X (2022)

What makes this slasher unique is also, unfortunately, what makes it so tedious: it isn't until the last thirty minutes when grisly death starts being meted out in tried-and-true slasher style that the energy picks up and the heavy-handed exposition (that really only serves to longwindedly establish the lore of all slashers always) finally lets up; it hardly seems to matter (and in fact I didn't even realise until later when I read it) that actress Mia Goth plays both the villain and the heroine.

★★★☆☆

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Sauvage (2018)

Félix Maritaud transfixes as a 22-year-old who lives his life in service to others and although he is just doing what comes naturally and wouldn't himself change anything about his life — why would he? — all you want is for the poor kid to find a moment to stop dealing in the desires of others, retreat to a quiet sunny spot, and get some long overdue me-time.

★★★★★

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Heavy Metal (1981)

This instantly repulsive but ultimately captivating animation, clearly the work of an all-male team of animators having a hoot, features copious amounts of sex and violence in an oddball collection of stories about a strange glowing ball that terrorises a young woman.

★★★★☆

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Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

The fact he's an oft-photographed billionaire is irrelevant - no-one acknowledges him, not even in elevators in his own skyscraper - which is just one of the many ways this untitillating sex drama floats free from reality; in fact, Christian Grey and doey womanchild Anastasia's unlikely sex contract negotiations (he tries for two hours to involve her in his sado-lite world of slaps-on-the-backside and silk tie shackles) raise just one question in bored viewers' minds: in what world are Christian Grey and Anastasia that they haven't seen Sex And The City?

★☆☆☆☆

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Barbarella Queen Of The Galaxy (1968)

Its kitsch 1968 aesthetic, groovy music and the sight of a young Jane Fonda as a sex kitten space agent will mean this sci-fi romp has curiosity value for some but otherwise Barbarella, directed by Fonda's then husband, is leaden and only occasionally mildly amusing - one scene that opens with Jane Fonda's Barbarella singing operatically might raise a smirk. 

★★☆☆☆

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9 Songs (2004)

Scenes of explicit sex are cut with Brixton Hall concert performances in this 65-minute love story that is curious for the first half then boring for the second.

★☆☆☆☆

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Stranger by the Lake (L'Inconnu Du Lac) (2013)

A plodding, unconvincing police investigation headed by the film world's most uncharismatic police inspector is the context for three or four explicit gay sex scenes and the film's one belaboured point about one gay man's destructive lust.

★★☆☆☆ 

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