Seems only fitting that we follow up last week’s question about favorite films not themed around sex or violence with the reverse question: What are your favorite films that expressly explore the themes of sex and/or violence?
Tasha Robinson
I wouldn’t say Jane Campion’s In The Cut is a favorite of mine in the sense that I want to run out and re-watch it every week. It’s a brutal, sometimes overwrought, sometimes overbearing film, and like Campion’s work in general, it can be a bit pretentious. But I remember watching it with amazement, thoroughly impressed at how much mileage it got just from reversing the sexual dynamics between genders, and giving Meg Ryan a character who acts more like a man does in a typical dark sexual thriller than like a woman does. She’s menacing, mysterious, and prone to taking sexual control—but she’s also very aware that the men around her are stronger and with more potential for violence than she has. Campion is always alert to the possibilities of gender dynamics, an ongoing theme in her films, and she tends to address them in ugly, blunt ways, but her lack of hesitancy tends to have powerful effects.
Ryan McGee
Maybe it’s because it’s been airing on basic cable television with alarming frequency lately, but I’d have to go with the original Bourne Trilogy here. All three are stepped in the physical and psychological costs of violence, with Matt Damon’s lead character fighting to keep any semblance of his humanity throughout the three films. Too often, cinematic violence lacks a visceral edge, whether it takes the form of bloodless gunplay or the Looney Tunes-esque choreography of something like Shaolin Soccer. But in the Bourne films, each fight takes its toll on both the characters and the audience. Watching Bourne employ a rolled-up newspaper as weapon is thrilling, but that thrill soon gives way to horror at the sheer brutality with which it’s wielded. Even if Jason Bourne can’t always remember those upon whom he has inflicted violence, he feels the pain he causes them in every fiber of his being. Bringing such visceral violence into a popular film series is no small feat, and it’s always surprising to see, no matter how many times TNT might air it this month.
Cory Casciato
Just after Tony Scott died, I pulled out his early-’90s classic True Romance. There’s a movie with just about all the violence you could ask for, plus a nice side dish of sex. We get most of the sex early, as a call girl named Alabama and a comic-book-store clerk named Clarence fall in stupid love after a night of steamy passion—depicted with a hot but not explicit sex scene—then get married. The violence starts shortly thereafter, once Clarence goes to kill Alabama’s pimp and ends up stealing a shitload of the mob’s cocaine by mistake. From there, it’s pretty much nonstop mayhem (with one more sex scene thrown in for good measure), with several unforgettable scenes, including Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken facing off in a battle of wits that ends with a sudden headshot, and a youngish James Gandolfini delivering an almost unwatchably brutal beating to Alabama (Patricia Arquette). It all climaxes in a massive clusterfuck of a shootout that sees the mob, the police, and a couple of ’roided-up bodyguards shooting the living shit out of everything and everyone in sight. When it was new, it was one of my favorite movies, and I have to say it holds up remarkably well after almost 20 years. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better use of cinematic sex and violence cementing together a timeless story of young, senseless love.
John Semley
Sometimes my girlfriend gets on me about only liking violent movies. My usual rejoinder is “Hey! I only like movies about violence!” and then, “I love you.” Obviously the former isn’t true. When I watch Commando or Death Wish 4 (or, more recently, The Raid: Redemption) I’m not really watching anything that’s about anything. I’m watching it for the goofiness, the splatter, and the inventive bone-cracking. Nonetheless, violence—the nature of it, the human capacity for it—is an endlessly interesting theme, and one that informs many of my favorite films: The Shining, Robocop, Performance, The Wild Bunch, Taken, etc. It also informs what is maybe my favorite movie, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. I can’t possibly fathom what it might have been like to see this surrealist high masterpiece when it was originally released (in September 1986, I was too busy being a newborn to get out to the movies), to be fully knocked off-kilter by its studied critique of the return-to-values ideals of the Reagan era. But in a way, these of-the-moment resonances are incidental. Blue Velvet’s themes go way back, dismantling the complex veneers of civility we erect to suppress a violence and vulgarity innate to our character. Kyle McLachlan’s gumshoe journey into the seedy underbelly of his all-American industrial town is, as has often been said, a journey into these roiling subconscious desires, embodied by Dennis Hopper’s sadomasochistic, gas-huffing, nipple-twisting crime boss. Besides being perfectly made, Blue Velvet exists at the confluence of sex and violence—themes it confronts with elegance and a weird, watchful respect. It doesn’t explode with squibs or seduction (what sex there is seems thoroughly un-sexy), but I’d put Blue Velvet on the short list of the best, most important films about sex and violence.
Sarah Collins
My favorite films tend to hover in low-violence territory, but 90 percent of the movies I see in theaters are ultraviolent spectacles. If it stars Liam Neeson or has DC or Marvel in the credits, I have probably seen it half a dozen times. Most of these movies shy away from treating violence as a theme in favor of using it as an effect: Taken is the prime example. The best of this recent run of big, beat-’em-up franchises does, however, explore what violence means while it’s splashing it all over the screen. The Dark Knight trilogy spends just as much time on the consequences of violence as it does on how great fighting looks in hi-def. The Batman franchise has historically complicated violence more than its comic-book peers, but previous movie versions have fallen a bit short of nuance. Christopher Nolan’s run returned meaning to the character by pushing his violence back into an ambiguous zone somewhere between good and evil. The movies have lots of exciting fight sequences, but on all sides, the violence stems from, and results in, loss. The Dark Knight Rises powerfully concludes the trilogy by flipping good and evil, pitting a Batman motivated by pride and a death wish against an enemy with a vision for a better world. The ending may be a bit of a copout, but the rest of the film wallows in violence, righteousness, and what it takes to win.
Joel Keller
As an impressionable, celibate-but-not-by-choice college student, I found sex, lies, and videotape much more of a revelation about sex than any of the porn I was watching at the time. Why? Because Steven Soderbergh was unknown back then, he made the movie on a shoestring, but his tight budget worked to his advantage. It felt in many ways like a student film, where we looked in on the lives of a group of young, attractive people who were only interested in the adult ways to make sex more than just friction and sweating. Once James Spader, playing an impotent filmmaker who gets off on recording women talking in achingly sensual terms about sex, enters the mix, the movie goes from a standard infidelity tale to a story that could make even the most asexual person horny as hell. It doesn’t hurt that Laura San Giacomo manages to out-sexy Andie MacDowell, which turns out to be a great acting feat, given that San Giacomo’s subsequent filmography was filled with dowdy and nerdy roles.
Will Harris
Looking back at the legacy of Twin Peaks, it’s easy to accuse the show of inspiring numerous subpar knockoffs revolving around small towns filled with eccentric residents and dark secrets. But it’s also guilty of a far more heinous crime: sending hormone-addled teenagers to seek out any and all other films featuring Sherilyn Fenn. This wouldn’t be such a sin if Fenn’s filmography had been written and directed by guys like Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese, but if there’s one thing we can probably all agree on, it’s that Zalman King, God bless him, is not on that level. With that said, however, I suspect I’m not the only one who can recall a time when Two Moon Junction was the best goddamned movie of all time. It really isn’t, of course, but it’s one I can actually revisit once in awhile and enjoy… and no, not just because of the gratuitous nudity and sex scenes. There’s still some kitschy merit to the film, thanks to performances by Burl Ives and Louise Fletcher, neither of whom wink at the camera in spite of the ridiculousness of it all, and as someone who can be amused by a film simply because of a weird cast, it’s also just fun to see people like Kristy McNichol, Milla Jovovich, Hervé Villechaize, and even Screamin’ Jay Hawkins show up at various points in the proceedings. But, yeah, I’m not going to pretend otherwise: the biggest reason to watch is still the fact that it’s filled with naked-Sherilyn-Fenn-ness. So sue me.