Sex in the Cinema

Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling (aka Harry Potter’s Dudley Dursley) put the pedal to the metal in 2025’s outstanding dark comedy drama/Rom-Dom, PILLION. Torie and returning special guest Xaria Coleman discuss this brutal, hilarious, unapologetically graphic, and poignantly tender high-speed ride into the world of the leather daddy BDSM biker subculture. Featuring phenomenal performances from Alexander Skarsgård (at his ice-cold, enigmatic best) and Harry Melling (arguably the finest young actor to emerge from the Harry Potter franchise), PILLION pulls no punches. This brilliantly astute exploration of attachment, intimacy, and avoidance pushes your boundaries as the viewer.  

Hindsight 20/20 dominates this episode covering Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 critical darling (and resident gay opus of the millennial generation), CALL ME BY YOUR NAME.  Torie and returning special guest Xaria Coleman break down this lush, sensual, and deeply tactile portrait of first love starring two of Hollywood’s most notable poster boys for toxic masculinity, Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer. Ah, how the mighty have fallen.  As critical thinkers, it’s our job to try and separate the art from the artist. But what about the actor from the art? Welp, when it comes to watching Chalamet and Hammer in the year of our Lord 2026, it turns out the struggle is very, very real.

Austin comedian and rising star, Xaria Coleman, joins Torie for the first of a three part series showcasing the some of the greatest gay love stories to hit the silver screen. To kick off this steamy triad, Torie and Xaria discuss Ang Lee’s sweeping epic romance, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005). Starring the late Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway, this devastating portrait of clandestine love between two cowboys was a cultural juggernaut that early aughts audiences never saw coming. Released during the lingering homophobia of the post-Y2K era, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN was arguably the first guy-on-guy romance featuring explicit sex to hit mainstream media. Both groundbreaking and back-breakingly heartbreaking, Ennis and Jack walked so the other boys could run.   ---- Xaria Coleman is a comedian from Austin Texas with 14 years of improv and sketch comedy experience. You can see her on Austin PBS summer 2027. Follow @xariadoesit on Instagram and TikTok

Torie is joined by returning special guest Billy Weston for an epic double feature discussion of Christopher Nolan’s blockbusting THE ODYSSEY (2026) and Wolfgang Peterson’s hornier, hammier, early aughts adaptation of The Iliad, TROY (2004). Billy and Torie discuss their adventure seeing THE ODYSSEY in 4Dx, Brad Pitt’s hair, the perks of being a tent bunny, mothers who have unresolved anger towards their sons, Orlando Bloom’s acting chops, and more. Torie spins a considerable yarn recounting her days as a 15-year-old burgeoning horndog sneaking into R-rated movies. Torie and Billy also discuss how the Swords & Sandals genre is plagued by bisexual erasure, and if the time is ripe for Swords & Sandals to strut in for a sexy comeback.

In this next installment of our Euphoria graduates series, we turn to Barbie Ferreira, who played the fan-favorite Kat Hernandez in seasons 1 and 2 (aka the good seasons) of Sam Levinson’s HBO series. While her former classmates, Nate and Cassie, have moved on to big-budget flicks (some of them blunders), Barbie as claimed a throne for herself as the Indie Queen reigning over the festival circuit.  Set in 2011, MILE END KICKS (2025) is a full-throttle journey back to the Millennial golden age - when Indie Sleaze ruled the clothing racks, startphones were a coveted luxury, cute guys wore skinny jeans, and Indie Rock topped the charts.  Barbie Ferreira stars as Grace, a struggling music critic in her early 20s who travels to Montreal for the summer to write her book about Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill. There she meets aspiring Indie rockers, Bone Patrol, and gets romantically involved with two of the band members. Hijinks and horrible decisions ensue culminating in the stark truth that just because these indie boys may convey depth, they can be no less stupid than their jock counterparts.  SITC all-star guest star Cecilia Conti joins Torie for this nostalgic trip back in time that’s so on-the-nose it’s uncanny, especially for Torie who recalls her days as an American Apparel-wearing hipster in the Chicago garage rock scene, her time singing in a band, the plethora of guitar-wielding indie boys she dated, and all the pitfalls of being a girl in your early 20s in the 2010s.  

This is a landmark episode. Best friend of the pod and long-awaited guest John Garcia joins Torie to unpack one of the most reviled installments of the 90s erotic thriller canon, BODY OF EVIDENCE (1993). It just might be the best bad movie you’ve ever seen.   Starring the one, the only, the icon - Madonna - as a femme fatale firing on all cylinders, and Torie’s boyfriend, Willem Dafoe, as her moronic lawyer, BODY OF EVIDENCE checks every single box of erotic thriller cliches and then some.  Suspected murderess Rebecca Carlson (whose alleged weapons of choice are cocaine and f**king old men to death) enlists private defense attorney Frank to prove her innocence. Like a succubus on a bender, Rebecca lures Frank away from his marriage to Julianne Moore by introducing him to the pleasures of S&M, hot candle wax, and more.  However, this film is a body of evidence in itself. Intentional or not, this opus of mediocrity exposed one of most storied and gatekept parts of male anatomy in all of Hollywood, Willem Dafoe’s d**k. That in itself grants BODY OF EVIDENCE a place in the annals of film history. Get ready to go whale watching, because Willem’s megalithic Dashow does not disappoint! — Make sure you tune into John's own movie podcast, Afterthoughts, at theafterpod.transistor.fm or anywhere you get your podcasts!

Returning guests Cecilia Conti and Josh Reinhold join Torie to eviscerate the cultural climate’s pathetic answer to a feminist take on an erotic thriller, THE HOUSEMAID (2025). Starring everyone's favorite MAGA-loving bimbo, Sydney Sweeney, the phenomenally talented Amanda Seyfried, and a lesser-Hemsworth-coded hunk named Brendan Sklenar (who Josh looooves), this film undoubtedly caters to the true crime-obsessed, Colleen Hoover-reading, Lifetime™-loving audience. Featuring disappointingly little sex, atrocious clothing, unnecessarily gratuitous violence, and awful one-liners, this "for women, by women" film fails to meet its intended goal of feminist rhetoric. Despite a truly bang-up performance from Amanda Seyfried, it barely even meets the criteria for a solid hate-watch.  Amid the discourse, Torie struggles not to sound like a misogynist discussing Sydney Sweeney's most famous attributes, and everyone fails (again and again) to correctly pronounce Seyfried.  

If there’s one film that set tongues (literally) wagging this year, it’s the latest adaptation of Emily Brontë’s masterpiece of gothic fiction, WUTHERING HEIGHTS.  Directed by one of cinema’s most de rigueur darlings, Emerald Fennell, WUTHERING HEIGHTS showcases Fennell’s trademark maximalism, bold subversiveness, and canny eye for visual magic tricks. The formula should have been a perfect match of fiction and filmmaker. So why did it leave us feeling kind of… meh?  SITC all-star guest star Cecilia Conti and special guest Josh Reinhold join Torie to hash out their feelings about Fennell's new take on Brontë’s classic. And honestly, the film reads more like a smut fanfiction or two-hour music video than a true-to-text take on a venerable and deeply complex work of literature.  Starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as doomed lovers Cathy and Heathcliff, Fennell’s sex-ed up rendition is more style than substance. All the same, the candy-coated visuals are glorious, the metaphors are ripe, and the acting ain’t half bad. The sex itself is decidedly PG-13, but it was enough to confirm that Jacob Elordi is very much most likely a damn good kisser.

This is the final boarding call! The SITC submarine is departing port for one more journey 20,000 leagues under the sea. This time, the tentacular, mighty Poseidon of masculinity, King Triton, wields his whale dick, effectively blasting us with oozing gallons of salty sea.  Creator of the Hyperreal Film Journal and critic, Ziah Grace, joins Torie below deck to dissect Robert Eggers’s ferociously homoerotic, abrasively bleak masterpiece of cinematography, THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019).  Starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattisson as one of the greatest “odd couples” to ever grace 35 mm, this claustrophobic meditation on Sartre’s existential idiom “hell is other people,” is packed with alpha/beta power dynamics, a yonic/phallic(!!) lighthouse, perverted seagulls, and enough masturbation to generate a Sperm Whale’s worth of ejaculate. These gents have No Exit, and, for one hour and 50 minutes, neither do you.  Get ready for an onslaught of girthy tentacles, depressing orgasms, alcoholism, gaslighting galore, and man-on-mermaid action (alongside a very large, anatomically explicit mergina). Other highlights include Torie’s Willem DaFetish and an inevitable discussion of the most fiercely gatekept piece of male anatomy ever to circulate the Hollywood rumor mill. 

Come back aboard the SITC submarine for the next descent into the trenches of taboo, where sexy sea creatures seamlessly seduce bone-headed humans. Captain Torie is joined again by film critic and First Mate, Ziah Grace, for a delightful submersion into one of the best, boldest, and most ingenious takes on The Little Mermaid to ever grace the silver screen: the Polish, punk-rock, Eastern Bloc fever dream, THE LURE (2015).  This is a tale of two sisters: Silver (light) and Golden (dark). After spotting a found family-assembled rock band playing on the shore, these nubile young mermaids each hatch a pair of legs and migrate to the metro-capitalist world of their bipedal contemporaries. But horny humans beware, pretty mermaids are not mere trifles. Like mankind, they contain multitudes of facets: monster, maiden, lover, killer, seductress, sister… the list goes on. Highlights include kaleidoscopic musical numbers, creature feature-worthy and subversively girthy tails, accurately fishy vaginas, the intersection of female body politics and misogyny, the infatuated euphoria of first love, the tragedy of self-sacrifice, and the sacred bond of sisterhood. Torie also reveals some meta-contextual backstory regarding her musician ex-boyfriends, who bear a striking resemblance to the floppy-haired bass-playing “Prince.”