Genre: Vice
Stories about the appetites that undo us — addiction, temptation, and the slow pull of the things we can’t stop reaching for.
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Striptease (1996) — Review
Andrew Bergman comedy based on Carl Hiaasen Florida political satire. Demi Moore, Burt Reynolds. Marketing compromised the substantive material. 7/10. -
Lovelace (2013) — Review
Biographical drama about Linda Lovelace. Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard. Substantively fluffy treatment of complex source material. 6/10. -
Boogie Nights (1997) — Review
Paul Thomas Anderson's foundational ensemble masterpiece. Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds. San Fernando Valley adult industry. 10+/10. -
Pretty Woman (1990) — Review
Beautifully crafted, morally indefensible. Roberts and Gere at their peak, the original dark $3,000 script Disney bought to invert, and the documented real-world Pretty Woman myth. Reviewed at 7/10. -
The Babysitters (2007) — Review
Katherine Waterston's discovery performance, John Leguizamo as a slimeball, Cynthia Nixon as the wife who knew. Indie drama, not comedy. The Babysitters at 6.5/10. -
Angel (1984) and the Franchise — Review
Donna Wilkes, Rory Calhoun, Susan Tyrrell, and pre-gentrification Hollywood Boulevard. Exploitation cinema that survives in spite of itself. Angel (1984) at 5/10. -
Showgirls (1995) — Review
Paul Verhoeven's most reviled film is his most exposed — a Vegas satire 1995 critics mistook for the trash it was pretending to be. The reappraisal earned. -
Vice Squad (1982) – Review
Wings Hauser's Ramrod is one of genre cinema's genuinely frightening villains — casual, flat, and relentless across a single Hollywood night. Vice Squad earns its rating through its location, its villain, and Season Hubley's quietly intelligent performance. The cop is the weak link, but the rest holds. -
Hardcore (1979) – Review
George C. Scott delivers one of his most underrated performances in Paul Schrader's 1979 descent into the Los Angeles sex industry — a film that builds a devastating portrait of American Calvinist rigidity confronting a world it has no tools to navigate, then loses its nerve at the finish line. -
Vice Noir Movies – Where the City Eats Its Own
The darkest streets of American cinema — twenty films that descend into urban vice, neon-lit corruption, and moral rot with the unflinching eye of a crime reporter and the visual grammar of noir. These are the movies that looked at the city at its worst and didn't look away.