Studio: Digital Playground
Director: Joone
Cast: Evan Stone, Jesse Jane, Carmen Luvana, Steven St. Croix, Janine, Tommy Gunn

If Pirates had been the first porn movie I ever saw, I probably would have decided that there wouldn't be much money in making fun of porn as a profession. I would have said that porn is a healthy medium that can make fun of itself just fine, and maybe get a job as a park ranger or lieutenant governor somewhere.

But the fact is that the first porn movie I ever saw was probably something like Catherine, or some mid-80's video version of it, and I always had in the back of my mind that this was an industry ripe for deflation.

Anybody who tells you they know how much Pirates cost is probably lying, but the large amount of cash spent on publicity and premieres and special effects (the latter probably causing a little buyer's remorse) seems secondary to the solid, sexy, and engaging kind of film Digital Playground creates when it puts its collective mind to it.

As Maude said in The Big Lebowski, "Sex can be a zesty experience." That is why it is huge fun watching Jesse Jane work with Carmen Luvana, and then Janine. Pirates doesn't waste the audience's time on awkward getting into position; the sex scenes switch from blowjob to cowgirl to candles in the ass seamlessly, and all the scenes smoke (sometimes literally).

Like any porn flick, there are willing suspensions of disbelief required for answering why Jesse (who, clothed, looks a little like Janice from the Muppets in this movie) and Evan Stone don't get together (Jesse said that she and Stone "fuck in every film, so this time we just didn't") or why Carmen Luvana wears her wedding ring in some scenes and doesn't in others, or why she pronounces "Caribbean" "Carabian", or why Teagan Presley wasn't just told to go home, but this was a movie that deserved its big screen showing.

Evan Stone is a solid and very hammy actor and Joone and editor "Cousin" Nick Pulgadas gave him a lot of room to just be funny. The most ballsy performance comes from St. Croix, however, who curls himself into a fetal position and shrieks when Jesse leaves him. Every pop shot at the premiere was greeted by cheers, but the only bit of dialogue that got a similar response (though there were many fun lines) was Janine's, when she commanded Tommy Gunn to "lick it."

Every now and then - but rarely - director Joone felt he needed to advance the story, something about finding one's destiny by means of pirate hunting. It was at these times that Pirates seemed a little like kids playing dress-up (as did the premiere, which resulted in the inevitable dismissal from Variety). When the movie stood on its considerable strengths - a strong cast who had worked together before, excellent editing, a fun score from SkinMusik, and a lot of light humor as well as hot girls in abundance - Pirates was the only porn movie you need to see this year.

Buy it.

Studio: BurningAngel.com
Director: Doug Sakkman
Cast: Joanna Angel, Tommy Pistol

Seriously: Re-Penetrator is a must for any porn consumer's dirty library.

This is the perfect short subject film to present before any of your trendy parties. Dr. Hubert Breast (Pistol) creates a zombie woman (Angel) who craves only sex. She fucks him to death, bloodily. Fake blood dries quickly so lubrication issues kept making Pistol fall out. The end.

Studio: Ninnworx
Director: Michael Ninn
Cast: Audrey Hollander, Nikky Blond, Valentina Velasques, Otto Bauer, Victoria Swinger

Watching Catherine is like recovering from a hangover. But some people feel they deserve hangovers.

On what appears to be the front steps of a disused public library, a dwarfess pushes a baby carriage down the stairs while a fat man in an unbuttoned tunic looks on. Audrey Hollander, dressed as a larger version of the dwarfess, later strips naked and is verbally harrassed by a man in a fancy house gown. He calls her a cunt, a pig, and a whore, and asks if she denies it. "I deny nothing," she says. For some reason, the B-roll of the same dialogue is replayed. Then she does a solo scene on the steps, then, maybe because all is forgiven, she and gown-man have sex.

I've had several months to build up an intense dislike for Catherine because all its hype made it look pretentious and boring. It didn't help that the two trailers released for it were similarly intensely sterile.

Michael Ninn does all he can to make Audrey Hollander, who is stunning to look at, unattractive: he dresses her like Queen Elizabeth I (the Virgin Queen) through half the movie and then he makes her speak the film's ridiculous and repetitive dialogue . As a bitchy suburbanite in Roy Karch's Desperate Wives, Hollander was allowed to be a lot more believable.

The film tracks back and forth between Hollander as Catherine in some bygone age populated with aforementioned dwarfesses, and Hollander in the present day, suffering from nightmares (as I will) of Catherine's vengeful ghost.

That Ninn's work is visually arresting, and that the tableaux he creates are undeniably artful and well-considered, does nothing to forgive such abandonment of substance. You might say, "Hey Gram, it's a porn movie - I'll just fast forward to the parts I can jerk off to," and you'd have a hard time finding them. Ninn has a talent for filling up empty space with redundant shots, as if PurePlay, his executive producer, demanded a movie of a certain length. So one must slog through many empty calories to get to the meat of Catherine, which is well-constructed sex scenes.

But there's a lot of people who put together well-constructed sex scenes between sexy people - is there a market for the porn version of highbrow trappings people like Ninn provide? (And yes - this, too, is a "porn version": a mainstream movie wouldn't get away with the looped transitional scenes, and a mainstream producer would have probably raised the volume on the music every time Hollander or one of her castmates spoke.)

There is no reason why Ninn, who knows how to light, could not also have remembered to tell his actors not to look at the camera during the pop shot; this is supposed to be a feature, not a gonzo production. And the Meatholes family of products does not have a monopoly on misogyny, as Hollander's characters are continually shouted at as cunts, pigs, sluts, and whores. Which I guess is fine if everybody seems to be having a good time, but No, Catherine is deadly serious.

I wanted to be pleasantly surprised by this movie, but I wasn't. It left me depressed that, not only is there a huge amount of people out there who voted for Bush, but there are people who think a porn film can only be good if it drains all the fun out of watching sex on film.