I don’t have many occasions to review films (other then straight ahead porn movies) for THE SEX FILES. I like to take full advantage when I catch something provocative, sexy and downright weird from the mainstream world, as I was supposed to do yesterday at the NYC FILM FESTIVAL showing of Maps to the Stars.

I’ve been honored to attend the festival for us now three years running and there is lots presented, press and paying audience alike. If you get a chance check-out the Festival’s website here and get over to see some truly neato ‘Main Slate’ premiers, documentaries and revivals, as sparkling cool this year as any other.

Well, now I am convinced more than ever before that David Cronenberg, director of this little opus called Maps to the Stars might just be a nihilist. His films before have hinted at society gone wacky and the man does love his violence, but here, well…

Not that John Cusack, the stunning Julianne Moore (stunning in looks as well as acting) Mia Wasikowska   don’t give stand-out performances…they do. It’s just that this “black satire” as it is being touted, screams from its every celluloid pore “Why the hell was I made?” I include a review of this movie here for my week’s naughty tidbits column because the story (penned by Bruce Wagner) is centered around a couple of acts of taboo sex that lead to a nightmare chain reaction coming to the fore as the center of this yarn’s action. The implication is interesting to say the least, and I’m not sure I have ever actually seen a movie that expounds on the ramification of what might happen down the line when something like this naughty and an untoward event occurs, so for that I give David Cronenberg and Bruce Wagner  props, but the execution simply is off.

I can’t say the audience around me wasn’t laughing at broadside Hollywood commentary, and it’s not that the violence didn’t jolt you out of your chair, but in the end I found myself asking…who cares? I just hate a movie that wastes my time (not that my time is so very valuable). I don’t mind walking out after seeing a film and hating it (though I’d rather love it) at least that means what I just saw had enough of an effect to have some effect on me. But sitting in a movie and walking out after feeling that flaccid penis brain reaction is the worst. With Maps to the Stars I felt very much as I did leaving Lars Von Triers’ Nymphomaniac movies (see here for that review) supposedly so sexy and controversial, but in the end neither! I know sexy and satire are in the eye of the beholder, but Maps to the Stars had nothing much to hold me with.