Alexander (2004)

Writer/director Oliver Stone's controversial costume-epic film documented the life of ambitious, bisexual Alexander the Great of Macedonia, known for his world domination and invasion-conquest of the Persian Empire in 331 BC. Stone blamed "raging fundamentalism in morality" in America for the film's ultimate failure, claiming that the catchphrase "Alex is Gay" turned off potential audiences.

During the wedding-night bedroom scene, the title character and his newly-wed bride were:

• Alexander (a blonde-wigged Colin Farrell)
• Roxane (Rosario Dawson), his seductive, big-breasted newly-wed Bactrian wife

The couple had passionate, animalistic heterosexual relations (accompanied by wrestling, knife-fighting, clawing and cat-like hissing), even after she discovered his homosexual relationship with his battlefield commander Hephaistion (Jared Leto).

Strangely, there were no explicit male sex scenes (with caressing or kissing, although there was lots of innuendo and soulful gazes), given the obsession about Alexander's alleged sexual preferences with both Hephaistion and Persian slave boy-eunuch Bagoas (Francisco Bosch).

Alfie (2004, UK/US)

Writer/director Charles Shyer's film was a remake of the 1966 Michael Caine film of the same name, although now taking place in New York City.

The commitment-phobic title character of Alfie (now a limo driver) was played by Jude Law.

One of his womanizing conquests was undemanding model Nikki (Sienna Miller).

Other female dalliances were with:

• Dorie (Jane Krakowski)
• Julie (Marisa Tomei)
• Lonette (Nia Long)
• Liz (Susan Sarandon)

Anatomy of Hell (2004, Fr.) (aka Anatomie de l'Enfer)

This was another of the pushing-the-limits, controversial, provocative and sexually-graphic unrated films of writer/director Catherine Breillat, exploring previously forbidden, obscene and disgusting topics. It was basically a sequel to her earlier film Romance (1999, Fr.).

This latest work featured some graphic (and distasteful) scenes, although not necessarily erotic. The opening credits ironically stated that the numerous intimate female genital closeups (of labia) were provided by a body double. The two main characters were only identified as:

• the Woman (model Amira Casar)
• the Man (Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi)

This hardcore, ground-breaking body-horror film, adapted from her novel Pornocracy, opened with an explicit oral sex scene (male-on-male) outside a gay nightclub disco. Inside the club, an anonymous suicidal woman (model Amira Casar) slitting her left wrist met a homosexual hustler (Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi) in the nightclub's toilet. She explained her motivation: "Because I'm a woman." After her slashed wrist was bandaged, she was seen slashing her neck (a fantasy) - and she rewarded him with oral sex in the park.

She hired the reluctant, misogynist gay man (known only as "Man") for four consecutive nights to watch and study her nude body ("Watch me where I'm unwatchable. No need to touch me. Just say what you see") in her isolated cliffside ocean beachfront house. There, she performed various unusual acts to achieve "total intimacy." She confronted his repulsion of women by investigating the inside of her body. She challenged his anti-female feelings ("The fragility of female flesh inspires disgust or brutality, women depend on one or the other"), such as having him look at her naked hairy genitals:

"You can't deny what those black tufts remind you of with their shiny putrid hairiness. A just-hatched bird, still wet from the egg."

[In one of the film's two flashbacks, three prepubescent boys played 'doctor' as they pulled down the underwear of a little girl behind a bush and looked at her vagina.]

She also had him paint her vagina, anal opening (rectum) and lips with lipstick, insert his fingers into her with blood and vaginal secretions (which he wiped through his hair), violate her from behind while she slept with the wooden handle of a large 3-pronged garden rake, and insert (and re-insert) a 'stone' dildo into her vagina. In addition, a bloody tampon was dipped into a glass of water ("as the aged do with their dentures") as an engorged teabag - and they drank the reddish liquid.

She demonstrated how to insert a tampon ("So one can insert it, without touching oneself, keeping one's virginity intact"). After having vaginal intercourse with her during menstruation, she gushed her menstrual blood onto his member, resulting in a blood-drenched penis. He left and went back to a bar, where he bragged: "I reamed her pussy so hard, no one will want her again!"

He remorsefully returned to her abode at the end of the four days, where he found that the mattress was missing and she had left the bloody sheets. The film ended tragically - he found her at the edge of the ocean cliff, and when he approached, she walked backwards and fell to her death in the raging womb of the ocean. [Earlier, it was said that "This ocean, like a woman, could engulf you and make you vanish into its loins."] Had he pushed her off, was it an accident, or was it all a fantasy?

Various Scenes From Anatomy of Hell
Lipstick painting	Digital Exploration
Gardening Tool Scene	Tampon Scene

Bad Education (2004, Sp.) (aka La Mala Educación)

Writer/director Pedro Almodovar's very explicit and personal film was a Hitchcockian noir-melodrama and murder-mystery from Sony Pictures Classics which implied Catholic church child abuse and misconduct (implied pedophilia). Its flashbacked themes, in a story-within-a-story (or film-within-a-film) included lost youth, mistaken and shifting identities and gender transformation.

The Spanish film with English subtitles was rated NC-17 for a scene of mutual masturbation among young teen boys, among others, as well as explicit gay sex scenes, the "Moon River" sequence, and an erotic pool scene.

Its story spanned multiple years, as it told about the reuniting friendship in adulthood (in 1980 in Madrid) after 16 years between two grammar school friends who had attended St. John's Catholic School together:

• Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez as adult), now a successful Spanish film director
• Ignacio Rodríguez (Gael García Bernal as adult), now a writer and bearded actor looking for work

During their visit, a bearded Ignacio/Angel brought Enrique a semi-fictional short story - a semi-autobiographical film manuscript called "The Visit" about when they were in school in 1964 (during the Franco Era), and experienced instances of abuse at their boarding school. Ignacio was hoping to play a starring role in the proposed film.

Upon reading the script set in 1977, it was revealed that Ignacio had grown up to become the karaoke, cross-dressing, heroin-addicted, drag-queen/transvestite character of Zahara (also Bernal), a pre-operative trans-sexual using the stage name Angel Andrade. His/her boyhood lover was Enrique (Raúl García Forneiro as boy). For revenge, Ignacio/Zahara was working clubs with his pal Paca (Javier Cmara), and was engaged in blackmailing his manipulative, Catholic School headmaster-priest Father Manolo (Daniel Giménez Cacho). In exchange for one million pesetas, Zahara/Ignacio would not publish the damning "The Visit" script. The blackmail money would be used for Zahara's sex reassignment surgery.

There were flashbacks of the two boys who had been sexually-abused as boarding school students by the priest, especially Ignacio. The relationship between the two adolescents, Enrique and Ignacio (Ignacio Pérez as boy) was depicted when they went to a movie theatre where they stimulated each other while watching 50's Spanish sex star Sarita Montiel (as Soledad) on screen in Esa Mujer (1969, Sp.). After hours at night, the two were also caught in the bathroom (in a toilet stall) by Father Manolo. In another instance during a school retreat, the young Ignacio was forced by Father Manolo to sing the Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer classic "Moon River" while the boy's friends swam nearby.

The Erotic Pool Scene

When the priest threatened to expel Enrique, Ignacio offered to give himself to the pedophilic priest. Enrique was expelled anyway, in order for Father Manolo to lustfully continue to enjoy Ignacio all for himself.

In the film's surprise revelation back in 1980, Enrique spoke to Ignacio's mother and learned that the real Ignacio had been dead for four years. Ignacio's imposter was Ignacio's younger brother, Juan (also Bernal). Enrique decided to produce, direct, and adapt Ignacio's film script, bringing the past and present (and fact and fiction) to collide together. Juan would play Zahara/Ignacio as he wished. As the film was being made, Enrique fell in love with Juan/Angel. The script was also revised so that the blackmailed Father Manolo was murdered by Ignacio, who was raising funds for his trans-sexual surgery.

Father Manolo (Daniel Gimenez Cacho)	Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez)	"Juan" - Ignacio's Younger Brother
"Ignacio"	"Ignacio"	Zahara (Ignacio/Juan as Drag Queen/Transvestite)

During filming on the set, another double-identity was revealed: Senor Manuel Berenguer (Lluís Homar) -- actually Father Manolo with a new name/identity (and no longer a priest), described how he and Juan (in a relationship) had teamed up to murder the real Ignacio (the role of an adult pre-operative trans-sexual Ignacio, seen in flashback, was played by real-life trans-sexual Francisco "Fran" Boira). They had conspired together to kill Ignacio by providing him with pure heroin for an overdose, because he was a harsh, unlikeable, drug-addicted individual who was blackmailing the priest about his molestation. After Ignacio's death, Berenguer then attempted to blackmail Juan for his part in the murder of Ignacio.

In the coda to the film, the film's epilogue, Father Manolo (or Senor Berenguer) was killed in a hit-and-run car driven by Juan (in revenge for being blackmailed by Berenguer for his role in Ignacio's murder).

[Note: All of the principal lead roles were male or in drag.]

Before Sunset (2004)

In this sequel to the first film Before Sunrise (1995), two lovers Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) met again nine years later, with only a short time before Jesse's flight left. At the end of their time together, they went to her apartment to have tea and listen to a CD recording of Nina Simone singing Just in Time.

Recalling a Nina Simone concert that she had attended, Celine performed an impression of the singer as she stopped in the middle of a song and came to the edge of the stage, while slowly moving her hips side to side and puckering up her lips in a pout, seductively speaking:

"Oh yeah, baby. Oh, yeah. Uh, hmm. I love you too. And then she'd walk back, took her time, no hurry, you know. She had that big cute ass that she would move, woooh! And then she would, uh, go back to the piano and play some more. And then she would, uh, I don't know, just start another song in the middle of another. You know, like, stop again, and be like: 'You over there, can you move that fan? Uh, huh. Ooh. You're cute. Hmm. Oh, oh yeah.'"

Celine then warned Jesse: "Baby, you are gonna miss that plane." Jesse only ambiguously answered: "I know." He held his left hand up and briefly twirled his wedding ring with his left thumb. Was he signifying that he would miss his flight and remain longer?

The screen faded to black before the closing credits.

Birth (2004)

Maverick young filmmaker Jonathan Glazer's mysterious, metaphysical, unconventional and controversial film was a box-office disaster. It was accused (and denounced at Cannes and other film festivals) of pedophilia and creepiness, with its sexually powerful scenes. The two main characters were:

• Anna (Nicole Kidman), a 35 year-old widow
• Sean (Canadian child actor Cameron Bright), her 10 year-old son

He claimed to be the 'reincarnation' of her dead husband Sean -- ten years after his death.

One of the heavily-debated scenes was one between Anna and the naked boy in a bathtub, when he announced his identity, and the scene of their passionate kiss.

Another talked-about scene was at an orchestral concert (Wagner's Die Walkure) when conflicted emotions overtook Anna's face in an intense close-up.

There was also the scene of Ann flirtatiously asking the boy over ice cream sundaes if he could really take care of her needs: "Have you ever made love to a girl?"

Closer (2004)

Esteemed director Mike Nichols' sexually-frank R-rated film, a cinematically pungent version of Patrick Marber's 1997 Broadway play, featured characters played by against-type actors:

• Anna Cameron (Julia Roberts) - an unfaithful photographer engaged in an affair with Dan
• Larry (Clive Owen), Anna's perversely-dangerous, dermatologist husband
• Dan (Jude Law), a struggling writer, Anna's lover
• Alice Ayres (Oscar-nominated Natalie Portman in her first truly adult role), Dan's part-time stripper girlfriend

All engaged in destructive behavior against others, including their brutally honest, insult-ridden, and gutter-talk dialogue.

When Anna revealed her long-term indiscretions with Dan to Larry after he revealed that he had slept with a prostitute, the angered husband asked: "Is he a good f--k?...Is he good?" When she responded positively, she also added that he was a "different...gentler" lover. He went further and wanted to know more details about their sexual behavior:

"Did you come?...How many times?...Did you touch yourself while he f--ked you?...Did you enjoy sucking him off?...Do you like his cum?...Do you like him cumin' in your face?... What does it [his semen] taste like?"

Her last answer: "It tastes like you, but sweeter." He replied: "That's the spirit. Thank you. Thank you for your honesty. Now, f--k off and die, you f--ked up slag!"

The film also gained notoriety for editing out Portman's fully-nude private strip scene for the final release, leaving her topless and with a G-string, but only viewed from behind or in obscured shots.

Club Dread (2004) (aka Broken Lizard's Club Dread)

Director Jay Chandrasekhar's film was a combination horror-comedy spoof, including elements of the murder-mystery Ten Little Indians, bloody Friday the 13th slasher films, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, stoner dialogue, a serious Scary Movie, low-brow raunchy comedies, Jimmy Buffett, and T&A of the Girls Gone Wild variety.

It told about a tropical, booze-soaked Costa Rican beachfront vacation spot named Pleasure Island where rock star owner Coconut Pete (Bill Paxton) and staff were plagued by a series of machete-murders (at the film's end, it was revealed that the killings of staff members were committed by "fun police" officer Sam (Erik Stolhanske)).

The film opened with three staff members exploring part of the island inside a deserted mausoleum, two of whom flung off their tops (Tanja Reichert as blonde Kellie and Elena Lyons as brunette Stacy) to engage in kissing, and joking about the statue of a monkey with an extremely exaggerated phallus. But soon, the male was assaulted and killed by a machete-wielding masked character, and the two females were pursued to their deaths. Kellie was pushed off a cliff, and Stacy was decapitated.

The Acrobatic Bedroom Scene with Penelope (Jordan Ladd)

In the film's most talked-about scene, one of the resort's vacationers was an uptight blonde named Penelope (Jordan Ladd, daughter of TV's Charlie's Angels Cheryl Ladd, grand-daughter of actor Alan Ladd, and niece of Leigh Taylor-Young), who claimed she was a student at Oral Roberts.

However, the horny blonde kept advancing on one of the resort's staff members, nervous swimming coach Juan (Steve Lemme) (who called her Peen-Na-Lope) - he thought she was suspicious. She claimed that calamari was an aphrodisiac (she stuffed some into Juan's mouth), and then suggestively said that she wanted to wrap her little tentacles around him.

In a bedroom before first-time sex as she removed her turquoise-blue bikini top over her head, she unpredictably confessed that she was a runaway Olympic gymnast:

"I haven't been entirely honest with you...I have never been to a place like this. I mean, it's just so free. Juan, I have spent my whole life in a gym. I just wanted to party like everyone else."

She ably demonstrated her skills by both backward and forward topless flips before landing on his lap and making love to him.

Cruel Intentions 3 (2004)

Scott Ziehl's straight-to-video film was another sequel. It followed after director Roger Kumble's direct-to-video prequel Cruel Intentions 2 (2000) - the first sequel released after the original film Cruel Intentions (1999).

The predictable film featured more seductive and erotic games of betrayal played by Cassidy Merteuil (Kristina Anapau), the younger cousin of one of the characters from the first film, at a fictitious Santa Barbara college.

Others joining her were Jason (Nathan Wetherington) and Patrick (Kerr Smith).

One of the unpleasant goals of mean-spirited sexual wagers amongst three students was to seduce and then dump various victims. Only minor characters in the film exhibited any nudity.

A Dirty Shame (2004)

This censor-baiting film was a return to trashy cult form and perverse bad taste for director/writer John Waters. It was given a questionable NC-17 rating (for its "pervasive sexual content") despite no real hard-core content, and could best be described as a gleeful nouveau "nudie-cutie."

Waters' film was an incredibly sophomoric, nonsensical, silly film about sexual obsession and perversion as an allegory for the tale of Jesus Christ and his twelve apostles as magically endowed sex addicts (!) who became empowered to change the attitudes of sexually-conservative, anti-sex "Neuters."

It told about repressed, middle-aged convenience store manager Sylvia Stickles (Tracey Ullman), a normal, prudish, everyday housewife who had suffered a head concussion in a freak car accident and thereafter became an insatiable sex addict. Before her conversion, her horny husband Vaughn (Chris Isaak) had to retire to the bathroom with dirty magazines when he had to satisfy his "marital needs." Sylvia continually demanded oral sex for herself ("Let's go down to the Holiday House and f--k the whole bar!"), and picked up a plastic water bottle with her "runaway vagina" while dancing the hokey pokey in the Gentle Care Nursing Home for old folks.

Sylvia's oversexed daughter was Caprice Stickles (Selma Blair) - a wayward nymphomaniac who had ludicrously large, balloon-shaped prosthetic breasts. She was continually under arrest for indecent exposure, although she performed legal stripteases at a biker bar named Holiday House (with stripper name Ursula Udders) for individuals such as Fat F--k Frank. Sylvia would confess to her daughter: "I'm a cunnilingus bottom and I'm your mother."

There were many bizarre ideas and sexual fetishes in the Harford Road neighborhood, such as:

• trees with erections, V-shaped trunks, and labial bushes
• a fetish for licking tires, or for dirt, or for scatalogically using a woman's purse, or for fondling raw hamburger meat in a supermarket
• an adult cop wearing baby clothes while having sex
• a couple admitting the practice of "roman showers -- vomiting on each other," while 'sploshing' or messy sex (dubbed "the erotic urge to dump food in your private area")

In the finale, self-proclaimed sexual healer and part time mechanic Ray-Ray Perkins (Johnny Knoxville), with an elongated tongue who earlier performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a squirrel, ejaculated straight out of the top of his head. He was joining all the others, who were giving themselves head injuries to cause sudden insatiable sex drives. He splattered whitish, gooey semen onto the screen - as the film credits began.

Down to the Bone (2004)

This low-budget, unrated, naturalistically-dramatic film (shot on high-def video) from first-time director Debra Granik had only a limited theatrical release, although it was lauded at the Sundance Film Festival (with a Directing Award and Special Jury Prize for star Vera Farmiga). Farmiga was also voted Best Actress by the LA Film Critics Association.

The story told about a struggling couple in upstate New York:

• Irene (Vera Farmiga), a mother with two sons, a desperate, coke-addicted blue-collar supermarket checkout cashier
• Steve (Clint Jordan), her unsupportive husband

She took the difficult and painful step to seek rehabilitation, when she became involved in a co-dependent relationship with another recovering heroin addict and male nurse named Bob (Hugh Dillon).

He promised her a new life with a house-cleaning business.

EuroTrip (2004)

This mostly unfunny teen sex (raunchy) comedy from the writing team of Alec Berg, David Mandel, and Jeff Schaffer (the director), producers of Road Trip (2000) and Old School (2003), was chock full of bare breasts and other nudity.

Before the titled "Eurotrip," in a hot-tub scene during a graduation party, Candy (Molly Schade) appeared pointlessly topless (only in the un-rated film version full of added nude scenes). She was rubbing an imagined dirt smudge or spot on her right breast while horny student Cooper (Jacob Pitts) advised her to locate the mark.

The main story was about four American teens, including high school senior Scott Thomas (Scott Mechlowicz), who traveled to Europe to have Scott finally meet his pretty Berlin Germany penpal Mieke (Jessica Boehrs).

Along the way in one of the film's many gratuitous sex scenes, the group encountered a nude/topless beach with dozens of female extras sprawled around sensuously, with two of the young ladies (Edita Deveroux and Petra Tomankova) mutually enjoying a massage - this scene was preceded with a view of a beach with fully-nude males.

European Nude/Topless Beach Nude Beach Ladies (Edita Deveroux and Petra Tomankova)

Girl Play (2004)

Two real-life narcissistic lesbians starred in this straight-to-video lesbian, romantic comedy love story. It was an adapation of their own original, two-part play Real Girls, directed by co-writer Lee Friedlander. The actresses were:

• Robin Greenspan (as Robin), a brunette, neurotic Jewish female with a domineering mother (Mink Stole), committed but unhappily 'married' for a number of years to girlfriend Cass (Lauren Maher)
• Lacie Harmon (as Lacie), blonde, and commitment-phobic, who often prowled the bar scene after her past relationship suffered from 'lesbian bed death'

The non-exploitative film told how the two frustrated actresses met and fell in love while working on a play.

The two were cast by director Gabriel (Dom DeLuise) to star as leads in a local Los Angeles sapphic stage show, in which they were to pose for a topless publicity shot.

During rehearsals (with many narrated soliloquies directed toward the camera) to bring out their "intimacy," the two platonic friends found themselves brought together for the first time as lovers and partners.

There was also one soft-core lesbian love scene between Lacie and Cass.

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)

Up and coming Swedish-born star Malin Akerman had a bit role in this comedy as tow-truck driver Freakshow's (Christopher Meloni) attractive blonde wife Liane.

She enticingly invited Harold (John Cho) to reach out and fondle her breasts as she opened her top and asked:

"Do you want to play with them?"

They were abruptly interrupted by her husband.

[Note: Akerman would soon go on to appear as Juna in HBO's short-lived series The Comeback (2005) and in 2006 in the role of Tori on the Emmy award-winning HBO original series Entourage. She also starred in The Farrelly Brothers' comedy remake The Heartbreak Kid (2007) as the newlywed, sex-crazed bride Lila.]