Pornography: A Thriller (2009)

Memorable, crazy movie

Just perfect...

Highly Overrated But Still Good

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Okay, I love psychological thrillers. I love gay cinema. I watched this movie and couldn't figure out what in the hell was going on.First, I couldn't tell who was who. The movie was so poorly lit that I found myself squinting to see what was going on. All of the main characters looked the same - I guess it was to link the three phases of the movie together to show the different dynamics of the same issue, but good Lord. Turn the lights up so I can distinguish between the leads.The story was so full of holes and there was nothing intertwining the different stories. It was like they couldn't figure out what direction the movie was going in. I felt the movie should have ended 5 times before it was truly over.I feel like hours of my life were sucked away and I will never get them back. It wasn't even a movie that was so deep that I reflect on it later. I watched it until the end and all I could say was, "What in the hell was this movie about?"

Slow and boring — a badly told story: are the two objections reviewers here reiterate in different ways over and over. And yet, the film I saw couldn't be more enticing. PORNOGRAPHY: A THRILLER is methodical, character driven, but certainly not boring; and considering its ambitious three part narrative, I'd say this seamlessly rendered film ends up being the engaging puzzle it was intended to be. Writer/director, David Kittredge has clearly thought about his subject long and hard, for the kind of cubist back and forth he's cooked up brilliantly exploits thriller hooks to explore the relationship between hardcore sex acted for the camera and the imagination of those who get off on watching it. Even with the ghost of David Lynch in obvious attendance, Kittredge's thriller plot does not seem stolen or manufactured, as others would have you think; it reflect the artist's ambiguous relationship to the subject. The film is saying that pornography arouses us, body and mind, with temptation and dread; two sides of the same coin. Here's a gay film that truly challenges its audience to think. No gay bar clichés, no stupid, camp posturing pandering to a marketable demographic. If someone says this is boring or not well done, it means the film went over their heads.

David Kittredge has style - it is a style that inhabits a number of other really fine writers and directors as Christopher Nolan (Memento), David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive etc), Claude Chabrol (Chloe), Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad, etc). Good company, this, and it would seem that given some time to develop his technique and perhaps seek the assistance of some other script doctors he will likely become an important artist in film. In PORNOGRAPHY: A THRILLER he comes close, but it seems like the finished product was rushed to screen before the kinks were ironed out. There are three interweaving stories in this movie about the male pornography business. It begins with a well-known Los Angeles porn actor Mark Anton (Jared Gray) who is talked into a final film deal where he will make a large amount of money for a one night stand, but the one night stand seems to be a snuff film project with Mark interviewed in the dark by a crazed killer. Jump 14 years ahead to New York City and Michael (Matthew Montgomery) and his partner William (Walter Delmar) move into a large apartment in Brooklyn. Michael is doing research on a book on pornography and in the process receives strange photographs in the mail that lead to the discovery of the presence of evidence that video cameras had at one time been installed in their apartment, videos they come to discover show the 'snuff film' of Mark Anton! The discovery leas to dire consequences. The third story involves porn star Matt Stevens (Peter Scherer) who out of a dream state begins writing then directing and casting a film called 'The Mark Anton Story' in which Matt will play the role of Mark Anton! In the film his partner Jason (Walter Delmar) is a participant in the horror that follows and instead of a film about the death of Mark Anton no one is able to tell where reality stops and thriller starts. It is a classical dilemma for the audience of the conundrum 'What is real'? The cast is well trained and there are some cameos by Wyatt Fenner and Rasool J'Han that are particularly fine. Give David Kittredge some time and he may become an important figure in cinema!

This is an excellent, enticing and thought-provoking movie that doesn't infantilize and spoon-feed the audience like most of the assembly-line crap that is now coming out of the film industry. This movie gets right at the lizard brain, without apologies, and challenges the viewer--gay or heterosexual, male or female--to look at and tolerate the darker, naked aspects of the human condition. It breaks my heart and frustrates me to no end that that this film will likely not reach as broad an audience and receive the level of attention and acclaim it deserves--as it undoubtedly would if the porn industry depicted were heterosexual--because too many members of our society are still too fearful to explore different realms and find the underlying commonalities.