Some reviews on SEX, LIES & VEDIOTAPE
- The 4 characters in this movie: JOHN, a lawyer who has just become a junior partner at a firm, is having a steamy affair with CYNTHIA, ANN's sister who works as a bartender. When GRAHAM, a college friend John hasn't seen for nine years, comes to town, he spends an evening at their house. Ann takes him apartment hunting and, starved for companionship, they reveal secrets to each other over lunch. She finds sex to be overrated, and he admits to being impotent. Graham gets through to Ann when he says: "I remember reading somewhere that men learn to love the person they're attracted to and women become more and more attracted to the person they love."

Graham's hobby is making videos of women talking about their sexual experiences; it is also the only way he gets turned on. Eventually, Cynthia finds her way to his apartment and eagerly allows Graham to film her. Ann is infuriated by her sister's brazen sexuality. When she then discovers evidence of Cynthia's affair with John, Ann decides to go to Graham herself. In a showdown, they both remove their masks and relate to one another on a level of intimacy neither one has felt for years.

- Steven Soderbergh circles around the ever shifting pattern of contemporary sexual politics, shedding light on the fears and desires of men and women, the difference between sex and love, the destructiveness of lying, and the danger of voyeurism and detachment as a way of life for the video generation. In her book Courage My Love, Merle Shain wrote of contemporary relationships: "Emotional support is the only thing we really need each other for now. And if we aren't able to do that for each other, there won't be any reason to be together at all." Until more couples realize that truth, the weather in the world of sexuality will remain overcast.

- This is much more than a voyeuristic film, as everything becomes probing and personal. It stresses the morality needed to live a normal life.

- Things happen with the four characters, and soon, not only does Cynthia find Graham's little fetish intriguing as well, but she has soon made a tape for him, finding it much more of an actual turn-on than actual sex with John. When Ann makes a tape, it's probably the best scene in the movie, since it becomes the enzyme which fuels the characters to come out in the end the way they do.This is, of course, a film primarily fueled by characters. The plot is moved only by characterization, not some cheap plot device. The use of videotaping sexual confessions is not a cheap plot gimmick, but rather an outlet that is created by one of the characters to compensate for a lack of interest in sex. This is really true-to-life, since sex is basically interesting for a while, but gets old, but talking about it is pretty much immortal. The scene where Graham interviews Ann for the camera is one of the greatest film scenes in recent film history, as it shows the characters opening up in ways they wouldn't before. Each character is mysterious, but soon shows they are human and unique.

- I have a friend who says golf is not only better than sex, but lasts longer. The argument in "sex, lies and videotape" is that conversation is also better than sex - more intimate, more voluptuous - and that with our minds we can do things to each other that make sex, that swapping of sweat and sentiment, seem merely troublesome. Of course, this argument is all a mind game, and sex itself, sweat and all, is the prize for the winner. That's what makes the conversation so erotic.

- Graham's dangerous, not in a physical way, but through his insinuating intelligence, which seems to see through people.

- Spader's protagonist comes armed with a video camera - his only working equipment: Graham gratifies himself by videotaping women as they talk about their sex lives. After a series of painful fandangos, he's decided he'd rather look than touch. "I used to be a pathological liar. ... I used to express my feelings nonverbally, and I used to scare people I love," he confesses. He's since become so tender a listener that women are drawn to him like kittens to cream, and his video library is chock full of confessional peep shows.