On Demand Weekly

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: AUTOEROTIC (IFC Films)

Click Here For On Demand Weekly's Exclusive Interview With Director Joe Swanberg

AUTOEROTIC - Mumblcore On Demand
By Chris Claro

The genre that forces you to crank the volume all the way up, mumblecore, marches on with AUTOEROTIC, directed by Joe Swanberg (UNCLE KENT) and Adam Wingard, a rambling and digressive examination of the sexual foibles of a group of Chicagoans. Swinging wildly from outrageous farce to creepy voyeurism to – one or two – moments of tenderness, the film is explicit, prurient, and not the least bit sexy.

Using naturalistic settings and lighting, Swanberg and Wingard, who wrote the script with Simon Barrett, dive deep into dysfunction, shining a light on a panoply of sexual maladies, including chronic masturbation, anaorgasmia, online porn addiction, and self-asphyxiation as sexual aide. It’s all as much fun as it sounds, and it features a crew of self-absorbed hipsters who make sex look about as inviting as a visit to the DMV.

The film opens with a vignette featuring a guy who thinks he isn’t packing enough to satisfy his girlfriend. Despite her assurance that he’s wrong, the guy breaks up with her and starts a regimen of penis enlargement pills. Satisfied with the initial results, he starts popping them by the jarful. When it appears he’s about to score with a girl, she runs, screaming and naked, from his monster member (which is never shown on camera).

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: THE PILL (FilmBuff).

THE PILL

By Sky McCarthy

The morning after can be extremely uncomfortable, but THE PILL takes the awkwardness of a one -night stand to the next level. While this movie may be a snapshot to the sexual realities of today, the film lacks any imagination to provide unique insight. It begins with a classic tale of modern “romance” – boy meets girl, girl gets drunk, boy sleeps with girl…unprotected.

After a frantic morning fight, Fred (Noah Bean, “Nikita” “Damages”) convinces Mindy (Rachel Boston, “In Plain Sight”) to take the morning after pill despite her surprising religious convictions. Fred is immediately relieved after the initial swallow but soon becomes Mindy’s unwilling companion for the day when he realizes she must take a second dose within 12 hours.

The storyline is somewhat complicated by the fact that Fred is already in a relationship. Fans of the MY GIRL movies will be surprised to see Anna Chlumsky in a rare on screen role as Fred’s nagging and shrewish girlfriend. While Mindy initially represents a mental and physical escape from reality, she herself is emotionally unstable and invents white lies throughout the film to keep Fred’s attention. The next 24 hours take Fred on a strange roller coaster of events through New York City including a confrontational meeting with Mindy’s ex and a surprise visit to her parent’s apartment.

As the movie drags on, it becomes apparent that every character is completely flawed. Not one of them is likeable so it becomes unclear as to why anyone should care about hurt feelings or unwanted pregnancies. Initially the film plays like a lengthy PSA for the consequences of unprotected sex and one may be left wondering if Planned Parenthood had a hand in funding production costs.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: GOD SAVE MY SHOES (Gravitas).

GOD SAVE MY SHOES
By Amy Slotnick

Although you first might think this is another fashion documentary, one that explores the history, design and obsession with women’s shoes. However, GOD SAVE MY SHOES is actually more about addiction than anything else.

Julie Benasra’s documentary provides a thorough analysis of shoes as pop culture icons and fetishized objects. Interviews with top designers, such as Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin, shoe collectors, like performers Kelly Rowland, Fergie, Dita Von Teese and poker player Beth Shak (who owns over 900 pairs), as well as sexuality experts, fashion historians, orthopedists and psychologists, explore the power, sexual and social implications of the famous stiletto heel. More than once SEX & THE CITY is credited with exploiting women’s attraction to stiletto heels and bringing them to the forefront of today’s fashion and pop culture.

Pierre Hardy                        Christian Louboutin                      Manolo Blahnik

Several theories emerge about what draws some women so obsessively to buy an impractical quantity of shoes at increasing heights. On the one hand, by minimizing the height difference with men, the high heel can be seen as increasing a woman’s power, putting her on eye-level with male counterparts. On the other hand, they limit a woman’s mobility and if heels were a way to increase power, as one of the film’s experts observes, they would be coveted and worn by men (as they were at one time in the 18th century).

Kelly Rowland