This Paul Thomas feature won Best Film at AVN this year, so I thought I'd check it out. And I miss Sunrise Adams, so I wanted to see how she's doing these days.

First impression: Oh yeah, this is why I hate Vivid discs. Four inescapable minute-long ads, and some more bullshit after that before I can access the menu. God, I fucking hate that. Yes, I could FF them, but they each had their own chapters, so I had to do it over and over. I hate, hate, hate having to futz around before I can get to anything. Goddamn it.

There are two major themes in this movie: sex addiction and choppy editing. That's not a joke -- the sudden cuts and lack of transitions must be a deliberate stylistic choice.

The plot is pretty light, but that's fine. Randy Spears loves his wife; on the other hand he loves squalid, dangerous sex with hookers. Can he control those urges and build a nice, happy family with the lovely, pregnant Ava Vincent? (Guess not.)

The film basically follows Randy from one encounter to another, and in between he feels guilty about them. The most interesting thing about this movie is its structure: There are a ton of sex scenes (10 or 11), and they're all short, some as short as three minutes or so. Not all of them are consummated with pop shots. There are repeated, brief pairings of the same characters, particularly Spears and Dru Berrymore as his go-to prostitute/dominatrix. And within each of these short scenes, the shots are very short -- sometimes you get literally 15 seconds of a position, and that's it. Then there's a jarring cut, no transition attempted, to a totally different position in a different part of the room.

It's an interesting choice. I'll stop short of calling it a good one. It could be tough on viewers who are conditioned to expect the specific kind of flow we always get in porn scenes. And if you see something you like, well, you're not going to see it for long.

Pros: Hey, those are Adams' real breasts, the ones I remember. I had assumed she had them done before she started her contract. Good gaddlemighty, she's beautiful.

* Good acting. Spears is always reliably good, and he has to carry the movie -- he's on screen an awful lot. He plays the furtive, closet sleazebag just right. Berrymore does a nice job with her wise-hooker role. Sunrise handles her dialogue (not that she has much) very capably. Vincent could play the sweet wife role in her sleep. The characters aren't exactly complicated, but no one does a poor job, and that's rare enough.

Cons: I was watching with interest, but I wasn't "viewing with a purpose." If I were looking for something to whack to, the speed with which Thomas gets in and out of the scenes would be a drawback, even though the sex mostly looks pretty good, while it's happening.

* There's a non-sex sequence that doesn't belong in the movie. Most of the plot is consistent and well integrated, but I don't know why we need Randy taking a walk with his senile dad in the wheelchair. What the fuck?

* Ava Vincent looks great as usual, but she has about one minute of sex in this movie. Seriously, that's it. I mean it, like 60 seconds. Damn.

Bottom line: I wonder if the brevity of the sex scenes, and of the individual shots during those scenes, is some kind of experiment in the science of what's "good for couples." Maybe some couples would like to see sex scenes that don't dwell on repetitive bang-bang-bang for minutes on end. After all, in 15 seconds of doggy, haven't you seen about all you're going to see?

Is that what made this an award winner? I know, I know, ads in AVN made it an award winner. But maybe people are looking for something like this. It is unique.