Nell (1994)

Academy-Award nominated Jodie Foster starred as the title character Nell Kellty in this engrossing Michael Apted-directed drama about a 30 year-old woman who was isolated her entire life in a remote cabin in North Carolina with her partially-paralyzed mother due to a stroke. This made her appear to be a 'feral' or 'wild child.' Her unusual and almost incoherent speech was due to her conversations with a deceased twin sister until she was 6 years old, and listening to her mother's garbled words, and she was possibly conceived by a rapist.

Once the town's doctor Dr. Jerry Lovell (Liam Neeson) and therapist Paula Olsen (Natasha Richardson) came upon Nell, there was conflict over sending her to an institution or letting her remain in her familiar surroundings. As they studied her behavior over a three-month period, they realized that Nell was nocturnal, and that she had a twin sister who had died young. In one scene, the untamed woman stripped down to go skinny-dipping/swimming in a moonlit lake (with the doctor joining her to reassure her), and in another, Nell lifted up her top in a poolroom-bar when a local raunchy redneck took advantage of her innocent naivete about civilization.

Priest (1994, UK)

This volatile, daring, provocative and controversial British drama from director Antonia Bird was accused of attacking the Roman Catholic Church's official views on homosexuality (or chaste celibacy of any kind by priests), and the sanctity of privacy in the confessional. The film was forced to be re-edited for its US R-rated theatrical release.

The film told about a conservative, gay Roman Catholic priest in Liverpool -- Father Greg Pilkington (Linus Roache) who broke his vows by engaging in homosexual sex with a man named Graham (Robert Carlyle), while also being tormented by a confessional from a young 14 year-old girl named Lisa Unsworth (Christine Tremarco) about incestual abuse from her father.

Rapa-Nui (1994)

Director Kevin Reynolds' (and producer Kevin Costner) historically-questionable film about civil war on early Easter Island (known as Rapa Nui in Chile) in the remote SE Pacific. Throughout the melodrama set in the 1600s, there were many scantily-clad natives.

The film told about a forbidden (and preposterous) 'Hollywoodish' star-crossed 'Romeo and Juliet' love story between two secret lovers who were from two opposing tribes:

• plebian, slave class "Short Ear" native girl Ramana (mishandled and miscast Sandrine Holt)
• aristocratic, ruling class "Long Ear" Noro (Jason Scott Lee)

The backdrop for the romantic melodrama was the perilous annual contest - the Birdman competition (taking a route along rocky cliffs and into shark-infested waters) - between representatives of all the clans, to determine who would reign as "Bird Man" for the next year. The shaman reluctantly promised Noro the hand of Ramana if he won and if she was confined during a 6-moon preparation period in a cave called the "Cave of the White Virgin," although she had already been de-virginized (and impregnated by Noro). Another male, a "Short Ear" named Make (Esai Morales), Noro's childhood friend but now the leader of rebel unrest, also vied to win Ramana's love.

The film ended with Noro as the sole surviving winner of the competition - he escaped the island with Ramana and their recently-born baby.

Ready to Wear (1994) (aka Pret-a-Porter)

Robert Altman's two-hour ensemble black comedy satirized the fashion industry through a look at the fashion world of Paris, and combined it with a murder mystery.

The film featured dozens of characters and cameo appearances (Lauren Bacall, Harry Belafonte, Teri Garr, Forest Whitaker, Naomi Campbell, Lyle Lovett, Christy Turlington, Cher and others) with Altman's characteristic interweaving plot lines of the lives of models, designers (Richard E. Grant), fashion magazine editors (Sally Kellerman, Tracey Ullman, and Linda Hunt), and journalists (Tim Robbins, Julia Roberts, and Lili Taylor).

Its most memorable scene was its eye-popping, two-minute runway show finale -- a sensational, all-nude fashion show featuring over one dozen slim models, displayed by both real-life models and actresses, including pregnant Albertine (German singer Ute Lemper):

The Road to Wellville (1994)

Writer/director Alan Parker's adaptation of T. Coraghessan Boyle's 1993 novel of the same name told about the early 20th Century Reform movement for health self-improvement.

The satirical sex comedy chronicled the fanatical treatments at Kellogg's fictional Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, where affluent guests were rejuvenated by being subjected to daily colon cleansings and enemas, the eating of roughage (and denial of meat), electric shock baths, flagellation and other shock therapies and battery-powered treatments applied to the genitals, womb manipulation massages, and sex abstinence.

It featured many big-name stars, including:

• buck-toothed Corn Flakes developer/health guru Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (Anthony Hopkins)
• William Lightbody (Matthew Broderick)
• wife Eleanor Lightbody (Bridget Fonda)

Eleanor Lightbody		Nurse Irene

Even so, the film was filled with scatalogical references and lots of nudity.

Due to William's forced separation from his wife Eleanor (who sponged herself while engaged in frequent milk baths), he found himself libidinously attracted to his sexy and pretty nurse Irene Graves (Traci Lind) who administered his enemas (and who he imagined undressed, when they shared an elevator together), and to sickly and consumptive Ida Muntz (Lara Flynn Boyle) across the hall.

Sirens (1994, Aust./UK/Ger.)

John Duigan's free-wheeling, erotic drama (based on a true story), with the tagline: "Be Seduced," told about "sirens" who lived in a sensual paradise, and posed 'au naturel' for controversial and eccentric Australian painter-artist Norman Lindsay (Sam Neill) at his Blue Mountain estate. It was noted for its generous, free-spirited modeling scenes, including the following (left to right in 2nd picture):

• Sheela (Sports Illustrated supermodel Elle Macpherson in her film debut)
• Rose Lindsay (Pamela Rabe)
• Pru (Kate Fischer)
• blonde Giddy (Portia de Rossi)

The Sirens Models

The sensual beauties swam naked to sexually awaken the latent urges of uptight English minister Rev. Anthony Campion's (Hugh Grant) repressed wife Estella (Tara Fitzgerald). In an earlier scene, she ran in slow-motion in a white frock, and then suddenly appeared naked - there and inside a church. She was also sexually stimulated by the blind handyman (who also made a full-frontal nude appearance on a rock), who caressed her through her clothes.

Sheela	Giddy	Pru	Sheela & Estella

The final image of the film was a long-shot of the naked sirens on an outcropping of rock.

Spanking the Monkey (1994)

David O. Russell's debut directorial film was this black comedy - the film's title was another term for "masturbation." The independent feature film told about a self-abusing, introverted college freshman named Ray Aibelli (Jeremy Davies). He was continually interrupted touching himself in the bathroom by the whining family dog, and he experienced a rocky relationship with his neighborhood girlfriend Toni Peck (Carla Galio) due to his graceless and rough manner.

Ray was forced by his philandering, acerbic and domineering father Tom (Benjamin Hendrickson) to care during a hot summer for his recuperating, emotionally-dependent, and bed-ridden depressed mother Susan (Alberta Watson) who suffered from a broken leg.

During their close time together (helping her shower, etc.), they developed an off-limits, mother-son relationship. The most controversial scene was one late at night in which he rubbed massage lotion into her upper thigh and they commenced love-making.

Because of his spiraling depression and guilt over the forbidden love with his mother, he suicidally jumped off a cliff.

The Specialist (1994)

Two supposedly sexy box-office superstars were featured in this body-conscious, 'guilty pleasure' thriller-tale of murder and revenge against the underworld set against the neon backdrop of Miami. It won two Razzie awards (Worst Actress - Sharon Stone, Worst Screen Couple - Stone and Stallone) from its five Razzie nominations, including Worst Actor, Worst Supporting Actor (Rod Steiger) and Worst Picture.

The two ultra-buffed stars were:

• femme fatale May Munro/Adrian Hastings (Sharon Stone)
• former CIA explosives expert and free-lance hit man Ray Quick (Sylvester Stallone)

May hired Ray to avenge the murder of her parents.

They appeared in a number of sex scenes, including a lengthy, exhibitionist shower scene that featured their taut and toned bodies - his biceps and pectorals and her breasts. The scene began in a Fontainebleu Hotel bedroom where they kissed - he let her hair down, and told the alluring female that she had a "beautiful face." To the tune of bluesy jazz music, they undressed and caressed each other and made love on the bed - the scene then segued into the shower where they kissed under the steamy showerhead. They sank to the shower floor where they stretched out and made love.

Their dialogue was unintentionally funny and unsexy, as, for instance, this double-entendre line as she soaped up his chest from behind and then came around to his front to kiss him. She noted that she had faked her own death, so that she could witness the demise of ruthless criminal Tomas Leon (Eric Roberts). She also sexily stated that 'specialist' Ray only built bombs focused on their target:

I had to be there when he died. I needed to see it. Anyway, I knew you'd pick the safest way for everybody. I studied your style. I knew you always focused your detonations. So I knew that if I was facing Tomas, right in front of him, like this. A little bit closer, like this, I know I feel safe.

Threesome (1994)

Writer-director Andrew Fleming's debut feature was an R-rated fairly crude, blatantly-stereotypical romantic sex comedy about a coed triangle. It took the unlikely premise that there was a mix-up in Freemont University (UCLA?) dorm assignments. The mistake placed three unlikely individuals together in a dorm suite:

• female Alex (Lara Flynn Boyle) (with a gender-ambiguous name)
• studious, sensitive, intellectual junior transfer student Eddy Howe (Josh Charles)
• boorish, Neanderthal-like, sex-crazed jock Stuart (Stephen Baldwin)

In an early scene in their cramped quarters, obviously heterosexual Stuart was given time to "socialize with friends" -- he was seen removing the purple bra from friendly dorm laundry girl (Katherine Kousi) and kissing her breast.

Their "delicate equilibrium" was quickly upset when Eddy found Alex showering in the suite's bathroom - and she announced herself as their new roommate. The teasing and prudish post-modern coming-of-age film dabbled with whether Alex's reluctant, stand-offish and "sexually-ambivalent" love interest Eddy might be gay ("I like them (girls), I just don't want to have sex with them"), while Stuart was ardently pursuing her (the film's basic plot was summed up early on by Alex: "You have the hots for me, I have the hots for him, and sooner or later he's gonna have the hots for you").

Although they made a "sacred vow" together to remain only friends, that line was soon crossed. Dialogue was exemplified by lines such as this, mostly from Stuart:

"For me, sex, it's like pizza. Even if it's bad, it's still pretty good."
"If you don't have sex soon, your dick is going to shrivel up and go inside your body. Then what do you have? A vagina."

The film displayed Alex having an orgasm fully dressed as she seductively squirmed around on a library table in front of Eddy, and oral sex was delivered by Stuart to Alex under a blanket while she spoke on the phone to Eddy. During a skinny-dip scene, the three were naked and kissing until interrupted by a group of young hikers led by a priest who saw them and then began laughing. Afterwards, Eddy (in voice-over) described the significance of their kissing:

Alex said that the priest symbolized God, the children - lost innocence, and the three of us - a post-modern Eve with two Adams banished from the sacred garden to wander in the wilderness for eternity because we had sinned. We had acknowledged our own nakedness and partaken of the forbidden fruit. Though it amounted to only a kiss, a touch, it changed everything. Pandora's proverbial box had been opened, but more interestingly, I'm not sure any of us wanted to close it again.

The film eventually included a soft-core three-some sex-sandwich bedroom scene in which Alex was naked between the two men, with Alex interested in Eddy, while he was interested in Stuart, and Stuart was interested in Alex. At the end, Eddy's musings in voice-over, accompanied by a few flashback images, summed up:

My college experience wasn't what I had planned. It bore no resemblence to the pictures in the brochure. But I'm not unhappy. I don't think any of us are. We got what we needed out of it. It's kind of like when you go on vacation. You plan everything out but then one day you make a wrong turn or take a detour and you end up in some crazy place you can't even find on the map, doing something you never thought you'd do. Maybe you feel a little lost while it's happening, but later you realize it was the best part of the whole trip.

True Lies (1994)

James Cameron's expensive, cross-genre film was an action-comedy, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger starred as computer salesman Harry Tasker. He was actually a US secret double agent, was married to bored traditionalist wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), and they had a daughter named Dana (Eliza Dushku). Because of his job requiring extensive travel, Helen began to suspect that Harry was having an affair, while at the same time, Harry was worried that Helen was involved with a used car salesman named "Simon" (Bill Paxton), posing as a spy to seduce her.

Using the resources of his counter-terrorism and intelligence task force, Harry interrogated her behind a one-way mirror - as a punishment and as a test - of her fidelity and her extra-marital relationship with "Simon." She confessed that she had second thoughts about her marriage and had considered leaving Harry ("a boring jerk") for Simon: "I wanted to do something outrageous, and it felt really good, to be needed, and to be trusted. It's just there's so much I want to do with this life, and it fells that I haven't done any of it. You know, the sand is running out of the hourglass, so I want to look back and say, see, I did that, that was me, I was wreckless and I was wild, and I f--king did it."

He presented Helen with a choice - to go to prison or to be sent on a "mission" to seduce a double-agent while posing as a prostitute named Michelle. She chose the latter. In the film's sexiest scene, she was sent to the Hotel Marquis, where she was ordered to perform an arousing and provocative strip-tease for a suspected arms dealer (a disguised Harry), while secretly planting a bug on his phone.

She used one of the bed-posts as a stripper pole, undressing down to sexy black lingerie and black high heels as Harry watched from dark shadows - amazed at her convincing bump 'n' grind. When she finished, he instructed her (with a tape-recorded message): "Now lie on the bed and close your eyes." She replied: "But I thought you only liked to watch." He teased her with a red rose, tickling her with it from her nose to between her breasts, before attempting to kiss her. She destroyed the mood by bashing him with the phone, and kicking him in the stomach while he groveled on the floor, shouting out: "You pig! Bastard!"

Uncovered (1994, Sp./UK)

Based on the book "The Flanders Panel," this neglected murder mystery was filmed on location in Barcelona by directors Jack Baran and Jim McBride. Its tagline was: "To Some - Murder Is an Art."

The film starred Kate Beckinsale (in an early, short-haired role before starring in Pearl Harbor (2001), Van Helsing (2004) and The Aviator (2004)). She portrayed the character of Julia, an art restorer who thought she had discovered clues to a centuries-old murder and a modern-day succession of murders.

She found the clues in an 'uncovered' inscription of a 15th century Flemish master painting of a chess game - it read "Who killed the knight?" She also uncovered herself as she drank a glass of wine, approached the painting and studied it in a topless reflection.

Woman of Desire (1994)

This film-noir wanna-be, capitalizing on the success of Basic Instinct (1992), was directed by Robert Ginty (not Bo Derek's husband John this time - a rare occurrence). One attempt at cleverness was to have some of the character's last names matching famous directors: David Lynch, John Ford, Walter Hill, etc.

The plot was about yacht captain Jack Lynch (Jeff Fahey), who was accused of two crimes:

• murdering his boss Ted (Steven Bauer) who fell overboard and drowned (was he shot too?)
• raping the victim's wife Christina Ford (Bo Derek) as the "woman of desire" - she lived by the motto: "A long time ago I decided that the key to life was pleasing men"

Jack sought out veteran attorney Walter J. Hill (Robert Mitchum) to help prove his innocence.

Christina Ford was on full view in love-making and nude scenes on Ted's (Steven Bauer) yacht with Ted's identical twin brother Jonathan (also Steven Bauer), in the shower and on a motorcycle