and it tore me apart"). Soon, he became obsessed by the Japanese concubine, who had given him a note that he had translated by Lyon brothel owner Madame Blanche (Miki Nakatani) of Japanese descent - it was translated as: "Come back, or I shall die." Blanche advised: "Forget about it, not the money, the woman. Forget about her. She won't die and you know it." Although Japan was in political chaos, Herve made a third risky trip back to the village, finding it recently destroyed by rebels and still smoldering. On his return to France, the eggs he had purchased were hatched, and the worms were dead - devastating the town's silk business. The next winter, Herve received a letter written in Japanese, again taken to be translated by the Madame, who advised him that he should never return:
The Madame left a small blue flower on the letter, similar to a bouquet of flowers left by her on the grave of Helene after she weakened and died in 1875. Herve tracked the Madame down in Paris, who disclosed in the film's twist, that it was Helene who had written the long letter and had it copied out in Japanese script. According to the Madame, after Helene had unforgettably read the letter outloud, "...more than anything, she wanted to be that woman." Herve responded: "She was that woman." Later, the remorseful widower sat with young gardener Ludovic (Mark Rendall), and told him about the "real story" of his life with the wronged Helene - the film's story. The film concluded with Helene's voice-over, reading most of the contents of the letter. She prophetically had declared that she and her husband would always be together, even after she died. |
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The Simpsons Movie (2007) Conveniently-placed objects (trees, shrubs, birds, etc.) often (but not always) blocked Bart Simpson's genital area, as he rode around the town of Springfield naked on his skateboard, on a dare from Homer. But at one point, the animators - for fun - reversed things. They had Bart skate behind a large hedge fence with a small strip where ONLY his penis was seen - mocking the convention of cleverly hiding a character's privates behind objects. After being startled as a naked Bart was catapulted toward the window of the local Krusty Burger fast food restaurant where devoutly religious Ned Flanders was giving thanks, he told his kids Rod and Todd to repeat after him:
They dutifully repeated: "Bountiful penis." |
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Stuck (2007) Director Stuart Gordon's dark cult film and black comedy was "inspired" by a similar true-to-life tabloid incident in Arlington, Texas in the year 2001. The visceral melodrama was poorly received, grossing only $67,000 with its widest release in 16 theatres over a month and a half. In this loose adaptation, a Providence, Rhode Island retirement home nursing assistant with trashy corn-row hair, Brandi Boski (Mena Suvari), was a very compassionate worker helping seniors at Silver Cedars Assisted Living facility. She was up for a promotion worth a lot more money. However, due to binging on martinis and ecstasy drugs at the HighLow club with her co-worker/best friend Tanya (Rukiya Bernard), and talking on her cellphone while driving home after midnight, Brandi committed a hit-and-run accident upon a pedestrian. She seriously injured a homeless, recently-evicted white-collar worker named Thomas Bardo (Stephen Rea), running into him as he was pushing a shopping cart, and having his bloodied body lodge itself half-way through her front windshield (according to a black witness: "The guy was stuck like a goddamn bug"). In a panic and fearful of what to do next since she was driving under the influence, and although Thomas was pleading "Help me," she hid the car in her garage. In her mind, she put the blame on Bardo, to avoid responsibility:
She promised: "I'll get help. I'll be right back," but then selfishly proceeded into her house where she told her African-American drug-dealing boyfriend Rashid (Russell Hornsby), over another few drinks, that she had been in an accident ("I hit someone...but it wasn't my fault"). She explained that there were no witnesses, and that the victim was "a bum...a street person." Rashid was relieved: "Nobody saw it. Nobody gonna give a s--t," reassuring her as they went to the bedroom for lovemaking. Meanwhile, the victim was still struggling for life and within earshot of their rap-music enhanced sex - impaled in the broken windshield glass. She screamed at the thought of his head crashing through the window while having intercourse, prompting Rashid to believe that his sexual pumping was effectively inciting her lust ("Oh, yeah, baby! F--k ya!"). The next morning, she assured Bardo, still alive: "I called, help's coming," but couldn't convince herself to dial 911. In fact, she clobbered Bardo over the head with a two by four to silence him from honking the horn - to avoid alerting the taxi cab driver who was picking her up for work. And in the film's social commentary, others were unable to assist - an illegal immigrant neighbor family failed to report "the hurt man" due to their own issues. |
Brandi Boski (Mena Suvari) |
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Superbad (2007) Director Greg Mottola's Judd Apatow-produced sleeper teen sex comedy, with a raunchy script by Knocked Up star Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (written when they were young teens about their own HS experiences), was a tremendously funny and popular hit during the summer of 2007 (but without the requisite nudity of this genre). It contained typical gross-out jokes and comedy surrounding three outcast, sex-obsessed, nerdy and "supergay" high-schoolers:
They all went to great lengths to attempt to lose their virginity before attending college. At the school lunch table, overweight Seth embarrassingly admitted to Evan his obsessive childhood habit of artfully drawing male genitalia:
He admitted how in 4th grade, his neighboring seatmate Becca happened to see one of his pictures (a "real big, veiny triumphant bastard" he called it), causing her to scream and report him to the school principa. The incident traumatized him with the added revelation of his Ghostbusters lunch box full of a variety of dick drawings. In another scene, typical teen Evan speculated on ideal female sexual feelings:
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Teeth (2007) Writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein's full-length feature film debut was this macabre cautionary, coming-of-age tale (and black horror-comedy). It was accused of being misogynistic and feministic at the same time. Its main female character was one who possessed vaginal teeth:
Dawn feared that her genitals had undergone "adaptation" with razor-sharp "teeth" - not just the mythic vagina dentate ("There's something inside of me that's lethal" and "I think there might be something weird going on inside"). Her unusual condition was possibly due to the two nuclear reactor cooling towers near her suburban home. She was the spokesperson for the local chastity group called "The Promise." In her science-health class, the full-page illustration of female genitalia had a big gold star plastered over it, as she explained, to prevent "violation of a woman's natural modesty." Her pierced, tattooed and maladjusted stepbrother Brad (John Hensley) had a scarred index finger from an early kiddie pool game of "Doctor" with her. Her first sexual experience took place in a dark cave after a swim with Tobey (Hale Appleman). It ended badly, as did a scene in the gynecologist's office with a perverted Dr. Godfrey (Josh Pais) ("What did you put in here?"), and in a third scene with a predatory male rapist. Surprisingly, the film displayed views of three severed penises, but no views of the toothy vagina. |
Dawn O'Keefe (Jess Weixler) |
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Virgin Territory (2007) This Elizabethan-style film was adapted from Giovanni Boccaccio’s "The Decameron." The inept and escapist teen comedy opened with one cartoonish cherub in the heavenly clouds urinating into a cup below, another one farting, and a third duo coupled together, with the quote:
Director David Leland's direct-to-DVD film was set during the time of the Black Death plague when it threatened Italy. It appeared that everyone in the bawdy cast, except stars Mischa Barton and Hayden Christensen, was seen in various stages of random undress. It starred Hayden Christensen as young 14th century Lorenzo de Lamberti who failed at obtaining the love of lifelong chaste crush Pampinea (Mischa Barton), so he sought shelter at a convent, posing as a deaf and mute gardener. At the convent, Lorenzo was immediately approached by two lusty and beautiful nuns:
The two sisters stripped off their gowns and offered themselves nude during a candle-lit bath. Two other randy nuns (Sister Gabriella (Elisabetta Canalis, George Clooney's girlfriend at one time) and Sister Maddalena (Katy Saunders)) approached Lorenzo, jealous of his attention to the other two nuns. Believing he was "like an angel from heaven," they both demanded:
Gabriella enticingly exposed her right breast to him from under her gown. In one of the film's more ludicrous scenes, two buxom farm milk-maids, Simona (Maimie McCoy) and Monna (Coral Beed), offered two guys some 'fresh milk' - cow's milk - seen during a sexy instructional scene in which the males were shown how to get milk from the animal's teats. The two orgasmically stroked the cow's teat and squeezed the hot milk onto the guys' faces:
The two then began to make love to them. Afterwards that night, one of the sexually-frustrated guys had a wet dream of bare-breasted angel Simona flying toward him, surrounded by winged penises. And in one of the film's many subplots toward the film's conclusion, a naked, skinny-dipping "enchantress" named Elissa (Kate Groombridge) emerged from a pool of water in front of wealthy Russian Count Dzerzhinsky (Matthew Rhys), to disrupt his arranged marriage plans to Pampinea. She kissed him and offered:
Her ploy allowed the interrupted love affair between Lorenzo and Pampinea to flourish.
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XXY (2007, Arg./Sp./Fr.) Writer/director Lucía Puenzo's drama was taglined:
It was probably the first non-exploitative film dealing with the controversial subject of hermaphrodism (technically known as Klinefelter's Syndrome). It told the unlikely story of 15 year-old daughter Alex (Inés Efron), an Argentinian teenager and intersexed hermaphrodite who was born with both male and female genitalia, although raised as a tomboyish female (and taking hormones to prevent the growth of a beard). She had what doctors called "sexual or genital ambiguity," caused by an extra X chromosome. She lived with her parents in a secluded fishing village in Uruguay. The drama really commenced when Alex's mother, Suli (Valeria Bertuccelli), invited a couple (plastic surgeon Ramiro (German Palacios) and his wife Erika (Carolina Peleritti)) and their confused and shy 15-year old son Alvaro (Martín Piroyansky) for the week-end. Her goal was to convince her husband, marine biologist Nestor Kraken (Ricardo Darín), that Alex needed to have an operation, to surgically 'correct' her child’s ambiguous sex. One day on the beach in a near rape scene, ignorant local teenagers chased Alex on the beach and pinned her down to check out the mystery of her physiology. Unexpectedly, the surgeon's son (who was possibly gay and was androgynously attracted to Alex) had an unexpected sexual encounter with her (rear-entry sex), with virginal Alex taking the male role - this set off a provocative chain reaction. |
Near-Rape on Beach The Sex Scene |