Because Everybody Else Has One

Small week, not a good week. This is probably the week to catch up on those great Awards season movies (and don't you dare miss the under-represented Inside Llewyn Davis and Saving Mr Banks) and leave the new releases for next week. First up, this week's Channel 24 review, which is basically a gender-flipped sub-American-Pie sex comedy.  What it's about Brandy Klark, a bookish school valedictorian decides that it wouldn't do to enter college as a virgin so she draws up a “to do list” of the various sexual acts she wants to experience during her summer vacation between the end of high school and the beginning of college. At the top of her list is having sex for the first time with a hunky but immensely stupid guitarist. What we thought In the middle of a cast filled with TV stalwarts, The To Do list features Modern Family's young Nolan Gould but those of us who are used to seeing him as an awkward teenager may be surprised to see just how young he is he...

Sex! Comedy! Drama! Hippy Priests! Polio! Ladies and gentlemen... The Sessions! That this story about a man completely immobilized by polio is uplifting without ever being mawkish is miracle enough, but that it's also one of the best and funniest sex comedies to come along in a long, long time must be too good to be true. Well, it isn't. The Sessions is a genuinely wonderful film filled with wit, warmth and three seriously terrific performances. John Hawkes stars as Mark O'Brien, the real life man on whose essay/ memoir the film is based, a 38 year old man who spends most of his days immobile in an iron lung after contracting polio at a young age. Despite being entirely dependent on assistants and living a clearly painful existence trapped in his own body, Mark becomes desperate to lose his virginity. After "striking out" with one of his pretty assistants, he decides to enlist the services of a sex surrogate, Cheryl Cohen-Green (Helen Hunt). Along the way, ...

Here we have two sex comedies that couldn't be less typical of this occasionally funny yet largely embarrassing sub-genre. Hope Springs came out a couple of weeks ago, but it makes sense to review it along with this week's Hysteria as a single piece. On with the show then... When one thinks of sex comedies, presumably the last place your mind would go would be to either a film about an (older) middle-aged couple trying to reintroduce some sparks into their marriage or a film about the invention of the vibrator in 19th century England. And yet, here we have two films that are keen to make their mark on a genre that is known for having its fair share of gratuitous nudity, highly sexualised profanity and typically young, attractive people doing all sorts of unspeakable things to one another, by not including any of the above. The former is Hope Springs , a low-key comedy drama that stars Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep as a middle aged couple who go, at her insiste...