Cotton Mary (1999)

Boarding School, aka Leidenschaftliche Blümchen, aka Passion Flower Hotel, aka Preppy School Girls, aka Virgin Campus, features Nasty Kinski in a German sex comedy. She plays the new student at a Swiss girls' boarding school with one very fortunate asset -- a boys' school only a short walk over a bridge. Since she has an excellent record, she is placed in a dorm room with the wildest students in the school in the hope that she will be a good influence in them.

Not even close.

On the train ride to the school, Natassja meets a young man from the boys' school. She concocts a plan for the girls to form a prostitution company so they can lose their virginity. The boys immediately form their own group of "customers." The truth is that none of the young people have any experience, and going from motive and opportunity to actually committing the crime proves to be more difficult than they imagined.

This is the second time I have run across this film. The first was very early in my imaging career. The transfer then was terrible. This time, it is only slightly better, with the video being badly over-saturated and mushy.  Some may get a few chuckles out of the lengths these kids go to to try and get laid, but the film is mostly noteworthy as a chance to see a very young Natassja with her clothes off, however briefly. (There is actually not much nudity in this film, especially given that there are two shower scenes, and a strip tease show put on by the girls, but then the cast members were actually school girl age.)

 This is a low C-.

IMDb readers say 3.9.

We have breasts from Natassja Kinski...

... and Veronique Delbourg.

Norma Jean and Marilyn (1996)

This is a HBO biopic of Marilyn Monroe. I've had this bare-bines DVD a long time, but Scoop's review so thoroughly trashed it that I completely passed until now. To summarize his complaints, he felt the film attempted to long a period in a life with too large a scope. He also felt that the film failed to show the amazing charisma of Marilyn, or offer any insights into why she was the way she was. I don't disagree with his conclusion at all, this was a 139 minute waste of my time. I suppose the fact that they misspelled her real name should have been a clue.

I am not sure the problem was the scope, and I can hardly blame the film makers for their inability to cast someone who could demonstrate Marilyn's incredible screen presence. In viewing all of her films in the boxed sets, I couldn't help but notice that if Marilyn was on screen, she is the one who got your attention, even when playing a bit part with no lines. Sophie Marceau, in her prime, had a great deal of appeal, but even she would have been upstaged by Marilyn's mere presence. I am also not sure the film didn't have a point of view. They cast Ashley Judd as Norma Jeane Dougherty, and Mira Sorvino as Marilyn, and in the second half of the film, show them almost as a split personality, with the Norma Jeane personality having infinite drive, and the Marilyn portion being essentially a love- and attention- starved woman who was done in by drugs. At least, it would be possible to make a strong case for that view.

For me, the problem was different. A collage is a valid graphic art form, and can be used very effectively, for instance, to show interconnections among elements of the image, or to present overall images with layer after layer of deeper meanings contained within. While you can usually say that the finished product does or doesn't appeal to you, you must study it at length to completely understand it. Further, viewing art is subjective, so different people will walk away from it having seen different things. This film was a collage of Norma Jean/Marilyn's life, assembled hodgepodge from the elements of her life all of us already knew. The problem with this concept is that it plays out in linear time, not allowing us to study the elements, the way they were arranged, or how one influences another. I suppose one could watch it over and over, and see if there is a successful collage here, with insight to be eventually gained, but I will leave that to someone who was not bored to distraction by this completely uninspiring film.

Scoopy wavered between C- for film nudity fans, and D for the rest. Although clips of the nudity would be a worthwhile project for some volunteer, I have no such scoring dilemma. To me, this is a clear D.

IMDb readers are more charitable (6.1)

Ashley Judd does full frontal and rear nudity starting before the opening credits.

Mira Sorvino shows breasts, partial buns, and maybe a hint of bush.