Reviews: West Wing was quite good tonight. Matthew Perry again was excellent, suggesting the "Ainsley Hayes" conservative slot on the show should be used more often. One reason why it was good was because it something going on beside malaise. It had that, but it had more too, including a good subplot about the Chief Justice that was a payoff of repeated references sprinkled into various episodes about his slow mental disintegration.

On the other hand, In the Cut was ridiculous. I liked or respected past films by Jane Campion. Meg Ryan looks pretty sexy nude and did pretty well with the material with which she was dealt. It is rare to find a film with even a hint of a penis (admittedly, female frontal nudity generally stops at the chest) and Campion doesn't disappoint there. Also, I'm sure the film was meant to have some deep, feminist, and/or intricately psychological point of view about sexuality. So be it. The movie was boring, pretentious, stereotypical, and ridiculous. It annoyed me because the presence of serious portrayal of sexuality is rather rare in wide release films and this effort did not do much to help that.

A halfway good analyst could probably write a social thesis using the film as a subject and the film wasn't total garbage. All the same, it was a waste of the potential to actually say something about the issues while telling a good story. On that level, it was akin to run of the mill straight to video late night thrillers, which also tend to be explicit, have some lame stereotypical supporting characters, and seem attracted to the seedy underside of things. They also at times even provide a useful message or two, the surprising artistic value especially nice given it was unexpected. You expect more of this sort of fare, though perhaps, the pretentious aspects of Campion's past work made it not totally surprising.