Sex and Death 101

(2008)

Roderick Blank (Simon Baker) is about to be married after an active bachelorhood. He works as an ad exec for a fast food chain, and feels like his life couldn't possibly be better. Then his lesbian secretary opens up an anonymous e-Mail listing every woman he has ever had sex with, in order, followed by many other names. He becomes convinced that he is to sleep with every woman on the list, in order. Some mysterious agents contact him, and explain that the e-Mail is real, and was sent by a smart machine.

At the same time, Winona Ryder is killing men who richly deserve it, and she is the last one on Simon's list.

Theoretically, hilarity ensues.

This film has fans, but I am not one of them despite the fact that writer/director Daniel Waters penned the cult masterpiece, Heathers, which I love. 

If one starts with the premise that Blank must sleep with each woman on the list and no others, and the last woman on the list is the serial killer, then the film must end with him mating with the serial killer for life, or being killed by her.

It does.

The hero of this one, Mr. Blank, discovers, among other things, that knowing women are sure things takes much of the joy out of sex for him. I found that having a completely predictable film did the same for me.

• The Good: IMDb readers say 6.3, and it won a Best Director award in a Seattle film festival for writer/director Daniel Waters.
• The Bad: Critics were not kind
• The Ugly: It did not do well in the box office, with two festival appearances, and a perfunctory theatrical release of some sort.

Winona Ryder shows breasts, briefly.

We also have exposure from Jessica Kiper

Pollyanna McIntosh

and Sophie Monk.

Confessions of a Lap Dancer

 (1997)

General overview:

So many things you do not want to see as you travel through this life, for they are warnings of bad things to come.  An umpire walking to home plate with the help of a seeing-eye dog.  That would be bad.  Dr. Kevorkian sent to tell you the results of your biopsy.  That would be worse.  A movie - any movie - with a first scene in which a woman - any woman - is crying. Worst of all possibilites, that one.  Tells you there is viewing pain ahead. It violates the one rule we have in the house about which movies to rent or buy: I will not watch a movie that does or even could star Hugh Grant.  Don't care what the title of the movie is, if a gal be crying in the first scene, Hugh Grant cannot be far behind.  Despite failing this litmus test, Confessions of a Lap Dancer has two saving graces: Hugh Grant is nowhere to be seen and barely a minute goes by without one, two or all three B's out there in the open, for us to enjoy. 

The movie's protagonist and title character - the Lap Dancer, not the Confessions - is played by Blake Pickett.  Ms. Pickett had quite the career.  Once a video DJ on the Nashville Network, or some such thing, and then a beauty in B movies who kept her clothes on, all the more to be desired, Blake wandered into this mess of a movie because, well I suppose because she had bills to pay.  Time was I capped a movie of hers in which she stripped down to a bikini.  And how I wished at the time she had shed a lot more clothing.  Had red hair then and she looked wonderful.  In Confessions she has bleach blonde hair - independent evidence of its unnatural color is given us several times in the movie - and although her body looks remarkably well toned her face looks like the years have worn her down.  But does she ever give up the goodies.  I counted 12 scenes in which she either strips or sport humps.  If you like her looks and can think of nothing better than to see Blake Pickett naked, brother, then you have come to the right place.

The movie itself blows.  Giant green weenies.  Blake's character is a stripper, lap dancer and hooker, all rolled up into one neat package.  Back story is she wants her daughter back from some older, respectable guy but because she's been arrested and jailed for solicitation the odds of that are ever so slim.  There is one meager, contrived attempt to explain her hooking.  You see, she has a preternatural desire to defy convention and live wildly.  You know that because in exactly one scene, immediately after her friend has offered that theory, she boosts a car and goes for a joyride. End of exposition, end of backstory, end of interest... on anybody's part, including the scriptwriter.  We do learn repeatedly that Blake is an unhappy camper.  Does not like her day job.  Every time she hooks up with someone she cries, discreetly enough so that the John or the Jane cannot see her, which is a good thing for business because most of us would rather not  have our sex partners weep through a session of heated boffing. 

Her lawyer decides he loves her and dips his dingus into a honeypot that should be drained dry by now, and you know she loves him because she smiles during intercourse - whoda thunk?  But then she meets his best friend and it turns out to be one of her johns and yada, yada, yada.  Who the fuck cares?  Another story winds its way through the movie - something about the strip joint's bookkeeper, whose cop ex-boyfriend wants her back or something.  In the end, almost as if by magic, all stories get resolved all happy and neat, in a way that tells me this script had to have been written by a girl.  Not a woman, a girl.  Even if the writer sported a Y chromosome and external genitalia, he is still a girl.  Confessions is really a chick flick with all the sensibilities of a Hugh Grant film, but with lots and lots of nekkidness.

Blake and a whole lotta other women do get seriously nekkid.  Got the caps and clips to prove it.  You will see lots of stripping scenes, sometimes by named players - not just Blake but also Nikki Nova and Julia Kruis and Janine Lindemulder - and many times by a quartet of unidentified lap dancers who sit and wait politely while the main gals strip and then bounce up to wriggle around on some guy's lap.  Seems like awfully civilized behavior from a group of sex workers, but what do I know?  Director of this dreck has a style for filming the stripping scenes.  Too bad it is a piss poor style.  Use two cameras, he figures, and set em up at the back of the room and to make it seem as though this really is a strip club have people walk between the camera and the subject as often as possible.  Yep, that sure convinced me.  And there were many sport humping scenes.  Blake does a handful of guys and one gal, played by Lisa Comshaw. 

That scene is a hoot, BTW. Lisa has her arms out, crucifixion style, and is blindfolded - so she thinks Blake is her hubby as she canoodles with her naughty bits, but as soon as the blindfold comes off, Lisa's hands are shown to be free as birds.  Just the way it goes in Confessions of a Lap Dancer.  People who made this thing could not be bothered to worry about stuff like... I don't know, logic, consistency, continuity... that sort of stuff. 

So okay, wasn't supposed to be Kagemusha, this movie.  And I do so appreciate the fact the producers went out and got Blake to take off all her clothes every five minutes, but crimony they were this close to having a movie that might have worked at some level above the pudendum.  Sadly, it was not be, mon cherie.

 

About today's clips:

 

Scene 3 - this is the star of the whole shebang. We get Blake Pickett in a stripping scene. To paraphrase the Munchkin doctor, she's not only merely nude, she's really most sincerely nude. Lots of B's wherever you look. This scene, more than any of the others, lets you see just how well-toned was Ms. Pickett's body. So the hooters are after-market additions, but that rumpus and those legs ... and the place where those legs meet ... are all natural and in mah-velous shape, if you don't mind me saying. Blake and the director of photography do some first-rate teasing in this scene. They get oh so close to gynocam territory only to have Blake's hand or some other object obstruct the view (see collage 3g as an example of this tactic). But just as the scene ends, for exactly two frames, we are treated to the sight of Blake's privates - collages 3h and 3i . In the words of the great philosopher, I'd walk a mile for a vertical smile. BTW, how do casting directors decide who is drafted into service as strip club patrons in these movies? Do they take volunteers? I am serious here, me buckos. Imagine if you could have been a patron at The Blue Iguana as Daryl Hannah danced topless or at this place while Blake strutted her stuff. They would not have to pay us to sit there and watch; and we would not have to act to look interested, no sirreee. Collages below:

Scene 4 &  Scene 5 - here Blake boffs the best friend of her current lawyer and soon-to-be boyfriend. She will have some 'splainin' to do. The idea that transgressions come back to haunt a character after he or she has turned to the side of good is as old as Thomas Hardy. How then does a drunken frat boy coke hound become the leader of the Western World? Methinks Hardy was full of shit. Collages follow. The first two are from scene four, the last from scene five.

Veronica Sanchez

Ms. Sanchez is the featured player in both of today's films. The first is Las 13 Rosas (2007), in which Veronica is the nudity soloist. Here are the film clips. Two collages follow:

The next one takes us back two more years for El Calentito (2005), in which Veronica shares the stage with two other beauties.

Macarena Gomez film clips (Samples right.)
Ruth Diaz film clips (Samples right.)
Veronica Sanchez film clips (Samples right.)

The Bank Job

2008

This caper movie is fun and full of action, but has the additional benefit of being based on the true story of the 1971 robbery of the Baker Street Bank in London, which was kept more or less quiet for 30 years because of a government gag order to cover the asses of crooked politicians and cops who were caught up in the drama. Martine (Saffron Burrows) offers her friend Terry (Jason Statham) a chance to rob a bank. Their target is the safe deposit room with boxes full of money and goodies worth millions. What they don't realize is that the boxes also contain a wealth of secrets; log books, ledgers, and photos that would cause a huge scandal if they became public.

Looking a little bit like the gang that couldn't shoot straight, Terry's boys nevertheless manage to pull off the robbery, but then they wind up with cops, the government, and gangsters all on their tail to recover their dirty laundry.

This movie is interesting and exciting, well worth an evening of your time.
 

Louise Chambers	Saffron Burrows