TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

hall895 Director Steven Soderbergh calls The Girlfriend Experience an experimental film. Which is a convenient way of providing yourself an excuse when you end up making a terrible film. And make no mistake, this is a terrible film. Give Soderbergh no credit for his "experiment", for trying something different. The truth is he made a boring, monotonous, quite wretched film.Adult film actress Sasha Grey stars as a high-class escort. It doesn't take long to see that Grey should have stuck to that other type of film. She's no actress. Her performance is so lifeless that it sucks all the energy out of the film. Not that there was ever really going to be any energy to begin with. The story is not compelling at all and unfolds in non-linear fashion with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. The movie jumps all over the place, back and forth in time, and does so to no good effect. The way the story is told just makes a muddled mess of things. But even had it been told in a more straightforward fashion the story was never going to work. There just isn't enough story at all. Clocking in at a brief 77 minutes there's not enough story to even stretch this thing out to proper feature length. And even at 77 minutes the film seems interminable. It all leads up to a damp squib of an ending which is really no ending at all. There's no resolution. Not that there's much to resolve. An escort has some relationship issues with her boyfriend. And...that's about it. And there's not even very much to that storyline. And everything else is a complete waste of time. This is a very amateurish effort from everyone involved. The script is terrible. The cinematography is terrible. The acting is terrible, with Grey getting no help whatsoever from anybody else in the cast. The director really should be ashamed. As experiments go this is a total failure. As films go this is among the worst you'll ever see.

Cyniphile New York City glamour, extremely real acting and scenarios followed by CNN circa 2008 mumbo-jumbo, annoyingly flashy cinematography, and wanna-be American Psycho depravity-in-materialism preaching. Rarely do it want to shut off a movie every five minutes, and if so, even more rarely do I find something to respect in the next five. As to Sasha Grey and her acting abilities, I think she's OK at it. Many reviews scathe her for "deadpan", but I think that's what high-class dumb sluts actually are probably like. Pretty much empty. Making the most of what god gave them in a depraved way. To me it seems real. The "hooker's boyfriend" character was great, which is hard to pull off in my mind. I really empathized with this guy in a weird situation.What's not real are the characters of many, though not all, of the "rich assholes". That's about as eloquent as Soderberg is with these characters, "They're just rich assholes" when "the rest of us are hurting" as we are reminded again, and again, and again. The script and plot line isn't great, often forced by some contrived circumstance, and really goes nowhere in the end. Maybe 5 is too generous. I guess I was intrigued.

Lloyd Bayer When Steven Soderbergh is not too busy directing George Clooney or a frat pack led by George Clooney, he must be in the middle of an intricate work of art. So much so, this is art on the other side of the spectrum, a realm too rare to be noticed by fans of the flamboyant Ocean's trilogy.Set during the start of the current and very real financial crisis, the plot for the most part revolves round the true nature of the crisis and its effects on upper working-class people. Book marking the film in time and space, Soderbergh even boldly debates the outcome of a 700 billion stimulus plan as strategized by Barak Obama. But as financial stress continues to take its toll before the stimulus nurtures any recovery, the needs of sexually active men can never be stifled. This is where Chelsea (Sasha Grey) comes in. She isn't just a regular street walker paid to blow off some steam, but an escort of the highest calibre. Much more than that, Chelsea is a high profile, chauffeur driven escort offering a high level of companionship where fine dinning, intellectual conversations and emotional reciprocation plays a major part in her business, rather than just consensual sex at a pre-determined price. Metaphorically, it is like evaluating the difference between paying for a room at a classy hotel for one night and renting a fully furnished apartment for a month. As the plot progresses, Chelsea runs her independent business in total control. But things start to get complicated when she finds herself mixed up in a possessive "real" relationship, while caught between her ambitions of being the best in the business and allowing the prospect of sleazy clients pimp her product to cities less affected by the recession, namely Dubai (UAE).Although critically controversial for various reasons, this is a director's film through and through and Soderbergh has his name written all over it with his unmistakable handy work etched into all aspects of the movie. With a plot severely depending on dialogue, the only setback may be in the script that seems improvised at times. But even that appears innovative when characters appear natural and very believable. Another signature trade mark is his panning of plot segments back and forth like setting pieces of a puzzle into place. This is done by narrating a day in the life of a prostitute as described by Chelsea in her journal. At times the approach is from a documentary styled interview between Chelsea and prospective clients, while simultaneously building up insight into her personality. This is also Soderbergh's crossover into digital filming, so to speak. As such, cinematography is dynamic yet superb. Intimate moments are sometimes intentionally out of focus, at other times fully zoomed in with maximum lens aperture but using ambient lighting, again a key characteristic of the current digital era. Coming to the topic of sex, which also happens to be the main topic of discussion, the act itself is never shown but a more subtle approach is given to brief nudity, including a suggestively framed full frontal. Soderbergh's skills aside, the jewel in the crown is Sasha Grey's debut into mainstream Hollywood. I say ˜debut' not because this is her first lead role, but because of her controversial background in hard core porn. The way I see it, if Ms Grey can deliver an above average performance as a character with all her clothes on, then there is no need in bringing up her past. Besides her stunning looks, she also possesses an uncanny way of flirting with the camera and ultimately engages the viewer. This is called on-screen charisma, and she has a lot of it.Back to Soderbergh, given his multi award winning "Traffic" and recent biopic "Che: Part 1&2", I wouldn't call this his masterpiece, but it still is a definitive piece of art that would give Woody Allen a raised brow. And with a tagline that says "See it with someone you ****", perception of art has potentially endless possibilities.

jennifer anniston 15 minutes into the movie, I was bored out of my mind and decided to fast forward through the movie. If you watch it in 5x, you'll notice all they do is eat and drink and change wardrobes.The worst part about it was that there was no Sahsa Gray sex scenes. There should have been like 4 or 5, but there was none! I wanted to give it one star, but Sasha Grey is so pretty.Blah blah blah... I have to write 10 lines even though I only have 6 lines to say. What a stupid policy and a way to extract forced and constrained, thoughtless reviews like this one. What, do they want me to make up stories and lie about the quality of the audio as if I actually cared?