The Imitation Game (2014)

“The Imitation Game” wants to be a liberal rage against the evil that was British law for a century: The criminalization of homosexuality, and the body-and-mind destruction – execution, really -- of WWII hero Alan Turing, because he was born gay. But it’s really an (sorry) ultra-straight drama that’s played so safe and virginal, my church-going parents would not blink. Benedict Cumberbatch is mesmerizing and coolly brilliant as Turing, the mathematician who is called on by Her Majesty to help break the seemingly impossible cryptic Enigma code used by the Nazis during World War II. Mr. Sherlock nails the part of the misfit thrown into the Army, where failure to fit in can get you shot or jailed. But Turing’s sexuality? Cumberbatch has nothing to work with. All sex is off screen, hidden like one of those impossible codes. Now I get Turing couldn’t act on desires during war, living under Army rule. fact. But here there is no desire. No anger. No frustration. Why? By the time onscreen Turing is forced to undergo chemical castration, one has to ask, why fret? This man, as written for the Oscar votes, seems to have been a unich all along.  B-

We’re the Millers (2013)

“We’re the Millers” is a stoner road-trip comedy with “SNL” vet Jason Sudeikis as a small-time pot dealer and “Friends” alumna Jennifer Anniston as a stripper hitting Mexico in an RV for drugs for cash. The two neighbors who hate each other pose as parents, painfully so, as neither could raise curtains. The flick is hilarious, raunchy, and dirty -– Anniston makes out with teen “son” Will Poulter –- until we all take an exit tour into family values and sentimentality and love conquers all hugs. Why? Here’s a rule: No one hugged at the end of “Producers” or “Blazing Saddles.” Follow it. Save the hugs for “Lifetime.” B

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Forget “Great Gatsby” comparisons. Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” is the greatest black comedy satire since “Natural Born Killers.” Trade phones for guns, gold watches for scalps. This crazy F.U. gem is being crucified as overlong and obnoxious, a pointless drug- and sex-smeared stain of debauchery focusing on Wall Street brokers who strikes it rich fleecing common Americans on shit investments. People, that is the point. Scorsese playfully crashes and flames his epic movie as often as real-life Wall Street scum bag Jordan Belfort (a never more alive Leonardo DiCarpio) crashes and flames yachts and cars, snorts coke, screws whores, and rallies his team to make more money. I cheered. This is America. Scorsese, writer Terence Winter, and DiCaprio are daring us to hate this movie. Our hate is misplaced. They are revealing the strings of the soulless puppet masters who run our banks, buy our congressmen, and control our 401K futures. More so: Our nation’s wealth and the whole stock market is the ultimate con we all buy into. Again and again. Refocus your anger. Best character: Jonah Hill -- gold! -- as a fat Alfred E. Neuman geek who drives Belfort’s scam. Mad men. A

North by Northwest (1959)

I forgot just how funny Alfred Hitchcock’s early, genius spy-flick thriller “North by Northwest” is, until a recent watch on cable. Coolest Man Ever Cary Grant plays NYC ad guy Roger Thornhill, who gets stuck in a giddily preposterous mistaken identity chase across the U.S. of A with silent killers, the CIA, a dame, and Mount Rushmore all to follow. Early in, Grant as Thornhill is seized by two goons who try to kill him via a bottle of bourbon and a fake DUI car crash. Comedy gold hits: Smashed-ass Grant drives his way to jail, where his first and only call is to his mother. Literally, his mommy. Roger’s indignant. The cop near busts a tooth smirking. Hitchcock and writer Ernest Lehman (“Sweet Smell of Success”) turn 500 screws, add in murder, a mystery woman (Eva Marie Saint) with stranger/train sex on her inscrutable mind, and James Mason as a smooth villain with his own slippery identity. Oh, and that crop duster. So cool, Bond soon ripped it off. Hitchcock is having a cackling ball, yanking his camera to dizzy high spots, and letting Mason “punch” the screen. Knock out. Hitchcock kills it. A+

Much Ado About Nothing (2013)

Joss Whedon -– director of “Avengers,” creator of “Firefly” –- has adapted Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” into a light and airy, black-and-white big-screen trip. The result is less movie and more “you have been invited to a weekend theater party” at Whedon’s own house no less, with his TV friends (Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion, and Clark “Agent Coulson” Gregg) performing off the cuff and in the kitchen where last night’s dishes sit unwashed. Adorable. See, this “Much Ado” -– you either know the famous comedy about sex, dirty war, and feminine politics, or you are a home-schooled lonely Bible freak -- reminds us that these plays were not high-brow work for snobs, but blasts of escapist fun for the masses. The cast riffs and experiments on the dialogue and gender-flips roles, and some of it works, and what sinks has the beauty mark of trying something different. Fillion’s “police force,” which in modern day would not dither over infidelity and womanly virtues, seem to be having more fun than any group of people onscreen all summer long. Now, about that “Avengers” sequel… A-

Sleuth (1972)

I saw the original “Sleuth” ages ago, whilst in college, and remember it as highly entertaining, a wild cinematic shape shifter, turning in on itself repeatedly as a cuckolded old man of wealth (Laurence Olivier) invites the hairdresser (Michael Caine) sleeping with his wife to his home for a cruel game of psychological torture. But the tables turn, and the characters onscreen one-up each other, as do the actors, classic theater thesp versus young hotshot sex symbol. I also recall it being painfully overlong, just one damn parlor trick too much. And, damn it, I hold at exactly that. Seriously, watch this film if you love acting, the way people play at bouncing off each other on screen, revealing -– and more importantly, holding back information -– until exactly the most painful or ludicrous moment. But beware, past the two-hour mark, you as I did, may get antsy and there’s 20 minutes to go. Based on a play, Anthony Shaffer’s screenplay desperately needs shortening. Olivier and Caine are beyond great, I can barely imagine the thrill of being on set. So watch. But squirm. Avoid the remake. B

Corvette Summer (1978)

Luke Skywalker’s Corvette gets stolen!?! Wait ’til his dad finds out! Cheesy joke? Yeah. But much of the car-and-a-girl adventure flick “Corvette Summer” is cheesy and often ridiculous, most of the latter unintentional. Hamill -– 27 and post disfiguring crash -– improbably plays an auto-shop geek teen who has never sipped booze or kissed a girl. (That Hamill constantly looks rocked is remarkably not remarked upon.) The story: Hamill’s Kenny’s shop car beauty –- bright red, right-seat drive, killer flares -– gets stolen and ferreted to Las Vegas, and our boy hitchhikes his way to get the car and rip the bad guys. Along the way he meets a naïve girl (Annie Potts) yearning to go pro ho, gets mugged, goes homeless, bounces jobs, gets laid, and -– yes! –- finds his car. In perfect Skywalker fashion, Hamill whimpers, moans, and hyperventilates through every act. I wished Ben Kenobi to swoop in, scream “Shut the fuck up!,” and cut Kenny down. Didn’t happen. “Corvette” must be a prank on the hot rod genre: Guys, cars are just shiny metal, chase after the girl! This cannot be serious. Hamill himself is the best gag, intentional or not. B

Spring Breakers (2013)

Harmony Korine’s purposefully delirious drama/horror/satire “Spring Breakers” is shocking, but not for any onscreen debauchery, but how bright and shiny, and dull it is, and how much it strives to be “Girls Gone Wild” meets “Natural Born Killers.” Circa 1994. The story: Four college girls (led by Disney princesses Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez, plus Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) head to Florida and plunge into binge drinking, drugs, sex acts, and scooter racing without helmets. When they land in jail, a redneck drug dealer (James Franco) “saves” and woos the group with guns, piano skills, and love of “Scarface.” After Gomez as a Christian named “Faith” (fancy that, eh?) bolts for home, the other three turn pink-masked gangbanger. Really. Korine spills ironic observations about youth obsessions with sex, gun culture, and celebrity, and our affinity to get bored, no matter where or what we are. But he’s working from a sketchy 30-page culture thesis triple spaced to 90, with scenes and sounds (guns!) repeated without end. Boiled down: Korine’s only real trick is getting two Mickey Mouse stars to go Mickey and Mallory for faux shock value. To break taboos? Or filmgoers’ patience? Franco, btw, is madly genius. C+

Rust and Bone (2012)

The moment “Rust and Bone” –- an erotic and harsh French drama from director Jacques Audiard (“The Prophet”) -- lost me: Marion Cotillard, who wowed Americans in “Inception” and is back in her native language, stands triumphantly upon prosthetic legs, holds her arms out Jesus-style, and smiles into the sun as Katy Perry’s “Firework” blares in her memory and our ears. Screech.

Cotillard is Stephanie, a screw-authority, sensual whale trainer whose life is derailed when one of her “pets” chomps off her legs. Seriously. Only in France. 

But hold tight. Stephanie is a secondary character to Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), a single dad fucking and torching his life away, brawling for cash in a fight club. He dotes on his son when not angrily throwing him across a room. 

So, yes, Steph and Ali need each other. For redemption, for fuck-buddy sake, because these romances happen in movies, and fellow lost-soul hook-up drama “Silver Linings Playbook” was too happy.  

The cast is divine, the pain real-ish, but never serve up Perry in a serious film, and never cast firework Cotillard as a tortured, legless woman whose journey to redemption boils down to coveting a good orgasm. Disappointing. B-

The Sessions (2012)

When the Academy Award nominations come in, 2012 Sundance-Festival-favorite “Sessions” will be mentioned. For sure. But when the awards go out, it will be left empty. This is a drama destined to become movie trivia and “Did you ever see?” probing among die-hard, art-house cinemasts, loved by a few, unknown to most. 

That’s a shame. This is a smart, amazingly uplifting, funny, poignant, and, yes, heartbreaking adult tale of a man (John Hawkes, from “Winter’s Bone”) attempting to get laid despite his own body being left motionless from the neck down after being stricken by polio as a child. (He has full sensitivity. His muscles do not work.)

Based on a true story, “Sessions” focuses Berkley, Calif., resident Mark O’Brien’s desire and need to lose his virginity before he dies, and he knows he won’t live terribly long. His sell by date is approaching fast. Mark spends his nights in an iron lung, a massive tube that alleviates breathing problems, and his every waking moment is accompanied by an oxygen tank for much the same purpose. I said he cannot move, but he can get an erection, and, like any living being, longs for intimacy. 

Here’s the beauty of this film, small in the best of ways: Newcomer writer/director Ben Lewin -– himself partially crippled by polio -- refuses to go sentimental or booming give-us-a-big-cry movie soft accompanied by a swelling orchestral score from loud Hollywood. 

Instead, he beautifully lays out the film with clear-eyed, sobering journalistic precision. O’Brien himself was a poet and journalist. The mood, the smallness, fits. Perfectly.

Before the opening credits are through, Mark has finished university (in footage of the real O’Brien) and now works as a freelance writer, typing and dialing the phone with a stick inserted in his mouth. When he makes a house visit for an interview, as he does in any outside trip, a medical assistant pushes O’Brien along as he lays flat prone on a gurney. 

His latest paid gig: Write about sexuality and the disabled. That assignment gets his own wheels (and libido, and sexual fantasies) spinning. He’s 38, never had sex, and hitting the bars, clubs, and other singles hot spots, is out of the question. 

But a sex surrogate is within the bounds, and O’Brien seeks out Cheryl Cohen Greene (Helen Hunt, of “As Good As it Gets” fame, and gone too long from cinema screens), a specialist dedicated to physically helping people cope with sexual hang-ups. (If you’re thinking “prostitute,” don’t, and the notion is handled quickly here, in fine form.) 

As O’Brien explore his sexuality, he also wrestles with his faith and what God thinks of his struggle. If He would forgive O’Brien’s curiosity. O’Brien full believes and holds no anger at God, and his faith journey is also handled sober-minded serious, no mockery. Nicely.

“I’m not getting married anytime soon,” O’Brien says, I paraphrase, to his priest, played by William H. Macy. Their talks are fascinating, to anyone of faith, or not of faith. (Macy is so damn good here. Although right-wingers will cringe at his priest. Hey, this is Berkley.)

O’Brien and Greene’s first sexual encounters are tinged with all the possible awkwardness of anyone’s first time, cranked a thousand fold as he can’t move. These scenes are funny, sad, beautiful. O’Brien carries a lifelong lack of physical contact, so he instantly falls for Greene. In his mind he sees her as love of his life. Except she is married, with a teenage son. 

I’ll stop with the film synopsis. This is a true story, if you know the outcome, I’ll just bore you. If you don’t know the story, I’ll make you mad. 

This is an adult film, no holds barred, with graphic nudity and sexual content, but it’s no porn film. The sex, as with O’Brien’s faith struggle, is dealt with clear-eyed and exact, no frills, no tricks. More so, it’s sex as human contact, an absolute need for intimacy and love. This is a story of one man under unique experiences few of us can ever imagine, but he’s a man like us nonetheless. 

Lewin doesn’t need to push his story down our throat with sugar, he lets his actors –- both deserving of Oscars, especially Hawkes -– act, and he tells his story with an exactitude that 95 percent of Hollywood could not possibly imagine: There’s a moment when O’Brien faces a life crisis, the 1989 California earthquake knocks out power, and Hawkes’s character does not cry a tear, but shrugs. Accepts. The moment almost seems comedic. 

But it’s not. The scene resounds with the serious realization of a man who knows the darkest laughs.

It’s a simple as this: O’Brien -– as played by Hawkes –- knows his time is limited, and he is making the best of it, hungry for every moment and every experience that others, myself included, take for granted. 

For a film that shrugs off miracles, “Sessions” is its own kind of magic. See it now. A

A Dangerous Method (2011)

When David Cronenberg -- master of exploding head psychological atom bombs, and violence mixed with sex – said he was making “A Dangerous Method,” the ménage a trois between pioneer head-shrinks Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, I was stoked. I wanted envelopes torched, singed paper ashes blown in the faces of prudes. So count me wanting, put out, so to speak. Except for a few wha? spanking scenes, “Dangerous” is all talk, and I should not be surprised, as this was once called “Talking Cure.” Our focus is on Spielrein, German Jew, wealthy, and hysterically mad, put in the care of Jung (Michael Fassbender), the protégé of master head doc Freud (Viggo Mortensen). Sabina bends Jung’s tight-starched collar, and Freud feuds, and Word War I dawns, and Jung’s last scene has him going like Michael Corleone’s last scene in “Godfather, Part II,” lawn chair and all. No burning desire, no passion. Talk. Knightly’s accent grinds, and Mortensen’s Freud has all the zing of Ask Jeeves, so it’s Fassbender’s show, and he’s damn good, but a notch below “Shame,” the 2011 sex-obsessed flick that’s all dangerous method. B-

Shame (2011)

“Shame.” Call me crazy, but it’s all about the liquids inside us. Poison. The bodily fluid liquid Shame in all of us. A weight, a black hole, a soul crusher. The bodily fluids must be purged, at all costs. They. Must. As demons are exorcised, memories are downed in drugs and booze. Liquids purged. This crazy-daring-disturbing-beautiful art flick, from Brit director Steve McQueen (not the dead Hollywood star of the 1960s, but a young black Brit artist) follows Brandon, an Irish-born, American-raised 30-ish man in New York City. Some dub him a sex addict. Maybe. He certainly relentlessly, ceaselessly, and carelessly picks up sex partners where ever he can find them, or pays for the pleasure for quick encounters. And if no woman is available, porn via Web or magazine will do, and he can masturbate out the semen from his body. His rage, his demon. Men will do, too, to help get that liquid anchor out. What past he leads?

Rising star of 2011 Michael Fassbender, quickly becoming a favorite actor, should have landed an Oscar nomination for his Brandon, a tortured, lonely, angry soul, long past dead inside, who – in the long, wordless climax (I mean that many ways) – cannot fathom intimacy or love or a relationship, and during a three-way, looks as tortured as a man undergoing water-boarding. His one shot at intimacy, an actual relationship, is a full disaster, he calls the woman boring and denounces love, and fails in bed, sexually. It’s all about release, nothing more. There is no love in this world. Not here.

Brandon’s cold, hard, life, all the sex and porn, leftover take-out, and relentlessly repeated classical music played as white noise is thrown a devastating loop when his equally mentally unstable sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) shows up in his shower, unexpected. Uninvited. Unwanted. Unbounded. She longs for a connection to Brandon. His openness at her nudity and she at his, hints at a dark, horrible childhood. Never explained. We don’t need to know, and maybe would be too horrified to know the truth. Their first run-in onscreen, I thought she was his ex-wife. I said dark and disturbing, and I meant it. Few films ever go this dark.

If Brandon ejaculated out his pain through sex, masturbation, or any stimulant, Sissy is a cutter. Blood. A long series of scars mark her wrists and arms, and she wants to lose more blood. And she will in the end. Pints. The whole movie is liquids -- blood, semen, music, fast-moving subway cars, and rain, never stopping, spinning in an endless circle, down a bottomless drain. Even the music is liquid. Always moving, flowing.

The final scenes mimic the first scenes. McQueen’s film is epic, and cold and small, and amazing, full of sex and nudity. That climatic three-way starts out explicit and erotic as hell, as porn, and then turns painful as Brandon shows nothing but misery, a cold, hard punch to audience-mandated expectations for such a NC-17 sex film. This is eroticism turned ugly, anti-erotic. If the screenplay, by McQueen and Abi Morgan (who wrote the lesser “Iron Lady”) is slight on details, McQueen’s camera – the cinematography is beautiful, and in ultra-wide screen – tells us so much more. Watch how, when Brandon and Sissy talk, the camera is behind them, their faces, eyes, expressions cut off. Cold. Only when they fight, scream, yell, and he attacks her, him fully naked, do we see their faces. As dark as this film goes, I want a re-watch. STAT.

Fassbender bares it all, literally. The rage inside him is barely contained, and when he stares down a woman, his flirtation by eye, masks something far darker. That’s acting. Art. Beauty, Danger. Sex. And ... bottomless doom. The character of Brandon barely speaks. Mulligan, she of “An Education” and “Drive,” will not not speak, and lays out a tortured version of “New York, New York,” so dark, so long, so painful and hopeless, I’m not certain what we saw on screen was reality within the film, but her singing/talking directly to her hardened, hard-on brother, how the cold, dark, big city -- life itself -- will kill them in the end. Brandon cries at the moment, by his sister’s beauty and pain, and is horrified to see that kind of liquid, a tear, come from inside him. Pulsating rage follows.

Do not trust anyone says this film is dead and cold; it is about death and coldness, and sex, in all its glory, and pain and misery and Shame. And always about liquids, bodily fluids, escaping from the body, and the pain of an unexplained past. Pure fucking genius. Bravo, Mr. McQueen, and Mr. Fassbender.A

Footloose (2011)

It’s been too long since I watched the 1984 Kevin Bacon-starring “Footloose” to compare it side-by-side to this 2011 remake. Both follow the same concept: A big-city high school guy named Ren McCormack (here Kenny Wormald) arrives in a small town that has gone all 700 Club following the fatal DUI wreck of several students: Dancing is banned. Loud music banned. Church mandatory. The plot is set in stone: Ren loves to dance, and he will dance, bringing a wild child (Julianne Hough) and a geeky country seed (Miles Teller) along the way. It’s a goofy movie with lines such as: “It’s our time now!,” but it’s a fun fight-the-power trip for teens bored of living at home. This version is more sexual and violent. Director Craig Brewer (“Hustle & Flow”) for the most doesn’t belittle small town people, and his camera happily follows the feet and hips of youths dancing until adulthood arrives. Wormald scores bonus points over Bacon: He does his own dancing, and does it spectacularly well. Diverse helpings of music abound. B+

Conversations with Other Women (2006)

"Conversations with Other Women" is the "Rashomon" of romantic dramas. A split screen shows constantly evolving, changing and conflicting views, asides, thoughts and memories as a man (Aaron Eckhart) and a woman (Helena Bonham-Carter) hook up and screw at a wedding. To give away a second of the film, or even a hint of the characters is to ruin a story that changes course every time one thinks they have it cornered. Know this: Eckhart and HBC are a fantastic, sexy couple and the emotions on display dig deeper and truer than almost any film about sex and love I've seen in ages. Adults only, please. Best tip: It could be watched a dozen times, and a dozen different takes could be carried away. A-

Sex and the City: The Movie (2008)

"Sex and the City: The Movie" is not a bad flick, it's entertaining and a wild hoot to see a pack of women lead a summer box office film, no guns, no robots, no guys crawling up walls in tights. But it's not all great. I saw many of the episodes on HBO, and some were shallow pools of shoe obsession, but most hit on important topics to any woman -- dating, marriage, a miscarriage, or a New Yorker, mainly a huge tip post 9-11.

If you know the original HBO show, you know the drill. If you don't, the film follows newspaper sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her four pals (Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon) as they cope with sex and life in New York City. The title is a giveaway, don't you know? Here, Carrie finally gets the chance to leave singleton behind as she marries long-longtime boyfriend Mr. Big (Chris Noth). But not so fast -- Big leaves her at the altar after getting cold feet. The three friends also have their own tribulations, both corny and heartfelt, but the film, like the show, focuses on Carrie.

It is witty, funny and well-acted, especially by headliner Parker who plays early 40s with all its glories and bumps. But the film lingers for an unbearable 2 hours and 25 minutes, and that shallow feeling comes roaring back. Full on loud. Must we watch women squeal over $500 shoes that could pay for a family's groceries for a month? The greed and materialism is stunning, and so very Wall Street and AIG. The taboo-smashing joys of the show have been bought out.

So, I'm in a toss up: "Sex and the City" is entertaining, but it's also a great call for socialism. Pluses go to Parker and company for making a film by woman for woman (Ok, a man directed and wrote, but still). Many of the male characters are treated as mere disposable and replaceable sex objects, just as women are in 99.7 percent of Hollywood films. It's interesting -- and vital -- for us guys to see the shoe on the other foot, not to obsess on shoes. I hope this inspires more films of its kind (but without the rampant self-love and materialism). C+