Davis Freeberg's DVD AllStars

To be honest, I'm not sure how this one ended up in my Netflix queue, but with Heather Graham in it I had high hopes for the film.  Heather is one of those actresses who has a certain charm that I've always found damn sexy and for those of you who were fans of Rollergirl in Boogie Nights won't be disappointed with her role in Killing Me Softly, but for those of us who were hoping for a good storyline, plot and acting to go with heavily sexualized themes, this film is a pure disappointment.

In watching the film, I was really surprised in that the entire film was crammed full of nudity and sexual tension.  This in and of itself wouldn't normally make this film unique and there are a lot of guy flicks out there that use a little sex to spice things up for their core demographic, but this film was different.  If you listen to the dialogue and follow the plot, it's almost as if the target audience for the film was women, but then they felt like they needed to spice things up to bring in their dates.

The film revolves around Graham's strange relationship with a guy that she meets.  You can never quite tell if she actually likes the guy or if it's a casual relationship, but at some point in the film, she gives up power to him and the rest of the film is about her being suspicious of her lover.  With a heavy dose of relationship advice and it's fair share of male bashing, it surprised me to see the film resort to T&A tactics.  It was as if they took the worst of both demographics and made a film that neither men nor woman will like. 

I found Requiem for a Dream to be an extremely powerful, yet disturbing tale.  It's story focuses around the lives of three junkies whose lives are only driven by their next high.  The film paints a gritty and realistic portrayal of the life of a junkie.  The cinematography of the film is unbelievable.  It features a choppy and erractic experience, but it adds to the sense of entering and leaving sobriety throughout the film.  Overall, this was a well made film, but it's certainly not for everybody.  The issues the film addresses and the graphic way that it tells the tale made even me squimish at times.  Perhaps it was the intensity of the film or it could have been the dream like sequence, but after seeng the film I wasn't left feeling uplifted as much uneasy.