Striptease (1996) Review
Andrew Bergman comedy based on Carl Hiaasen Florida political satire. Marketing compromised the substantive material.
Genre: Vice
Films about addiction, temptation, and the habits that own people. Vice cinema reviewed by someone who has watched the real costs up close.
ViceLovelace (2013) Review
Biographical drama about Linda Lovelace. Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard.
ViceBoogie Nights (1997) Review
Paul Thomas Anderson's foundational ensemble masterpiece. Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds.
VicePretty Woman (1990) Review
Beautifully crafted, morally indefensible. Pretty Woman is simultaneously one of the best-made films of 1990 and one of the most socially destructive.
ViceThe Babysitters (2007) Review
The pacing is genuinely good. Some critics and marketing materials have positioned it as dark comedy, which is the wrong genre frame.
ViceAngel (1984) and the Franchise Review
Donna Wilkes, Rory Calhoun, Susan Tyrrell, and pre-gentrification Hollywood Boulevard. Exploitation cinema that survives in spite of itself.
ViceShowgirls (1995) Review
Read as a Verhoeven satire of the American Dream, the film makes sense. The 7 accounts honestly for execution problems that remain even when the satirical reading lands.
ViceVice Squad (1982) – Review
Wings Hauser's Ramrod is one of genre cinema's genuinely frightening villains, casual, flat, and relentless across a single Hollywood night. That's not a bad place for a genre film to land, it means the ambition outpaced the execution in specific,…
ViceHardcore (1979) – Review
Paul Schrader grew up in a strict Calvinist household in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's a hard film to watch, not because of what it shows, which is less explicit than its reputation suggests, but because of what it understands about…