American Pie Presents: Beta House (2007)

Here was the third of four American Pie Presents: films - direct-to-DVD/video sequels (in both R-rated and Unrated versions) to the original American Pie franchise series.

• Band Camp (2005)
• The Naked Mile (2006)
• Beta House (2007)
• The Book of Love (2009)

This one was the raunchiest of the entire bunch (to date), with many episodes of in-your-face nudity, unrelentless perversity (with lots of projectile fluids including slo-mo male ejaculate), toplessness, and lewd/gross humor (bestiality with a sheep). The two main female character-stars refrained from getting naked (Ashley and Denise), but there were many others who did in lots of breast-centric sequences.

Naive and young Erik Stifler (John White) was about to embark on his freshman year at the University of Michigan. He entered the co-ed dorm bathroom to urinate, where he met pretty Ashley Thomas (Meghan Heffern), while another dark-haired beauty revealed all as she left another shower stall.

In Erik's room, his overweight roommate Bobby (Nic Nac) was having sex with his gum-chewing chubby girlfriend Margie (Christine Barger) - she was "riding the white whale" while they were cooking bratwurst - until she began choking on her gum and required the Heimlich Maneuver from behind performed by Erik.

Erik was invited by his older, sex-crazed cousin and leader of the Beta House, Dwight Stifler (Steve Talley) to a party at the fraternity. Dwight channeled Apocalypse Now's Robert Duvall: "I love the smell of boobies in the morning"). The main plot premise was soon revealed:

• the rivalry between the Animal House-like Beta House and the nerdy Geek House

Erik began dating Ashley (and experienced an embarrassing premature ejaculation - it sailed across the room onto her stuffed bear Mr. Biggles), while his friend Mike "Cooze" Coozeman (Jake Siegel) was dating Ashley's roommate Denise (Sarah Power) and suffered from a nightmare that she had a male penis (a la Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights). Dwight became exhausted after repeated sex with aggressive blonde sex addict Tiffany (Ashleigh Hubbard) that he had picked up at a group therapy session, and he was forced to flee the room.

Beta House pledges, including Erik, "Cooze" and Bobby were required to perform 50 heinous tasks before semester's end, such as # 37 ("Get your ass signed by a stripper") or # 31 ("Have sex with a professor"). There was considerable competition between the two houses, usually involving sex:

• Hot R.A. (Stephany Sexton) opened her top to reveal her stomach with painted Beta Delta Xi letters to trick prospective pledges
• During a stripper brawl in the Silver Dollar Room club while pledges vainly attempted to complete task # 37, two topless lap-dance strippers (Sabrina Oliveira and Dawne Furey) entertained two Beta brothers
• Chief geek Edgar (Tyrone Savage) had Star Trek-inspired sex ("Uphold the Galactic Alliance with my c--k") with queen of the nerds Irene (Angela Besharah) who had painted her body with alien makeup

The main event was a poolside Greek Olympiad frathouse competition between the Geek House (presided over by Edgar) and the Beta House (run by Dwight) with about half-a dozen events. Beta House alumnus Noah Levenstein (Eugene Levy) officiated the competition.

Lots of unknowns participated in the first event - a "Release of Venus" bra-snapping removal speed contest between Dwight and Edgar - won by the Beta House.

The Poolside Greek Olympiad Competition
"Release of Venus" Bra-Snapping Removal

Another repulsive contest during the Olympiad was a Deer Hunter-Russian Roulette scene with horse semen. In the final, sudden death "Rise of Aphrodite" event, the two frat house leaders competed to hold back while given sexy lap dances by the likes of tempting Julie (Michelle Suppa) and a stripper (Sabrina Oliveira) - Edgar lost the contest due to a sheep-fetish!

Lap Dance with Stripper (Sabrina Oliveira)		Lap Dance with Julie (Michelle Suppa)

The victorious Beta House celebrated with a toga-party, during which Cooze provided oral sex for Denise who pleasantly surprised him when she screamed repeatedly: "I'm coming, I'm coming" - and showered his face with female ejaculate. He was amazed and surprised: "Can you do that everytime?" Erik also found true love with Ashley.

One of the extras on the Unrated DVD was a segment titled: Boobie "Yule Log," in which there were close-ups of female breasts (with tassels or nude) bouncing and jiggling to various Christmas tunes like "Jingle Bells."

American Pie Presents: Beta House - Boobie "Yule Log" segment

Atonement (2007, US/UK)

Director Joe Wright's lush epic told of thwarted romance in the mid 1930's England between:

• Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley), privileged
• Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), Cecilia's 'secret' boyfriend, servant/cook son

Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), Cecilia's manipulative 13 year-old, precocious sister (a budding and aspiring writer) kept coming across what she falsely identified and misunderstood as improper behavior between Cecilia and Robbie.

This was epitomized by a scene at an outdoor fountain when lithe Cecilia dove underwater to retrieve a broken piece of a family heirloom vase - and emerged almost naked in front of Robbie with her soaked and transparent dress - spied upon by Briony.

It was also evidenced by Robbie's expression of sexual lust for Cecilia causing a twist of fate - when he typed a note about wishing to ravish 'your sweet wet cunt' - shown in extreme close-up on his typewriter. He also hand wrote a second apologetic note with a sincere expression of regret, but misdelivered the note. He mistakenly picked up the raunchier note ("the wrong version" with "anatomical" detail) and gave it to Briony to give to Cecilia. When he realized his mistake, it was too late. Briony had read it, and concluded that Robbie was a "sex maniac."

In the library, for the first time, they emotionally and physically expressed their unbridled erotic love for each other (with Cecilia in a green dress up against a stack of books and awkwardly positioned on a ladder while making love). Just before love-making, Cecilia confessed:

It's been there for weeks, and then this morning by the fountain. I've never done anything like that before. And I was so angry with you, and with myself. I thought if you went away to medical school, then I'd be happy, but I don't know how I could have been so ignorant about myself, so... So stupid. You do know what I'm talking about, don't you? You knew before I did.

Unfortunately, they were witnessed and/or interrupted again by Briony who was so shocked, mistakenly, that she subsequently wrongly accused Robbie of 'raping' her young cousin Lola Quincey (Juno Temple) because of sexual misunderstanding.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)

This fatalistic crime melodrama-thriller by veteran director Sidney Lumet was a heist tale, told in non-linear flashback, about two brothers (a Cain and Abel story):

• Andy Hanson (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a slobbish, bulky, smooth-talking and scheming but indebted New York real-estate broker-accountant
• Hank (Ethan Hawke), his deadbeat, divorced, weak and indecisive younger brother

The two master-minded a crazy (and completely botched) hold-up of their parents' Westchester suburban strip-mall jewelry store on a Saturday morning because they needed cash for debts. Hank needed child-support funds for his vindictive ex-wife Martha (Amy Ryan) and for his daughter, and Andy required money for his string of white-collar criminal activities, including an expensive heroin drug habit and male prostitutes, and to escape embezzlement charges by his company and the IRS.

As a result of the heist, there were two fatalities - the brothers' masked accomplice Bobby Lasorda (Brían F. O'Byrne) and Mrs. Nanette Hanson (Rosemary Harris), who happened to be filling in for the regular store clerk Doris. Andy and Hank's father Charles Hanson (Albert Finney), was determined to make the unidentified robbers pay for their crime of murdering his wife.

The film's bloody climax resulted in an effort to cover up the trail of evidence, or to silence the brothers' blackmailing creditors. Andy murdered his heroin dealer (along with an innocent client), and also lethally shot Bobby's blackmailing brother-in-law Dex (Michael Shannon). Subsequently Andy was severely injured by Bobby's widowed wife Chris (Aleksa Palladino) and hospitalized, where Charles (who had been doggedly following the two brothers) was able to suffocate Andy to death with a pillow for his role in killing Nanette.

In the opening scene, Andy made love (vigorously from behind, doggy-style) while on vacation with his beautiful, dark-haired trophy wife Gina (Marisa Tomei in a frequently-naked role) in an exotic Rio hotel room surrounded by mirrors. [This particular scene has been rated as one of the worst sex scenes ever filmed.]

Restless, miserable and reckless Gina also visited Hank on a weekly basis to have sex in his dumpy apartment. During one clandestine tryst, he wanted to run away with her and escape his debts and disastrous problems in his life, but she reminded him of his responsibilities (child support, his daughter, the rent, etc.).

Then, in the kitchen (as she stood topless before Hank), she told him:

"You've (got) a really good thing going. You should just enjoy it. We had a really good time in bed. I don't ask for anything."

He responded plaintively: "I love you. I want more."

She seductively and sensuously approached him and said:

"So does, uh, Oliver Twist. Can I help you to seconds, or do you really, really, really have to get back? Huh?"

Ironically, Andy had a similar conversation with his drug dealer.

Beowulf (2007)

Director Robert Zemeckis' adaptation of the Old English epic poem engendered some anticipation over its rating -- PG-13 or R.

The semi-bloody film ended up PG-13 and avoided a dreaded R-rating, mostly because the nudity was of an animated or CGI character. However, it still included intense sequences of violence (i.e., monster Grendel tearing people in half), disturbing images, and some sexual material (and nudity).

Angelina Jolie played a mostly-naked seductive role as Grendel's Mother - she was seen covered with dripping gold liquid (although virtual and 100% CGI as a digital replica), and looking like a golden Academy Award Oscar statue. A gold-painted, nude body (belonging to Rachael Bernstein) was attached to Angelina Jolie's CGI-rendered head.

Charlie Wilson's War (2007)

In an against-type role in this Mike Nichols biographical drama, Tom Hanks portrayed womanizing Texas House of Representatives' Democrat Charlie Wilson. His main claim to fame was involvement in the covert war against Russia in Afghanistan to end the Cold War in the 1980s.

In an early scene, Wilson was shown entertaining in his bachelor's pad with a hot tub, complete with beautiful naked women (l to r):

• Stacey (Cyia Batten)
• Kelly (Hilary Angelo)

Closing the Ring (2007, UK)

Another example of a TV star crossing-over to the big screen, and then revealing herself, was Mischa Barton from the mid-2000's TV soap The O.C. The popular Mr. Skin website named her appearance "the best nude scene of 2008."

Barton appeared in director Richard Attenborough's tearjerking romantic drama about unrequited love (similar to The Notebook). In this multi-generational romance, Barton played the role of:

• Ethel Ann (Mischa Barton, adult role played by Shirley MacLaine), a young darling

The film was set in two time periods (WW2 and the present early 1990s) and locales (Michigan and Belfast, Northern Ireland). It told about a wartime pilot (Teddy) who gave a ring to an Irish local to give to his American girlfriend (Ethel) if anything should happen to him. The wedding ring, inscribed with the names Ethel Ann and Teddy, was found in Ireland, and the American girl was subsequently tracked down 50 years later.

In flashback, young Ethel Ann had secretly married her sweetheart - US Air Force airman Teddy (Stephen Amell), who was in the midst of building a house to live in with her. During construction, she sat on his lap while he removed the top of her dress, kissed her, and told her: "You're so beautiful." As she turned to him fully naked, wearing only her wedding ring, she confessed as tears welled up in her eyes:

"I will always love you, Teddy. I'll be here till the day I die, I swear it. There won't be room for anyone else in my heart but you. No one else, not ever, till I'm laid in my grave."

Shortly later, he left to fight alongside buddies Jack (Gregory Smith and older Christopher Plummer) and Chuck Harris (David Alpay) in WW2. When Teddy faced death in a crash in 1944 in Belfast, he asked Chuck to take care of Ethel - which led to their loveless marriage.

[Note: After this film, Barton also briefly appeared topless in a bathtub scene in Assassination of a High School President (2008).]

Eastern Promises (2007)

Filmmaker David Cronenberg's violent thriller contained one of the most talked-about sequences ever filmed - recalling (the director noted) Psycho's notorious shower scene:

• a four-minute vicious fight sequence (beautifully choreographed)

In the memorable scene, marked, tattooed and enigmatic mobster driver/bodyguard Nikolai Luzhim (Viggo Mortensen) was ambushed by two knife-wielding, clothed Chechen assassins in a steamy bathhouse.

He was naked and vulnerable except for his body tattoos, and the fight culminated with one thug being stabbed in the eyeball.

El Bufalo De La Noche (2007, Mex.) (aka The Night Buffalo)

Director Jorge Hernandez Aldana's directorial debut film was a melodramatic, dark and somber film based on the book of the same name by prolific Mexican novelist-screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga. Its themes were betrayal, insanity and a disillusioned search for romance/love.

The overheated drama, part of a Mexican New Wave cinema, was filled with many sex scenes and couplings between the various performers. The film was rated NC-17 for some gratuitous graphic sexuality, including fellatio, and even a 'golden-shower' scene, plus full-frontal nudity (both male and female, mostly from Mexican TV star Liz Gallardo) throughout the entire film.

The basic flashback-laden yet complex (non-linear) story was about a romantic triangle between three Mexico City college students:

• Gregorio Valdes (Gabriel Gonzales)
• Manuel Aguilera (Diego Luna), Gregorio's best friend
• Tania Ramos (Liz Gallardo), the sensual girlfriend of both men
  
  
• also involved was Margarita Valdes (Irene Azuela), Gregorio's caring sister, and frequent recreational sex partner of Manuel

22 year-old Gregorio had been hospitalized as a paranoid schizophrenic for two years with strange and insane thoughts - he believed that an earwig had burrowed into his brain and insides (necessitating that he had to cut off two of his toes), and even crazily threatened to kill girlfriend Tania during an attempted love-making. He also thought that a buffalo was breathing down on his neck at night while he slept. (He foreshadowed his own death when he told Manuel: "The buffalo of the night dreams about us, and one of us is going to die soon.") Both male friends had received tattoos of a buffalo on their left arms, using the same needle to become "blood brothers."

Tania Ramos (Liz Gallardo) - The Duo's Girlfriend
Tania (in film opening)
Tania (in flashback) losing virginity to Manuel

During his extended psychiatric treatment, Tania and Manuel engaged in an affair, always conducted in Room 803 at the Motel Villalba. Their cheating ultimately led to Gregorio committing suicide (he shot himself in the head) almost immediately after his cure and release, when he discovered that she had sex with his best friend Manuel. Tania realized: "Gregorio is blaming us for his blood, the bastard."

With Gregorio's sister and his own best friend Margarita, guilty-feeling Manual sought further solace and absolution. She gave him Gregorio's goodbye-gift -- a cardboard box that was full of pictures, cryptic handwritten notes (with poems or song-lyrics in them), and souvenirs - instigating many flashbacks.

The first flashback, triggered after opening the box and reading notes Gregorio had written (one song-lyric: "It's like being in the core of the flame"), was the loss of Tania's virginity to Manuel in the motel, when she exclaimed as he excitedly embraced her: "You're hurting me," before he penetrated her more gently. A spot of blood on the sheets confirmed her virginity, although Manuel said: "I told you I didn't care if you were a virgin or not." She ripped the stained, square-shaped patch from the bed and gave it to him ("Never forget this afternoon").

While seeking emotional support, Manuel also cheated on Tania by having sex in a car with Margarita. She gave him fellatio (seen in explicit detail in the very dark scene), and then when she asked if he wanted to try intercourse again: "Do you want to try again?", he declined. Mysteriously, Manuel started receiving mailings containing messages, reinforcing the same ideas from Gregorio's box. The first read: "The buffalo of the night will now dream about you."

Trouble brewed when Gregorio's father discovered that Manuel was having sex with Margarita while also sexually involved with Tania - "Gregorio's girl." During another love-making scene, the confused and insecure Tania asked Manuel: "Are you going to marry me?" He responded that he didn't know, but then quickly assured her. She distrusted him, however, suspicious that he was having relations with Margarita.

Another strange envelope arrived: "You can't run from the buffalo of the night," received while Manuel's relationship with Tania was beginning to crumble. It also contained a Polaroid picture of Tania with the words: "Very deep inside the fire." At the same time, he began a similar descent into madness, tormented that earwigs were beginning to infect him too, and that his arm's tattoo needed to be scraped off.

For further solace, he turned to ex-girlfriend Rebecca (Camila Sodi), and after kissing and touching her naked body, she told him: "I'm very in love with you," but then added: "I won't see you anymore...because I love you too much." He developed jealousy over Tania, and at the zoo's wolf paddock, he asked how many times she had slept with Gregorio in the final months. She replied: "I slept with him five times less than you with Margarita." He called her a "f--king whore," threatened her, and then with a gun he had brought, shot at the caged zoo animal. Newspapers labeled the crime a "NATIONAL OUTRAGE."

One final time, Tania came to Manuel in the motel room, stripped off her clothes, and begged him to hold her. While on top of him, she urinated on his stomach during love-making. After they slept together and she received a vibrating cell-phone call, she left but promised to return soon. Soon after, he was arrested by police, and forced to sign a statement about the wolf incident. He was shown the gun with his fingerprints, and Tania's witness statement (she had led the police to him).

The Attorney General's son, the elusive Jacinto Anaya (Walther Cantu), met with Manuel to make a proposal on Tania's behalf: "She promises to drop all charges if you leave her alone." When Manuel wouldn't agree, Jacinto admitted that a suspicious and vengeful Gregorio had asked him to take care of Tania. He claimed that the only thread keeping Gregorio alive in the mental hospital was Tania, and when Manuel took that away from his friend, it basically killed him.

To avoid rotting in jail, Manuel escaped from the police station and sought help from Margarita to confront Jacinto Anaya again. At Anaya's apartment, Manuel beat up Jacinto, and then was surprised to see Tania there. He pursued her to the street where he demanded an answer: "Do you love me?" He was held at bay by police, when she finally answered that she did love him.

Feast of Love (2007)

Robert Benton's R-rated ensemble film was based on Charles Baxter's novel The Feast of Love from 2000. It was set in suburban Portland, Oregon in a small college town was composed a series of interlocking vignettes providing a meditation on the complexities of love ("a story for anyone with an appetite for love").

The melodramatic, weepy 'chick flick' film, inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, contained copious amounts of nudity from many of the female characters in the midst of their magical and mysterious relationships.

The film was headlined by Morgan Freeman as wise, omniscient philosophy professor and writer Harry Stevenson - the voice-over narrator and resident sage of the town in the year 2007. Now while Harry was on an extended leave of absence, his supportive gray-haired wife Esther (Jane Alexander) was having difficulty communicating with her grieving husband after their college-educated, 36 year-old son Aaron overdosed on heroin and died in 2006. Harry opened the film, under the credits, with his characteristic gravelly voice-over:

"There is a story about the Greek gods. They were bored, so they invented human beings, but they were still bored, so they invented love. Then they weren't bored any longer, so they decided to try love for themselves. And finally they invented laughter, so they could stand it."

Greg Kinnear also starred as his eager, naive, lovelorn and clueless friend - Jitters Cafe/coffee shop owner Bradley Smith. He believed in idealistic romantic love:

"I think it's everything. The only meaning there is to this crazy dream we're all trapped in."

Bradley's life was completed changed when his wife of six years, hazel-eyed Kathryn (Selma Blair) suddenly engaged in a lesbian relationship with Jenny (Stana Katic), a softball rival, as Harry noted (in voice-over): "Sometimes you don't know you've crossed a line until you're already on the other side. Of course, by then it's too late."

The two females were shown in a passionate and nude face-to-face embrace. Bradley was left, ultimately, with a humane society dog named Bradley, Jr. that he dumbly felt she needed, although she was scared of dogs. After divorcing, Bradley mused: "My ex-wife left me for another woman."

He began to date a single, ice-queen blonde - a frazzled real estate agent Diana Croce (Radha Mitchell), who was concurrently and secretly sleeping with married man David Watson (Billy Burke) (the husband of Karen (Julie Vhay)). During one of their bedroom sex encounters, Diana viciously argued in the nude with him about her impending marriage to Bradley (he considered it a "soul mistake"). Bradley's hitching to the cynical and unfaithful Diana was short-lived (as a clue, she hesitated during the vows) and they soon divorced when she began seeing David again, after he had separated from Karen.

After being jilted, Bradley sliced off the tip of his right pinkie finger, and then mused to a kindly hospital Nurse (Sherilyn Lawson) - a Hungarian named Margit Vekashi, as he was being bandaged: "I wanted to feel, in my body, as much pain as I feel in my heart." She listened compassionately to his story of disappointment. He asked her a two-pronged question:

"Do you think love is a trick nature plays on people so that we'll make more babies? Or do you think that it is everything, the only meaning there is to this crazy dream?"

They agreed that they believed in the second statement, and they soon fell in love with each other:

Harry: "Bradley finally found someone who loved him as much as he loved her. They fit together. It's a peculiar thing, what happiness does for people. He actually became friends with Kathryn and Jenny, and Diana and David. Bradley realized that you can't hold someone's love against them."

In another segment of the film, there was another love relationship occurring between:

• Chloe Barlow (Alexa Davalos), free-spirited, hippie-ish and beautiful, a newcomer to the town
• Oscar (Toby Hemingway), Chloe's co-worker in Bradley's coffee-shop, a cash-strapped fellow barista and troubled former drug addict/junkie

Until he moved out with Chloe and they found their own home, Oscar was living with his violence-prone (knife-wielding), hard-drinking, disrespectful father Bathold (or "Bat") (Fred Ward). Harry (in voice-over) described their relationship: "They laid eyes on each other and their fates were sealed. Life will never be the same for either one of them again."

She made love to him one night on the 50 yard-line of the deserted Portland State University football field stadium, beneath a meteor shower. In another cross-cutting love scene, Oscar discussed his wealth fantasy of the future about one day coming home to find Chloe greeting him in their mansion's foyer (to the soft tune of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah!") where they had lots of kids. To afford a place to live and make ends meet, the struggling Chloe considered a "business opportunity" - to make and sell a home-made pornographic tape (but their first attempt wasn't "hot enough" and it failed).

After a visit to psychic fortune teller Mrs. Maggarolian (Margo Martindale), and paying $20 for a dire forecast of the future about Oscar, she bravely tempted fate and "didn't run away." They were married when she was already pregnant, but then six months later, Oscar suddenly suffered cardiac arrest (due to a congenital heart defect) while playing a pickup game of football, and he tragically died on the way to the hospital.

Bradley described to Harry how Chloe knew what would happen to Oscar, but still persevered: "She found them a house, she threw away her birth control, and she married him." He then gave his own optimistic philosophy of life: "God doesn't hate us, Harry. If he did, he wouldn't have made our hearts so brave."

Harry offered Chloe to come and live with him and Esther, as her adoptive parents ("Be our little girl"), as she had earlier requested: "Esther and I will give you and your baby all the love we have left to give. Let's go home."

Harry ended the film with another voice-over:

"The unexpected is always upon us. And of all the gifts arrayed before me, this one thought at this moment in my life is the most precious. And so, we begin again."