CARPOOL

Carpool starring Kaylani Lei, Kylie Wilde, Nicole Sheridan, Nikki Rhodes, Renae Cruz, Marcus London, Evan Stone, Alex Sanders, Dane Cross, Herschel Savage, Niko and directed by Jonathan Morgan

The Plot: On the ride to work each member of a carpool discusses what they did over the weekend.

: As each carpool member tells their story, we get a flashback to their sex scene. A good set up for a vignette style movie. There's nothing really that great in Carpool, on the other hand, it is does have very competent actors plus the humorous writing of Jonathan Morgan. The sex scenes are of the modern day "way too long" variety.  As far as your enjoyment of this movie, I think it will rely on how much feature porn you watch. If you've seen a lot, you'll find this just an average film. If you're newer to feature porn, you will probably be much more pleased. I grade it C+

BLIND DATE

Blind Date starring Kaylani Lei, Kris Slater, Randy Spears, Alektra Blue, Stormy Daniels, Barrett Blade, Briana Blair, Brynn Tyler, Brendon Miller, Alexa Nicole and directed by Stormy Daniels (who also makes a non-sex cameo in the movie).

The Plot: To insure a promotion at work Kris Slater agrees to a blind date with the boss's daughter, Kaylani Lei. Neither Kris or Kaylani are very excited about the date, since they both have just ended bad relationships. They really hit it off and things are going great...until their exes show up to make the blind date turn into one disaster after another.

: Stormy has become a pretty reliable director/writer with her romantic comedies like Sleeping Around and her action comedies like Operation: Tropical Stormy. Blind Date continues in that vein and has a good opening sequence to hook you in to the storyline: Kaylani is dancing on top of a car while an apartment burns in the background, Blind Date then flashes back 36 hours to see how things got to this point.


Of course it doesn't hurt to have a great cast. The leads, Kaylani Lei and Kris Slater, both do an excellent job of carrying the movie. But it's the supporting cast who really shine in Blind Date. Barrett Blade, who has become adept at comedy is pretty darn good in the film, but comes in second to Brendon Miller, Kaylani's ex. Brendon gets some of the best lines in Blind Date and really goes all out with his character. If you don't have some laugh out loud moments with Brendon in this movie, better check for your sense of humor because you have definitely lost it. I should mention that I never could buy Randy Spears as a "redneck". It was so out of character for him I could only think I was just seeing Randy Spears trying (and failing) to act like a redneck during his scenes (and let me tell you...I know redneck....being as I am one!).


The main drawback to Blind Date is something I have found with all of Stormy's directed films....the sex scenes never generate any on-screen heat between the performers. This falls to one of two reasons I can think of....either Stormy doesn't know how to direct a sex scene (highly doubtful considering the amount of sex scenes she has appeared in over her career) OR my guess is she has been in so many sex scenes that her interest lies more in the storyline than the sex scenes. Even though here at XXX Marks The Plot I am more interested in the storyline than the sex scenes, I still want to have decent sex scenes in the films I'm watching....after all, we are talking porn here! I'm rating Blind Date a solid B.

NEXT

Next starring Kaylani Lei, Brianna Love, Voodoo, Derrick Pierce, Kissy Kapri, Tommy Gunn, Steven St. Croix, Alex Sanders and directed by Jonathan Morgan.

The Plot: Two girlfriends (Kaylani and Brianna) discuss their current relationships and make them sound a little bit better than they really are. Brianna convinces Kaylani to try speed dating where they meet a roomful of wacky characters.

: If this was a mainstream movie it would be labeled a "chick flick", which would make a lot of guys and some "chicks" avoid such a movie at the local multiplex. In the land of porno, movies don't get labeled like that and Next is just labeled a plot based feature.

Kaylani does a great job in her role, but she is basically playing the part of the "straight man" to Brianna's wackiness. Brianna is so good as the ditsy friend, she really steals the movie from the star, Kaylani. Since Next is a short 89 minute movie, the sex scenes (which are integrated into the film) don't run on to the point of becoming boring and detracting from the flow of he movie. As an added plus to the movie, there are a few XXX directors who make cameos during the speed dating segment. Next was another great movie from Jonathan Morgan, who to the best of my memory, has never disappointed me. I grade this one an A.

RAWHIDE

Rawhide starring Carmen Luvana, Kaylani Lei, Julian, Olivia Del Rio, Taylor Rain, Velvet Rose, Brooke Balentyne, Jesse V., Natalia Wood, Evan Stone, Randy Spears, Steven St. Croix, Dale DaBone, Cheyne Collins, Joey Ray and directed by Nicholas Steele

The Plot: Carmen Luvana has been living in the city for years, but after her father dies, she inherits his ranch and must make a decision to either sell the ranch or run it herself.

: Rawhide had a logical plot, was shot on location and had great costumes. This should have been one of the best feature XXX movies I had ever seen, instead I found a movie that wound up boring me. I'm going to blame it on bad editing. The almost three hour running time is padded with long scenes of people riding horses, shots of the locales, or even having the camera linger on a fire. The other problem I had with Rawhide was, after sinking so much money in the movie, why didn't they hire a cameraman who could backlight a scene. There were way too many scenes in the movie which were either too dark due to being lit wrong OR maybe not lit at all. While Rawhide was a major disappointment for me, I appreciate the high production values and the effort put into the movie to make it appear almost mainstream (albeit with hardcore sex) and I'm going to give it a B.

SPACE NUTS

Living in The Bible Belt and also in a city that is home to Bob Jones University, getting porn movies has always been something of a challenge. Back before VHS you occasionally ran across someone that had an 8mm stag movie and that was about it. How Greenville, SC, managed to have a XXX movie theater on Main Street (see photo on sidebar) back in the late 60s and early 70s is still a mystery to me. We also had a XXX drive-in movie theater up the road in Spartanburg, SC....and here's the kicker....you had to know someone who could get you a membership card before you could get in....thankfully, I had a terrific Uncle Bob who got me one....so "Bob's Your Uncle" and I possessed a card (that joke is just for my UK and anglophile readers). Along came VHS and some of the small Mom and Pop shops tried to rent porn and were constantly busted by the police. I am still thankful to them for the times, between busts, that I could rent XXX videos.

All of the above is just a preamble to how thankful I was one day in 2006 when I read an article where Tori Spelling talked about renting porn by mail. My only awareness of Tori Spelling was that she was the daughter of Aaron and had been on some TV shows, none of which I had ever watched. When I read the following quote: ""My husband Dean McDermott and I also belong to this service that's like a porn Netflix.....The Netflix DVDs come in a red package and the porn ones come in a blue one, so we're like, "Oooh! A Netflix arrived!" or "Oooh! A porn arrived!" I became a fan of hers for life....curiously, to date I still have never seen her in any TV show or TV movie, but I won't "cotton" to anyone saying anything bad about Tori!!

After all that long winded explanation, I'm finally getting around to the movie I'm going to discuss for my 100th review. In 2004 HBO had a show called "Pornucopia" and part of that show was about the making of Space Nuts, a big budget XXX comedy with a plot. It reminded me of some of the older plot based movies I had seen years ago, albeit with a much bigger budget. I checked out Tori's recommendation and joined the online porn movie rental company with Space Nuts being one of the first movies I received.{IF you wonder why I'm not mentioning the rental company, their service was very slow and I eventually switched to another company}. Since I felt that review #100 should have some type of significance, I decided to watch Space Nuts again. It is a real rarity for me to watch a XXX movie more than once.

Space Nuts doesn't spoof any certain movie, but takes parts of "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Star Trek", "Star Wars", "Buck Rogers", and who knows what else, mixes them all together, adds in some special effects and produces an outstanding movie in the world of XXX. Space Nuts was directed and co-written by Jonathan Morgan, who has, as many of you know from my past reviews, become one of my favorite go-to directors when I'm looking for a good XXX movie. It also stars some top talent: Mike Horner, Jessica Drake, Evan Stone, Stormy Daniels, Katie Morgan, Randy Spears, Devinn Lane, Jessica Drake, Kaylani Lei, Kyle Stone, and even a cameo by Ron Jeremy.

The plot centers around Princess Hubba Hubba (Stormy) who is fleeing her galaxy (the Clitoran system) from the Evil Overlord (Mike Horner - unrecognizable under a prosthetic mask) who wants to marry her and control her empire. Assisting the Evil Overlord are the Dark Witch (Devinn Lane) and General Warts (Kyle Stone). On the side of good with the Princess are Buzz Starfokker (Evan Stone) and the android Jeeves (Randy Spears).

Space Nuts had a big budget for a XXX feature (reportedly $200,000) and it looks like a lot of that money was invested in special effects with some of the effects (definitely not all) being on the level of mainstream studio productions. They also didn't cut corners on costuming or make-up, something porn features are sometimes apt to do. With the effects, the costumes, the acting, the great comic writing all added together, you get one damn good movie....How good is it? They could remove the ten sex scenes (which were all too long anyway at the modern 20+ minute length) and I would still without hesitation recommend this movie to anyone who likes a good spoof.

Space Nuts starring Jessica Drake, Stormy Daniels, Devinn Lane, Kaylani Lei, Shanna McCullough, Katie Morgan, Kim Chambers, Amber Rain, Casey Pink, Evan Stone, Randy Spears, Ron Jeremy, Kyle Stone, Mike Horner, Steve Hatcher, Trevor Zen, Scott Styles, Jim Enright and directed by Jonathan Morgan

2040

WARNING! THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW. There is no way I can talk about this movie without giving away some of the plot points.

I've had this one for a while and when I saw the length(167 minutes, and that's not counting the 2 bonus discs that I didn't rent), I put it aside. When I finally got around to watching it, I wished I had done so sooner, since it is one of the better plotted modern porn movies I have seen in a while. Of course some of the length of the movie is due to the sex scenes being too long, but when they start to bore me, well, that's when the FF button is handy.

2040 opens with a voice over telling how a bad disease has caused people to stop having sex with each other. People have turned to virtual sex, however there are still a few people making porn movies.

The movie starts with the son of Randy Spears (Randy Spears) being directed by the son of Barrett Blade (of course played by Barrett Blade),shooting a movie using a green screen with a futuristic looking camera. The female in the scene is Alexis Texas and she looked stoned and out of it. This reminded me of some of those Golden Age porn movies where sometimes you ran across an actress who was actually stoned and out of it. We find out that Alexis isn't a real person, she's a sexdroid, and just needs some time to warm up. Alexis did a pretty decent job of appearing to be non-human, although she did slip and blink her eyes a couple of times. I'm actually going to blame that on the director and/or editor since these slips could have been re-shot or edited better.


Alexis breaks down and there's a fairly humorous bit about getting the sex scene finished. Since a new female/humanoid will be needed in order to continue shooting, they call in Marcus London and his sex doll, Alektra Blue (photo above). Marcus London has made a sexdroid who is super life like, her body even reacts to stimuli. News of this new sex doll spreads to the competition: Real Dolls, which is run by Brad Armstrong. It seems Marcus used to work for Brad and Brad considers Marcus's new doll stolen work that belongs to Real Dolls. Brad calls in Kaylani Lei to take care of Marcus. To my surprise Kaylani Lei arrived in a real helicopter, that I assume was rented especially for the movie.

2040 shifts the focus back to Marcus' company, where we find they have also made a male sex doll (Eric Masterson) and Kirsten Price is putting the finishing touches on him (which of course leads to a sex scene). Kaylani arrives at the lab looking for Marcus. When she finds that he's not there she uses a shock weapon on Kirsten and then trashes the lab.

A Brief Interruption: I typed the above after watching the first part of 2040. Later, when watching the second part of 2040, a funny thing occurred, I found the second half to be a lot weaker that the first half. Is it because I lost the momentum of the movie by not watching it straight through or is the second half just not as good? Sorry for the interruption, now back to the plot.

2040 shifts back to Real Dolls as Jessica Drake shows Kaylani around. We learn that the company did a lot of work in making artificial limbs for the military and that this research helped them in making body parts used for sex more realistic. We also get told how much money Real Dolls is set to make if Marcus doesn't interfere. Somehow everyone gets "hot" touring the factory and this results in the next sex scene. I found this to be the first weak spot, since it seemed the sex scene had been forced into the plot. Next, we are taken directly back to the lab where Mikayla Mendez tests out some of the new creations at Real Dolls. I think this is the spot where I really starting losing interest and it could have been packing (no pun intended) these two sex scenes so close together.

Jessica goes to see Marcus and tries to talk him into making a deal with Brad, leading to yet another sex scene forced into the plot. When Jessica gets back to Real Dolls she has a talk with Mikayla about whether the Dolls have any consciousness, but Jessica explains that's the type of thing that got Marcus the boot to start with and the topic is best left alone. It seems that's the major conflict between the two - Marcus wants to make dolls that actually have human feelings and Brad wants to make a pure sex product.

Back to Marcus' lab and we find that he has upgraded Alektra and she is becoming more human. There's also a funny sequence here with Alektra teaching Kirsten how to dance. This is probably the best scene in part two of 2040.


Next we are taken to The 55th AEE Expo and this is probably the worst scene in 2040. It's poorly shot and the only reason for it to be in the movie is to enable an orgy scene. We do find out here that Alektra has feelings for Randy and vice versa, resulting in another sex scene. After Randy and Alectra's sex scene, he takes her to the beach, they find a dead crab and he teaches her about death. Randy and Alektra next attend a play and Alektra finds it so beautiful that she is moved to tears (well a tear). 2040 was starting to get really boring to me by this time.

Brad goes to see Marcus and after a struggle Marcus is shot. Brad now has possession of Alektra (sex scene follows). This is then followed by a lot of plot that I translate as: "let's wind this fucking (pun intended) movie up". I won't give the ending away, but will just say it includes a death, a rescue, and a happily ever after with Randy and Alektra walking down the beach. This ending reminded me of a saying we had as kids: "Gag me with a maggot".

I still think the first part of 2040 was above my expectations and that the second part had too many sex scenes that didn't flow with the movie and too many cliches in the plot. As you know I'm only interested in plots here at "XXX Marks The Plot", for a deeper look into 2040 I encourage you to check out Gore Gore Girl's review: CLICK HERE. I'm grading this one an A- for the first half and a C+ for the second half, which averages out to a B

2040 starring Marco Banderas, Alexis Texas, Alektra Blue, Jessica Drake, Tory Lane, Kaylani Lei, Rocco Reed, Kirsten Price, Janet Mason, Marcus London, Bill Bailey, TJ Cummings, Kayla Carrera, Mikayla Mendez, Jayden Jaymes, Mick Blue, Tommy Gunn, Randy Spears, Brad Armstrong, Eric Masterson and directed by Brad Armstrong