Type of Site: Studio   
Address: 
www.cinemaerotique.com 
Price:
 
$20/two weeks
Date of Review:
September, 2008
Pornreports Rating: 

    

Review:

SEPTEMBER 2008 RE-VISIT

This is just a brief update to our review of the unique British site that offers (in its own words): "Hot sexy movie for cool people!" The main thing that's different is that the new movies are being shot in 1080p HD, which is nice though you still can only download full movies which means the files are kind of big. Otherwise what we've said in previous reviews still stands. Director Cherry Chapman still has a thing for skinny girls, but they're refreshingly natural and different looking (we really liked Agnes). Up to 26 full movies now, as well as a number of "striptease" shorts in the Peepshow section. Though to be honest we thought the striptease stuff was kind of dull, especially compared to the features.

As an addition to the tour you can also check out the Cinema Erotique blog here. Doesn't seem to be updating that much, but it lets you know the latest.

MAY 2006 RE-VISIT

OK, our second re-visit and we have to admit this site is starting to grow on us. It's also starting to grow, albeit slowly. The update schedule is irregular, but they're now up to 14 "striptease" films and 18 full-length (somewhere around 20-30 minutes long) feature movies. They also seem to have quite a bit of stuff in the pipeline, which you can read about in the (now open) Editing Room (where you can also read scripts and listen to music, including "Porn Sluts," a single from the forthcoming PORN: The Musical).

Now a lot of what we've said in the past still goes. The site itself is quite clunky. The Editing Room is titled "Editing Romm." In the Models area there are pics with instructions to "click and visit my site", but none of these seemed to be working links. You browse through the production stills galleries and there aren't any links to take you back to the members home page. They misspell "starring" as "staring" throughout (something we complained about a year ago). And this list could be extended.

Another issue has to do with the file sizes, which can be quite large (even for the low quality versions). You'll want the high quality stuff because it looks great, with widescreen 2000 kb/s playback. But for the movie Sex Toys, for example, your choices are between a 268 meg file for the low quality or 760 megs for the high quality version. And since the films aren't split up, you'll have to download these as single files. So you'd better have a fast connection.

OK, in terms of presentation it's a homemade job. But, on the other hand:

(1) It's still only $10 a week, which is really cheap for this much exclusive video content.

(2) The movies themselves are very interesting. 

Are they always hot? Not in a conventional sense. In fact they can be downright weird. But we have to give credit where it's due and call Cherry Chapman probably the most original adult filmmaker shooting for the Internet audience today. There's really no other site where you're going to find stuff remotely like this, taking these kinds of chances and going in so many different directions.

In the first place, it is all professionally produced by a team that obviously knows how to make a movie. Now admittedly some of the actual sex isn't handled that well. Chapman is best at directing solo masturbation or girl-girl scenes. He doesn't quite have the knack for getting the best angles for penetration. But overall it's pretty good.

What really sets these movies apart though is their imagination. Every one is a totally unique experience. This can lead to some bombs (like the movie Cream, where, in our opinion, the tone is all wrong), but also the odd masterpiece. Deep End is an example of the latter. This is just a terrific film, and we can't think of another site that could have done it. It tells a great little story about a love affair between a young English couple. It's really quite romantic, and hardcore too, with some wonderful chemistry between the two stars. And it's the kind of thing we'd really, really like to see more people doing.

Look, if you're just hunting for something to get off to in a hurry then this probably isn't your ticket (though there are some hot scenes, typically at the end of each feature). But if you care about porn and want to see different visions, or are just totally bored by the usual cheap bullshit stuff out there and want to experience something new, then we recommend you start here. 

APRIL 2005 RE-VISIT

This is kind of a quick turnaround to write a new review, but the webmaster got in touch with us to let us know that there'd been some new content added. As noted in our previous review, this site does not update regularly. That's why there's a low weekly membership fee, non-recurring (or an even lower two-day membership, also non-recurring).

As far as the update is concerned, they have added four new movies, meaning they now have a total of 10 features to download. They have also added a couple of new "Striptease" films.

We still had a lot of the same complaints. There isn't any explanation of who is behind the site or what it's about. There's something that looks like it should be a link called "Editing Room", but it isn't active. The site itself is really crude. You can only download full movies, not short clips. This is a pain because some of the movies are really long (over 200 megs for one), and there is no text description and precious little thumbnailing. There were a bunch of simple little errors too, like spelling mistakes ("starring" is consistently misspelled as "staring") and wrong page titles. It is not a slick production.

As far as content goes, it seems to be getting even weirder. One of the new striptease movies (which, by the way, are higher quality now) has a girl stripping superimposed in front of a movie of pigeons in a park. What the fuck was that all about? The new movies we saw included a parody of Scream called Cream, and some kind of psycho-sexual thing with a girl masturbating as part of her homework. It's hard to explain, and looks even odder than it sounds. Kudos for trying to do something different--this is unlike most of the porn you've ever seen. Unfortunately we still thought a lot of it was too damn dark, the story-lines were weak (things just sort of dissolve into fantasies), and the whole spirit of the thing seemed less about sex than sexuality. That last is a personal judgment, of course, but we have to call it as we see it. As film it's interesting, but we didn't think it was great porn.

We'll bump it up from a "5" to a "6"--after all, they basically doubled their content. Otherwise nothing much has changed since we were here a few months ago. Including our bottom line: We'd recommend it to those of you who are really looking for something different. It definitely has its own visual style, and it's not the usual gonzo dreck. Check out a trailer and see if it's your thing. There still isn't a ton of content, but god knows the price is right.

DECEMBER 2004 REVIEW

Most studio sites tend to take themselves more seriously than the average porn site. Whether they are photographers or small film studios, they usually have an independent vision that they really believe in. We're not just talking about Abby Winters championing natural, healthy, fun porn. Even a sleazy-looking spanking site like Red Hot Video's BunBeatingFun has a "mission statement" that goes on and on and on . . . but which also spells out in a clear manifesto their personal vision of what porn (or at least their variety of porn) should be like.

CinemaErotique, as you might tell from the name, has some pretensions to class. As you can also tell from the name, it's a movie site. It is not, however, a French site, despite the name and all the put-on about this being "un film de Cherry Chapman" (the site's auteur), and the funny quotes from Cahiers du Cinema (example: "The actresses are far more beautiful in Jean Cocteau's 1930 'Le Sang d'un Poete', but none of them had a snatch like a mountaineer's rug."). Not that there is any issue with language anyway. The music, composed by "Dick Power", pretty much takes care of the script, credited to "Rhythme Method."

As you can tell by now, this is a site that doesn't take itself all that seriously. Cherry Chapman does have his own vision of porn though, and it is put across with a lot of professionalism. The editing in particular is top-rate (that is, by porn standards), and you know the people doing this have some experience in making movies. It's not so clear, however, that they have a lot of experience in making porn movies, as the lighting is terrible and close-shots don't seem to be in their film vocabulary. 

On the main page they ask "The site for quality erotic videos?" Why the hell they put the question mark in there is beyond us. We suspect it's a typo. And it wouldn't be the only bit of sloppiness we found. Site design seemed pretty crudely thrown together. The title bar for the main members area (the "foyer") is "nowe". The parody reviews are repeated on several pages (and a joke is never funny the second time around). All of the videos are in one format, DivX, but there is no support page or even link provided to where you can grab a DivX player.

Our major knock against the site is how little content it has. There were only six "feature" movies, totaling 560 megs, when we visited. That's 53 minutes of film. Yikes! That's not a lot of video. In addition to this there are five short "Striptease" flicks. No extras. No photo galleries. No mission statement. Nothing else on this site at all. Nada.

Is there more coming? Hard to say. There's no update schedule and no mention of coming attractions. There is a link to send e-mail to the webmaster so they can tell you "about future productions", but that's it. For all we know these six movies (and striptease featurettes, which run 58 megs each) are it.

Is it any good? Well, it's different. As noted, the movies are all in DivX. Playback is good, but gets blurry with a lot of motion if you try to watch it fullscreen. The striptease movie we watched was a much smaller picture, playing back at postage-stamp size. Also annoying, by the way, is the fact that you can only download full movies in single files. Since a couple of the movies are 150 megs, you may be a few minutes downloading them (unless you have a real fast connection).

The movies seemed kind of retro to us. You see some bush (the "mountaineer's rug" mentioned earlier) and a lot of older style lingerie. As noted, the lighting is awful. Instead of reading Cahiers, somebody should have been watching Andrew Blake. The movies themselves deal with fairly straightforward sexual situations, but they aren't long enough to have real stories. In "Bible Bashing" a bible salesman has a session with a pair of babes who drag him upstairs and proceed to fuck him. There is hardly any dialogue (though he does manage to blurt out "Praise the Lord!" as he delivers with the money shot). In a bizarre movie called "Mr. Big's Smack Deal" a pair of girls strip (in the dark) before a gangster. Then they get down on all fours and he . . . smacks them once on the behind!

And that's it!

So let's face it, there's not much here. But we draw your attention to the price. That's an odd strategy you don't see very often. Presumably they know you just want to download their content and that it won't take you more than a couple of days to do it, so they only charge you $5 for two days. Non-recurring. Or $10 for a week (also non-recurring). This is a nice touch, but also made us suspect that they don't have big plans for doing a lot of updates. It's the sites that update a lot that try to rope you in with a trial, hoping you'll stick around for more. For a site that doesn't update, offering a cheap and quick membership option makes more sense, and we have to say they're being very fair about it. They aren't offering you a whole lot, at least yet, and they know it. We didn't think it was that hot, but for only $5 it's worth checking out some of the trailers and seeing if it might be your thing. It is at least something new and original.

Other Reviews of This Site:

---Adult Reviews 
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Adult Site Surfer 
---The Best Porn 
---FreeOnes 
---
Jaxon Jaganov 
---
Porn Adept
---Porn Inspector 
---Rog Reviews 
---Self Lover's World
---Spankmania 
---X3 Guide 

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