Cortechba Overrated

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

kosmasp At least that's what Rosario Dawson thought this movie would be achieving. I have no idea, nor have I checked with any insider if situations have changed for women in the adult industry. But the movie is bold in tackling a subject like that and the actors (some of them well known, like James Woods) too.The leading actress who's more than mesmerizing in this one, seems to have gone out of the industry and if her twitter is correct, she wants to evolve to a filmmaker. It's a shame, because she has the charisma to be in front of the camera, but at least she'll still be in the art business and hopefully be able to continue to express herself.In this movie, which has nudity that is not meant to be getting anyone excited though, her character has to endure quite a couple of things. It's the industry, it's her personal life (family issues) and of course a maybe bad choice in secondary career besides the films she did.There are quite a few interesting ideas thrown around and a lot of nice but also horrible things that are happening. All that seem out of control of the person actually right in the middle of it ...

lastliberal I like James Woods, and I thought his performance in this film as a father with Parkinson's was outstanding. The lead, Juliette Marquis, is fairly new, and also did a great job. I was really touched watching her stop her life at times to care for her father, ass-wiping and all.Rosario Dawson made a couple of brief appearances talking about the porn life, and gave some brilliant comments.This is not really a "porn" movie, but a drama shot in documentary style showing the life of someone in the internet porn business. Even leaving has consequences as Michael Rapaport suspiciously shows up just as she was walking out; and he was not a happy man. I wonder who tipped him off? It was a good story and worth the time.

Aarkangel Refreshing for its full-on, unflinching exploration of issues around sexuality. Juliette Marquise is charismatic and well cast, as are most of the characters - the garage guy and the porn boss, for instance. James Woods' role is very exposed and difficult - he has to make himself ugly and without dignity - which he does in a brave way. The treatment of sex - given that it's a film about pornography - is admirably restrained and non-gratuitous. Ash has a very individual outlook not dissimilar from his cousin Sasha Baron Cohen - saying what people think but are afraid to say, asking the questions we want to ask but dare not.

Robert J. Maxwell After the success of the inexpensively made trade movie "Boogie Nights," one might expect a series of even cheaper and less skillful ripoffs. The usual trajectory for ripoffs would be more sex and less character.I suppose in some ways, we wouldn't have "This Girl's Life" if we hadn't had "Boogie Nights," but this film is actually pretty good. If the earlier film was mostly an ensemble effort, this one depends on Juliette Marquis. We see things almost exclusively from her point of view. She's a porn star with a heart of gold and some brains. It sounds like a cliché, but she pulls it off okay. She's not exactly beautiful but she is sexy and exotic and has a nasal voice that sometimes drops into the lower register.But Marquis gets surprisingly good support from such mainstream players as Rosario Dawson, and adequate support from Cheyenne Silver, a genuine star of sex films who has a fresh-faced attractiveness that suggests she grew up on a farm and fed on nothing but cream and ripe strawberries. Anyone who wants to see what she looks like all over can easily have his curiosity satisfied with a bit of effort.James Woods is super as Pops, Marquis' father who is stricken with Parksinson's disease. He's a courageous actor, wandering around in public with what seems to be an enormous head and a shrunken flabby body. The only investment of ego on display is his talent.If "Boogie Nights" showed us that the sex movie industry of the 1970s was like a family, "This Girl's Life" demonstrates that the family is not entirely functional these days. The head of the studio keeps carrying on paternally about how we are all one big -- incestuous -- family, but when he wants one of his girls to do something that she does not want to do, he prompts her to do a line of coke and shoves her roughly against a wall. Spare the rod and spoil the child, you know.The director has Marquis talk directly to the camera on several occasions, as if this were a reality TV show. She shows us how a microvideocamera works, a "spy camera" like that used in police and FBI stings. And there are times when scenes appear as if shot with one of those tiny cameras, all fuzzy and with horizontal lines. Not sure what the point of that was. And I'm not sure what happens to Pop either. His case seems to be hanging in the air at the end when, after a violent encounter with a man whose life Marquis has just professionally put an end to, she takes off with her naive young monogamous lover.I assume -- I HOPE -- that she finally got back to taking care of Pops, because his disorder is rather advanced and it would take him an hour to peel a banana.In any case, the very amateurishness of some of the performances contributes to the documentary feel of the film, but it's a documentary that is emotionally charged.A surprise, well worth watching.