The NC-17 rating slapped on Ira Sachs’ ‘Passages’ and breathless talk about a few scenes in ‘Oppenheimer’ have renewed questions of whether — or why — American movies seem more sexually uptight than ever.
The NC-17 rating slapped on Ira Sachs’ ‘Passages’ and breathless talk about a few scenes in ‘Oppenheimer’ have renewed questions of whether — or why — American movies seem more sexually uptight than ever.
I feel this way even in the case of porn. I feel more interested when it’s finding creative ways of “showing but hiding” and leaving bits of the process to the imagination.
Actually, horror and sex tend to have a lot in common. When a horror movie shows someone being slowly and brutally disfigured, it’s rightly called out as a gratuitous and unsatisfying gore fest. When they’re dragged away into the dark, it’s truly scary and unsettling.