Film Review: The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)

Though his work in the '90s was not as consistently great as in the '70s and '80s, it was one of the most interesting periods of Woody Allen's career. Whether as a reaction to the tabloid furore that followed his very public and acrimonious split from Mia Farrow or as a natural extension of his evolution as an artist, a harsh darkness began to creep into his films. This reached its peak with his last three films of the decade, which ran the gamut from bittersweet (Sweet and Lowdown) to just plain bitter (Celebrity and Deconstructing Harry). It was a triptych which contains some of his most bracing and uncompromising work, for better or worse, but marked him as someone who still has a lot to say.

Film Review: The Sessions (2012)

Based on the real-life story of Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes), a poet and journalist who spent most of his life in an iron lung after contracting polio as a child, Ben Lewin's The Sessions focuses on the period of O'Brien's life where, at the age of 38, he decided to seek the help of Cheryl Cohen Greene (Helen Hunt), a professional sex surrogate, in order to lose his virginity. In the process, O'Brien develops a friendship with Greene that is all too easily blurred by their professional involvement, and is forced to confront his own attitudes towards sex, and how they were in turn shaped by his past, his parents, his Catholic faith, and the accompanying guilt arising from all of the above.