If there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and too much of a good thing can indeed sometimes be bad, then the abundance of readily available pornographic images online is certainly going to somehow impact a sea change with respect to human sexual interaction for future generations. A bit of this uncertain, slippery new frontier gets put under the microscope in The
Price of Pleasure, an engaging short-form documentary co-directed by Chyng Sun and Miguel Picker.

Once relegated to the margins of society, pornography has become one of the most profitable — and increasingly less invisible — sectors of the cultural/entertainment industries the United States, raking in an estimated $10-13 billion annually and possessing, of course, its own governmental lobbying power brokers. At the same time, in the advent of the digital age the content of pornography has become more overtly aggressive, arguably more sexist, and undeniably of easier access to younger and younger viewers. Going beyond the same tired, stale liberal-versus-conservative debate, The Price of Pleasure features chats with industry consumers, critics, producers and performers alike, giving an impressionistic snapshot portrait of how pleasure and pain, commerce and power, and liberty and responsibility are all intertwined.

The
Price of Pleasure isn’t a jeremiad, which is a nice thing. But while it doesn’t approach its subject matter with a blanching sensibility (hardcore clips are interspersed throughout, but for illustrative punch rather than empty effect), neither does it really dig into any one single thesis or issue with quite enough tenacity and doggedness. If anything, the title’s 56-minute running time undercuts its effectiveness a bit; just when the movie alights on a provocative opinion, Sun and Picker (ahem) jerk the audience off in another direction, spinning tangential connections based on emotion rather than imposing the sort of more rigorous intellectual thematic divisions that seem warranted.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Price of Pleasure comes to DVD presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with a solid slate of deleted scenes and bonus features that extends the title’s running time by an additional hour or so. Two minutes with the female editor-in-chief of the college sex ‘zine Boink make a (somewhat dubious, or at least poorly articulated) argument that its how-to “Donkey Punch” featurette was all a funny-ha-ha joke, while punk-hardcore starlet Joanna Angel and former actress turned memoirist Sarah Katherine Lewis speak to the generational divide in the adult industry in 11 minutes of interview odds-and-ends.

There’s also nine more minutes of material on performers, with AVN Senior Editor Mark Kernes talking up the appeal of an on-screen emotional connection; eight minutes on the dominant market consumers of adult films; and a perhaps unintentionally amusing three-and-a-half-minute segment in which author Noam Chomsky talks about an infamous September 2005 Hustler interview he did, claiming not to know it was a skin rag. (He detests pornography.) Some more interview material with Sun and Picker would have been nice, but overall this is an interesting collection of bonus material that definitely extends the DVD’s collectibility. Also included are previews of three other Cinema Libre titles, including Make Me Young. To purchase the DVD, click here. Or if Amazon is irreversibly your online retailer of choice, meanwhile, click here. B- (Movie) B (Disc)

Infidelity, in either temptation or its actualized form, has always offered up rich dramatic terrain, because in addition to being about sex (which immediately piques the interest of more than half the population), it’s also all wrapped up in betrayal and insecurity. But as the nature of modern marriage has evolved — it’s now much less about providing a base of financial security for women, and more about actual shared values, notions of family and a vision for moving forward together — so too have the manner in which some movies approach the topic of romantic cheating. If couples are cognizant of the differences between men and women, and allowed to have that honest conversation, then that’s but a stone’s throw away from a conversation in which certain extracurricular flings or activities are allowed, or pre-approved.

All of which brings us to multi-hyphenate Katie Aselton’s The Freebie, which bowed at the Sundance Film Festival around this time last year. A spare, almost enervated character sketch (it clocks in at only 77 minutes), the movie centers on Darren (Dax Shepard, above right) and Annie (Aselton, above left), who from the outside seem to have a solid relationship, and still enjoy each other’s company. Unfortunately, they can’t remember the last time they had sex. When a dinner party conversation leads to a later discussion about the state of their love life, and when an attempted bikini seduction leads to a crossword puzzle race instead of some horizontal action, the pair begins to flirt with an idea for a way to spice things up. The unusual deal they strike: one (calendar-fixed) night of freedom, no strings attached and no questions asked.

Though it has at its core a provocative premise, The Freebie is in certain ways a kind of chaste treatment of the notion that monogamy is a fairly awkward (and unnatural?) state when the haze of lust has faded, and there are no children involved. The film was workshopped at the Sundance Institute, and it’s no coincidence that it’s executive produced by one of the Duplass brothers (Baghead, The Puffy Chair), reigning kings of the so-called mumblecore movement. Even though they strike upon this radical experiment, its characters are reticent, cuddly-smoochy PDA-types, and they in essence lean back rather than forward, no matter what choices the story foists upon them.

This works well for a bit, establishing a certain intrigue as it relates to who exactly these characters are, and why they find themselves in such a rut. Shepard, who heretofore has specialized in more out-there comedic characters, channels a bit of Owen Wilson’s penchant for cud-chewing conversational ellipticism, and Aselton is equally subdued. Some of the dialogue here is quietly smart, for how it locates what the characters are avoiding saying to one another, and the laughs the movie proffers exist for the most part entirely outside of itself, in our judgments of the characters’ earnest declarations (“The way we love each other is so far beyond whether we have sex every night”).

It’s a disappointment, then, that The Freebie doesn’t take this at-odds tension — the foisting of a hot-and-heavy premise on a couple of characters who have started to look through rather than at or into one another — and ultimately do something with it, in terms of sparking a deeper analysis of their current state of being. The manner in which Aselton constructs her film — its did he/did she? structure, which vacillates between the couple first agreeing to the deal and the beginning stages of them acting out their trysts — is interesting, but she chooses the wrong wind-up for her third act. The big emotional argument to which The Freebie builds is inherently less interesting than what causes that outburst — the offshoot reasons for Darren and Annie’s individual and collective unhappiness, either in a continuing, latent insecurity or serial sexual unfulfillment. Aselton’s failure to recognize that makes The Freebie‘s climax both empty drama (“You slut, I can’t believe you did that!”) and something of an emotional-psychological cheat. With neither empty titillation, complete feel-good resolution, nor an honest accounting of what triggered this foray into “on the side” fulfillment, the film comes across — despite the quiet rhythms of its scene-to-scene successes — as a watered-down exercise in gender-play sociology.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Freebie comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language 2.0 stereo track. Cinematographer Benjamin Kasulke’s HD digital work makes a play for intimacy and immediacy over more polished set-ups, but it translates in even more cramped and color-muted unappealing style here, even if the transfer avoids any edge enhancement or other artifacting issues. Shepard and Aselton sit for a warm, playful, feature-length audio commentary track, easily the highlight of the bonus features, and the theatrical trailer, a photo gallery of less than two dozen stills, and a quartet of phony “National Freebie Day” promotional spots round out the supplemental slate. While the film’s festival presentation is discussed, it’s a shame that not more material explicitly from its Sundance bow is included here. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Fire on the Amazon, an exotic, South American eco-drama from 1993, is most notable for being the repository of star Sandra Bullock’s first nude scene, before she blew up (figuratively, and almost literally) in Speed, became even more body-sensitive, and then later started claiming that her first nude scene was in 2009’s The Proposal. It is not a good film, but it has — how to say this tastefully? — value, hence its new DVD reissue and Blu-ray debut.

Written and directed by Peruvian-born Luis Llosa (who within years would go on to unleash The Specialist and Anaconda upon audiences), and executive produced by Roger Corman, Fire on the Amazon is a moralizing drama about the inherent nobility of indigenous locals, a la Medicine Man. Set in Bolivia’s Amazon basin, the movie centers around the issue of massive deforestation, and how the encroachment of industrial greed threatens to destroy the lush jungle. When Rafael Santos (Eduardo Cesti), a local environmental activist and leader of the union of rubber tappers (yes, seriously), takes a stand against scurrilous development and impending disaster, he is assassinated. Devil-may-care American photojournalist R.J. O’Brien (Craig Sheffer) teams up with activist Alyssa Rothman (Bullock) to uncover a dangerous conspiracy.

First, the good news: Llosa obviously has a rooting interest — a personal connection — to the material, and the film’s location shoot affords him the opportunity to capture a great deal of convincing local color on a reasonable budget. He also elicits a performance of not insignificant quietude from Bullock, which is nice, and runs counter to the hotheaded passion one might typically expect from such a character, as written. Unfortunately, a lot of the drama is rather rank, and screeching monkeys and lurking alligators substitute for the wandering, “boo-scare” cats of any given brain-dead horror film. Sheffer, too, is an almost complete non-starter as R.J.; he’s saddled with a ridiculous ponytail, and acts “independent-minded” and ballsy by leaning forward a bit too closely in conversation, and making scrunched-up kissy faces like he’s auditioning to be Sylvester Stallone’s stand-in or something. It’s a terrible performance, one that grates quickly, and puts you on the side of whomever is trying to do him harm.

But… what about the sex scene, you ask? It’s real, and not merely some fuzzy, eight- or nine-second cross-fade. But neither is it explicit, so if you think you’re going to get wild, full frontal sex, you’ve got another thing coming. No, instead it’s this strange, minute-plus, faux-animalistic thing, in which a tweaked R.J. and Alyssa, visages smeared with ceremonial Indian face-paint, tongue each other’s bare backs in the half-light, and kind of grind and copulate like they’re aliens who just read a how-to sex manual, or are perhaps filming one of those cushion-humping parody videos for the web. Let that information be your guide if you’re contemplating a rental or purchase.

Housed in a regular Blu-ray case, Fire on the Amazon comes to Blu-ray in a 1080p transfer and 1.78:1 widescreen presentation, with a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio track. The disc’s main menu screen is motion-animated, and the sounds of little jungle animals burst forth with the selection of chapter stops or a set-up screen (which offers only English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing). Truth be told, the picture is solid for a title of its age and (one presumes) minimal brush-up, with no edge enhancement or artifacting issues, and consistent color throughout. The only supplemental feature is a cruddy (seemingly VHS-lifted) version of the movie’s original trailer, burnished with new title interstitials. Sans reminiscences from cast or crew, this high-definition upgrade isn’t worthy of an archival purchase, unless one is a hardcore Bullock completist. To purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, though, click here. C- (Movie) C- (Disc)

Stress takes many forms — a headache, irritability, harsh words. But its possible metamorphosis into a bizarre physical manifestation forms the narrative spine of How to Get Ahead In Advertising, a barbed, 1988 cult classic from Bruce Robinson that helped land star Richard Grant any number of supporting comedic roles in slightly more staid, traditional Stateside product.

Skewering both the advertising industry and split-personality dramas with wit and without much pity, the movie stars Grant as slick corporate ad man Dennis Bagley, who is as cynical as he is successful. When Dennis develops an extreme case of creative block during an important campaign for acne cream, his anxieties over a boil on his neck escalate until his worries manifest as a socially mischievous evil twin head growing out of his neck. Well… at least that’s what he thinks and sees, despite fairly calm, reasoned efforts by his wife (Rachel Ward) and psychiatrist (John Shrapnel) to convince him otherwise. As his carefully constructed professional world crumbles down around him, can Dennis save himself from the demon whispering advice in his ear, or will his mental collapse completely engulf him?

As written and directed by Robinson (The Killing Fields, Withnail and I), How To Get Ahead In Advertising attacks micro-tuned capitalism with an eccentric glee and wild abandon. Robinson’s collaborator matters greatly in this endeavor. Grant’s performance is akin to watching a car in front of you on the highway skid precariously along the road’s edge, so charged is it with dangerous energy. And that’s great for a bit, truly. After a while, though, the film’s grip loosens considerably, largely because there is no outside force acting reliably upon Dennis’ stark, raving lunacy. A distressing feeling of manic sameness settles upon the movie, and it transitions from a vehicle by which to comment upon capitalism, consumerism and their impact upon one’s personality and relationships to a warped, hysterically pitched one-man show. One’s appetite for that will greatly impact their enjoyment of the film.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with hollowed-out spindles (which is good) and a not-particularly-deeply-set (which is bad), How To Get Ahead in Advertising comes to DVD presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. The DVD cover of this reissue seems strangely faded, and apart from a handful of auto-start trailers all slugged together there doesn’t seem to be a particularly compelling reason for its release, since there are no supplemental features at all. If someone really loves the film and doesn’t yet own it, the superb 2001 Criterion release is the way to go, honestly. Nevertheless, to purchase this version via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) D- (Disc)