A beautifully written screenplay about relationships ruined by cheap, unnecessary pornography

Rating: 3/10 (23 October 2016)

Billed as a 'Romantic Drama' five minutes in I was intrigued. Beautifully observed, with intelligent, amusing dialogue  I poured myself a glass of wine, thinking, 'Yep, this is going to be good'. Sadly, after the initial scene with Jude Law and Julia Roberts (in fine form) it descended into a lame excuse for audiences (and actors) to be subjected to yet another screenplay from a foul-mouthed playwright living out his sexual fantasies on screen.
Why do it? I find myself dismayed by the amount of such films being released that appear to be a 'genre' in themselves. Sex and violence have become almost de rigueur in far too many new releases. Forget the MPAA rating, pornography by any other name is still pornography and it's time it got kicked out of mainstream cinema.
Scenes of a sexual nature should not only be significant, they should produce an emotion that is not akin to throwing up in a bucket. Anyone can talk dirty or thrash around in a bed showing parts of their anatomy that we'd rather not see (all too often ageing actors, think Michael Douglas, actually where's that bucket?), but any actor worthy of the name can produce such a scene (with the help of a good cinematographer and director) with a look, a hand, the curve of a naked back which is often far more stirring  but Clive Owen feigning an orgasm while reading a stream of filth on his computer screen  doesn't actually do it for me . I'm giving it a '3' rating for the dialogue (sans porn) alone.