Supelice Dreadfully Boring

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

subxerogravity If I had saw this movie when it first came out in 2009, I may think differently about it. It's interesting to me how outdated the movie feels. The story centers around a high price escort doing her job just after the finical crisis of 2007 and the 2008 election. The constant mentioning of these two events makes the conversations feel forced and not natural, which is strange considering the film came out a year after these events, events that we are still going through as I write this. The movie is cluttered and makes no sense. The editing style makes you need to watch it more than once to understand what is going on (I myself watched it twice). The only problem is, I did not find it entertaining enough to even sit through it once.Sasha Grey is not all she's cracked up to be. I've seen pron stars in mainstream movies act better. I've seen her act better in mainstream movies. I guess I should not be so harsh since this was her first mainstream event. It may have been a better idea if Soderbergh at least got better actors for his supporting cast, instead of the dry uninteresting folks that make up this one. A lot of the movie is just conversations and it looks like the actors were picked because of their grasp of the conversation topic, which was about money, rather than their capability to make this topic interesting to someone uninterested in the topic.The movie does feel like a beta test for what would become a string of movies Soderbergh would end up doing after this with the same style to it. Unless your that die hard of a Soderbergh fan I would watch every movie that came after the Girlfriend Experience instead.

Jackson Booth-Millard I first saw the well-known former XXX hardcore porn star in the low budget terrible horror film Smash Cut, and this film from director Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brocjovich, Traffic, Ocean's Eleven) sounded like her kind of territory, and a return to the director's Sex, Lies, and Videotape beginnings. Basically, set during the time of the 2008 Presidential Election, between Barack Obama and John McCain, in the city of Manhattan, the story centres around the life of high class call girl and escort Chelsea, real name Christine (Sasha Grey), and the many challenges she faces between work and her personal life. Chelsea charges $2,000 an hour for all clients from all backgrounds, and for that she offers the "girlfriend experience" (GFE), where she acts like a girlfriend towards her clients, dressing for what they have in mind, whether it is dinner and a movie, or a hotel meeting, she will listen to their conversations, and with mostly business consumed clients they will mostly talk about work and finances, and of course having sex with them. The story sees five non-consecutive days of her life, she is finding recently that she is not seeing as many clients and wanting to make more money, so she arranges to meet a sleazy Interviewer (Mark Jacobson) who has met many other escorts to give them a review of an experience with them, most getting positive description and boosting their profiles to get more clients, but he says he should get a free session. She also has a boyfriend, Chris (Chris Santos), who works as a personal trainer and is aware of what she does for a living, but she has promised him she will never go with a client longer than a single night, so she is going against her rule with this suggestion of spending a weekend or longer with the interviewer, but she insists it is for the sake of making more money. Chelsea is devastated in the time we see that she loses one or two clients who have families and feel great guilt wanting to have sex with her, the interviewer gives her a lacklustre review complaining that despite looking beautiful she does not perform all sexual acts as good as other women he has been with, and not getting personal with clients, or talking about what she has been doing with her boyfriend, the only people she can open up to her female friends and one man at a bar who just wants to talk. Also starring Philip Eytan as Phillip, Glenn Kenny as The Erotic Connoisseur, T. Colby Trane as Waiter, Peter Zizzo as Zizzo, Ron Stein as Vegas Buddy #1, David Levien as David, Alan Milstein as Pete, Dennis Shields as Dennis, Marshall Gilman as Vegas Buddy #2 and Michael Roberts as Vegas Buddy #3. I had seen a few of the hardcore videos of Grey before this, so it was certainly interesting to see her play the prostitute character well enough that you can empathise with her to some extent, she is pretty much the only thing you can watch about this film, because many of the clients along the way blend into each other and seem too similar, besides of course the filthy minded interviewer who just exploits and takes advantage of her, the sexual content is not that frequent but is I suppose necessary, there is not enough focus on an engaging story, and it only gets more interesting in the last few scenes when the lead character's conscience and personal life comes into play, so overall it is an alright enough but lukewarm drama. Okay!

Lloyd Bayer When Steven Soderbergh is not too busy directing George Clooney or a frat pack led by George Clooney, he must be in the middle of an intricate work of art. So much so, this is art on the other side of the spectrum, a realm too rare to be noticed by fans of the flamboyant Ocean's trilogy.Set during the start of the current and very real financial crisis, the plot for the most part revolves round the true nature of the crisis and its effects on upper working-class people. Book marking the film in time and space, Soderbergh even boldly debates the outcome of a 700 billion stimulus plan as strategized by Barak Obama. But as financial stress continues to take its toll before the stimulus nurtures any recovery, the needs of sexually active men can never be stifled. This is where Chelsea (Sasha Grey) comes in. She isn't just a regular street walker paid to blow off some steam, but an escort of the highest calibre. Much more than that, Chelsea is a high profile, chauffeur driven escort offering a high level of companionship where fine dinning, intellectual conversations and emotional reciprocation plays a major part in her business, rather than just consensual sex at a pre-determined price. Metaphorically, it is like evaluating the difference between paying for a room at a classy hotel for one night and renting a fully furnished apartment for a month. As the plot progresses, Chelsea runs her independent business in total control. But things start to get complicated when she finds herself mixed up in a possessive "real" relationship, while caught between her ambitions of being the best in the business and allowing the prospect of sleazy clients pimp her product to cities less affected by the recession, namely Dubai (UAE).Although critically controversial for various reasons, this is a director's film through and through and Soderbergh has his name written all over it with his unmistakable handy work etched into all aspects of the movie. With a plot severely depending on dialogue, the only setback may be in the script that seems improvised at times. But even that appears innovative when characters appear natural and very believable. Another signature trade mark is his panning of plot segments back and forth like setting pieces of a puzzle into place. This is done by narrating a day in the life of a prostitute as described by Chelsea in her journal. At times the approach is from a documentary styled interview between Chelsea and prospective clients, while simultaneously building up insight into her personality. This is also Soderbergh's crossover into digital filming, so to speak. As such, cinematography is dynamic yet superb. Intimate moments are sometimes intentionally out of focus, at other times fully zoomed in with maximum lens aperture but using ambient lighting, again a key characteristic of the current digital era. Coming to the topic of sex, which also happens to be the main topic of discussion, the act itself is never shown but a more subtle approach is given to brief nudity, including a suggestively framed full frontal. Soderbergh's skills aside, the jewel in the crown is Sasha Grey's debut into mainstream Hollywood. I say ˜debut' not because this is her first lead role, but because of her controversial background in hard core porn. The way I see it, if Ms Grey can deliver an above average performance as a character with all her clothes on, then there is no need in bringing up her past. Besides her stunning looks, she also possesses an uncanny way of flirting with the camera and ultimately engages the viewer. This is called on-screen charisma, and she has a lot of it.Back to Soderbergh, given his multi award winning "Traffic" and recent biopic "Che: Part 1&2", I wouldn't call this his masterpiece, but it still is a definitive piece of art that would give Woody Allen a raised brow. And with a tagline that says "See it with someone you ****", perception of art has potentially endless possibilities.

lilaqueen The worst Soderbergh movie I've ever seen; in every term. The useless plot, empty and unconvincing characters along with God knows why perfect frames from a distance which rarely serves the plot but mostly bores to death. I expected to happen something or something to mean anything but nothing came up. What was the point of all the artistic fuss which doesn't tell anything at all? It is obvious that the story is not for Soderbergh and in order to tell the story it seems that he chose a very distant and cold style which only serves to show the emptiness and dullness of each character more and more. Avoid at all costs from a total waste of time.