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 Studio: Wicked
Director: Michael Raven
Cast: jessica drake, Dana DeArmond, Scarlett Fay, Randy Spears, Barrett Blade, Eric Masterson, Barry Scott, August
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
jessica drake is Zoe as today's Wicked Girl on a mission in "Kissing Girls," in which the long-leggedy pornstress lets us know (in standard-issue voiceover form) that this will be her year to climb the corporate ladder, make the world a better place, and find her soulmate. (As this line cuts to her trysting with Eric Masterson, we can assume that he is not it, else the movie would be very short.)
"He understood my passions and dealt with my neuroses," she says of him, but when he tells her to hurry because his wife will be home soon, she knows it isn't to be. We know that the movie will be about dipping her toe in the world of women.
Like Hustler is hitting a groove with, or at least spending a lot of time on, its "parody" movies, Wicked is co-opting mainstream successes and making them a little more porny. "Kissing Girls" is Wicked's "Kissing Jessica Stein."
Frustrated with men, Zoe answers a personal ad. From a girl.
At first she is hesitant, but when a montage sequence reveals that alll men are crazy, she reconsiders.
"Besides," she says, "aren't all women lesbians these days? Bisexual? Swingers? Isn't that all the rage?"
All the rage in Hell, maybe.
Anyway, drake bites the bullet and meets Moonbeam (Dana DeArmond), and they hit it off on Wicked's muted pastel restaurant set. And they have so much in common! They're both Scorpios, they like to drive, and neither likes labels.
But they do like labia.
Moonbeam tells Zoe about first finding a woman attractive, when she caught her babysitter (Scarlett Fay) having sex with her 40-year-old boyfriend. Luckily, we don't see 12-year-old Moonbeam peaking around the curtains. We're also proud of ourselves that we guessed how another sex scene would be shoehorned in before Zoe and Moonbeam's inevitable coupling.
drake and DeArmond at first seem an unlikely porn pair, but DeArmond handles the transition from gaping and choking to couples'-friendly lesbo scene with aplomb, and even inspires the best ad-lib of the movie when drake says, "If I had a cock you'd be in trouble."
I've said it before and I say it again: it's great jessica drake does not have a cock.
 Labels: August, Barrett Blade, Barry Scott, dana dearmond, Eric Masterson, jessica drake, Randy Spears, Scarlett Fay, wicked
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 Studio: Wicked
Director: Brad Armstrong
Cast: Kaylani Lei, Shyla Stylez, Victoria Sin, Mikayla, Devon Lee, Jennifer Dark, Brad Armstrong, Tommy Gunn, Deep Threat, Niko, Barrett Blade, Derrick Pierce, Marcus London
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
"Some say the path we take is guided by Fate or unseen forces," intones Lei in the voiceover, which is immediately reminiscent of the sort of stylish, formulaic, safe, and empty Skinemax porn Wicked produces so well
How does one become a hooker accidentally? Well, if you looked like Kaylani Lei and you were walking down Hollywood Boulevard dressed to enhance all your Kaylani Leitude whilst absently sucking your soft drink from a straw, it would be within reason for the common passerby to at least hope you were a hooker.
And the passerby would be right, because hooker Lei is en route to an interview about how she became a hooker accidentally. Turns out she met a dude, Marcus (Armstrong), online who wasted no time sampling the goods once they finally met.
"He didn't seem to be an axe murderer or anything," Lei recalled. Waking up alone, Lei was surprised to find $500 by her bedside.
Was she a hooker? Who knows. Marcus invites her to L.A. and at the airport she is greeted by a limousine containing not Marcus by instead a man named Deep Threat.
"Little did I know that it would change my life - " says Lei in the voiceover.
(wait for it)
" - forever."
"I realized I crossed a line," she says.
(wait for it)
" - that could never be uncrossed."
Also:
"I had changed - "
(wait for it)
" - and this was only the beginning."
Lei begins a crazy joyride of sex for money, immersing herself in "the life," in which intimacy, commerce, and hedonism coexist in an uneasy colloidal stew - forever. She fucks other women, rich swains at the opera, guys at the car wash, couples, anything that pays.
Wicked cannot solve this problem, but in the scene with Shyla Stylez and Tommy Gunn as the couple Lei beds, the movie falls victim to something that happens in porn all the time: Stylez looks more like a hooker than the person playing a hooker. It's like the Monty Python "Bicycle Repair Man" sketch, where everyone is a superhero.
But the highs become fewer and farther between.
"Every once in a while you ask yourself, 'What am I doing?'" Lei tells her interviewer.
"Why don't you just stop?" he asks.
"That's easier said than done," she says, blowing cigarette smoke. "You can't just walk away. It's in your blood. It's what you know. It's what you are. No matter how hard you try, you het sucked right back in. You're in for life. And sometimes? That feels like an eternity."
I hand it to Wicked for yet another unflinching look at the world of high-priced call girls this summer, the other being Latina Hollywood Hookers.
But just when you condemn Wicked for padding the script, you realize that all those (or most of those) sodden sentences work up to a twist ending reminiscent of that Tom Cruise Isn't Gay Enough movie.
Like M. Night Shyamalan movies, the twist endings over the years have yielded diminished returns since The Sixth Sense. But this is porn, so we've got at least ten more years of them. So I'll leave it to you to decide if the twist redeems the movie.
Labels: Barrett Blade, brad armstrong, Deep Threat, Derrick Pierce, Devon Lee, Jennifer Dark, kaylani lei, Marcus London, Mikayla, Niko, Shyla Stylez, Tommy Gunn, Victoria Sin, wicked
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 Studio: Wicked
Director: Jonathan Morgan
Cast: Kaylani Lei, Kylie Wilde, Nicole Sheridan, Nikki Rhodes, Renae Cruz, Marcus London, Evan Stone, Alex Sanders, Dane Cross, Herschel Savage, Niko
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
Is Kaylani Lei dead? In a gauzy, brightly-lit room she cavorts with a man in white underpants. According to the Porn Valley Book of the Dead, this and her four-inch white stilletos point to the Afterlife. But something is wrong; the apparition she's with appears to be Nick Manning in all that oversaturation, but it's not. Is she in Heaven or in Hell? We can't tell. Also, because the room is so white, we can't tell if a load has been dropped.
But wait. It's all a dream. Sandy (Lei) was only dreaming. It's Monday morning; she's not making love to an angel, she's a lonely working girl with a dog, and she's late for her carpool.
The car ride to the office is filled with the type of banter acting that reminds one of locally produced AM radio commercials. It's comforting. It says that, no matter how expensive the camera package and editing rig, that porn directors know the real reason people watch porn is for the sex.
It seems the office is going to undergo a round of layoffs, say the carpoolers. But, just as the movie opened with a more or less gratuitous sex scene (and I'm not saying there is anything bad about gratuitous sex in a porn movie), we now have the opportunity, through the porn-narrative techniques of exposition and flashback, to review each passenger's weekend sexcapades.
In the slow drive around the neighborhood, nerdy Jimmy recounts how he bedded a stripper in Vegas after a winning night at the blackjack table. He must've won big, because Hooker didn't make him wear a condom! Outside his casino-comped room, neon lights flash. Production design! Then the stripper's luchador husband arrives.
Then it's middle-aged Bob (Herschel Savage)'s turn. He and his wife get ready for a night of role-playing by talking about the APR on their leased vehicles. Wicked's couples'-friendly credo is this: See? Dom/sub couples are just like you.
"Next week, we're going to try something called erotic asphyxiation," Bob says.
Around this time I was waiting for the weekend adventures of the driver of the carpool, Sue. "I bet those glasses are just a beard for her sexual hellcattery," I said.
But Kaylani is the contract girl, so she gets her second sex scene first. She has a threesome with her friend and the pizza guy. The pizza guy. Never accuse Wicked of discarding history.
We finally get to Sue, who shocks our sensibilities by being a dirty little biker whore. With Brian Surewood unavailable, the role of lead biker went to an unshaven Evan Stone. While Sue's acting in the car was frankly abysmal, at the biker bar she acts with her eyes. Brilliant!
Four attractive people stuck in traffic talk about sex. Is there anything better suited to late-night cable? Carpool may be formulaic, but it's friendly, non-threatening, and fun. As the gang breaks up at the office parking lot there is a tidy wrap-up. With gas prices so high, I see room for a slew of inexpensive sequels.
Labels: Alex Sanders, Dane Cross, evan stone, herschel savage, jonathan morgan, kaylani lei, Kylie Wilde, Marcus London, Nicole Sheridan, Nikki Rhodes, Niko, Renae Cruz, wicked
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 Studio: Wicked
Director: Randy Spears
Cast: Demi Delia, Daisy Marie, Cassandra Cruz, Maya Gates
The first thing one thinks when confronted with Wicked's new Latina Hollywood Hookers is, "Well Duh. You think there's Latina hookers in Glendale? It would be a step up to have Latina hookers in Glendale."
On that subject: Irvine Robbins R.I.P., whose first ice cream store was in Glendale. Mourn ya 'til I join ya (pours Friendly's Fribble on grave).
After the triumph of Cinco de Mayo we are faced with harsh realities: some Latinas turn to prostitution. Luckily the "hookers" of the title are not streetwalkers but classy call girls with phone numbers, credit at a florist, and their own couches.
Demi Delia is the head of this escort agency but, striving to stay close to her roots, also sees select clients. One is Ben English.
 In the first scene, English and Delia offer a valuable service to consumers, providing an example of the small talk and protocol characteristic of a session with an escort: he places the money on the table, she pretends to have missed him since the last time, and then they get down to it.
The only inaccuracy was that they kissed each other. That Wicked requires condoms made for more authenticity. If a hooker does not require a condom, you should run (unless you are only there to strangle her, in which case you should reconsider and go to Baskin Robbins).
 The second scene is even more authentic in its awkwardness. Tommy Gunn forgets to pay Sienna West until she prompts him with something legally innocuous, just in case he is a cop:
"Do you want to take care of business?"
Sienna West utters not one "Ay, Papi" throughout the scene, but she does imply she is a Latina by asking, "So do you like to fuck Latinas?"
 Daisy is a massage therapist in the next scene, and Randy Spears tells her that her "money is over there."
 Nick Manning plays a serial whoremonger in his scene with Cassandra Cruz. She asks if he has seen women from the agency before.
"All of them," he says. "And none of them can keep up with me."
 Finally, Alex Sanders and Dick Delaware sign on for Maya Gates. "You know it will cost you a little more?" asks Delia in the phone interview.
I found this scene the most verdad of all of them. The conversation was stilted and Cruz knew very little English. In fact, it was less like a porn scene and more like a hard-hitting HBO documentary, with poignant human drama everywhere you looked.
 One bit of dialogue I would have liked to see was:
"You sure you're not a cop?"
"You sure you're not Armenian?"
Wicked has done a great public service in releasing this prostitute primer. Still, I can't help thinking that if these women had been white, they would have been called "escorts."
Labels: Cassandra Cruz, Daisy Marie, Demi Delia, Maya Gates, minireview, Randy Spears, wicked
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 Studio: Wicked
Director: Mark Stone
Cast: Lindsey Meadows, Prseley Maddox, April ASubrey, Jayme Langford, Kayla Carrera, Kissy Kapri, Nikki Kane, Ryann Reynolds, Evan Stone, Marco Banderas, Nick Manning, Randy Spears, Marco Banderas
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
There's a dance party for the nurses, and they'll do anything to win. Even resort to sex and martial arts.
It's movies like Kung Fu Nurses A Go-Go that remind us that the rental of two or three skimpy nurses' outfits spread over eight or so women on different shooting days is really all it takes to satisfy the porn consumer's need for a narrative.
This movie is just about pointless, but is light and charming regardless. A vignette film not featuring any of Wicked's female contract stars, it has the feel of a movie that has little to prove and little to lose.
This inspires some serious hammy acting from three of the four hammiest actors in porn: Randy Spears, Evan Stone, and Nick Manning (Steven St. Croix couldn't make it) who reappears as Mr. Thermopyles for no other reason than to refer to his character in the third person.
We meet various nurses over the course of the movie, and each informs her patient that there's a dance that night. Somehow kung fu is incorporated.
One gets the impression that there were some extra props lying around, some money was freed up, and Nick Manning happened to be driving by. "Hey! Let's make a movie!"
Porn consumers familiar with the work of the late Jim Holliday might see similarities in this movie directed by Mark Stone, in that there are nurses. Unlike Holliday's work, however, there is little scripted dialogue. The viewer can enjoy scenes of pretty women in nurses' uniforms without sitting through a self-important plot.
Kung Fu Nurses A Go-Go is not an important porn movie; it's just fun.
Labels: April ASubrey, Jayme Langford, Kayla Carrera, Kissy Kapri, lindsey meadows, Nikki Kane, Prseley Maddox, Ryann Reynolds, wicked
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 Studio: Wicked
Director: Brad Armstrong
Cast: Kirsten Price, Shyla Styles, Barrett Blade, Scott Lyons, Vanessa Lane, Savannah Stern, Gianna Lynn, Chris Cannon, Christian, Tyler Knight, Brooke Banner, Jada Fire, Kayla Carrera, Mikayla, Derrick Pierce, Marcus London
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
Poor Brian Parsons (Brad Armstrong) is called to serve his country in Iraq, lamenting the U.S. Army's lack of 18-year-olds. Luckily, porn has 18-year-olds in spades, so Brian's girlfriend (Kirtsen Price) makes his last week stateside one to remember.
Brian asks his buddy Jimmy (Barrett Blade) to take care of his girl while he's away. I feared the worst.
"If that was me," Blade's girlfriend says, "I'd keep you to myself for a week."
The two couples get together at the same bar from Porn Valley. There are a thousand stories there.
As his departure grows nearer, Brian receives a creepy farewell from Charlie, his boss. "I always felt you were the son I never had," Charlie says. This has to be in the top ten, at least, of Quotes Inappropriate for a Porn Movie.
I wondered how the movie would squeeze sex into the boot camp and Iraq scenes, but with the help of dream sequences and the presence of female soldiers (in the same way Hawkeye availed himself of Lt. Dish), that problem was taken care of easily.
Unfortunately, Brian doesn't make it. His small town thinks the worst of Jimmy drying the widow's tears. Brian's brother accuses Blade and Price of not mourning long enough when he finds them at a drive-in together.
"Stop stirring the pot, you little shit!" Jimmy cries.
For the hundredth time I wondered if Wicked's Real Movies But with Sex m.o. was an effective strategy, but the drive-in scene was pretty cool.
Meanwhile, Brooke is getting suspicious of Jimmy and Kirsten. And for good reason!
Brooke retaliates. She calls Jimmy a "fucking dummy" in a monologue that I think prospective porn talent should memorize for auditions.
Coming Home is a movie that drops its cliches as it goes, so by the end it really forgets it's a porn film and becomes something else, something heartfelt. Could that be good? I don't know. It is difficult for a porn movie to sell tragedy, though plenty of them attempt it. This is a porn movie that ends sadly, and there is logic in the sadness. But Coming Home is not the movie to watch if one is already guilty about jerking off to porn.
Director/writer/star Brad Armstrong has improved on Flashpoint, the reissue version of which I reviewed here recently. Coming Home features only strong performances (save for the gas station manager) and the story is much tighter. It also makes a play for some of the biggest consumers of porn, the U.S. military, and doesn't do soldiers a disservice, even on a porn budget.
Labels: brad armstrong, brooke banner, directors, kirsten price, wicked
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 Studio: Wicked
Director: Mark Stone
Cast: Penny Flame, Kelli Tyler, Katarina Kat, Kissy Kapri, Aubrey Addams, Marlie Moore, Nadi Phuket, Randy Spears, Evan Stone, Barrett Blade, Manuel Ferrara, Charles Dera, Chunk
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
Adult women in schoolgirl uniforms has become a cultural indicator divorced from cultural practice, in the same way that Hawaiians don't have luaus without tourists watching. That is why we can watch a film like Reform School Girls 2 like anthropologists, and not have to mail back our college degrees and refund money to our parents.
Unlike other movies in which the bait and switch becomes apparent immediately, this film mightily maintains the schoolgirl conceit all the way through (even if, shame on Wicked, we never see Penny Flame and Katarina Kat in the same scene, as implied by the boxcover).
Mr. Davidson (Randy Spears) is in gravelly, bemused I Know You're Here to Jerk Off mode as he explains that his Headly Academy for "girls slightly over 18" is all about a hands-on approach to finding the right slots for wayward girls to fit in. You can see where it goes from there.
The first applicant is the delicious Penny Flame, whose winning sense of humor matches that of Spears as all attempts at convincing her that this is a vo-cational school rather than a va-cational school lead to the Inevitable. Afterward, she spits out his come and pops a wad of gum back in her mouth.
Aubrey Addams doesn't have the "finest" clue how to cook or "how to handle meat" so she is paired with Manuel Ferrara, the school chef. He demonstrates on her how to show respect to chicken breasts. We had a bet about how long it would take someone to say, "Now I'm going to show you how to stuff a pussy." It took maybe five minutes.
Then we meet the toothsome Nadi Phuket, sentenced to dance class with Evan Stone. Despite the fact that this is a class for The Dance, he somehow finds a way to direct her to "use 'Cock' in a sentence."
Then the Ukraine's Katarina Kat discovers that Acting and Modeling instructor Charles Dera's Method has nothing to do with Stanislavsky. It's hard to keep track of everyone who washes ashore in this business, but I found myself lamenting the hollow months I spent not knowing who Katarina Kat was.
The game Kissy Kapri and Marlie Moore do the best they can with modeling clay for a man named Chunk, playing their art teacher. If we didn't have gay stereotypes, how would we know where to place the lesbo scenes?
Finally, music teacher Barrett Blade works on the vocal cords of Lexxi Tyler.
This movie is part of Wicked's Wall to Wall series, its gonzo division. When not producing higher-budget fare, this is what the company does. It's a good niche for the company, delivering enough of a setup to make couples feel OK about buying porn, but not taking itself so seriously that people like me would have a problem with the dialogue before I forget what the real purpose of the movie is.
Labels: katarina kat, Penny Flame, wicked
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Flashpoint X
 Studio: Wicked, Adam & Eve
Director: Brad Armstrong
Cast: Jenna Jameson, Asia Carrera, Brittany Andrews, Jill Kelly, Johnni Black, Missy, Sindee Cox, Sydnee Steele
This marketing event of 2007 and consistent bestseller (or so we're told) was virtually overlooked by the AVN Awards when it was released in 1998. Why? Is it because its cast is so much more important to us now, but back then its hokieness was unforgivable?
We are in a coed firehouse with guys who look like fireman and women who look like Jenna Jameson and Jill Kelly. If director Brad Armstrong had pitched me this movie, I would have stopped him right there and dumped money on him.
After firefighter Robert Dunn is killed in the line of duty in Repo Man-adjacent L.A. we are treated to a blinding array of props, locations, and equipment rentals unprecedented in porn movie history. There are fire trucks, at least ten firefighter uniforms, a cemetery scene, and a helicopter (although that might have been a lucky shot), as well as real fire, which Pirates didn't even have.
Unfortunately there is also dialogue more appropriate to a film with a smaller budget.
At the memorial service: "I want to thank Robert Dunn. And the loss to his family."
At the gravesite: "Let it go."/"This isn't over - not by a long shot!"
In the aftermath: "I keep thinking that I signed on to make my dad happy. He's a 20-year veteran of the f- department."
Don't get me wrong; I love and respect porn as an art form and its historic need to get to the sex by any means necessary. But the promise inherent in a movie about a coed firehouse is almost squandered when smart people are made to say stupid things.
Luckily, back at the firehouse Jill Kelly and Sindee are commiserating with one of their co-workers. He tells them, of course, that if they keep complaining they might as well pack it in. It's tough love. Then they have sex. So powerful is the idea that if a man just comforts a woman in a time of sorrow she will have sex with him - and bring a friend - that I applaud the production for bringing this truth to film.
And then an interesting B story starts to develop about a fireman's secret injuries and painkiller dependence. He will not share the news with Jenna because she already ditched a gimpy fireman and he doesn't want it to happen to him. "The minute I can't carry my load," he tells snoopy Jill Kelly, "I'll pack it in."
It also develops that Jenna leaves injury in her wake; at least two people in her past are revealed to have been killed or handicapped. It compromises her work. Will she get it together by the end of the movie?
About this time we wonder how many more fire-related sex scenes we can have. A likely candidate - the grateful rescue - appears when Asia Carrera's friend almost drowns in their swimming pool. We think it's gonna happen, and then - Nope, the painkiller-addicted firefighter has a sexy dream. When in doubt about where the next sex scene is going to show up in your feature porn script, write a sexy dream. Then nothing has to make sense.
Luckily, two heroic firefighters return poolside to cavort with thankful Carrera and Sydnee Steele. Yet a third plot twist about Jenna's possible involvement in a string of arsons threatens to complicate matters, but then more sex happens.
It is a pleasure to watch such an ambitious project, the glamour project of its time,
featuring 1998's A-list porn talent. The dialogue keeps it solidly in the realm of porn movies, but "Flashpoint" is a excellent porn movie.
Now for the extras. "Flashpoint X" comes with three additional DVDs, including all the commentary you would like about this movie, storyboards, and lots of Jenna Jameson. Jameson and Wicked became famous together, so Jenna is all over the extra footage, and Jameson fans probably need no other impetus to purchase this package.
While this was a Wicked movie through and through, co-producing credit goes to Adam & Eve. As they did with Digital Playground's Pirates several years later, Adam & Eve split the bill for this mega-production. Flashpoint is just as good, if not better, than Pirates,and earns extra points for not calling itself "Crackdraft".
(This movie is not yet available with this site's sponsor.)Labels: "asia carrera", classic, jenna jameson, jill kelly, wicked
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 Studio: Wicked Pictures
Director: Michael Raven
Cast: jessica drake, Herschel Savage, Kaylani Lei, Sammie Rhodes, Hillary Scott, Randy Spears, Veronica Hart
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
Other than the works of Shakespeare, I suppose, there is no more fertile place to mine stories than the Bible. Even for porn.
Of course, any pornographer going to that bestseller for plots runs the risk of seeming precious, self important. Then again, if we have learned anything in our time together, precious sometimes sells.
"Ah, sweet Christy: I needed her more than any man ever needed a woman," says Samson Nazarite (Herschel Savage), the Master of the Universe whose devotion to his career drove Christy (Hillary Scott) away. Samson's immediate regret of Christy's departure (he chose to go to a conference with Phyllis Stein & Associates rather than on a lovers' cruise) seems abrupt in light of how he treated her, but even more abrupt is the way Savage takes to Delilah (jessica drake), the frank hairdresser he takes up with soon after.
drake hardly cracks a smile the whole movie; she is a svelte dragon lady.
The graying Savage is a fine actor who, along with Randy Spears, represents porn's mature leading men. A clever trick in adult movies is channeling all the dialogue into voiceovers. These Savage delivers well, but he also has the personal gravitas required of the role.
Unfortunately the movie is lousy with gravitas. Not only do we have the unholy mixing of Old and New Testaments with "Samson" and "Nazarite"(an OT term for a man who has taken a vow of abstinence), but Samson has also lost "Christ"y. That and the dim blueness of the sex scenes, in which the lovely drake is seldom fully revealed, makes me think that, as a porn movie, Delilah misses the point; even if jerking off to all the movies that cross my desk is not an option, the idea behind each and every porn movie should always be that I could if I wanted to.
Delilah is not a hit with Samson's friends, Stephanie (Kaylani Lei) and Pete (Spears), nor with his mom (Veronica Hart), all of whom act their asses off in service to a film that is relentlessly depressing.
But ambitious. The story doesn't give up. It has twists and turns that the cast stays with: Delilah has a past, Spears is not the friend he seems, Christy is still in the picture. Samson prays.
A bum (but, you know, one of those supernatural bums with a wealth of wisdom), approaches Samson outside a restaurant with, "What does it profit a man to gain the world but lose his soul?" (New Testament again). Oy.
Delilah is, like it or not, an adult movie for adults. There is not a lick of fantasy in it. We believe Spears and Savage, with their high-powered resumes, would actually have icy trophy partners. We believe that men like that might search for redemption in the wrong places. I even believe that certain couples would be turned on by this movie - I just don't know any.
drake, unfortunately, plays an unlikeable character and it works. We don't want to not like jessica drake.
Delilah is the elusive "real movie that happens to have sex in it" that the big adult companies strive for. Not a lot of sex, either; the best-lit scene is with Lei and Spears, and Hillary Scott never appears in anything less than a bikini.
Though the movie ends with Samson getting a second chance - and literally praying for one - the journey there is decidedly un-porny. What does it profit a porn movie to gain a good script but lose my erection?
Labels: jessica drake, wicked
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 Studio: Wicked
Director: Jonathan Morgan
Cast: Stormy Daniels, Brianna Love, Cassie Young, Delilah Strong, Katie Morgan, Kelly Kline, Nicole Sheridan, Sunny Lane, Eric Masterson, Evan Stone, Mr. Pete, Randy Spears, Voodoo
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
A couple is visited by ghosts of relationships past in order to deal with their current boy/girl woes.
It's tough being Jen (Stormy Daniels), so starved for a relationship that she can't have meaningless sex with a guy without telling him she loves him. And it's tough for Dave (Voodoo), who, when Stormy tells him she loves him, runs out of the room.
Wicked's latest couples' flick, written by Daniels and directed by Jonathan Morgan, aims to deliver the elusive mainstream movie - but with sex - that other studios aspire to. The mood is light and the sex is positive. But can the story sustain it?
Out in the hallway, Dave bumps into ex-girlfriend Roxy (Sunny Lane), who guesses Jen's problem right off the bat.
"How can you love someone who obviously doesn't love herself? She's so insecure, she sticks bags of poisonous water into her chest to get men like you to justify her womanhood."
Daniels' script is festooned with fun lines like this, and sometimes the performers pull them off and sometimes they don't.
"I was just trying to find myself," Roxy says of a previous infidelity.
"In someone else's vagina?" asks Voodoo.
Jen and Dave are visited by several of their exes in the course of the movie, and the flashbacks depict what made them exes in the first place. Randy Spears, Delilah Strong, Nicole Sheridan, and Evan Stone cameo as particularly oily characters.
If the movie has great ambition but doesn't live up to it, is it still better than a movie that doesn't even bother with a story? Hard to tell, but the effort makes The One a winner. After all, there are boatloads of Hollywood movies featuring actors who can't wrap their mouths around their dialogue but who don't compensate by wrapping them around anything else.
My only problem with the movie is that it is lit murkily. Very few scenes take place in the daylight for such a sunny film.
The movie ends happily, with both principals realizing that it should be easy to say "I love you" to a porn star.
Labels: dvd, reviews, stormy daniels, wicked
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Porn Valley
 Studio: Wicked
Director: Michael Raven
Cast: Kaylani Lei, Carmel Moore, Gianna Lynn, Monica Mayhem, Riley Evans
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
Thinking first that Wicked Pictures had commissioned a tribute movie about this site, I was eager to tear the package open and find out how to get my royalties. Then the elegantly art-diirected cover, featuring a clothed Kaylani Lei, made me recognize this film for what it was: a couples' movie.
"Since I have destroyed all who have ever loved me," I reasoned, "perhaps I should watch this. You know, for tips."
The movie begins with Kaylani Lei's voiceover. "In my 26 years I had seeen maybe three pornographic movies," she says. "And I was scared of it." She talks about Brazilian waxes and carnal moans, all the trappings of the porn ouevre. The audience is deposited without explanation into a blue-tinged sex scene.
We are watching a scene from the pornography that is destroying our narrator's relationship. She watches in disgust as her boyfriend of five years drinks it in. A Wicked DVD box sits on the table.
She explains that, since moving to L.A. from Louisiana (it is hard to believe Kaylani Lei as a Louisiana girl, but harder still to believe she's from Cape Cod, which she is), her boyfriend has subscribed to a casual sex website. She confronts him. He admits he is a sex addict. The relationship is over. Way to support your partner in his time of need, Kaylani.
"Fucking sex addict," she tells her girlfriend. She wonders aloud if pornography, like the kind that possessed her husband, was like marijuana, "a gateway drug to more harsher things." Her friend advises her to date.
She does, and gets into an online relationship with a man who seems compatible, charming, and intelligent. He also directs porn movies. She meets him anyway. He explains that some people use casting couches, but not him. Then, in a flashback to a routine starlet interview, he explains yet again that there will never be another Jenna. The starlet thanks him amid a jangle of bracelets.
She probes him during dinner. It is like a softball infomercial interview. Are drugs orevalent in the porn industry? No more than in Hollywood. Do you think having sex for money is psychologically damaging? I'm all for sexual expression, not repression, baby.
The film thus far is a little dark, not in tone but in hue. It is slightly hard to see. But the movie avoids other inexplicable couples' porn tropes by not being unnecessarily serious. There are laughs and there is some wonderful acting by Barrett Blade (the pornographer) and Lei.
Director Michael Raven takes his time with the scenes, and it is worth mentioning the screenwriter, Jennifer Allison. It seems that Porn Valley can't but be the story of her own journey to Los Angeles. If not, hers was a fortuitous meeting with Wicked, because this script made it onto the screen without being mangled by a hack director or porn performers unused to acting.
Now and then the movie does feel like an ad for the Porn Valley Chamber of Commerce. As Lei meets Blade's friends, she muses, "These people were witty, friendly, polite... Just normal people." She realizes that it is not porn that is the problem with relationships, it is deception. Time and again Blade proves his integrity to her.
The movie ends happily, a porn-positive flick if I've ever seen one. I was wondering, as Lei and Blade consummate their relationship, if he would pull out and come on her chest or if the movie would dare to be different. Raven compromises, but you'll have to watch it to find out how.
Labels: kaylani lei, reviews, wicked
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All About Anna
 Studio: Innocent Pictures/Zentropa Productions
Director: Jessica Nilsson
Cast: Gry Bay, Mark Stevens, Eileen Daly, Thomas Raft, Morten Shelbech, Thomas Lundy, Ovidie
Portions of this review originally appeared on Fleshbot
The mainstream porn movie is an elusive thing, and usually happens by accident. Wild Things seems to have had the right sensibility, whereas both the heavy Eyes Wide Shut and David Cronenberg's Crash fell short, as did Baise Moi.
Denmark's Zentropa Productions, most closely associated here with Lars von Trier, has released a movie that combines some of the tenets of Dogma 95 with a script that seems like it was assembled out of the high school diaries of our favorite porn stars.
Anna is a theatrical costume designer unlucky in love but not wanting for sex. Director Nilsson makes the best of a problematic script that is often simplistic and precious. Marketed as a romantic movie for women, All About Anna certainly pays attention to all the tempestuous relationships a blindingly attractive woman can have in today's theatre community.
As in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves, AAA features the heroine's love going off to sea and coming back compromised. The rest of the movie deals with Anna's comings and goings with Johann (Mark Stevens) and their mutual screwups.
Wicked Pictures is taking the unprecedented step for a porn company in distributing this movie in the United States. As a porn film, no one would argue that there is not enough sex in it. The sex depicted is also too tame for the established market. But the sets, direction, acting, and script are, in the absence of lots of humping, above par for standard porn fare.
So this might be the perfect porn gateway drug. The one blowjob carried to completion results in shame and awkwardness - just like in real life! - rather than sperm-gargling, sperm-drinking from champagne flutes, and/or sperm-swapping with Cytherea. So that's got to count for something.
Where Anna borrows best from Dogme '95 practitioners is the natural lighting and digital filming. Often the movie is heartbreakingly sweet and present, with no little help from its centerpiece, Gry Bay. Her episodes with men, women, and herself are refreshingly devoid of the porn posturing that often compensates here for a lack of time, budget, enthusiasm, beauty, and talent.
But without all the sex, the viewer turns his/her attention to things like the script, which doesn't do justice even to a thoughtful audience willing to forgive almost anything for the love of Gry Bay.
"I had to conquer my fear!" the script has Anna saying in voiceover. "I had to go back to that flat!"
Ultimately, Anna is a sweet movie with a happy ending. Men will like it for Bay, loopy roommate Eileen Daly, and LTG tryst partner Ovidie, and women will like it for Anna's choice in partners, especially Johann.
Do you know who won't like it? The French. But you'll have to watch the movie to learn why.Labels: dvds, reviews, wicked
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Studio: Wicked
