ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

MBunge Have you ever been talking to someone and halfway through what you were saying, you forgot the point you were trying to make? That's what this movie is like. It starts out as the story of a socially dysfunctional young man turning to porn to try and find normalcy but then turns into an Afterschool Special on the evils of XXX entertainment.Paul (Michael DeGood) has a problem. He's so incapable of relating to women in any normal way that he substitutes porn and prostitutes for healthy romantic relationships. He has a massive collective of porn tapes he keeps in a locked cabinet, is a regular customer for a local call girl (Kelly Stone) and frequents strip clubs to such an extent that he's on a first name basis with every girl who works there. One day, while returning some XXX tapes to the video store, Paul complains to the clerk about the quality of the porn. The clerk tells him that if he doesn't like them, Paul should make his own. A light bulb practically goes off over Paul's head, and he decides to make his own amateur pornography. He hires his regular call girl and her friends, but Paul doesn't film himself having sex with them. He genuinely wants to be behind the camera and hires a pot head named Tom (George Hertzberg) to sexually perform with the whores while Paul tells them what to do, like a little girl playing with her Barbie and Ken dolls. Except these dolls are life-size and have working genitals.Making these videos consume Paul's time and energy and they're good enough, by porn standards, that he's able to catch the interest of Mr. Spano (Craig Wasson), the head of an actual porno movie company. Spano says he can make Paul a professional director of adult films, as long as Paul can bring him a new, fresh faced girl to be in those films.Now, up to this point in the movie, The Pornographer was kind of interesting. It's one of these painfully cheap films that get made in a couple of weeks and outside of Craig Wasson, none of the cast can really act. However, there's actually something to this story. It's about a guy trying to find where he fits in the world (which is not a double entendre because this story is about porn) and I wasn't sure where the film was going to go. Was it going to be provocative and have Paul find fulfillment in this denigrated subculture? Was it going to be moralistic and show Paul finding nothing but betrayal and cruelty in the world of adult videos? Was it going to go in a completely unexpected direction? I had no idea and somewhat mildly wanted to find out.But then everything established in the movie is abandoned without a backward glance. The story ceases to be about Paul and his search for contentment and instead becomes a litany of the clichéd evils of the adult industry. We see the aging porn star who's been hardened by her years in the business, the young porn star reduced to the gutter, the struggling young actress tempted by the money and emotionally manipulated into doing porn. There's even a scene where a character rattles off a bunch of anti-porn statistics. It ceases be about Paul and his inner conflict, which was the only noteworthy thing in this whole production. It's almost as though writer/director Doug Atchison wrote the first half of this script, stopped and forgot about it for a few years, then wrote the second half of the script without remembering or bothering to re-read the first half.There is some okay nudity and a few sex scenes in The Pornographer, but not nearly as much as you'd expect given the subject matter. The acting, as mentioned before, is almost uniformly poor and the dialog is undistinguished. The first half of the film does have a few scenes where Paul's emotional and sexual frustrations are explored with a nice touch, but then all that is discarded and there's nothing of interest that replaces it.You'd think a film called The Pornographer would make a big impression on you, either for good or ill. But this movie never amounts to anything of consequence, either positive or negative. Unless you're friends with one of the people who made this film, I can't think of a reason you should watch it.

ctroed Too many movies these days make a woman the central character and shows all their problems etc. But its time movies were made about men, and finally this film has and its quite observant. Women should recognise that most of the things they dont like about the way theyre portrayed and treated is all theyre doing. Men are blamed, treated like s*** and still expected to be there solely for the women....This film shows the impact of such a society on a normal, well educated guy. Michael DeGood did a great job. The ending was laughable, but the director has alot of talent and potential and with a little more money will surely show what he's capable of. Its rare that a movie on late on cable will grab your attention enough that you are suddenly in the thick of the story and wanting to actually watch the whole thing.

Kastore I first checked out "The Pornographer" because it starred my favorite B-movie actress, Monique Parent. First, I was surprised to see that Craig Wasson was also in it. Then, I was surprised to see that the acting all around was quite good. Finally, I was further surprised that this movie was actually very dark, serious, and thought-provoking, and wondered why it was I had never heard about it before.Michael DeGood is quite good as the socially weak, sniveling protagonist Paul whose characteristics as such help explain his terrible luck with women. Craig Wasson turns in his best performance in years as Spano, the suave, cold and calculating porn producer. Newcomer Katheryn Cain is extra sweet and innocent, I hopefully look forward to seeing her in more movies in the near future. And of course, Monique Parent is beautiful as always and terrific in her role as the temptress pornstar turned renegade producer. I like seeing Parent in film festival-type stuff, and I hope to see her in more movies like "The Pornographer" (she's actually done several such films, though only a few have been picked up for distribution).Most of the first act is devoted to analyis of the central character, as we see Paul trying to procur a date, failing everytime, and eventually asking out the hooker whom he regularly employs the services of. The sequence of him accidentally asking out a 15y/o girl is particularly gripping, as we are not sure if he realizes the girl's age, or actually has pedophilic tendencies (or, perhaps we are witnessing the unintended origins of such tendencies). Another scene that stands out for me is when he visits the private booth and talks via phone to the stripper behind the glass. I couldn't help but be reminded of the scene in "Taxi Driver" when Travis tries to get Betsy to go on another date with him, but similarly gets turned down.So Paul, feeling utterly hopeless and dull in life, tries his hand at the subject he is most familiar with: pornography. He turns out to be somewhat of a natural at it, and is immediately taken under the wing of Spano (Wasson), who offers to give Paul the opportunity to make some 'real' videos (i.e. - with actors, not hookers). If, however, Paul can find a 'pure girl'. A chance accident leads Paul to meet such a girl - Kate (Cain). But Paul fails at getting close to her, of course, and instead of meeting Spano's challenge, Paul opts for the quicker, easier route of making lesser quality videos for Charise (Parent). However, she soon turns out to be simply using Paul for her own personal gain, and so he finds himself back to Spano and his challenge to Paul. Ultimately, we come to the best scene of the movie - Paul's on-camera seduction of Kate. This scene is done with such intensity and a sinister sense of innocence being lost that you can't help but hope Paul turns his life around to develop his relationship with Kate rather than ruthlessly use her as his ticket to success.With just this one film, writer/director Doug Atchison has proven himself more talented than so many other independent directors who are mass-worshiped after only doing one picture. His strength is definitely in his writing, as he presents us with a fully-dimensional main character that we simultaneously feel pity for and disgust towards. I believe Atchison does justice to portraying today's porn industry in all its cold reality, where people are exploited and in turn exploit others, and those who can't handle it (i.e. - the heroin-addicted fallen starlet) are literally left on the curb. Also, for a movie about pornography, there is little nudity - a sign of a skilled filmmaker. Atchison was probably hindered by a limited budget in showing off very much directing-wise here. However, the almost Cassavetes-like documentary style works for this particular movie. He shows shades of influence from Scorsese as well.The only major flaw I had with this movie was the somewhat slapstick ending, although it still serves to transmit the message of individuals getting forced into a dead-end situation - in this case, the porn industry. The final shot is truly haunting though, and quickly makes you overlook the slightly contrived ending. Besides, I can name over a dozen other great and heralded independent films with utterly ridiculous attempts at a brilliant and all-satisfying finale. "The Pornographer" is just about as good as they come, and I hope to see more projects by Atchison in the future. 9/10.

fahqueue The Pornographer is a pleasantly surprising movie. Contrary to its name, it is not a pornographic film, nor even a chincy hard R. Rather it is an insightful movie about a man who toys with the idea of making adult films.This movie helps communicate more about the too little (seriously) explored male experience, just like Swingers did. Consequently, I disagree with some of the other posters' evaluations of the main character's lack of social ability.With regards to sexually attracting women, young males often experience forms of frustration, humiliation, and insatiable, unfilled longing--unbeknownst and probably incomprehensible to most women who grew up with the privilege of being able to attract decent, fairly attractive members of the opposite sex with comparatively little effort and (little more than passive) risk of rejection. I know that the indignation and sense of injustice that I felt over how unbalanced the distribution of sexual power is scarred me for life. I am certain that it has had a significant (though publicly unacknowledged) negative effect on most men's psyches, even if the men were unable to identify it or verbalize it.If you think that the main character is socially inadept, then you have missed an important part of the movie's context. The protagonist, Paul Ryan, is a typical twentysomething who lacks Don Juan's confidence and charm, an MBA, MD, Harvard Law degree, or high paying computer science job. Most young males have difficulty sexually attracting decent women with regularity. The protagonists' experiences at asking women out for a date were very ordinary and sadly all too commonplace.If he truly lacked social skills he would have had difficulty fitting in at a high-powered law firm and his character would not have seemed as endearing to us. He did not seem to have difficulty talking to women; he just did not have the desire to expend large amounts of effort attracting them.In the film he explained that he was satisfied with prostitutes, but as his character develops he comes to realize that he desires an actual romantic relationship and not just sex. The real tragedy of this movie is that his past experiences and propensities kept him from seeing the forest for the trees. He could have had a real relationship with Kate, and I think he wanted to, but he was so fixated with breaking into the world of pornographic film that he turned her into a business opportunity. I get the feeling that, as a result of his previous frustrations, he was almost unable to conceive of the possibility of his having a relationship with her, which is real sad.The film raises an interesting question. Why didn't he enter into a romantic relationship with Kate instead of trying to push her into the world of pornographic film? Had he completely given up on women? Was he just determined to succeed as a pornographic filmmaker at any cost-even the heavy cost of foregoing a real relationship? Or was he unable to conceive of it?The movie raises another interesting question that the filmmaker may not have intended to raise. Do men perceive a significant difference between (1) paying women for sex, which seems like a straightforward and honest undertaking and (2) asking, begging, bending over backwards to please women in the hopes that they will one day agree to go to bed with them, risking rejection and spending the same money (while investing much more time) wining and dining them? Is it possible that, for some frustrated men like the protagonist, he may have found more satisfaction and less degradation with prostitution?This movie was good for the aforementioned reasons. However, in light of these questions, I wonder what the movie would have been like with a talented, serious scriptwriter who could further explore and develop those issues while maintaining the film's same overall tone and feel. It really does show just how far a good idea and content can take a film-the director produced a much better film than most of the big budget junk.The Pornographer and Swingers are the only two movies I know of that seriously explore the male experience from a point of view that is at least peripherally sympathetic to males.