Movie Reviews for Pervs: Shame

So this Friday, I went to see the new Steve McQueen / Michael Fassbender Movie, Shame, at the 2011 New York Film Festival. I was in excellent company: Cat Grant bought the tickets and treated myself, Liz Silver, and Damon Suede to the showing. And not that they're not awesome people, because they totally are, but did I mention Michael Fassbender and Steve McQueen were there? Because they were :D

I shall limit my fangirl squeeing, primarily because once Michael went through the photo call (which we were able to watch from about twenty feet away, but had to peek between the row of photographers), his handlers hustled him past the rope pretty quickly. He did try to sign autographs, but they told him he needed to introduce the movie. Ah well.

Speaking of introducing the movie, here's the blurb from IMDB:

In New York City, Brandon's carefully cultivated private life--which allows him to indulge his sexual addiction--is disrupted when his sister Cisssy arrives unannounced for an indefinite stay.

Basically, it's about an OCDish sex-addict who holds down a highly successful job in (I think?) an ad firm and suffers so deeply from his addiction that he jacks off in the bathroom at work, keeps porn on his work computer, brings prostitutes to his house, and randomly picks up women wherever he can find them. He's a miserable SOB, either in agony or numb pretty much all the time. The impression you get is that orgasm is the one moment in life when he is not in agony, and he chases it with the relentless desperation of someone who knows it's killing him but doesn't know how else to feel. His sister shows up and throws a serious wrench into his orderly life. Worse, she seems to make him think about all kinds of things he'd rather not think about every time he looks at her. She makes him face his present, too; when he starts having to hide around her, he seems to realize how fucked up he is, and starts trying to change.

So, on to the review. I want to (and will) treat this as a real review because the movie was pretty incredible in a lot of ways, but I'll be doing it within the framework of the Perv Score. For those new to Movie Reviews for Pervs, here's the four criteria by which films are judged:

1. Hotness of the star(s)
2. How often and how thoroughly the star(s) get nekkid
3. Severity of ass-kickings to which the star(s) are subjected
4. And, as something of an afterthought, whether or not the movie was actually any good

So, combined real and perv reviews, beneath the jump.

Movie Reviews for Pervs: Senseless

My first Movie Review for Pervs was one of the most-clicked posts ever on Fantasy Unbound, so I thought today I'd bring you lovely folks another one.

Today features Senseless, a horror/thriller based on the Stona Fitch novel of the same name and starring an all-grown-up Jason Behr. If you feel weird watching little Max from Roswell get viciously and repeatedly tortured, well . . . then you obviously didn't share the same childhood fantasies I did ;-p

Senseless is by no means a brainless slasher film, or even a Saw-esque capture/survival movie. Instead it presents itself as a thinly-constructed political screed about the dangers and offenses of American-style capitalism, with international businessman Eliott Gast standing in as the whipping boy for all the wrongs our capitalist country has done. Note I said that's how it presents itself. It's not what I think it is, or even necessarily what I think it intends to be. But . . . more about that later.

Anyway, because Gast (and Americans in general) is a seen by his captors as a man of the senses, a hedonist--impressions strengthened by occasional flashbacks into Eliott's indulgent past at bazillion-dollar-a-plate restaurants, playing piano, etc.--his captors decide to strip him of his senses one by one (in deliciously painful fashion), all the while broadcasting his long captivity and torture over the internet. Yes, Eliott's a Youtube sensation! And his captors leave it up to the masses to choose whether or not to set him free. Guess what the masses say >:D

Now then, on to the Perv Scale, beneath the jump. (Note for the easily squicked and those with slow connections: I have a weirdly huge number of screencaps for this one, but they're tamer than the Eden Lake caps for sure.)

Movie Reviews for Pervs (of the Best Possible Persuasion)

I know I promised a recap of the Rainbow Book Fair today, but since I was once again a giant idiot and didn't take my camera, I am once again at the mercy of others to receive photos. Since I'd like to do the recap with pictures this time (no more slideless slide shows, I promise!), I'm going to hold off until I get them. Hopefully Friday.

In the meanwhile, I thought I'd try out a new recurring feature here at Fantasy Unbound: Movie Reviews for Pervs. Perviness is a welcome thing in my world, of course, and if you follow this blog, it's probably a welcome thing in your world too. I've been watching a lot of movies of, er, questionable artistic merit lately--not much else to do on three-hour train rides, I suppose--and have often found myself in search of recommendations for a very specific kind of flick. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me asking the other day for something mindless, explodey, and full of hot guys. Well, I found some. And I'll be giving them a Perv Score: a weighted average of four criteria on a scale of 1 to 10.

Lest you think this might be getting too technical or serious, here are the four criteria, with the first three counting for twice as much as the last one.

1. Hotness of the star(s)
2. How often and how thoroughly the star(s) get nekkid
3. Severity of ass-kickings to which the star(s) are subjected
4. And, as something of an afterthought, whether or not the movie was actually any good

Perfect for this crowd, yeah? So let's get started on our first review, complete with screencaps (warning: kind of bloody and screamy), beneath the jump.