Showing Sex
It is really hard to write a “good” sex scene. It’s even harder to show one on screen. It is so easy to slip into the realm of heady, erotic fantasy as two lovers caress each other’s heaving bosom’s and dripping sexes. Bad sex scenes make you almost uncomfortable. I did not sign up for 50 Shades of Grey in my fiction. Moreover it feels like a teenager’s perception of what sex is like between two people: romantic, well lit, clean, and perfect. When, for the most part, sex is just sexy. Funny and awkward and so many other things. Actual sex is so far removed from what you will see in your average movie to the point where I almost wish it wasn’t included.
Rarely do I watch or read a sex scene and come away thinking, “Yeah, they got that entirely right.” It is almost never an actually significant part of the plot or character development, and they feel like they were included simply to titillate the audience. It has become a cop out to show how attracted two people are to each other to have them have sex, as opposed to actually showing a complex relationship through good acting and writing. Read More…
The Makings of a Good Horror Movie Kill
Ever since the advent of the slasher genre, horror movies have tried to become more and more inventive with the way they splatter their gallons of blood across the screen. We can only watch so many unstoppable murderers slash horny teens with machetes before we get bored. We want our mythical killers to be as ingenious as they are deadly. Our desire for the dastardly machinations of vengeful beasts is the whole reason that franchises like Saw or Final Destination can not only continue to exist, but thrive. To see the wild and wacky ways that writers can invent to kill teenagers who stumbled into the wrong haunted graveyard.
Why Did I Watch That? - 009-1: The End of the Beginning
I watched a bad movie today. It is sort of a guilty pleasure of mine. Watching bad movies that is. I revel in the terrible plots, paper-thin characters, cheesy effects, and wooden acting. It fuels me. I love them in a way that I can’t quite describe, or feel about bad games or music. To me, bad films deserve to be recognized, talked about, and maybe occasionally ridiculed. This one is no exception.
I honestly don’t know what to think about this movie. After the disappointing disaster of Jarhead 3: The Siege, I needed a certain level of schlock to help clear my palate and reset myself towards something else. So I dug this movie out of my Netflix list, having added it for an occasion just like this. And I don’t know exactly what I got. I can’t tell if it is supposed to be an action film or softcore pornography. It isn’t too good at either, and it seems like it is trying.
Why Did I Watch That? - Jarhead 3: The Siege
I watched a bad movie today. It is sort of a guilty pleasure of mine. Watching bad movies that is. I revel in the terrible plots, paper-thin characters, cheesy effects, and wooden acting. It fuels me. I love them in a way that I can’t quite describe, or feel about bad games or music. To me, bad films deserve to be recognized, talked about, and maybe occasionally ridiculed. This one is no exception.
It might come as a surprise to some people that there is not only a sequel to Jarhead, but also two of them. The 2005 film about a group of marines that desperately wish they could see action but instead are greeted with the banalities of life in a war zone, whose entire point was that maybe you don’t want to see action as much as you think. Maybe you don’t want to kill people. So of course they decide to make a direct to DVD set of sequels that are dumb, pointless action movies all about killing as many terrorists as possible. You have to love franchises.