Sex in the Cinema

FUN WITH FISH: The Shape of Water w/ Ziah Grace

Hop on the SITC Submarine because we’re plummeting into the watery, murky depths of interspecies sex. This deep blue beyond is where fish and fowl Neptune and chill.
For this first journey beneath the waves, Torie is joined by Ziah Grace, Austin Chronicle “Best of Austin”  2025 nominee for Best Film Critic and misanthropic beach boy, to soak in Guillermo del Toro’s 2018 Best Picture Oscar winner, THE SHAPE OF WATER.
Prepare yourself for an hour of Siskel and Ebert-coded bickering over a mediocre movie. Highlights include Torie’s monster fetish, Ziah’s impassioned response to an unjust cat murder, a profusion of eggs and egg timers, Torie’s abhorrence for men with long hair, squirting geysers, and Ziah’s supreme vexation over the creature’s phallic AF genitals (the fish dick). 
Despite some differences in opinions, both parties agree that Sally Hawkins’s performance was one of Cinema’s all-time best and that Guillermo del Toro robbed his audiences by refusing to give us explicit (yet romantic) fish f**king.

50 SHADES OF GARBAGE: Freed Garbage w/ Chelsey Morin & Thien-Y Hoang

We’ve arrived at the bitter end. Torie and returning special guests Chelsey Morin and Thien-Y Hoang make their final trip to the 50 shades of garbage dump searching for anything of substance in the final installment of this trash film trilogy. Alas, 50 SHADES FREED proves the third time is not the charm. 
 
Sulky sub Anastasia Steele and Dom daddy Christian Grey tie the knot (figuratively, not literally, this time). Their marital bliss is soon interrupted by Ana’s former misogynist boss, Jack, and his desire for vengeance against Christian, which still doesn't make sense, as well as a certain unplanned you-know-what that drives a wedge between Ana and Christian, who proves, even after three insufferable movies, that he remains an unhinged, narcissistic a**hole.    
 
What ensues is two hours of blatant misogyny, buttplug pleasures, adventures on the Aspen club scene, painfully asinine car chases, a kidnapping of Rita Ora, a profoundly obnoxious performance of ”Maybe I’m Amazed,” and the confounding absence of a prenup. And through it all, like some absurd monument to early 00s mallboi masculinity, are Christian’s cherished pair of Hollister Men’s jeans.
 

SITC Late Night FM: Heated Rivalry! Part Deux w/Billy Weston

SPOILER WARNING: This episode contains spoilers through the season finale of Heated Rivalry.
With the conclusion of Season 1, all us HR fans are sitting and processing our thoughts and feelings about the sleekly operatic, often playful, heart-throbbing, and ingeniously sincere story we just witnessed. Think pieces are bounteous across the editorial planes and the feelings are REAL. Torie and Billy discuss what Heated Rivalry means to each of them, and the deeper societal meaning around the whirlwind impact of this miraculous show.

BOOB TUBE DETOUR: Lifetime™’s A Carpenter Christmas Romance w/ Cecilia Conti

*Note to the listeners*- For the most pleasurable listening experience, lube up with our January 2024 episode covering Sarah Drew’s A Cowboy Christmas Romance before you tune in.
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We’re returning to the 50 Shades of garbage dump soon, but in light of this festive season, SITC all-star guest star, Cecilia Conti, joins Torie to incinerate the most recent(ish) installment of sugar & spice from Limetime™’s own formula-disrupting vixen, Sarah Drew. 
Her Cowboy-themed roll in the hay, A Cowboy Christmas Romance, made history as the first Lifetime™ holiday film to feature a “sex scene.” Sarah Drew is back with her sophomore feature that puts the WOOD in woodworking: A CARPENTER CHRISTMAS ROMANCE (2024).  
This explicitly My So Called Life-coded narrative follows nerdy(ish) romantasy writer Andrea back to her sort-of hometown, Wildwood, for an unplugged Christmas stay due to a scandalous leak of the final book in her stupid series. To her surprise, she reconnects with Seth, her old, Jordan Catelano-esque but née jock crush, Seth. Complications arise with the presence of Seth’s tenant, Aiko, and her cloying children. Is Seth still a f**kboi or is he a nice guy now? 
 

SITC Late Night FM: Heated Rivalry! w/Billy Weston

SPOILER WARNING: This episode contains spoilers through episode 4 of HEATED RIVALRY
 
Reference Links:
The Rite of Spring: Joffrey Ballet 1987 Rite of Spring (1 of 3)
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun: L'Apres-midi d'un Faune Ballet performed by the Joffrey Ballet

50 SHADES OF GARBAGE: Darker Garbage w/ Chelsey Morin & Thien-Y Hoang

Torie and special guests Chelsey Morin and Thien-Y Hoang return to the 50 Shades of Grey garbage dump for the second installment in this stinking landfill of a film franchise, 50 SHADES DARKER. Don't bother to bring a shovel.
After being broken up for 2.5 seconds, newly deflowered Anastasia Steele and hunky millionaire Dom Christian Grey rekindle their love and get into a full-on relationship. As their "intimacy" grows, Anastasia learns more about Christian's dark past and meets some of the (many) skeletons in his closet.
What ensues is two hours of even more sociopathic behavior, somewhat less sexy "S&M" sex scenes, a dash of gun violence, a lavish masked ball fundraiser, a pair of Ben Wa balls, even more Hollister men's jeans, poor restaurant etiquette, workplace sexual harassment, and more. We also meet a less-than-colorful cast of new characters, including Christian's former Mommy Dom "Mrs. Robinson," played by Kim Basinger, Anna's misogynistic new boss, Jack Hyde, and one of Christian's former pets/hostages, Leila.
 

50 SHADES OF GARBAGE: Grey Garbage w/ Chelsey Morin & Thien-Y Hoang

Welcome back, cinephiles and perverts, and welcome to Season Two of Sex in the Cinema!!!
To kick off Season Two, Torie is joined by Angelenos and expert hate-watchers Chelsey Morin and Thien-Y Hoang to demolish the cultural phenomenon that was the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy. From its humble beginnings in a Twilight fanfiction forum, to the published printed page, all the way to the silver screen, this gross disservice to the kink community turned on the world.
For SITC’s Season Two Premiere, we’re tackling the first installment of the trilogy, 50 SHADES OF GREY. Released in 2015 and directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson (wife of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, mind you), this film launched the careers of usually good actors Dakota Johnson and Jaimie Dornan.  
Mousy brunette super-virgin Anastasia Steele’s simple life turns upside down when she meets sexy billionaire (and apparent Never Nude), Christian Grey. Anastasia soon finds out Christian doesn’t do relationships, but he does enjoy “various physical pursuits.” Namely, kidnapping women and coercing them into dom/sub relationships of very questionable ethics.  
What ensues is two hours of sociopathic behavior, painful lack of chemistry, horrifically awful dialogue, NDAs and contracts, too many needle drops, countless glasses of unconsumed white wine, mostly vanilla sex, an apparent proclivity for Hollister men’s jeans, a dusting of taboo slap & tickle, one impressive den of iniquity set, and wayyyyyy too many red flags.   
So bust out those handcuffs and settle in for the long haul because, in the words of Christian Grey, there’s “no escaping now…”

AMOROUS ANIMATION: Fritz the Cat, Once Upon a Girl, Belladonna of Sadness

Fasten your seatbelts, cinephiles, because it’s SITC’s Season 1 Finale!
Thanks to a few renegade, paintbrush-wielding perverts from New Hollywood’s anarchic yesteryear, you’re in for a full 411 on some of the most disturbing, disruptive, and innovative works of sketch-to-celluloid since Mickey Mouse first wet his wittle whistle in Steamboat Willie. As of this episode, your childhood nostalgia for Saturday morning cartoons is OVER. 
Bored with the pretentious loftiness of his collegiate education, a privileged cat named Fritz acts like an ignorant a**hole who thinks he’s an anarchist in one of the most enduring masterworks of guerrilla satire, FRITZ THE CAT (1972). Don Jurwich, legendary heavyweight at Hanna-Barbera and Marvel Productions (this is not a joke), subverts your favorite fairy tales into gonzo softcore parables that will haunt you for the rest of your life (also not a joke) in the bombastic, cheeky ONCE UPON A GIRL (1976). A peasant woman’s quest for social and sexual freedom is manifested through tragedy, rupture, and rebirth in Eiichi Yamamoto’s kaleidoscopic, transcendent epic, BELLADONNA OF SADNESS (1973).
 

TITILLATING TRASH: Showgirls, Wild Things, Jade w/ Billy Weston

Friend of the pod and glamor-trash gay man-about-town Billy Weston joins Torie and Maggie to unpack three of the sexiest, messiest, and most titillatingly trashy erotic thrillers of the 1990s.

Jessie Spano trades textbooks for stripper poles to dance her way through a 24/7, nipple tweaking tantrum in Paul Verhoeven's infamous, eternally iconic TRASHterpiece, SHOWGIRLS (1995). Neve Campbell and Denise Richards, whose aquatic escapades inaugurated a million Millennial boners, continue to masterfully mindf**k us in WILD THINGS (1998). Sick of bad sex and surmised of murder, smoky siren Linda Fiorentino is suspected by CSI's OG sunglasses guy, David Caruso, in William Friedkin's convoluted, surprisingly sterile flop, JADE (1995).

RE-RELEASE - FULL FRONTAL FAVORITES PART 1: The Brown Bunny, The Dreamers, Boogie Nights

UPDATE, MAY 2025: This is a re-release of our premiere episode originally published on 8/9/23. As of May 2025, actor Michael Pitt was indicted for horrific sexual and physical abuse suffered by one or more partners. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233.  
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Torie and Maggie dive into cinematic rarity of films bold enough to tackle the taboo of full frontal male nudity. Torie has difficulty separating the art from the artist with Vincent Gallo's THE BROWN BUNNY (2003) whereas Maggie mines empathy for toxic masculinity. We celebrate the wonder of prosthetics in Paul Thomas Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997), talk twincest (and the double D showcase) in Bernardo Bertolucci's THE DREAMERS (2003), and tackle the ever-burning question - does size really matter?
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UPDATE, MAY 2025: This episode features some panty creaming for actor Michael Pitt, who as of May 2025, was indicted for horrific sexual and physical abuse suffered by one or more partners. At the time of this episode's publication in August 2023, Michael Pitt had history of bizarre explosive behavior spurts like many talented actors ("perhaps the sexy sad boy has untreated mental illness! or addiction! hopefully he figures it out!") but in light of these allegations, his SITC Hall Pass is now officially revoked. We will continue to do our best to separate the art from the artist but unconscionable acts should not be disregarded. We stand with the victims. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233.