Best of 2009: The Movies
As we continue our Best of 2009 series we've compiled our list of our top 50 movie & DVD picks. We'll be posting this alphabetical list later but providing ONLY a big, long list isn't the way we like to do things here. So, before we publish our top picks we wanted to spotlight the movies, people, & trends that we think made a 2009 such a big year.
Focus/Refocus. It should come as no surprise that if we were to pick one movie as our top pick it would have to be Focus/Refocus. It might be too much to say that this Raging Stallion movie has definitively redefined gay porn but F/R definitely raised the bar considerably higher and it's likely to have longterm influence. For the last few years the studio has been thinking outside the box and this well-scripted, well-acted movie with some exceptionally hot sex scenes is the culmination of these efforts.
Steve Cruz/Leif Gobo Mustang movies. When Gobo & Cruz first teamed in 2008 for the impressive Blue Movie we doubt anyone could have predicted that the movies that followed in 2009 would re-brand the Falcon Mustang brand. Yet that's exactly what happened. Gobo & Cruz constructed the RGB Color Trilogy, following Blue Movie with Red Light & Green Door; they de-constructed the "all-sex" genre with XXX; they made sex look like total fun again in Dirty!; and they turned to a darker, kinkier side of sex in Darkroom. All were well-crafted & stylish movies and showcased the directors' knack for great casting. New talent like Samuel Colt, Race Cooper, Tony Aziz, Leo Giamani, Vince Ferelli, Drake Jaden, Nash Lawler, and many others we given a great career-launching pad. Established performers like Arpad Miklos, Diesel Washington, Colby Keller, Ty LeBeouf, etc all showed why they were stars. Through it all Cruz & Gobo demonstrated great creativity and made us look forward to each movie's release.
Men of Israel. It says a great deal that other directors & studios were joining the chorus of enthusiastic gay porn fans and praising Michael Lucas for this beautifully shot video featuring hot sex between some of the most gorgeous men on the planet. Shot on location in Israel the movie was as much a love letter to the country as it was a quality gay porn movie. Contained in that love letter was impossibly sexy Matan Shalev who needs no hyping from anyone. The follow-up Inside Israel may not have had the same surprise or wow factor but it was proof that the first movie was no fluke.
Joe Gage. The legendary director continued to show why he's considered a legend, well beyond the fact that he's been making gay porn flicks for decades. Slow Heat in a Small Texas Town and Battle Creek Breakdown were this year's Titan offerings and each was as near-perfect as porn can be. The beauty of Gage is that everything unfolds seamlessly and the performers are all given a chance to shine.
Fetish fun. We mentioned previously that fetish/leather/kink films really evolved in 2009 with elaborate sets, gear, clothing, and were often filmed to created something surreal and near-artistic. Folsom Flesh, Skuff 4: Downright Fierce, and Flux, Taken & The Trap all demonstrated great creativity while keeping it accessible and presenting hot sex-filled set pieces. We especially liked the bizarrely hypnotic world created in Taken and the sex club setting of The Trap .
Lastly, we had it in our heads that we would list our favorite movie scenes but there were so many hot scenes in all the movies on our top 50 list that we would be at this for months. Our suggestion to you is go and rent or buy the movies here and on our top 50 list and see what we mean when we say 2009 was a BIG year.
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