Defending The Paperboy

Millennium Entertainment

Nicole Kidman as Charlotte Bless in "The Paperboy."

As part of the magazines Hollywood Issue, writers riff on the movies of 2012.

In a year packed with unhinged films (The Master; Holy Motors; Cloud Atlas), The Paperboy was the most unhinged, irresponsible and unapologetically trashy of them of all. For example: At one point, Nicole Kidman, as a lustful pinhead, and John Cusack, as a death-row inmate, enact what the director Lee Daniels described as a telepathic sex scene, in which the two reach orgasm solely by leering at each other from across the room. And this isnt even the most outlandish scene: theres one in which Zac Efron is stung by a jellyfish, and then urinated upon by Kidman, who once won an Oscar for playing Virginia Woolf.

So what exactly is defensible here? For one thing, The Paperboy embraces everything the years more tasteful films carefully avoided: lust, sex and all the mad desires that guide (or misguide) so many of our actions. In fact, despite or maybe because of all its sex, silliness, madness and jellyfish, The Paperboy may have been the years least cynical film. Its trash, yes. But its t! rash you can believe in.

Check back on Friday for a photo portfolio of celebrities featured in the Hollywood Issue.