The Elegant Spanking is a black and white, silent (with cards) movie about an afternoon between a mistress and her slave, a beautiful maid.  The story line beings with the mistress amusing herself in front of a mirror, eventually masturbating with a string of pearls, as her maid watches while arranging flowers.  The tension mounts as the maid joins the mistress, with much foot licking and pee drinking (and a little tea drinking too as a plot device).

The climax of the movie revolves around the mistress punishing the maid with an ethusiastic spanking and pedal stimulation of the maid.  After the mistress dresses and leaves the maid relives her afternoon while licking the pearls.

Maria Beatty’s movies are very different than typical pornographic films, they’re arty and have good music.  The women tend to be more “natural” than in mainstream porn.  The sex is explicit and fairly clearly shot, though the movie structure does not follow the standard porn movie “sufficiently long” sex scene/minor break/next “sufficiently long” sex scene model.   This is a short film, about 30 minutes.  I did not see The Black Glove, the other feature on the DVD.

Going Under is compared to secretary, but it is not nearly as compelling: it is slow, the character development moderate, the tension weak.   It compares well to low-budget sex-themed independent movies except for a few notable exceptions such as ShortBus, Secretary or even the comparatively low budget also kinky  Preaching to the Perverted. The quality of actor willing to play naked, the quality of writer willing to address the erotic, the availability of money all limit the final product usually disappointingly.

Going is not so bad as to be unwatchable and the story has some fairly interesting developments, even if taken slowly. The story centers around the evolution of a relationship between a kinky submissive therapist named Peter (Roger Rees) and a professional dominatrix named Susanne (Geno Lechner).  The situation is complicated because Susanne is quitting her madame and Peter is married.

Peter’s wife is apparently unperturbed by Peter’s needs or by Susanne and Peter’s budding “out of the office” relationship, but Susanne’s girlfriend is not so amused.

Then, suddenly, nothing really changed; roll credits.

Roger Rees is frequently naked in the movie occasionally pretending to masturbate and there are plenty of mild fetish flavored BD/SM scenes, though nothing particularly erotic or explicit.   The costuming is pretty good: stylish though more restrained than Preaching to the Perverted.

Cafe Flesh is a classic (really) adult film that developed a signfiicant cult following.  The basis of the following is a little obscure given the actual quality of the film and story line, however it does stand out from most movies with cum shots on screen as having a premise and a plot, the storyline being more complex than some mainstream cinema… though not exactly challenging those mainstream movies that might have a chance at an award.

The story line is that there has been a nuclear war and in the post haulocost world people have become either sex negatives or sex positives.  Sex positives can have sex (unlike bay-area sex positives who talk about sex all the time but never actually have it) and are required to by law to inspire the “caged desire” of the sex negatives.   This is posited as and might even be read as a nominally “deep” statement about the nature of human desire and the repression of the same.  OK… not too deep but still, it is a porn movie.

And “adult” it is:

• The first sex scene is MF, quick cum shot.
• The second also MF, also a quick cum shot.
• The third is FF, sort of cut short (no female ejaculation here, but this was from the bush era, and not the political one, not even the first).
• The fourth: MMF, slightly longer to accommodate the necessary permutations.
• The fifth: MF, with “Ric0″ the agent of change.
• The sixth: FF, a plot driven moment of tremendous magnitude.
• The seventh: MF, Rico drives the plot to its abrupt conclusion.

Overall it is actually a nominally watchable movie, though there’s some intrinsic schizophrenia in any movie that attempts to marry a plotline with an effort at arousing the viewer in a prurient way; Cafe Flesh straddles the two somewhat uncomfortably.  It is to the creator’s credit (I think) that it succeeds more as a plot-driven movie than a porn movie, not to imply any absolute figure of merit to that success, rather a relative one.

Nurse me is one of the better Hentai titles: the animation is pretty good for the genre, there is a comprehensible story, and there’s a lot of sex.

On the downside, most of the sex is non-consensual, though the story arc is predicated on the heroine discovering heretofore unknown sexual predilections and thus the non-consensual humiliation and sexual degradation to which she is subjected a journey of self-discovery.  One would not have to be an angry feminist to characterize the premise as a male fantasy with little grounding in reality.

The story line has some complexities which make it stand out, there is a conflict (yes, a real psuedo-literary conflict) between the protagonists desire to live up to the model of the nurse who gave care to her favorite uncle and the demands placed on her by the training program to which she has enroled that she might achieve the (literally) saintly objective.

This sainthood is something of a black mass, repleate with enemas, lacivious head surgeons taking her virginity, more experienced lesbian nurses, and low-class rapists (who get their “cumuppance” in the form of a martial art’s coin throw to the erect genetilia).  Still, the heroine is a good nurse and takes each trial in stride and explicit detail (without censoring).

Shortbus is a really fun movie, a slightly saccharine morality tale of finding happiness and redemption by discovering what sort of sex each of the characters needs and then really enjoying it.  We saw the movie in the theater shortly after the premiere in Toronto (which we missed).  It is funny, adorable, touching, and genuinely erotic.

We ran into John Cameron Mitchell in Mexico City at the film festival there and he told us that the marching band in the movie had nothing that he knew of to do with San Fransciso’s Extra Action Marching Band, but that’s sort of hard to believe when you see them.

We also talked with  Paul Dawson, who was very charming and friendly.  There’s something very leveling about meeting people in distant places.

It’s a great movie for anyone who feels sex should be fun, and probably even better for those who don’t.