Sneaky in that Soderberghian way; so blunt that it gets out in front of itself. Where the recession and nods to class have often been the casual subtext of his recent work, that stuff stands at the fore here as oily traders gab incessantly about the economy and how to better Sasha Grey's business. While Soderbergh renders fiscal concerns explicit and unavoidable, it's the transactional nature of sex and pleasure that hums in the background.

Not every customer mandates a…

Dawdling preciousness aside, the cheeky self-reflexivity and knowing artifice — Hugh Grant looking at Julia Roberts' breasts under the sheet, to cite an example — go a long way. Not to mention Roberts' willingness to play such a petulant, capricious incarnation of herself. The "Ain't No Sunshine" and "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?" montages, while easy, are strong and clever enough to almost make me forgive the use of Ronan Keating's monumentally awful "When You Say Nothing at…

I'm not gonna pretend like I watched the movie, so this will not be a review proper. I had a free pass and was down to go, but succumbed to the rumbly in my tumbly something fierce about 45 minutes in and life's too short to watch the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie while famished. So, I promptly ducked out to McDonald's and randomly decided on a Big Mac — an iconic fast food staple that has somehow eluded…

My family is intolerant. They would never see it this way but they are. Without getting too explicit, every last member of my family is in agreement that gays and transgender people are "sinful heathens in the lord's eyes". This is a result of being brought up in a Baptist home. Apparently, somewhere in the Bible it says to stop other people from being in love even if it doesn't interfere with your day-to-day life. Funny, I never knew that.…