Popular reviews

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★½

  "This [needle] was my dick and I fucked her with my dick. And she loved it. And I waited for this fucking relationship to mature.” or "You have to keep creating new holes."

  Some quick research shows that this is almost entirely staged. Storyboarded but unscripted, shot improv/verite starring people playing themselves and edited by a guy who claims he didn't know the footage wasn't real. Totally fascinating in its presentation of a porn industry riddled with drug abuse, narcissism, and misogyny but also populated mostly by professionals interested in merging their craft with a sex-positive (by 1986 standards) environment. Things get even more uncomfortably engrossing as the IRL romantic relationship between the two leads (real life porn actresses Sharon…

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  Review by Liz ★★★★★

  The contradiction at the center of the sex film: that real acts are being performed in works that are otherwise pure fantasy. Here, Bashore takes that contradiction and applies it to documentary, blurring the lines between storyboard and reality to create a piece that's as honest as it is staged; a movie within a movie within a movie.

  Pretty sure that Sharon Mitchell is my queer icon.

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  Review by Will Sloan ★★★★★

  Early in this porn-world doc/fiction hybrid, porn star Sharon Mitchell tells a striptease audience that she’s making a movie tentatively titled Truth or Fiction, because "I don’t know whether I’m more truth or more fiction." Elsewhere, Tigr, a production assistant and sometimes-porn star, says of Mitchell, “She fucks off-camera the way she fucks on-camera, so you don’t ever really know what’s real.”

  Pornography lends itself to this sort of inquiry, being a genre built on the documentary appeal of seeing private acts performed “for real," while also making the acts seem stylized and artificial. Characters talk a lot about truth, fantasy, and the grey area between them throughout this film, which chronicles the dying days of a real love affair…

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  Review by theironcupcake ★★★★½ 18

  "Who are you when you're offscreen with somebody you like?"
  "I can't say... I'm always in character... I'm offscreen right now and I'm a character."
  "Is that okay with you?"
  "I don't know any other way."
  "Really?"
  "I get paid to wait around between shots; I don't get paid to act. I do it all the time."

  Move over, Babylon - Sharon Mitchell is a real New Jersey star!

  In short: for anyone who thought Boogie Nights would have been better if directed by a woman, centered on queer protagonists and as complex in presenting a painfully troubled relationship as in A Married Couple. "Mitch," as the adult film veteran is always called, and her then-lover/production assistant Tigr play themselves…

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  Review by Sally Jane Black

  (This is a violent film with very little traditional violence. This is a glimpse of love both true and toxic. This is a nightmare.)

  52 project: 57/52
  Pride month: 28/30

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  Review by cult_vegetables ★★★★★

  Bold, drug-addled, brilliantly talented, one thing is for certain: Porn icon Sharon Mitchell's charisma is heavy with an aura of self-destruction. Initially, what seems like an observation of the Industry descends into harrowing meta-fiction. Within this, a timeless love story, operatic, and probably doomed.

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★ 1

  Director Juliet Bashore make a point to underline her movie was careful storyboarded. Given that at first what stands out about Kamikaze Hearts is its uncomfortable erasure of the truth/fiction line that's a curious thing to make a major point of, but there's rarely a movie particular one that might seem "realistic" makes me so aware of its camera, there's a weight there, the filmmaker presence always impossible to miss. The camera reminds the audience that everything on screen is about power, the relationship between filmmaker and her two main characters, their performances in their industry be it on stage or on camera, their relationship, their addiction. It is all a big major struggle. And there almost always a side…

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  Review by Liz ★★★★★

  I had a great convo with filmmaker Juliet Bashore over at Screen Slate — check it out.

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  Review by Liz ★★★★★ 1

  Tigr and Mitch are t4t

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  Review by Justin LaLiberty ★★★★½

  had an impromptu double feature of this and Adaptation, not thinking anything of it, and was struck at how much this feels like the sex film equal to the metatextual films that hollywood is seemingly obsessed with even if it feels far less self obsessed and, ultimately, more critical (or at least skeptical) with the industry it is capturing in (and largely a product of) -- what's most surprising here is how delicate and *funny* much of this is, feeling more like a Living In Oblivion of the porn world wherein its set life is a source of constant anxiety and the life of entertainers is patently, chaotically, surreal

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  Review by Adrian ☕🥐 ★★★★½ 5

  Kamikaze Hearts is a mockumentary about the porno-movie business. The main focus of the story is the romantic relationship between an adult-film actress Mitch (Sharon Mitchell) and script-girl/assistant director Tigr (Tigr).

  The movie opens up with Mitch arriving in San Francisco with the goal to be nearer to her girlfriend. They love each other, but they both have their demons and doubts. As the story moves along jealousy, self-reflection, and trust issues come into play. It's all very well done and feels real. Maybe too real.

  The cinematography and filmmaking in general, are excellent. All of the acting is great too. As I said, it doesn't feel like it's fake. It's that well made. Tigr also acted as a producer…

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  Review by Kyle Turner ★★★★½

  Sex, performance, film, desire, identity, capitalism, work, queerness, fiction, nonfiction, lies, truth. Everything i want in a film.