Lower City (2005, Braz.) (aka Cidade Baixa)

This acclaimed, sexually-explicit independent film was by co-writer/director Sérgio Machado (his debut feature film). The noirish, sultry, and grungy cityscapes were seedily portrayed in the film, including its strip clubs for lap dancing, floating brothels, gruesome cockfights, fixed boxing matches, violent and bloody fistfights, and sweaty, open-air bars.

The main star was Alice Braga (niece of famed 70s Brazilian actress Sonia Braga, appearing in her first major screen role, before appearing in the blockbuster I Am Legend (2007) opposite Will Smith), as:

• Karinna (Alice Braga), a beautiful, 20 year-old bleached-blonde stripper-lap dancer/hooker

She had two poor hustler friends:

• Deco (Lázaro Ramos)
• Naldinho (Wagner Moura)

Karinna was part of an erotic, doomed love-triangle threesome - often compared to a Brazilian version of Jules et Jim. She split the bonds between the two "brothers" with sexual tension, jealousy, taking advantage of their deteriorating relationship since childhood, and betrayal.

While traveling to Brazil's port city of Salvador da Bahia with them on their broken-down cargo motorboat in exchange for favors, the alluring Karinna soon became sexually-involved with both men in many heated sexual encounters and couplings (but never menage a trois), including dark alleyways.

The film's sexiest scene was Karinna's memorable pole-dance strip tease as "the blonde volcano" (with glitter on her glistening skin) performed in pulsating strobe lights at the Xanadoo club. At one point, Karinna declared to Naldinho: "I can't stay away from you or from him" - while he demanded: "You have to decide."

In another scene, Deco told Karrina: "We're not crazy enough to fight over a whore. I've had it with you. I don't want anybody's leftovers" but later asked Karinna to go away with him, although she feared prophetically: "You'd end up killing each other."

Manderlay (2005)

Controversial director Lars von Trier's sequel film to Dogville (2003) (part of a planned trilogy) was set in 1930s Alabama in a rural community that still practiced slavery at a secluded cotton plantation named Manderlay. The main character was:

• Grace Margaret Mulligan (earlier portrayed in the 2003 film by Nicole Kidman, but now by 24 year-old red-haired Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of actor/director Ron Howard)), a reforming, headstrong do-gooder

In one of the film's subplots, Grace performed in a graphic, inter-racial sex (simulated) interlude scene (interpreted as semi-rape by some critics) on a basically bare soundstage with former studly slave Timothy (Isaach De Bankole). She was ritualistically undressed and placed fully naked on a bed as a detached narrator in voice-over spoke:

"In Mam's bedroom, Grace recalled Flora's worrying intimate little details. Sexual intercourse amongst the munsie was determined by ancient traditions. It would not appeal to Grace, Flora had said, not with Grace's modern ideas of equality of people and the sexes. (A handkerchief was placed over Grace's head before the first strong thrust of penetration) But Grace seemed to have left her progressive attitudes at the table. Now actually in the situation she had dreamed of, it was all more bizarre than erotic. Anyway, Grace decided to hang on to this opinion."

As the grunting and thrusting continued, Grace's mouth appeared wide-open as the handkerchief was displaced from her face. All of a sudden, she screamed: "No" as the camera dramatically pulled back from a side-view of the bed.

Match Point (2005)

This was famed writer/director Woody Allen's first R-rated dramatic-erotic thriller, and his first film set and shot in England. The film, without Allen's typical humor, recalled elements of A Place in the Sun (1951), Body Heat (1981), Fatal Attraction (1987), Allen's own Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), his future film Cassandra's Dream (2007), and similarities to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment 1866 novel. Its main tagline was: "Passion, Temptation, Obsession."

Its main characters, in a love triangle, were:

• Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a handsome, recently-retired Irish tennis pro from a poor background, an instructor at an exclusive London tennis club; cool and arrogant
• Chloe Hewett (Emily Mortimer), the shy, sweet brunette heiress daughter of Eleanor (Penelope Wilton) and Alec Hewlett (Brian Cox)
• Nola Rice (Scarlett Johannson), a struggling, chain-smoking, blonde and sexy femme fatale American actress from Boulder, Colorado, the girlfriend/fiancee of Chloe's younger brother Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), and disapproved of by Eleanor for being "spoilt and temperamental"

The film began with a voice-over narration from the amoral Chris - a metaphoric musing about chance, luck and fate. At the time, he was reading the great Russian novelist's best-known work Crime and Punishment and The Cambridge Companion to Dostoevsky. The narration was presented with a side view of a tennis net and the freeze-frame shot of a tennis ball suspended in space over the net - poised to fall on one side or the other:

"The man who said, 'I'd rather be lucky than good,' saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose."

While dating (and having sex with) Chloe in London and becoming acquainted with her wealthy Hewlett family, Chris met the flirtatious Nola over a game of ping pong. She called him "extremely aggressive" while he complimented her "very sensual lips." Soon after, Chris was appointed as an office-worker in the company of her father, as part of a preparatory "grooming" process. Although he was about to marry into the wealthy Hewett family, he was smitten with Nola, who summarized to him her relationship to Tom: "I was overwhelmed with attention." She warned him:

"You're gonna do very well for yourself, unless you blow it...By making a pass at me...Men always seem to wonder. They think I'd be something very special...No one's ever asked for their money back."

The first steamy, clandestine tryst between Nola and Chris occurred shortly after another of Nola's failed auditions. They both met up in a wheat-field near the Hewlett country estate during a rainstorm. After they kissed, she asserted: "We can't do this...This can't lead anyplace," but they continued kissing. They dropped down into the long grass and she rolled on top of him. Seen from behind, she was on top as Chris reached under her purple shirt, touched her buttocks, and kissed her breasts before they made love (off-screen).

First Tryst Between Nola and Chris In a Wheat Field During a Rainstorm

Afterwards, Nola was distant to Chris: "I don't want to encourage anything. What happened, happened, Chris. I mean, the moment was very out of control for many reasons. I was upset, I was drinking, and the storm was overpowering...I'm not rationalizing. Passions are passions, but we're both very involved with other people....Look, you daydreamed about making love to me, and I'm not saying the fantasy didn't cross my mind, OK? We had our moment. But, you know, let's move on, get back to reality. Chris, we're gonna be brother and sister-in-law...Chris, forget it, it's over."

• Chris and Chloe were married, and soon after, she requested: "I want you to make me pregnant." She desperately wished for three children right away, although it was taking a long time for her to get pregnant, and they were consulting with a fertility doctor.
• The affair ended after Tom admitted that he had broken up with Nola (he revealed: "I've met someone else") - and she returned to the US to look for a job. Tom was married to already-pregnant Heather (Miranda Raison).
• However, after a chance meeting with Nola who had moved back to London and was working in a boutique, she reluctantly gave Chris her phone number and they continued their affair - discreetly.
• When Nola, ironically, became pregnant, she adamantly refused to get an abortion - for the third time ("It's a child conceived out of genuine passion, not as part of some fertility project...I expect you to do the right thing, OK? I'm not walking away from this"). She even threatened to divulge their affair to Chloe, who was beginning to suspect her husband's strange disappearances, phone calls, tenseness, anxiety and behavior, and even asked if he was having an affair ("Do you not love me anymore?"). Chris contemplated murder as a way out of his guilt-ridden, adulterous dilemma.
• With a shotgun (broken down and hidden in his tennis bag), Chris killed (off-screen) Nola's next-door apartment neighbor Mrs. Betty Eastby (Margaret Tyzack), then staged a burglary in her apartment; he also shot and killed Nola (off-screen) when she stepped off the elevator after returning from work.
• The murders were investigated by Scotland Yard as a drug-related robbery, with Nola as an accidental victim ("Poor unsuspecting soul came home at the wrong moment").
• Chloe announced that she was pregnant.
• Chris discarded the items stolen from Mrs. Eastby's apartment by throwing them in a river, but one of the items (a gold ring) fell short, hit a guard rail, and landed on the pavement.
• Upon initial questioning by Detective Mike Banner (James Nesbitt), Chris lied about being recently acquainted with Nola, although her diary included him in her writings ("As you can see, you're all over it"). He denied any link to the murder, but confessed to his recent affair ("You can't blame me for trying to hide the fact that I had an affair with her...I hope you don't think I had anything to do with her murder...I know it's not the most honorable thing to cheat on your wife, but that does not make me a murderer"). Banner asserted: "We're not making any moral judgments, just investigating a crime."
• Late one night, Chris was visited by the haunting ghost of Nola - he told her: "You can learn to push the guilt under the rug and - go on. You have to. Otherwise it overwhelms you." He also told the ghost of Mrs. Eastby, who was the real innocent bystander: "The innocent are sometimes slain to make way for a grander scheme. You were collateral damage." He also added: "Sophocles said, 'To never have been born may be the greatest boon of all.'" He then told Nola: "It would be fitting if I were apprehended and punished. At least there would be some small sign of justice. Some small measure of hope for the possibility of meaning."

Luckily for Chris, the gold ring which he discarded after the burglary-shooting was picked up by a known drug dealer-addict (a junkie who was later found murdered) and the drug-related burglary-crime was pinned on him ("The old woman's wedding ring was right in his pocket...Name and date engraved right on it"). The case against Chris was closed ("He's another poor schmuck who cheated on his wife"). Meanwhile, Chloe's baby was born - and her father Alec joyously toasted the boy: "With parents like Chloe and Chris, this child will be great at anything he sets his mind to." Tom retorted: "I don't care if he's great. I just hope that he's lucky." The final shot of the film saw Chris troubled, standing apart and very disconnected from his happy family.

Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005, UK/US)

With her debut "indie" film, Miranda July served as writer/director and star of this year's winner of the Special Jury Prize for "Originality of Vision" at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as the Camera d'Or (Golden Camera) Best First Film prize winner at Cannes. The film was rated R for "disturbing sexual content involving children" - even though it presented comic views of underage sexuality in a series of subplots.

The story told about a romance between:

• Christine Jesperson (Miranda July), an aspiring amateur video artist and service driver for the elderly
• Richard Swersey (John Hawkes), a recently-separated, socially-awkward shoe salesman

Other scenes included Richard's two Internet-savvy kids: six year-old son Robby (Brandon Ratcliff) anonymously sex-chatting on the Internet (in an instant message session initiated by his older 14 year-old brother Peter (Miles Thompson) with an unaware adult woman (Tracy Wright), and using the boy's own personal and innocent fixation about 'I want to poop back and forth' as the basis of the coprophiliac fantasy conversation:

"I'll poop in your butt hole and then you will poop it back into my butt and we will keep doing it back and forth with the same poop. Forever."

The phrase was mistaken for exotic scatological talk (with the response: "It makes me want to touch myself") - drawn by Robby with this smiley or emoticon: ))<>(( . Eventually, the young Robby had a real-life meeting with the stranger sitting on a park bench, revealed to be Nancy Harrington (Tracy Wright), the director-curator of the local art museum (the Center for Contemporary Art) where Christine had submitted her work.

In another scene, 14 year-old Peter allowed himself to be the blindfolded subject of a blow-job competition (off-screen) by two precocious, sexually-provocative teenaged neighbor girls who wished to practice their fellatio skills - Heather (Natasha Slayton) and Rebecca (Najarra Townsend) - the act required two washcloths, a towel, and two pieces of candy (preferably mints).

The same neighbor girls took up the dare of Richard's jolly co-worker, a perverted older neighbor named Andrew (Brad Henke) after he left sexually-lewd come-on notes taped to the windows of his house for them ("Then I would tell you to lick each other's tits while I licked both of your pussies") - but he sheepishly cowered inside when they called his bluff and came to his door to practice on him.

Melissa P. (2005, It.)

The coming-of-age tale by director Luca Guadagnino (and produced by actress Francesca Neri) was based upon the frank, scandalous best-selling teen memoirs book 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed by Melissa Panarello. It was co-produced with Spain by Italian thespians Francesca Neri and Claudio Amendola. Remarkably, the sexy Italian film was rated only PG in its own country, opening its viewing to 14 year olds there.

The title character role was:

• Melissa (18 year-old Spanish actress Maria Valverde (with dubbing into Italian by Alessia Amendola)), a baby-faced, shy, maladjusted 15 year-old Sicilian high school girl

She used sex to combat loneliness and neglect by her parents (especially her mother Daria (Fabrizia Sacchi)), conveyed through a "Dear Diary" format. Geraldine Chaplin played the part of Melissa's understanding, heavy-smoking grandmother Nonna Elvira, until she was taken to a convalescent home.

In the opening scene set at 7:15 in the morning, bare-breasted Melissa masturbated and caressed herself in her room in front of a hand-held mirror, when she received a phone call. She also pleasured herself during a bath with a detachable hand-held shower nozzle aimed at her privates.

Opening Credits of Melissa P.

The virginal child seductress also sought riskier extreme contact through sexual encounters with wealthy schoolmate Daniele (Primo Reggiani), first delivering oral sex to him in a secluded garden near a swimming pool when he instructed her: "Kiss my dick. Put it in your mouth. (afterwards cruelly) Maybe next time, you'll kiss me on the mouth."

She seemingly experienced an orgasm in gym class while hanging on a wooden pole and thinking about him closeby. She thought to herself: "How strange, I feel my body much more than before. I like it, but with him, I'd like it even more. I want him. I'm so sure."

Shortly later, after meeting Daniele in a pool hall (lit with blue light), she was seduced by him. He took her to his private residence, where he kissed her and asked: "Are you still a virgin?" When she replied, "Yes," he went further: "Do you want to do it with me? I want you so much." He stripped her from behind, before lying her down on a rug on her back, and forcefully entering her, to rob her of her virginity. She kept saying to herself: "I love you. I love you. I love you," but then he blurted out: "I don't love you." He showed her his bloody fingers after deflowering her. He coldly rejected her: "You're an idiot. Who asked you?" before walking off. Soon after, Melissa vowed to never let anyone hurt her again and to only think of her own pleasure.

Loss of Melissa's Virginity to Daniele

Further, through other sexual behaviors, including a threesome (a scene with Melissa, Daniele and his friend Arnaldo (Elio Germano) when she decided to take control), and a basement, near-rape orgy sequence when she became a plaything for others' gratifications (providing oral sex for five males), she attempted to seek her own identity.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005)

In this action/comedy by director Doug Liman, two married assassins targeted each other from rival organizations, while engaging in romantic and sizzling interplay:

• John (Brad Pitt)
• Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie)

[Note: This was the film in which the two fell in love on the set. Pitt divorced a year later in late 2005 from Friends' Jennifer Aniston - and subsequently partnered with Jolie.]

In the memorable formal dance scene, they both stripped each other of their weapons as they danced. He joked with her about his sexuality when she checked his crotch for a weapon: "That's all John, sweetheart."

Later, in a monumental and destructive fight scene in their own house as they still called each other "sweetheart," they fought each other first with their fists.

John: "Come on, honey. Come to Daddy."
Jane: (after retaliating) "Who's your Daddy now?"

They then fought with oversized weapons, concluding with guns raised at each other, but both were unable to pull the trigger. They called a truce - and then the bruised, turned-on lovers made passionate love.

At film's end, the couple were still engaged in marriage counseling (which also opened the film) - John encouraged the marriage counselor to ask the happy couple "the sex question" about how their sex lives had improved - the answer was "Ten" (on a scale from 1 to 10).

Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005, UK)

Stephen Frears' UK comedy (Oscar-nominated) was based on the true story of the Windmill Theatre in the 1940s in London - the playhouse was managed by an eccentric 70 year-old war-time widow:

• Laura Henderson (Judi Dench), the title character

She battled government censorship and transformed a run-down theater (the Windmill) in the 40s into a flashy revue of naked showgirls, when allowed to present shows with 'immobile' or motionless, fully-nude stage performers as living statues in 'artistic tableaux.' The performers (among others) included:

• Doris (Anna Brewster)
• Maureen (Kelly Reilly)
• Vera (Sarah Solemani)

To provide equality of the sexes, there was a brief nude glimpse of the theater's stubborn manager Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins).

The Notorious Bettie Page (2005)

Writer/director Mary Harron's R-rated period biopic, from a script co-written with Guinevere Turner, covered the life of '50s icon and brunette bondage pin-up queen Bettie Page (remarkably portrayed by actress Gretchen Mol). She often wore her hair as a shoulder-length pageboy haircut with bangs.

Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner said of her: "Bettie Page was one of Playboy magazine's early Playmates, and she became an iconic figure, influencing notions of beauty and fashion."

[Note: Page was the January 1955 Playboy centerfold, the first holiday centerfold. She was nude, on her knees and decorating a Christmas tree - and wearing only a Santa Claus cap.]

The film (alternating between both B/W and color) surveyed in a sketchy way Page's free-spirited life history:

• Page's fundamentalist background
• her innocent country girl roots in Nashville, TN
• her molestation by her father
• her abusive marriage
• an incident of a brutal gang rape
• her early days as a topless camera club fetish model posing with a whip and chains and other bondage set-ups
• her 1955 Playboy Magazine (Miss January) centerfold with a Christmas tree
• her targeting by a government 'witch hunt' against pornography (a "smut probe") led by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver (David Strathairn)

During her modeling days, she was photographed in numerous tawdry and kinky, S/M cheesecake poses for self-promoting photographer Irving Klaw (Chris Bauer). Klaw and his sister Paula operated a mail-order business specializing in cheesecake and bondage poses.

[Note: It has been estimated that there were 20,000 4-by-5-inch black-and-white glossy photographs taken of her by amateur shutterbugs from 1949 to 1957. Page had her most professional photographs taken in the mid-1950s by fashion photographer Bunny Yeager.]

Later in life at the age of 35, she walked away from modeling, turned back to Christianity and was born-again transformed. She died in 2008 at the age of 85.

The Real Bettie Page

Peindre Ou Faire L'amour (2005, Fr.) (aka To Paint or Make Love)

Writers/directors Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu's 98 minute poetic, erotic and visually-pleasing comedy-drama, the brothers' fourth feature film, told about a happily-married, middle-aged, urban, bourgeois couple: the talented red-haired hobby artist/painter Madeleine (Sabine Azéma) and her French meteorologist husband William Lasserre (Daniel Auteuil). Madeleine also managed a business specializing in remodeling homes.

The two relocated from an affluent life in Paris - for early retirement - to a broken-down, rural stone villa-cottage in the French countryside (in the mountainous Vercors region) that needed refurbishing. They were soon to be empty-nesters due to their only daughter Elise's (Florence Loiret-Caille) move to Rome on a scholarship to study architecture at a prestigious school.

Madeleine Lasserre (Sabine Azéma)	William Lasserre (Daniel Auteuil)
Adam (Sergi López)	Eva (Amira Casar)

The Lasserres became sensually reawakened and acquired a new positive outlook on life by their acquaintance with the visually-impaired local mayor Adam (Sergi López), with a super-sensitive nose and sense of taste and poetic word-smithing skill, and his lovely, free-spirited and sexy girlfriend Eva (Amira Casar). Eva easily persuaded Madeleine to paint her portrait - she eagerly and promptly took off all her clothes - except her black socks. The slightly embarrassed Madeleine asked why she was so eager and was told: "No one has seen me for a long time."

They became better acquainted after Adam and Eva's house burned down to the ground, and they were invited to move in with the Lasserres. Soon, the lives of the retired couple were almost imperceptibly lured or tempted into a life of 'swinging' (or partner-swapping) and adultery with the passionate couple, and they found themselves semi-addicted to hedonistic pleasure.

Shortly later, Adam and Eva left France for a Pacific island, and then phoned inviting the unsettled Lasserres to join them. While they were in the process of selling their home, they met another couple who came to the house. This couple, the striking blonde Julie ((Hélène de Saint-Père) and Mathieu (Philippe Katerine), became the perfect substitute for the erotic adventuresome spirit exhibited by Adam and Eva.

In the upstairs bathroom, Julie removed her maroon dress (over her head) while sitting on the toilet/bidet, then approached William fully naked. After he touched her genitals, they proceeded downstairs to the living room (where Julie's husband was delivering oral sex to Madeleine) and there, in front of a crackling fire, they also passionately engaged in sex.

Shadowboxer (2005)

Director Lee Daniels' daring, exploitative and provocative melodramatic crime-thriller (his directorial debut film) pushed the envelope and provided shock value with its story of inter-racial (and incestual) sex and crude violence.

It told about a female assassin named Rose (Helen Mirren) who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She and her younger inter-racial lover/step-son Mikey (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), a shadowboxer, were commissioned to kill Vickie (Vanessa Ferlito), the supposedly unfaithful wife of Clayton (Stephen Dorff), a sociopathic and villainous mob boss. Their plan went awry when Vickie's 9-month pregnancy compelled Rose and Mikey to help her give birth when her water broke as they were about to kill her - and they then protected her and her newborn son.

In addition to the film's crude and violent content, it also contained sexually-graphic scenes. In an early controversially-indulgent scene of sodomy and anal sexual assault, Clayton threatened traitorous Tommy (Jack Krizmanich) when he was tied down to a pool table, accusing him of having sex with Vickie. An 8-ball was used as a gag in his mouth. Clayton rammed a jagged, half-broken pool cue up his rear (off-screen) before killing him.

In another equally-controversial scene, while having coital sex from behind with his topless girlfriend (Maria Soccor) draped over a desk - Clayton withdrew himself when interrupted by an argument outside his door, exhibiting his semi-erect condom-covered penis, and then shot dead those who disturbed him ("What did I tell ya about talkin' when I'm f--kin'?").

And in an outdoor sex scene between Mikey and Rose, Mikey shot her in the head with a revolver as she climaxed - an unusual mercy killing.

Sin City (2005)

Director Robert Rodriguez' violent, carnage-filled film (with cannibalism, dismemberment, mutilation, castration and more!) was a bloody and ultra-stylistic noirish monochromatic (with splashes of color) - a noirish representation of Frank Miller's graphic, comic-book novels with three overlapping, cross-cut hard-boiled stories set in dark, corrupted and rain-slick Basin City.

In the film's pre-credits opening ("The Customer is Always Right"), a doomed, suicidal red dress-wearing dame known as Customer (Marley Shelton) stood on a terrace high above the cold, teeming city - to be kissed and then killed by The Man/Salesman (Josh Hartnett), whom she had supposedly hired as a hit man; after killing her with a silencer-gun, he mentioned that he would cash her check in the morning.

In the next tale "That Yellow Bastard" (the first of two parts), disgraced, heart-failing retiring -cop John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) saved young 11 year-old Nancy Callahan (Makenzie Vega as youth, Jessica Alba as adult) from depraved serial-killing pedophile Roark Jr.'s (Nick Stahl) rape and murder at the docks; Junior was one of Basin City's protected criminals - the son of Senator Roark (Powers Boothe).

In the second part of the story (much later in the film), after a deadly shoot-out between Hartigan and Roark, Jr., Hartigan was put on trial by Senator Roark and framed for Junior's crimes; he was put in jail and solitary confinement for 8 years. After his parole release, Hartigan relocated Nancy, now 19 years old, and was stunned to learn that she was performing as an exotic stripper (in a cowgirl outfit) in Kadie's Bar.

"That Yellow Bastard"
Hartigan (Bruce Willis)	Nancy (Jessica Alba)	Roark Jr. - aka Yellow Bastard (Nick Stahl)

He realized that it was a trap - he had been released to lead the forces of evil to Nancy; he was then pursued by the deformed, smelly and disfigured Roark, Jr., now known as Yellow Bastard. Again, Hartigan protected Nancy from the Yellow Bastard and brutally killed him (first by stabbing and then ripping off his genitals), but then suicidally took his own life to ensure Nancy's future safety.

In another storyline known as "The Hard Goodbye," tough ex-con, thuggish, Frankenstein-like street fighter Marv (Mickey Rourke) sought revenge against psycho-serial killer Kevin (Elijah Wood) for the Roark-instigated murder of his blonde hooker-lover Goldie (Jaime King); after having sex and sleeping with her in a red heart-shaped bed, he awoke to find her dead; Marv was set up and framed for the crime.

Marv (Mickey Rourke)

Kevin (Elijah Wood)

Wendy (Jaime King) - Goldie's Twin Sister

He met with Lucille (Carla Gugino), his lesbian parole officer, who was abruptly awakened from bed, topless, and brandished her gun at him, and strutted around wearing a brief thong; he told her he was in pursuit of the one responsible for Goldie's death. He told her he was in pursuit of the one responsible for Goldie's death; he discovered that the person behind the crime was powerful Cardinal Patrick Henry Roark (Rutger Hauer), the brother of Senator Roark. (Lucille was also preyed upon by Kevin, and eventually lost her life when gunned down by police).

Lucille (Carla Gugino), Marv's Lesbian Parole Officer

Marv went after silent, creepy, cannibalistic serial killer Kevin - who had decapitated many other Basin City prostitutes; after Marv's fight to the death with Kevin, as he urged: "Is that the best you can do, creep?", Marv tortured and dismembered Kevin, and then propped him up against a tree, after his arms and legs were sawed off and tied off with rubber tubing tourniquets. Kevin was then devoured by a meat-eating wolf (Kevin's own pet wolf). Afterwards, the exasperated Marv cut Kevin's head off with a saw - and stood there with the decapitated head in his left hand.

Marv (Mickey Rourke) Confronting Serial-Killer Kevin (Elijah Wood)

Kevin With Arms and Legs Sawed Off

Approach of Kevin's Meat-Eating Wolf

Marv also killed Cardinal Roark - the Senator's brother and the one responsible for Goldie's murder. In the bleak ending, Marv accepted his death sentence by execution in the electric chair for the murders of Kevin and Cardinal Roark (and for all their crimes as well). Before his death, Goldie's twin sister Wendy (also Jaime King) thanked Marv for avenging Goldie's death.

A third tale ("The Big Fat Kill") was about Sin City photographer and PI Dwight McCarthy (Clive Owen) who angered abusive Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro) - because he had begun dating Jackie Boy's girlfriend Shellie (Brittany Murphy); the prostitutes in Old Town were led by Dwight's sometime-lover Gail (Rosario Dawson), where Dwight followed and watched as Jackie Boy began threatening one of the other prostitutes named Becky (Alexis Bledel); leather-clad dominatrix, vigilante leader Gail with an Uzi machine-gun was in a turf war with the streetwalkers against corrupt cops, one of whom was abusive Jackie Boy.

Silent female martial arts expert Miho (Devon Aoki), one of Old Town's prostitute defenders and protectors along with Gail, also had been battling against Jackie Boy; Jackie Boy ended up dead from his own backfiring gun; Dwight discovered that Jackie Boy was actually Det. Lt. "Iron Jack" Rafferty, a Basin City police officer; if it was learned that the cop had been killed in Old Town, war would be waged on the prostitutes by the mob and Irish mercenaries.

Meanwhile, the traitorous Becky had sold out Old Town by betraying the prostitutes to the mob after the killing of Jackie Boy, for money and to ensure her mother's safety from the mob. Gail was kidnapped by mob enforcer Manute (Michael Clarke Duncan) and held for ransom before an all-out assault and gun battle; Dwight was able to intervene and free Gail and kill Manute, while the other prostitutes gunned down the remaining mob-mercenaries, as the injured Becky fled; in the short finale, Becky was confronted by the hit-man Salesman in a hospital elevator - she was about to be assassinated for betraying the prostitutes.

Each of the three main characters died for unselfish reasons: (1) Hartigan to protect Nancy, (2) Marv to avenge Goldie's murder, and to protect Wendy and other prostitutes, and (3) Becky to protect her mother from the mob.

Three (2005, US/UK) (aka Survival Island)

Writer/director Stewart Raffill's preposterous erotic action/thriller (compared unfavorably to Dead Calm and Swept Away - with Madonna) was produced in 2003.

The unintentionally funny film - only released for a short time theatrically in mid-2006, was lambasted for being lame, poorly directed, acted and written (mostly for its characterization of Manny and for the voodoo subplot). It was also Kelly Brook-breast obsessed, with frequent views of her in and out of a skimpy white bikini.

Jennifer (Kelly Brook) Shipwrecked

It told a tale about a shipwrecked Caribbean private yacht, taken by a rich couple:

• Jack Matson (Billy Zane), macho and wealthy
• Jennifer (Kelly Brook, FHM Magazine's Sexiest Woman in the World in 2005), Jack's pretty, big-breasted wife

She and crew shiphand Manny (Juan Pablo Di Pace) were stranded and marooned on a remote island -- where conflict and sexual tension arose soon afterwards when Jack (without survival skills) also appeared and created a fierce love triangle.

The real-life couple who met on the set, Billy Zane and Kelly Brook were later engaged - and garnered headlines in late 2005 when Zane unsuccessfully threatened producers to remove Brook's nude scenes.

Transamerica (2005)

Desperate Housewives ABC-TV sitcom star Felicity Huffman earned an Oscar nomination for her role in this low-budget, R-rated independent road film. She was in a gender-bending role as:

• Bree (with the given name of Stanley), a pre-operative transgendered woman (or male-to-female transsexual)

Bree displayed full-frontal nudity as both a man (with a prosthetic penis) and as a woman!

S/he discovered that (s)he had fathered a 17-year-old son - a troubled and surly, drug-abusing 17-year-old gay hustler named Toby (Kevin Zegers).

In one scene, she/he relieved himself at the side of the road while traveling from NY to CA by car with his/her son (witnessed by him through the car's rear-view mirror).

Another scene showed him/her coming out of the bathroom and embarrassed to be seen in his/her underwear by his/her son, and in a post-operative scene, she checked herself out in the bathtub.

The Wayward Cloud (2005, Fr./Taiwan) (aka Tian bian yi duo yun)

Tsai Ming-liang's porn-musical was controversial for its full-frontal nudity and explicit oral sex.

In a metaphoric scene, a nubile nurse (real-life Japanese porn actress Sumomo Yozakura) was lying naked from the waist down on her back on a white bed - her legs were spread-eagled and bent at the knees, with a juicy half of a watermelon between her legs. Low-budget porn film actor Hsiao-Kang (Kang-sheng Lee) crawled toward the nurse's fruit - his tongue lapped at her, and his fingers prodded into the sweetly-sticky, squishy melon. After she had an orgasm, Hsiao-Kang stuck a vagina-sized chunk of drippy watermelon pulp in her mouth.

In another outrageous and bizarre Busby Berkeley-esque production number, a troupe of marching, bikini-clad females with red plastic buckets on their heads, small pink toilet plungers attached to their breasts, and thrusting blue plungers, circled around Hsiao-Kang dressed as a giant penis head in a large men's restroom.

The Wayward Cloud

Other scenes included one of Yozakura sitting on a kitchen counter and masturbating with a plastic water bottle, various making-of-porn scenes, and the film's controversial, open-ended final sequence.

Wedding Crashers (2005)

This bawdy film from director David Dobkin marked a return to R-rated comedies with numerous T & A shots. It was about two intrepid Washington DC bachelors, divorce mediators, and lifelong friends:

• John Beckwith (Owen Wilson)
• Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn)

They invited themselves to nuptial receptions to pick up on women and bridesmaids (including one named Claire (Rachel McAdams) and her "stage-five clinger" sister Gloria (Isla Fisher)).

The film also included the sped-up, musical "wedding sluts" montage sequence, to the tune of the Isley Brothers' "Shout," of the two scammers at wedding receptions carousing, drinking shots, dancing, and popping champagne bottles - and soon after in bed with partly-clothed and topless women who flopped down on the bed in front of them (including in order, unclothed: busty brunette Rachel Sterling, Ivana Bozilovic, blonde Diora Baird as Vivian, and Hindu Woman (Naureen Zaim)).

Wedding Montage "Shout" Sequence
Naureen Zaim	Ivana Bozilovic
Diora Baird	Rachel Sterling

There was also the racy scene of John being seduced by sexually-insatiable Kathleen "KittyKat" Cleary (54 year-old Jane Seymour) - the socialite wife of Treasury Secretary and presidential wannabe William Clearly (Christopher Walken). Kathleen invited John to sample her new breast implants. She opened her blouse and seductively boasted to the shocked John:

"I just had my tits done. Do you like 'em?...William doesn't give a s--t about my tits...You've been playing 'cat-and-mouse' with me ever since you came here....Call me Kat... Call me 'Kitty Kat' (growling)...Feel 'em...I said feel them!...I'm not letting you out of this room, until you feel them."

Left with no choice, he reluctantly reached out and felt her breasts, replying:

"Wow! They feel really nice. Real orb-like. It's amazing what they can do..."

Although she appeared turned on by his mammary massage, he was rebuffed for sampling them and accused of being a "pervert."

Where the Truth Lies (2005)

This controversial, tangled and convoluted film-noirish feature film from Canadian director Atom Egoyan was a lurid and sexy backstage crime/murder mystery based upon Rupert Holmes' 2003 novel.

The film was filled with female and male nudity and was initially rated NC-17 by the MPAA for its sex scenes (especially the threesome scene). The film was released in both an explicit unrated version and as an R-rated version.

The erotic film was set in two time periods (1957 and 15 years later in 1972). In the earlier story, it told about an amoral and pill-popping comedy duo funny-man team in 1957 resembling Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis:

• Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon), an American
• Vince Collins (Colin Firth), a Britisher

Often, there were flashbacks to 1957 based upon three chapters of Lanny's written autobiographical memoirs. In that year, the two performers held a record-breaking polio telethon in Miami, Florida. Then, they immediately vacated their Miami Versailles Hotel suite, and flew north to New Jersey to the Palace Del Sol Hotel. They were there for the opening of the hotel's showroom.

[Important note: Both the Miami hotel and the NJ hotel were owned by the duo's supportive mob boss Sally San Marco (Maury Chaykin).]

Strangely, right after their arrival in NJ, their Miami room service waitress (and adoring fan), red-headed college student coed Maureen O'Flaherty (Rachel Blanchard), was found naked and dead in their New Jersey hotel. The comedians broke up their act shortly afterwards. Her body was encased in a ice-filled crate of lobsters when they first arrived (although the official story was that she was found in the bathtub). The cause of death was allegedly from drowning combined with a drug overdose --

In reality, Rachel had been murdered (smothered) in Miami, Florida, then her corpse had been flown from there to Newark, NJ and planted there. But why?

Later, it was revealed that she was killed because she witnessed Vince's closeted bisexuality-homosexuality during an attempted threesome sex scene in their Miami hotel room the night before the 39-hour telethon. Lanny screamed at Vince for attempting anal sex with him as he made love in the missionary position to Maureen:

"You got the endzone there, Vince...Get the f--k off me. We don't f--k, Vince ! We're buddies, we're pals, we're partners, we're a duo. We love each other, but we don't f--k!"

Afterwards, Maureen - who was researching the duo as an aspiring journalist, asked for a bribe to keep her secret and embarrassing knowledge quiet ("Who's gonna pay me?...I'm not looking for a tip..."). In the Miami hotel room, Maureen had kept her recorder on after a recorded interview, and had taped the unusual sexual encounter. Lanny went to bed, and discovered the next morning that she was dead.

Her killing was a psychosexually-related crime committed by Lanny's bodyguard, assistant and valet Reuben (David Hayman) who had smothered her with a pillow in order to silence her and protect his employment from blackmail and ruin for bisexuality.

15 years later in 1972, worldly, award-winning aspiring young journalist Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman), a polio survivor who was once a "miracle" guest on their final telethon show before the murder, pursued the two comedians for more interviews, to uncover the truth. She had been hired to ghost-write Vince's autobiography - a book deal for which Vince would be paid $1 million.

[Note: Karen had appeared on the telethon show in 1957, dressed like Alice in Wonderland - coincidentally, Wonderland was also the name of a polio clinic, supported by Vince, that treated children with physical handicaps.]

Her job was to write a provocative article/book to find "where the truth lies" in the circumstances surrounding the duo's split and Maureen's mysterious death. During Karen's work on the book, she made love to Lanny during a one-night stand after a dinner date at a Chinese restaurant, while impersonating her best friend elementary school teacher "Bonnie Trout" - to keep her identity a secret.

When both Lanny and Vince learned Karen's true identity and objective, and Vince found out that Lanny had sex with Karen, he feared that the truth about Maureen's death would soon be revealed. To produce possible incriminating evidence against Karen (in order to then blackmail her), Vince drugged and photographed Karen at his place when she was having lesbian sex (possibly considered rape) with aspiring singer/prostitute Alice (Kristin Adams), who wore a bluish Alice in Wonderland outfit.

In one of the film's hotter lesbian scenes, Karen experienced 'wet' oral sex performed on her (a glistening chin emerged on her partner's face). Vince then proposed blackmail against Karen, unless she told her publisher that there was nothing suspicious about Maureen's death.

Toward the end of the film, Karen learned what had truly happened. It appeared that Vince was so drunk the night of the murder that he was unsure whether he had committed the murder or not. Nonetheless, in the film's conclusion, Vince committed suicide in the same Miami hotel where Maureen had died. Reclining in an ice-filled bathtub, he took a sleeping pill/champagne alcohol overdose.

And in the last few minutes, Reuben revealed that he had the incriminating tape that was recorded the night of the murder during and after Maureen's interview of the duo. He confessed that he had committed Maureen's murder. Reuben had first blackmailed Vince over the tape for a million dollars -- the reason that Vince had agreed to do a book deal for a million dollars. Then, in a second attempt at blackmail, he tried to coerce Karen into having her publishing firm purchase the tape for a million dollars.

The film's offensive scenes, some of which were shortened/edited, were set in their Miami hotel in the late 1950s:

Some of the More Controversial or Offensive Scenes
		The repeated hip thrusting of Lanny as he took Denise (Rebecca Davis) from behind doggy-style. She begged: "Don't stop" when room service interrupted them (Maureen delivered food three days before her death).
	Vince on the couch received oral sex from unnamed hookers, seen blurrily only in the background during a fabricated orgy scene (in a flashback from the memoirs).
		The threesome scene (see description above) between Vince, Lanny, and Maureen.