The Masseuse

This slick rub-n-tug (not to be confused with Digital Playground’s Masseuse series) is another one of star director Paul Thomas’s sex-therapy dramas. Damaged Savanna Samson is good with her hands, but she has trouble finding love on her terms (boo-hoo), until she meets a soldier with the firepower to blow away her past. Telling her woes to a shrink, we see her quest for love while doing “extras” at a massage joint. (She admits she doesn’t make the best choices.) Thomas’s flicks are always more cinematic than your average hardcore, at least in a grindhouse sort of way, and he knows how to weave even the hardest fuck scenes into the overall film so that they don’t stick out like a sore dick. Sure, it’s hokey in places, but The Masseuse is full of intense genital action (including a Savanna double-penetration), fleshy close-ups, sporadic violence and fully scripted characters that aren’t trying to spoof a sitcom. These days, that’s harder to find than a $5 massage.