Rating: 
Summary: Interpersonal Communication 101: a review of "SLV"
Review: If you purchase "sex, lies and videotape" expecting to see erotica, you'll be disappointed. Steven Soderbergh's 1989 award winning film (Grand Prize, Cannes Film Fest) is a provocative, sometimes painful examination of how communication, or lack thereof, can affect relationships. The plot revolves around John, (Peter Gallagher) a junior partner in a law firm, his obsessive, repressed wife Ann, (Andie McDowell) her "extroverted" sister Cynthia, (Laura San Giacomo) and the enigmatic Graham, (James Spader) a friend John met in college. Through voice-over, sometimes overlapping narration and crisp editing, the characters are introduced at a rapid pace. While Ann is obsessing about the world's garbage to her shrink, John is in bed with Cynthia. Cynthia told John it would give her a "perverse thrill" to do it in her sister's bed, so when Graham moves to town, John suggests Ann take him apartment hunting. Ann tells Graham she thinks sex is over-rated. Graham tells Ann that for all practical purposes, he is impotent because he can't get an erection in the presence of another person. These events take place in the first 25 minutes of the film, which runs 100 minutes. The interactions between these four people is the film's core. However, the relationship which is most pivotal to the plot--between Graham and Elizabeth, a woman he dated in college--is never explored on film. The viewer can only surmise it from the dialogue. James Spader received the Best Actor Award at Cannes for his powerful, sensitive yet understated portrayal of Graham. Especially poignant in the last 30 minutes of the film, Spader's performance is also praiseworthy because we never doubt Graham's sincerity. The thought that he could be something other than he appears never enters our minds. This film is not for everyone. The characters discuss sex in a frank, yet natural way. Their motivations can be discussed for hours. It's possible some people will have an easier time discussing sex after seeing this film. It's also possible that, depending on your views of sex, this film might disturb you. It is not a film to be seen after a rough day. Rather, it's a film to watch with plans for a "post-film" discussion. Soderbergh also wrote the original screenplay, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Deliberately or not, there are some loose strings regarding Graham. However, this film is so powerful that this minor flaw adds to the film's mystique. No matter what else Soderbergh may do in his already distinguished career, this film will be considered a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Incorporate This Film Into Your Collection
Review: Okay, I'm highly biased. This is my favorite movie of all time.
It's a moody movie, set in the South, where emotion and dialogue carry me (and probably you) to the end. It's so good that, for me, it has become "peanut butter fiction," as if it's always been a part of my life. When there's nothing else to watch, I'll put it in. And I'll wonder why I waited so long to watch Sex, Lies, and Videotape again.
I've spent some time trying to identify the protagonist of this film. As with many great films, our hero is not clear. We have Ann (played by Andie MacDowell), the popular southern girl who, about a year ago, married a promising lawyer, John (Peter Gallagher), recently made junior partner of his firm. John is secretly sleeping with Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), Ann's sister. This situation would have gone on indefinitely, were it not for the arrival of Graham (James Spader). Graham is John's old buddy who is moving back to town and, with John's permission, will be staying at John and Ann's upscale home. Although logically Graham should turn out to be just like John--a deceitful man--we quickly discover that the opposite is True. "True" with a capital T.
Graham has changed since the old days. He's artsy, mysterious, immediately strange and likeable, and Truthful. John doesn't know what to make of him. The dialogue in this movie is perfectly revealing, for instance, when Graham explains how he insists on having a car. John finds a need for a car humorous: "In case you have to leave someplace in a hurry." Graham counteracts this observation by adding, "Yeah, or go someplace in a hurry." The first response indicates guilt, the second determination. Graham has come back to town for a reason.
John sends Ann apartment hunting with Graham, which provides John the perfect opportunity to have sex with Cynthia in the marital house while they are away. Unbeknownst to him, Ann and Graham share a connection. So we have either Ann or Graham as our "hero." Ann subconsciously suspects infidelity, and Graham has come to town to show "someone" that he has changed--and we the audience come to realize that he is specifically NOT being John, although years ago he and John were probably exactly alike. Graham is specifically not a liar. He is also impotent.
Sorry if you feel I'm forcing "spoilers" upon your eyes. I could give a treatment of this entire movie and still make it worth watching. So far, the only thing I've left out of Sex, Lies, and Videotape is the videotape. Graham may not be able to have sex with another person, but he can "get off." He makes videotapes. He videotapes women talking about sex, and if you were to ask him if this is how he achieves sexual satisfaction, he'd say matter-of-factly Yes. He sits in the living room of the apartment that Ann helped him find watching women talk about their sexual experiences.
Perhaps this movie would have fizzled at this point, with Graham out of the marital home, but for the sexually oriented Cynthia who hears about Graham and his strange habits. Once Cynthia visits Graham in his personal space, the conflict of the movie becomes intereseting. This is a movie with few, if any, visual effects. O Trust me when I say you don't need them. The story is enough.
How will John react to Cynthia visiting his ex-best friend? How will John react to Ann, who is slowly becoming wise? How will John react to the fact that Graham is the center of attention? Until Graham's arrival, John lived in a perfect world.
If you press me, I'll say the protagonist of this story is Ann, because the outcome of events MOST affects her, and she is likeable. At first I thought the protagonist was Graham. There is a part of me that considers that John is the most affected by the plotline, because his perfect situation is in danger of falling like sand out of the palms of his grubby hands. In any work of fiction, he whom is MOST changed by story events is our hero. You'll have to decide that for yourself.
I consider Sex, Lies, and Videotape to be "peanut butter" cinema. It's so good that you accept it as such; it's a staple of your refrigerator--er--your DVD shelf. It will wait to be seen, yearly, like Bob Clark's A Christmas Story. You can't watch it daily, but you'll want to. You can put it in your DVD player and do other things, occasionally tuning in for great dialogue and masterful plotting. But that's only after you've watched it too many times. The first time, you'll wonder why there aren't more movies like this. You'll wish you were a screenwriter. You might even sit down at a blank First Draft document. You might wonder why you can't make the words come, and when they do come, you wonder why you're such a plagiarist. Why didn't you write Sex, Lies, and Videotape first?
Rating: 
Summary: Very, very close to perfection
Review: sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989)Soderbergh's first big-league film (he directed the Yes concert video 9012Live a few years before this) didn't really set any new standards for the cerebral nothing-really-happens flick, but it did prove to Hollywood that audiences are willing to experience things that don't involve large numbers of explosions on a much larger scale than they realized. Things do blow up in this film, but on a much smaller scale, and without the pyrotcehnics involved in bigger-budget efforts. John Melaney (Peter Gallagher, probably best known as the coma patient in While You Were Sleeping) is a not-nice guy. Not nice at all. He's married to the repressive sister (Andie McDowell), sleeping with the more liberated sister (Laura san Giacomo), and not terribly concerned with who's going to find out. He is visited by an old school friend. Graham (James Spader) is the slick, weasely guy you usually find prowling the bars, actually living the dream that the guys with the big gold chains and umbrella drinks are dreaming. Graham, however, is impotent, and he sublimates his sexual urges into a fetish for recording women he knows talking about their sex lives. This seemingly harmless affectation ends up throwing the whole finely-balanced ecology around the other three main characters into disarray. Soderbergh is great at keeping the tension high in this film, despite the relative lack of anything going on most of the time. The four characters keep things going at a steady pace, leisurely and tense at the same time, helped along by a select handful of minor characters who provide the necessary comic relief (Steven Brill is especially good in this regard). A fine movie all around, and while it never quite gets over the top into true timelessness, it's still solid to the core, and very well done in a genre where to fail is to create a spectacularly awful release (eg. The Turning). **** 1/2
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed by Its Coventional Progress
Review: Sex, Lies, and Videotape is an interesting but unfulfilling look at the small world of four people in Baton Rogue, Louisiana. John Melaney (Peter Gallagher) is a junior partner at a Baton Rogue law firm who is handling his first case after his promotion. He is married to Ann Bishop Melaney (Andie MacDowell) who has become very uninterested in sex and who obsesses about things she can't control. John invites his old college frat brother, Graham Dalton (James Spader), to live with him for awhile after he's moved back home from New York. Graham has changed a lot since John last saw him and the two have grown apart. Or rather, Graham has become a very changed man. Graham and Ann strike up an awkward friendship until she finds out that Graham likes to tape women while he interviews them about sex. Also, Ann is unaware that her husband is having an affair with her younger sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo). The whole situation for everyone involved begins to unravel when Graham makes a tape of Cynthia. The effects of this recording spiral out of control for all involved. SL&V really turned out to not be as unique as its subject matter would have you believe. The ending is highly conventional. Of course, that might be the unexpected ending of an indie film. We are shown the consequences that can result from unrestrained passion and the little white lies we tell to the people we care about. It's kind of odd to get a moralistic tale from a movie titled Sex, Lies, and Videotape. The dialog and acting in this film are first rate. Too often in film the dialog flows too perfectly and the characters always seem to know the right thing to say. The interactions between the characters in SL&V, especially between Graham and Ann, are very real and the dialog is of the unsure nature that you usually get between two people who aren't exactly sure they trust each other. SL&V isn't a bad film, but it isn't a might see either.
Rating:
Summary: fascinating
Review: some of the most mesmerizing dialogue in movie history-also see teewillers review near this one-what a marvelous writer and review this is-you ought to do this for a living-the people who do this for the la times arent nearly this good
Rating: 
Summary: bang your head on the wall, it is better than this
Review: The only lies I saw in this is that there is sex on video tape. This movie was so overwhelmingly boring. The cast were supremely good actors. They had to be not to yawn the entire time through this. I wasn't expecting an action flick, but paint drying would be a heart pounding adventure after this. Great for insomniacs
Rating:
Summary: Interviews about sex
Review: The story is about a married couple named Ann and John, portrayed by Andie MacDowell and Steven Gallagher. The marriage lacks any sparks plus the fact that John is having sex on a regular basis with Ann's sister, Cynthia, played by Laura San Giacomo.
John is a lawyer moving up the ladder, Ann consults her therapist regularly, with whom she discusses her lack of interest in sex and compulsive ways. Cynthia tends bar at some dive with one regular customer that gets on Ann's nerves.
One day an old college buddy of John's appears wanting to face his past and find a place in town to live for an unspecified period of time. Graham is played by James Spader and spends a night or two at Ann and John's place before apartment hunting.
While John sends Ann off to look at apartments with Graham, he calls Cynthia for a quick romp before heading to the office. There is an interesting scene in a restaurant with Graham and Ann afterwards where the topic turns to sex. For some reason Graham confides in Ann that he is impotent.
What I found funny is the number of times Ann and Cynthia are talking on the phone and then Cynthia and John planning their next tryst. Once Graham moves into town the talk between these three at separate times is based on what they know and want to know about Graham.
Each time Cynthia and John are together it becomes apparent that once the sex is over Cynthia wants him gone. They really have nothing in common but the sex is intense after Cynthia relays the videotaping incident.
It sure looked like Cynthia spent more time with Ann and John separately than Ann and John were together. I did not see why they were even married in the first place. Ann seemed to be attracted to Graham in an off sort of way.
The ending left gaps for me because the sisters discussed their Mother's birthday and I did not see the significance of this discussion. The drunk in the bar got on my nerves always saying the same thing. I could not tell what line of work Ann was interested in pursuing or involved in.
I still sat glued to my couch watching Sex, Lies and Videotape wanting to see something that never came to light. I hoped that Ann and Graham would connect because I never saw a relationship between her and John. The sisters had a bond but also were jealous of what the other had. Graham mentioned spending nine years structuring his life, which was not really explained.
It was an interesting movie that was on the dark side with sexual undertones but never showing anything sexual but the language was of adult matter. I liked the brutal honesty of the characters and how they were all motivated in some way by sex.
Rating:
Summary: Eroticism is in the conversation, rather than the act itself
Review: This 1989 film, written and directed by Steven Soderberg, was certainly the beginning of an important career for him. This low-budget film captured a wide audience and a large box office. It's a seemingly simple film, but it makes an important statement. Basically, it demonstrates that our most erogenous zone is the mind. And it is the conversation, rather than the act itself where eroticism lies. The story is about four modern people, all with relationship problems. Andie MacDowell is a frigid wife. Peter Gallager is her lawyer husband who cheats on her with her own sister, Laura San Giacomo. And James Spader is the husband's friend Graham, who, because of his own dysfunctional needs, can only get aroused one way - by watching videotapes of women talking about their erotic life. Otherwise, he's impotent in a real life situation. I found this film slow and talky but it was also intriguing. It goes deeper than the surface and I was fascinated by its creativity. And it uses the medium of videotape to do it all. This, of course was filmed before the Internet, cell phones and even DVDs. And so there is a certain datedness to it. But yet it deals with some universal truths. And a willingness to explore the lies. I enjoyed it but it's more for film buffs than a general audience. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Eroticism is in the conversation, rather than the act itself
Review: This 1989 film, written and directed by Steven Soderberg, was certainly the beginning of an important career for him. This low-budget film captured a wide audience and a large box office. It's a seemingly simple film, but it makes an important statement. Basically, it demonstrates that our most erogenous zone is the mind. And it is the conversation, rather than the act itself where eroticism lies. The story is about four modern people, all with relationship problems. Andie MacDowell is a frigid wife. Peter Gallager is her lawyer husband who cheats on her with her own sister, Laura San Giacomo. And James Spader is the husband's friend Graham, who, because of his own dysfunctional needs, can only get aroused one way - by watching videotapes of women talking about their erotic life. Otherwise, he's impotent in a real life situation. I found this film slow and talky but it was also intriguing. It goes deeper than the surface and I was fascinated by its creativity. And it uses the medium of videotape to do it all. This, of course was filmed before the Internet, cell phones and even DVDs. And so there is a certain datedness to it. But yet it deals with some universal truths. And a willingness to explore the lies. I enjoyed it but it's more for film buffs than a general audience. Recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: What a stupid sex riot!
Review: This is a stupid movie, including that "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" reminds me about that movie called Unfaithful, I give this movie ** (2 out of 5).
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