Games We Play

Kayden Kross continues to establish herself as a standout porn director with Games We Play, a hyper-stylish offering adorned with directorial flourishes that enhance—rather than distract from—the erotic heat of the scenes she delivers. This is a vignette-style affair, with nothing to connect the scenes aside from Kross’s cinematic ambition, which luckily yields a product that’s both artistically and carnally pleasing. Impatient hard-ons might quibble with the devotion to pacing, detail, lighting and camerawork, but the effort’s worth it—it’s like jacking off to a van Gogh instead of a graffiti-strewn billboard. And if you’re fortunate enough to have a woman by your side, she just might be sufficiently inspired by this flick to lend a helping hand. Strawberry blonde Ashley Lane endlessly teases a dude, tormenting him with her mouth and hand. The scene’s set looks a bit like an abandoned Long John Silver’s, but Kross makes it work, creating a mood that’s Fifty Shades of Hot. Anyone who has ever been in a dysfunctional relationship will appreciate the emotionally hefty scene between big-titted brunette Angela White and her boyfriend, who she discovers is cheating on her through a bit of cell phone snooping. The entanglement is unflinching and unnerving, an intense swirl of choking, crying, ass-fucking and titty-humping, played out on a spectrum that careens from rage to ecstasy. I wish that there was a Seven-Eighths Erect rating to award Games We Play. When Kross latches on to a solid, feature-length concept, she will ably establish herself as the Martin Scorsese of scuzz flicks. Until then, there’s plenty here for the viewer’s intellect and libido to toy with. —P.D.R.