The year 2017 - and the many years before - have demonstrated that the most rampant and explicit nudity has not been on the theatrical big-screen, but has appeared in a myriad number of TV/cable shows. Although the collection of stars and shows below seems to be comprehensive, it barely scratches the surface of the many stars and cable series/shows that have featured lots of sex scenes and bare skin - always pushing the envelope of what is acceptable.

The sheer number of new shows on premium TV cable channels - to escape the FCC's rules on indecency, is astonishing. It has become commonplace and frequent to see bare breasts, butts, and some glimpses of genitals (and even some full-frontal male views) - and these instances are not blurred out. On-screen nudity and sexual scenes have boldly saturated the market.

Nudity and Sexual Scenes in Cable-TV Dramas and Shows
Rogue DIRECTV Ashley Greene	The Fall BBC, NETFLIX Gemma McCorry	Kingdom DIRECTV Lina Esco	Game of Thrones HBO Emilia Clarke	The Young Pope HBO Olivia Macklin
Girls HBO Jemima Kirke	Vinyl HBO Olivia Wilde	Bloodline NETFLIX Andrea Riseborough	House of Lies SHOWTIME Anastacia McPherson	Z: The Beginning of Everything AMAZON Christina Ricci
Game of Thrones HBO Nathalie Emmanuel	GLOW NETFLIX Kate Nash	Masters of Horror SHOWTIME Cinthia Moura	Berlin Station EPIX Fernanda Diniz	White Famous SHOWTIME Elizabeth Ruiz
The Dark NETFLIX Gina Alice Stiebitz	Easy NETFLIX Karley Sciortino	Easy NETFLIX Lindsay Burdge	Gomorrah SUNDANCE TV Boryana Krumova Manoilova	Godless NETFLIX Michelle Dockery
The Girlfriend Experience STARZ Riley Keough	The Girlfriend Experience STARZ Louisa Krause	Good Girls Revolt AMAZON Genevieve Angelson	Red Oaks AMAZON Alexandra Turshen	Comrade Detective AMAZON Bianca Pintea
Babylon Berlin NETFLIX Liv Lisa Fries	The Deuce HBO Margarita Levieva	The Deuce HBO Maggie Gyllenhaal	The Deuce HBO Emily Meade	The Deuce HBO Jamie Neumann
Outlander STARZ Hannah James	Outlander STARZ Caitriona Balfe	Tin Star AMAZON Kaycee Clark	Get Shorty EPIX Sarah Stiles	Suburra NETFLIX Carlotta Antonelli
Marcella NETFLIX Florence Pugh	Marcella NETFLIX Florence Pugh	Versailles CANAL+ (France) Anna Brewster	I Love Dick AMAZON India Menuez	Flaked NETFLIX Lina Esco

Atomic Blonde (2017)

Director David Leitch's formulaic, twisting and complex espionage-thriller and mystery story was - in part - based upon Oni Press's 2012 graphic novel series The Coldest City. The stylishly-filmed effort (with neon tones) that was peppered with 80s tunes was the director's solo directorial debut. The slightly-cartoonish movie was noted for multiple over-the-top scenes of martial arts hand-to-hand fighting and intense action sequences (especially in one apartment stairwell fight), car chases, and the requisite number of double-agents and double-crosses. Many weapons or lethal tools came into play at various times: a red stiletto, firehose, a cooking pot, a hot-plate, a corkscrew, a lampshade, and a rope.

The badass female-centered film, told mostly in flashback, was set during the last year of the 80s decade, during the waning years of the Cold War and at the time of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It starred Charlize Theron (the film's producer!) as the bruised action heroine Lorraine Broughton, an MI6 agent who had just completed a 10-day mission in Berlin, and was being debriefed in London by her agency head Eric Gray (Toby Jones), along with MI6 representative Chief 'C' (James Faulkner) and CIA chief Emmett Kurzfeld (John Goodman). Before the debriefing, vodka-swigging Broughton emerged from her blue-tinged icy bathtub, exhibiting her many combat wounds before a mirror (black eye, sore muscles, facial bruises).

With Lorraine, British agent David Percival (James McAvoy) (working and residing in Berlin as a station chief for the British) was assigned by MI6 to acquire a list of undercover double agents operating in the Soviet Union and in the West. The list (found on microfilm in a wristwatch), considered an "atomic bomb of information," had been stolen from another assassinated MI6 operative named James Gasciogne (Sam Hargrave). The thief and murderer was corrupt KGB agent Yuri Bakhtin (Jóhannes Jóhannesson). The list was very crucial, because the identity of one of the double-agent KGB-Stasi villains named Spyglass (Eddie Marsan) was on the list. [Note: Spyglass had also memorized the entire contents of the secret agents list.] One of Lorraine's other goals was to uncover and kill a duplicitous double-agent known as Satchel.

Upon her arrival in Berlin, Lorraine was immediately ambushed by Russian agents associated with arms dealer and KGB associate Aleksander Bremovych (Roland Møller). During the mission with her partner Percival to retrieve the list and its contents, she eventually realized that he was a rogue libertine allied with Bremovych, and that he had strangled her French co-hort Delphine to death. Vengefully, she shot him in the torso as he admitted:

"So, what have I learned after all this time? After all the sleepless nights, lying to friends, lovers, myself? Playing this crooked game in this crooked town filled with backstabbers and four-faced liars? I'll tell you what I've learned. One thing and one thing only. I f--king love Berlin!"

As he gasped for some final breaths, he told her: "I've read that list, Lorraine. And you feature heavily. Turns out you've been a very naughty girl...It's en route to MI6, where it belongs....Truth and lies. People like us don't know the difference..." She corrected him: "No, we know the difference, David. We choose to ignore it. Isn't that right, Comrade Satchel....It's a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver." He congratulated her: "Well played" - before she ended his life with a shot to the head. To her superiors, Lorraine identified Percival as Satchel.

In the film's ending twist, however, Lorraine was revealed to be a CIA 'triple-agent' working with Kurzfeld at the CIA - she was Satchel - and the film concluded with her point-blank bloody killing of Bremovych and his agents in a Paris hotel suite.

During her time in Berlin, Lorraine engaged in a very graphic relationship with artistic lesbian French spy-agent Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella). After meeting in a raucous nightclub bar where music played (and a sign read: "EVERYTHING YOU WANT IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF FEAR"), Delphine seductively suggested: "I've been dying to ask you a question" before kissing her, and then urged: "Let's go someplace quiet." In a hallway, they began to have sex by hungrily kissing some more, but then, Lorraine felt Delphine's gun, grabbed it and questioned her at gunpoint:

Lorraine: "Why the gun, Delphine?"
Delphine: "You're not as well-disguised as you may think. I know who you are. You're Lorraine Broughton, MI6, and you're here because of the death of Gascoigne."
Lorraine: "What do you know about Gascoigne?"
Delphine: "Nothing, but if someone is killing Allied officers, shouldn't we all care? Whatever is in that list has people willing to kill for it. This is my first assignment with the French intelligence. I've only been here a year. I'm scared, okay? I got into this because it was exciting. But it's never been like this in Berlin."
Lorraine: "You should have become a poet. Or a rock star."

After they realized they were fellow agents, although Delphine was a rank rookie, they kissed some more, stripped each other down, and engaged in a same-sex lesbian tryst.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Director Denis Villeneuve's overly-long, R-rated, visually-stunning, neo-noir sci-fi sequel was set thirty years following Ridley Scott's original Blade Runner (1982), that took place in Los Angeles in the year 2019. The story again involved the manufacture of replicants (or bioengineered humans "designed by the Tyrell Corporation for use off-world"), now by a new corporation, that were employed as slaves. Older, runaway rogue replicants often needed to be hunted down and eliminated by 'blade-runners' (police officers). In this installment, a search was on for the replicant-child offspring of Blade Runner's Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) and replicant love interest Rachael (Sean Young).

The five Oscar nominations it received were mostly technical honors: Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Production Design. These honors were well-deserved and were demonstrated throughout.

In a striking birthing sequence within the Wallace Corporation headquarters (Wallace Corp. took over and revived the creation-manufacture of replicants from the Tyrell Corporation), megalomaniacal Wallace Corporation CEO Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) - a godlike yet blind billionaire industrialist, Tyrell's evil successor, ordered: "New model. Let us see her, then."

A Female Replicant (Sallie Harmsen) fell to the floor from a giant, suspended vertical plastic bag. After she was dumped in a naked state, Wallace examined, caressed and cradled her head and told her: "First thought, one tends to fear to preserve the clay. It's fascinating. Before we even know what we are, we fear to lose it. Happy Birthday. Shh...Now, let's have a look at you." Tiny insect-like drones black drones circled around her.

Slightly later, as the female newborn stood naked before him, he continued by calling his replicant product an 'angel.' His intention was to breed obedient Nexus 9 "angels" to colonize planets across the universe. She was an example of the limitless future for humanity (and for his corporation) in his view - however, with his godlike power to create life (by the millions and trillions), he was dismayed and also furious that he had not perfected how to create replicants with procreative or reproductive capabilities. Because she was 'barren' or infertile, he killed her:

"We make angels in the service of civilization. Yes, there were bad angels once. I make good angels, now. That is how I took us to nine new worlds. Nine. A child can count to nine on fingers. We should own the stars!... Every leap of civilization was built off the back of a disposable work force. We lost our stomach for slaves, unless engineered. But I can only make so many. That barren pasture, empty and salted. Right here. (He touched her abdomen and womb area) The dead space between the stars. And this, the seed that we must change forever. (He viciously gutted and slashed her with a knife, and blood trickled down her legs) I cannot breed them, so help me, I have tried. We need more replicants than can ever be assembled. Millions, so we can be trillions more. We could storm Eden and retake her. (He kissed her, then turned away, as she crumpled and collapsed dead to the floor) Tyrell's final trick, procreation. Perfected and lost. But there is a child. (He delivered instructions to his henchman Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) to bring Deckard's (Harrison Ford) miracle child to him - birthed by Rachael (Sean Young), to attain the power of reproduction) Bring it to me....The best angel of all."

The film's most original, complicated, hypnotic CGI sex scene (compared often to the VR sex scene in Her (2013)) was dubbed 'the holographic threesome sex scene.' There was considerable criticism of the movie for its latent sexist attitudes, objectification and misogyny toward females, although it was counter-argued that those elements of subjugation existed because of the dystopian world of the film.

The scene in question began when red-haired human Mariette (Mackenzie Davis), a replicant or sentient sex worker (a pleasure model), stepped in to a Los Angeles apartment to act as a surrogate for Blade-Runner/Officer K's (Ryan Gosling) holographic-girlfriend Joi (Ana de Armas). K had purchased the commercially-manufactured Joi - an adaptive hologram, as a virtual girlfriend-companion to improve his lonely and difficult life. She was creating or orchestrating an elaborate fantasy for him to enjoy, by hiring Mariette to assist her as a surrogate or stand-in physical body to simulate the consummation of their relationship physically:

Joi: It's OK, she's real. I wanna be real for you.
K: You are real for me.
Mariette: You have a special lady, here. OK, let's do it.

Joi walked over to Mariette and projected her digital self onto her. The features of both were merged together via CGI, but there were subtle breaks, unsynchronized flickerings in their melded union when they made movements, as the love-making scene commenced - it was a three-way transaction.

Holographic Threesome Sex Scene

At the end of the film, LAPD Officer K (with a big bandage on his nose) watched Joi as a giant holographic stripper or pleasure model, glowing pink with black bangs. Her favors to fulfill his wishes were advertised with blinking neon signs that read: "JOI - EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO SEE/HEAR." She crouched down to him and spoke seductively:

Hello, handsome. What a day, hmm? You look lonely. I can fix that. You look like a good Joe.

Fifty Shades Darker (2017)

This erotic, glittery drama sequel directed by James Foley, following after Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) (directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson), again starred Dakota Johnson as assistant literary editor Anastasia 'Ana' Steele and Jamie Dornan as charismatic Seattle billionaire sadist Christian Grey. Both films were derived from British author E. L. James' 2011 novel. A sequel would follow: Fifty Shades Freed (2018).

Its taglines were: "Every Fairy Tale Has a Dark Side" and "Slip into Something a Shade Darker." It had abundant nudity, mostly the breasts and buttocks of its main female star (with no male genital nudity). In terms of time frames, the couple spent about 8 minutes of the film having sex, and almost 3 minutes making out.

Box-office receipts for the voyeuristic R-rated film were quite successful, but it was panned for its acting and storyline. On a budget of $55 million, the film made $114.4 million (domestic) and $381 million (worldwide). To bring in mostly female crowds, it was released - as before - on Valentine's Day weekend.

Ana was submissive, naive, and innocent in the first film, but in this installment, she took more caution and control over her relationship with Grey. They were reacquainted when he strangely (and obsessively) bought six giant pictures of her at a photography show. Over dinner, she insisted on renegotiating their terms if they were to rekindle their passions: "No rules, no punishments and no more secrets" - what she called "a vanilla relationship."

Becoming more of a personal issue this time around, Christian's troubled childhood accounted for many of his current difficulties, his recurring nightmares, his problems with past partners, and his painful inner demons - told as cheap psychology:

• his birth mother was a crack-addicted prostitute, who committed suicide when Christian was four years old; he was later adopted by stepmother Grace Trevelyan Grey (Marcia Gay Harden)
• he was expelled from four different schools for brawling
• he had become sadistic to get back at his birth mother

Other female characters in this film included Christian's former disturbed girlfriend Leila Williams (Bella Heathcote), a submissive who was stalking and threatening the couple. And there was Elena Lincoln (Kim Basinger), Christian's former dominant lover-partner (a "Mrs. Robinson" type), the owner of a beauty salon and Christian's current business partner. There were also problems with Ana's pushy, insanely jealous and lecherous employer, editor Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson), who would presumably figure prominently in the third installment.

Rear Entries - Pool Table Sequence

The requisite glossy sex sequences between the couple occurred in Christian's swanky Seattle bedroom, shower, and on his pool table. After she lost the game of pool, they seductively wagered for the reward:

Christian: I hope you're not a sore loser.
Ana: That depends on how hard you spank me.
Christian: I want to be very rough with you.
Ana: So be rough with me.

Before the shower scene, Ana (with a tube of red lipstick) had drawn a guide map on Christian's hunky abdomen to indicate his boundaries (where he couldn't be touched). Sex play also occurred at a swanky masquerade charity ball ("I don't know whether to worship at your feet or spank you"), in a restaurant (he ordered: "Take off your panties - Do it now"), in the back of a crowded elevator ("Don't come"), and in other public places.

By the end of the film, after Ana had accepted Christian's marriage proposal with a ring ("Be mine. Share my life with me...Marry me"), she was treated to a fireworks display.

Gaga: Five Foot Two (2017)

Pop singer superstar Lady Gaga (Herself) appeared in director Chris Moukarbel's Netflix documentary - the 30 year old's real name was Stefani Germanotta. The candid, behind the scenes biographical film was shot mostly in 2016 - previous to the release of the singer/dancer/songwriter's fifth album in 2016, Joanne (dedicated to Gaga's aunt who died of lupus at the age of 19), and her spectacular half-time appearance at 2017's Super Bowl in Houston, Texas.

The film followed her around in various settings - her Malibu home, recording studios, the set of American Horror Story (2011), video shoots for her new album, her grandmother's house, a doctor's office, and a baptism. It also chronicled her struggle against chronic pain following a hip injury in 2013.

There was partial nudity when she removed the top of her green bikini while sunbathing outdoors in her backyard and having a business conversation.

Gauguin - Voyage de Tahiti (2017, Fr.)

Vincent Cassel took on the role of controversial, post-impressionist 19th century painter Paul Gauguin in writer-director Edouard Deluc's biographical drama. The setting of the biopic was during artist Gauguin's first visit to French Polynesia about ten years before he died, when he left his wife and children in France to seek inspiration in the islands.

In this earlier time before fame, the bohemian visionary Gauguin took a romantic and sexual interest in one of the young local girls, Tehura (Tuhei Adams) - his artistic muse during his two-year stay whom he eventually married. Their relationship became more complex when a love triangle developed with a young local neighbor.

Girls Trip (2017)

One of the biggest summer comedies of the year was Universal's raunchy, R-rated chick flick Girls Trip (2017). The most outrageous, hard-R, talked about scene-stealing moment was a Tutorial on "Grapefruiting" - it was a description and demonstration on how to enhance oral sex with a man, using a ruby red grapefruit and banana as props.

[Note: The unorthodox sex method was actually first popularized in 2014 by viral tutorial videos from 'sexpert' Auntie Angel, aka Denise Walker, of Angel's Erotic Solutions.]

While eating breakfast, the sexually-experienced Dina (Tiffany Hadish) instructed two of her friends: Lisa Cooper (Jada Pinkett-Smith), with Sasha Franklin (Queen Latifah) watching, on how to use a grapefruit to further intensify fellatio (by serving as a 'cock ring'). She cut the two ends off of a grapefruit, then created a small hole in the middle of the fruit and stuck a banana through the hole. Then she applied her mouth to the banana and noisily sucked on it, while twisting the cored grapefruit around, to simulate both sexual intercourse and oral sex at the same time. She added that it was advisable to pretend to choke to make one's partner think it was approaching S & M pain/pleasure.

Just grapefruit him...Y'all ain't never grape-fruited before?...What you want to do is - you get a grapefruit, right?...And you cut both ends off, as so....Then you cut a hole in the middle, like this. Like a nice little tunnel. And then you place that on his penis, like this. Now, you want to squeeze and twist and suck, so then it feels like he's getting f--ked and sucked all at the same time. Huh? It's like this. You want to choke just a little bit, 'cause that make him feel like a man, like he killin' your s--t, just...Dude, this is tickling my throat. Mmm. Now, you never, ever want to do this with a pineapple. I almost died.

Ismael's Ghosts (2017, Fr.) (aka Les Fantômes D'Ismaël)

French writer/director Arnaud Desplechin's muddled drama centered around self-absorbed, sleep-deprived, eccentric and tortured director Ismael Vuillard (Mathieu Amalric) who was haunted by his past - and a complex love triangle.

In one of the film's five plot lines, the director became involved in a developing relationship with shy astro-physicist Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg) - he ultimately impregnated her by film's end.

Ismael Vuillard (Mathieu Amalric)

Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg)

Carlotta Bloom (Marion Cotillard)

In the midst of everything, Ismael's ex-wife Carlotta Bloom (Marion Cotillard) (presumed dead for "21 years, 8 months, and 6 days") unexpectedly reappeared before him (at the age of 20, she had walked out on him and boarded a Lyon-bound train from Paris, and was later declared dead) - a very Vertigo-like appearance. Carlotta's aging, traumatized and heartbroken father Henri (László Szabó) had maintained a relationship with Ismael, but blamed him for her disappearance, although he was unaware of her unfaithfulness with Ismael.

Carlotta mysteriously showed up while Sylvia and Ismael were taking an idyllic vacation to a beach house, and declared: "I've come to take my man back." In the film's most sexually-revealing sequence, Carlotta removed her outer robe to exhibit her stark nakedness. She walked over to Ismael, and they engaged in sweaty intercourse. The impact of Carlotta's ephemeral entrance caused Ismael extreme existential panic as he found himself caught between the two women.

The high-strung Ismael was in the midst of making his latest feature film production - a John Le Carré-like spy film, based upon the adventures of his estranged brother, a young French diplomat named Ivan Dedalus (Louis Garrel), possibly a Russian government spy, who was stationed in Tajikistan. The "film within a film" was plagued by multiple rewrites. The inconclusive film finished up with Sylvia breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience, to explain how everything turned out for Ismael.

Mr. Roosevelt (2017)

In writer/director/star Noel Wells' quirky independent comedy (her directorial debut film), 25 year-old struggling, aspiring comedian Emily Martin (the director Noel Wells, an ex-Saturday Night Live regular for one year) returned to her college town of Austin, Texas from Los Angeles. The tagline was:

We Fall Apart to Come Together

After returning home to attend to a medical emergency in the family, Emily learned that the deceased was her cat named Mr. Roosevelt. At the veterinarian office, she encountered her old hipster ex-boyfriend Eric (Nick Thule), who had been tending to Teddy Roosevelt after she had left for LA two years earlier. She met Eric's new girlfriend - the composed, near-perfect and stylish Celeste (Britt Lower) - gluten-free, a believer in herbal tea, and a book group attendee. To please his new fiancee, Eric had given up his rock music career for real estate.

Although a fish-out-of-water, anxious and unsure of herself after an absence of two years from Austin, Emily began to find a new set of friends, including free-spirited, unpretentious waitress-musician Jen (Daniella Pindeda).

At the beginning of one of the film's more evocative sequences, Emily was challenged when Jen asked her: "Are you willing to be reborn?" She held up a bikini top and quickly gave Emily a smack on the lips. Emily joined Jen and some of her friends for a picnic at Austin's swimming hole and weed-smoking locale - the Greenbelt. Jen and her friends were critical of all the gentrification and changes rapidly occurring in Austin:

Jen: Seriously, all the tech douches coming in, buying property, building condos on everything.
Samantha: I know. They're tearin' it all down, that's all they know how to do.
Rosa: A normal person can't afford anything anymore. I had to move past 183.
Birdie: I had to move back in with my parents, and they had to move back in with their parents.

Jen looked at Emily's bikini top: "Dude, that bikini top looks sick on you." Emily was shocked when Jen quickly doffed her top as did the three others in unison. She gasped in amazement as the other females didn't even give it a second thought. ("She looks like she's seen a titty ghost") The camera focused on the different-shaped and sized breasts of her four accompanying female friends, as Emily viewed their chests - in close-up.

Emily Nervously Watching Everyone Else Go Topless
(l to r): Jen and Emily	Jen	Samantha
Rosa	Emily	Birdie

One of them reminded her: "You know it's legal here in Austin." The male in the group Art (Andre Hyland), who was smoking weed, urged Emily: "Come on, free your nipples." The females, led by Samantha and Birdie, criticized him: "Yeah, but it's liberating when we say it. And it's creepy as f--k when guys say it."

Emily awkwardly removed her bikini top, but sat coyly covering herself up. When the four females decided to jump into the water, Emily hesitated: "Oh, no, I'm just gonna warm up for a little bit." She laid back with her arms crossed over her chest, covering her breasts. Art handed Emily his pipe and weed: "If you take a hit of this, you can put your top back on." After her "boobs were safely quarantined," she agreed to take a hit. But she felt insulted when he back-handedly and condescendingly complimented her: "You have the whole quirky girl vibe going." After she complained, he admitted that she was "definitely kind of a bitch."

When she received an insensitive cell-phone call from Todd (Doug Benson) and decided to impulsively quit her job at Pharmtec - she yelled out to everyone around her about her decision. They cheered back - and she impulsively ripped off her bikini top and jumped in. The song: "Why Me" (sung by Jimmy Radcliffe) played on the soundtrack - as she began to let go:

If you come to find out who you are, May you find out, may you find out who you are. And if you come to search for what is lost, Then may you find it, may you find it at any cost. And if you come over far, May it not touch you or ever do you harm. If I were to die today, Slaughtered in that masquerade, The last thing that you'd hear me say, Put my body on display in the parade.

The Shape of Water (2017)

Co-writer/director Guillermo del Toro's fantasy drama was highly-acclaimed and received the lead number of nominations (13) at the 90th Academy Awards - and ultimately it carried away four wins - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Score, and Best Production Design.

The adult 'Beauty and the Beast' fairy tale about forbidden love followed the development of a strong bond and romance between Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins), a mute Baltimore janitor, and a misunderstood, captured and imprisoned amphibious humanoid man-monster (Doug Jones). 41 year-old British-born actress Hawkins was nominated as Best Actress for her role as a lowly janitor in a secret government facility in the 1960s during the Soviet-US Space Race, who became close with the creature, resembling the 1950s 'Creature from the Black Lagoon.'

She felt protective of the creature, that was threatened by military officials and spymasters with exploitation, experimentation, and even euthanasia. Elisa helped the creature to escape and kept it hidden in her bathroom in her small apartment above a movie theatre, until her plan to return the creature to the ocean could be safely accomplished.

Ultimately, Elisa and the creature (with miraculous healing powers) became romantically and physically involved. They had primal interspecies-sex in her small bathroom when the bathroom was entirely flooded and they faced each other underwater.

Primal Interspecies-Sex

Snatched (2017)

Director Jonathan Levine's raunchy buddy comedy (with a mostly unfunny script by TV writer Katie Dippold) - with a slightly-dirty title - told about the filial bond between two dumb blondes - a daughter and her mother:

• Emily Middleton (Amy Schumer) - a self-involved, bawdy-mouthed, irresponsible young millennial female (addicted to Instagram), recently fired from her NYC job (at a retail clothing store) and dumped by her band-member boyfriend (Randall Park); completely directionless
• Linda Middleton (Goldie Hawn) - uptight and judgmental, introverted divorced suburban mother, with a love of cats

The film opened with an explanatory title:

In the spring of 2017 two American women were abducted fifty kilometers outside of Puerto Cayo, Ecuador. What followed was a tale of violence, mayhem, and the reckless disregard for human life. The kidnappers did bad stuff too.

On a pre-booked, non-refundable tropical vacation in Ecuador, now traveling with her mother, the two were kidnapped during a sightseeing trip by local crime boss/gangster Morgado (Oscar Jaenada), to be ransomed. They were helped, in some madcap slapstick sequences set in the jungles of South America, in being rescued by two oddball tourists they had met at the posh resort: "platonic" friends" Barb (Wanda Sykes) and Ruth (Joan Cusack) (who had past Special Ops experience), and by additional aid from Emily's agoraphobic brother Jeffrey (Ike Barinholtz).

One of the scenes in Snatched was voted the # 10 Top Nude Scene of 2017 by a popular celebrity nudity site - it was a poor choice, because the scene in question was unsexy, unflattering, and unfunny. During their time at the resort, Emily was romanced by handsome James (Tom Bateman), who hinted that she was accidentally revealing herself (a nip-slip) from her low-cut dress:

James: Your tit's out.
Emily: Your tit's out, too.
James: No, your tit is actually emerged.
Emily: I thought I felt a breeze. Will you excuse me?
James: Oh, no. Yeah, absolutely. (She tucked her breast back into her dress)

In the epilogue of the film set in Kuala Lumpur where the mother-daughter duo was happily vacationing a year later, Emily told a handsome male at the bar that she was with her mother (Emily: "She's f--kin' awesome"). He watched as her mother was twerking on the dance floor and noted: "Her tit's out" - signifying the bond between the two. The film's ending credits were intercut with views of the two females dancing together, to the tune of Billy Idol's Dancing with Myself, performed by Generation X.

The Square (2017, Swe.)

Writer/director Ruben Östlund's satirical comedic drama about the Stockholm art world won the Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, and was a nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the Academy Awards.

The most absurdist scene involved American journalist Anne (Elisabeth Moss) and hunky Christian (Danish actor Claes Bang), the curator of the X-Royal Art Museum in Stockholm. In her apartment where a full-grown chimpanzee sat in the next room, they prepared to have sex together - he equipped himself with a condom.

Anne (Elisabeth Moss)

After having a lengthy and sweaty bout of thrusting-intercourse (she was on top of him at the start, and then he entered her from behind and climaxed), the two engaged in a condom tug-of-war. When she politely offered to throw away his used condom, he held it close to his chest and refused to relinquish it. He declined to give up his condom when she held a trash receptacle toward him. Soon, an argument ensued. The pair fought over his semen secretions, because he feared she was going to use his 'essence' to impregnate herself. He was worried: "The second we're done, you're going straight for the condom," but she was appalled at his suggestion.

When she pulled on one end of the latex rubber condom, it stretched out to an enormous length. They squabbled over who should let go first. He claimed it was his, while she disagreed: "It's not yours, Christian. Let go...You're acting like a child." He warned: "It's gonna break!" Finally, he released his grip on it, and she deposited it in the receptacle - but ran away with it, smiling back at him.

A Thought of Ecstasy (2017, Germ./US/Switz.) (aka Ecstasy)

German co-writer/director Rolf Peter Kahl's unrated, psychosexual erotic thriller and road movie was a pretentious arthouse film, composed of fetishistic dreams, fabricated interludes and sex fantasies that were incomprehensible. It was reminiscent of David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997), writer/director Bruno Dumont's Twentynine Palms (2003), and parts of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970).

It was mostly notable for its semi-pornographic full-frontal nudity, clear images of genitalia during sex, and unsimulated sex scenes. The tagline was:

Love is immortal. Seduction is inevitable. Revenge is irresistible.

The experiential film (basically plotless and slightly irritating for being so free-form) opened with an erotic fever dream (possibly the end of the film with narration by a dead man) - it represented the search for past pleasure that could only lead to catastrophe.

A traumatized German man named Frank Patrick (director RP Kahl) drove down a two-lane highway during his quest in the US during a heat wave, in August of 2019. He appeared to be searching for a woman from his past, with only some photos of her and her authored 20 year-old diary to guide him. The cover picture of the diary-book was of the LA Desert locale. He recognized his own love life and relationship from 20 years earlier with a woman named Marie had been reflected or described in the book. He listened to her voice-over from the diary-book, to guide him:

The day I arrived in the desert, Frank died, like everything in life fades under the silver sun that burns through the sky like a huge magnifying glass. His looks, his smell, his words faded from my recollection. The desert became my new life. I was reborn, and every time I returned to LA, it felt like life was everything but me. That was my desert. The silent ones were my favorites. They allowed me to enter my own world. I felt alive in every - 'Should I undress?' I brought him back to life. Every 'Should I undress and play with myself?' Have him touch me again, him - Frank.

Frank came upon a deserted motel and its drained pool, and then in the bleak desert of Death Valley, a haunting nude woman appeared on the horizon. Naked himself, they coupled together and made love on the barren landscape. In retrospect, she resembled his long lost love Marie (Lena Morris).

The plot was officially set into motion in the present day of late summer 2019 (a dystopic future) in a gray building in Los Angeles where Frank met with a mysterious femme fatale literary agent named Liz Archer (Deborah Kara Unger). She represented the author of the recently-published, best-selling diary-novel who took the pen name Ross Sinclair. She insisted to Frank when he described his mission to find Marie: "There is no Marie." When Frank left her office, she phoned a male sex client to alert him - and set up a sex session with one of her hookers - to lure Frank to her location:

"He's here. Let's get started. I'll send you a package with instructions. Make sure you book the girl we discussed. Yes, that girl. Believe me, he'll be there. He'll follow the locations in the book. Just make sure he'll find you at the bunker."

Undaunted, Frank set out on a quest in the desert to find Marie with whom he had a torrid affair in the past. He used clues from the book to guide him during his trance-like, amnesiac travels in mostly barren locales. He found himself directed to a large, seemingly-deserted, crumbling concrete bunker in the middle of nowhere.

Frank (RP Kahl)

Nina (Ava Verne)

Liz Archer (Deborah Kara Unger)

That evening, after descending stairs in a reddish-tinged entryway, he watched as sex worker Nina (Ava Verne) was engaged in S&M sex (thigh-whipping and slapping with a thin red rod, nipple-clamping with clothes-pins, while her hands were attached to a hook above her) with a black-clad male wearing thick black rubber gloves and a flesh-colored mask (sent to the male by Liz). Nina was videotaped (with a camera on a tripod) during her painful ordeal.

Nina (Ava Verne)
Nina Masturbating for Frank	Nina Servicing Another Male Client - Filmed by Frank

Afterwards, he drove after Nina and followed her to a motel room as dawn approached. As he sat on a bed across from her in a chair, she asked: "Should I undress?" and "Should I undress and play with myself?" - the same words from Marie's book. She unsnapped her black leotard for him and pleasured herself as he watched. The words of the book seemed to materialize for him, and Frank was becoming a character in the diary-story during his search for Marie.

Later, he continued driving in the next sequence through mostly arid and rocky countryside, dotted with trailer camps and small roadside shops. More of Marie's voice-over noted that Frank was endlessly hoping to find and relive his experiences with her through others, such as Nina - entirely within his own head:

"A character may always ask who he is. Because a character really has a life of his own marked with his unique characteristics, for which reason he's always a somebody. But a person may very well be a nobody. I imagine that one day, Frank will ask the same question, seen driving through deserted streets and searching for me, and seen finding somebody who talks like I talk, maybe even thinks what I think. But that's not my life, my diary. That's Frank's life."

Another pertinent voice-over mused: "A man falling in love with a ghost," with an additional comment about how Marie's diary was from "the realm of the dead." During his search for Marie, Frank was often seen with Nina, mostly wanting to hire her to talk, not to have sex.

Meanwhile, Liz was setting Frank up to believe that one of her sex workers was Marie (Lena Morris as Marie's double), although the sex worker felt the deception wouldn't work: "Do I really look like her? She's dead, isn't she?" Liz engaged in a lesbian sexual sequence with 'Marie' herself. Frank was hired to work with Nina as her cameraman, since she often filmed her sexual encounters (something required by her clients - to be in a film), in return for sleeping at her place. He also met and filmed eye-patched 'Marie' - another one of the prostitutes, that more reminded him of his Marie.

During the bizarre stream-of-consciousness plot, Frank entered the Amargosa Desert Memorial Cemetery in a "god-forsaken" location (east of Death Valley, CA in Nevada) where he saw his own first name on one of the tombstones, and after a moment of reflection, he began wandering in the desert - into the night and complete darkness. With stubble-growth on his face, and delirium setting in with the dehydrating effects of the heat, Frank continued his search amidst mirages. He fantasized a lesbian relationship between 'Marie' and Nina, and imagined 'Marie' offering explicit fellatio to a black-masked client. Then, Frank took the place of the client who was with 'Marie' and kissed her himself - had he finally found what he was looking for?

In the film's final minutes ("the final chapter"), the female voice-over from the book moodily exclaimed:

I don't think a moment exists in the moment. Once you sense it, it isn't past. My past is Frank. My diary is eternal, it is my immortality. 'Don't know if I'll leave this world barefoot,' my destiny once said to me. I imagine those stairs of my strip club down into the red light as my exit. And once I step through the mirrored glass that divides me from the clients, I would finally arrive. It was like going home, entering into a long-since faded time.

At the "TOTALLY NUDE ENTERTAINMENT" establishment, Frank observed in the reddish light as 'Marie' performed a tantalizing dance (viewed in triplicate on-screen), as it became a totally nude show. The self-destructive Frank drove back to the cemetery, and later described his enigmatic feelings to Nina at night, by the ocean:

I saw her grave, she doesn't exist...your friend. September 30th, 2001. She died. Why did you bring her back to me?...Life is drained from me. I walk with a fear of falling. Each page I turned, I was in a sort of ecstasy. Everything spoke so vividly to my soul...Who are you?

In downtown LA, he had another meeting with Liz who discussed his quest and her role in creating the diary - and her role in masterminding Frank's suicidal self-destruction:

Liz: A character in search of an author to forgive him. I wondered when you'd show up.
Frank: It's her story and it was her life.
Liz: And he found me. You thought it was Marie. I mean, Marie had talents, but no talents that would reach beyond her diary.
Frank: Of course, such a best-seller would need a brilliant mind like yours. You took her life. You are destiny, aren't you?
Liz: I loved the woman you destroyed, but she always loved you. Maybe that's why she couldn't handle the job. Don't worry, I never told the girl about her father. I like to keep my characters in the dark. What do you think of her, by the way? I mean, you've met. (Frank was handed an envelope with a photograph of Nina, and a mini-sword)...In a good story, the hero must die.

The voice-over continued in Frank's mind: "Empty-handed I entered the world. Barefoot I leave it. My coming, my going, two simple happenings that got entangled." Frank watched black-and-white videotape of his love-making with 'Marie'.

In reddish light, he stabbed himself in the chest with the mini-sword. Back in Death Valley entirely naked and barefooted, he collapsed dead (superimposed) onto his own clothed, dead corpse lying in the sand. A quote came on the screen from Jean Baudrillard:

"But seduction is inevitable. No one living escapes it, not even the dead."