With The Killer Inside Me, we can clearly see why the prolific director Michael Winterbottom continuously fails to make films that are anywhere above average. He is missing something vital to the success of almost any cinematic work: a knack for the erotic. When a woman is unable to provide a man with an even mildly enjoyable handjob or blowjob, when she handles the penis in the cold way a gardener handles a hosepipe, when she generates more discomfort than pleasure, it is said she has “no sense of cock.” (Of course, this sort of deficiency can also be found in the gay world.) Winterbottom suffers from something like this lack of a sense of cock—meaning, if his new film were translated into sex, it would be a very bad handjob.
The Killer Inside Me is terrible primarily because its sexual content has no life in it, and so there is no contrast between the sex and the violence—both are plain ugly. One could say that this was the filmmaker’s intention: to make the fucking and beating equally horrible. But if that were the case, why employ an actress who is universally celebrated for her sexiness? Doesn’t it make more sense to have horrible sex scenes with an unsexy actress like Hilary Swank or Janeane Garofalo? The fact that Winterbottom hired Jessica Alba means he wanted the sex to be as hot as the actress.
Alba, a mixed-race beauty, plays a prostitute who falls in love with a sheriff, Casey Affleck, who turns out to be a funny-talking serial killer—the movie is based on a novel by Jim Thompson. The prostitute is certainly desirable, but her sex scenes with the sheriff lack any fire. And so when she is beaten to within an inch of her life, we are not at all surprised or shocked. Nothing in the fucking (the breathing, the moaning, the kissing) convinced us that the two were actually in love or caught in a storm of passion. The prostitute is flat, the sheriff is flatter, and the photography has no sense of cock. In short, Winterbottom failed to film a great sex scene with one of the sexiest women in Hollywood. 
Maybe it was Winterbottom’s intent to film unsexy sex scenes with one of the sexiest women in Hollywood, perhaps he was trying to drive home the unsexiness of the scenes this way.
Also, the main character is a sociopath, so sex to him is no more passionate than it would be to a rapist.
Last time I looked Janeane was pretty cute.
“…unsexy actress like Hilary Swank or Janeane Garofalo?”
Whoa, SNAP! What the hell, Charles, did Garofalo shun you after her last stand-up routine here in Seattle??? Did Swank fail to recognize your intellect when she sailed thru here while pimping her last flick?
I’ve been watching Winterbottom’s films for years and he’s always been hit and miss.
The sci-fi send up “Code 46” was a definite hit with endless closeups of Samantha Morton writhing around drunk on lack of sleep and Tim Robbins’ attentions. That film was a flavorful mix of sensuality, dystopian future and philosophical musings on pre-destiny.
“9 Songs” (which had a prodigous cock in it) was a horrible miss. Indeed, the only reason Kieran O’Brien was cast must have been because of his dick because he is THE ugliest Equity actor I’ve ever seen (and I’m including David Thewlis). And there’s an actress in that one who looks exactly like a 12-yr-old boy. WTF?
“In This World” is a bittersweet tale of an Afghan boy making his way along the illegal immigrant route thru Europe to the U.K.
“The Claim” is a gritty Western about a mean ol’ patriarch played by Peter Mullan and a disintegrating wild west mining camp. (There’s a fair amount of cock handling via prostitutes in that one).
There’s a lot of things I could say about Winterbottom but I think he does have a sense for cock, just rarely the right cock attached to the right actor.
Soooo, here’s the thing: serial killers aren’t really well known for being great in bed. Sexual dysfunction or inadequacy is a more common issue in their pasts, driving them to violence. If you’re capable of having the hot steamy sex, you probably aren’t likely to kill the person you just slept with at the end of it.
Of course, if what you meant to say is that Winterbottom was aiming for hot steamy sex, which doesn’t make sense, but okaaaay, we’ll just ignore the more likely serial killer pathology, and he falls far short of the mark, well then, FAIL again.
Says the girl whose primary knowledge of serial killers comes from the teevee and reading.
Garofalo? I’m not saying she’s ugly but rumor has it she single-handedly turned a tribe of cannibals into vegetarians.
Citing specific actresses as “unsexy” is petty and obtuse. Sexiness is subjective.