Slant Magazine

I don't know this man but he sure has an agenda. Methinks the "gentleman" doth protest to much—and all about the filmmaker, whom it sounds like he knows, although I doubt that he does. Something set him off and gave him an opportunity for insults wrapped in insults and an excuse for pretentious vocabulary, along with a chance to reveal more about his own life than he probably intended to.

I saw the film and loved it. Of course, I saw an entirely different film, because I saw it through much less of a filter.

Wow, I think Mr. Lanthier has some serious issues with women, and watching a woman's honest take on pornography put the poor man in a tailspin. Funny enough he didn't mention a single performance in the film, or anything else for that matter, only taking his chance to review this film as an opportunity to show off his vocabulary. I felt like I was reading a critique of some women's studies text in college. I saw 'Finding Bliss' in Seattle and loved it. The film is an unlikely mix of sex and romance, a winning combination amidst all the other sanitized romantic comedies out there.

Nocuous! Oh you are delightful! Tippling again with that new thesaurus weren't you? What was it this time, not the creme de menthe! "Naught-eur!" did you spill on the divan when you auto-titillated?

I saw nary a few minutes of this film on cable, and while I can't say I agree with the entirety of the review just because I couldn't get past more than a few minutes, in so much as the reviewer "protest(ing) so much, I too had a very visceral reaction. Mine wasn't to the subject matter, but to the fact that it was so particularly amateurish and poorly made. Yes, I am an aspiring film maker, and whenever I see a bad director/writer being able to sustain a career despite very basic skills, it does set off a twinge of annoyance. But hey, that's life. Hell, Kevin Smith has managed to make films for nearly twenty years with little regard for visual style, storytelling, or pacing. But something about this film really irked me. Granted, as a film maker, I can and often do find myself unable to get past a directors weaknesses, particularly visual. Ms. Davis not only seems incapable of even the most basic scene staging, (I believe an actor played an en tire scene with his back to the camera) but seems hell bent on keeping the camera in exactly the same spot for every shot. Consequently, scenes are played with the camera awkwardly looking down on actors in hairs r on the floor. I'm sure they teach the concepts of wide, medium, tight shots at AFI. If anything, the film almost seems to be making some type of statement on the world of adult films by aping the cheap visual style of soft core, made for Cinemax fare...although even tse movies understand that a camera can move to more effectively register the action on the screen...like the faces of the actors...it can even move..."for effect"...As for the idea of gender roles, the way feminism and pornography mesh in our society...hogwash. This script is a by the numbers, fill in the blanks "follow your dreams" tale with "film" serving as the "dream". The characters are so paper thin, it's a wonder they even bothered to give them names. The dialogue, such as it is, is so on the nose and obvious, i may as well be a cliff notes version of the script, with the exception of the "raunchy scenes", where, for example, two characters discuss a scene from one of their films featuring the adult uses of a martini glass...

of course, this all means i am a mysoginist, right, because the only way a person could not like this film is their own fear of a woman's point of view on pornography. oh, did i mention that i didn't know it was directed by a woman when i saw it and had my initial reaction? but that probably doesn't count, though, because I'm a "man" and therefore possess some deep seated "gaze" in my reptilian brain that causes me to instantly fear the blah blah blah...Seriously, I probably wouldn't have bothered posting if the comments didn't start taking those cheap shots. And, for some odd reason, all "three" of these women seem obsessed with his use of vocabulary. Did anyone else even notice his vocabulary, let alone find it objectionable? Back to the "sexism" attacks, since it was brought up first, let me just state the obvious...you can dislike a piece of work for whatever reason you want, and no matter how strongly the person who created that work wants it to be inextricably linked to an issue or specific identity, having an adverse opinion of that work does NOT make the holder of the critical opinion prejudiced. You can't make a half assed film, then expect everyone else to do the work for you and dig out only the positive elements for fear of being called racist, sexist, etc.

Frankly, even discussing this film in terms of its themes is being generous. It is so amateurish and poorly made that failing to mention this in the review, and instead to go on about the film's take on women and pornography, is giving it more respect than it deserves. Frankly, if you loved this film, then you must not see very many, or you just hate movies.