In a strange and often poignant follow-up, German filmmaker Jochen Hick returns to California eight years after his celebrated 1997 hit Sex/Life in L.A. to film a sequel, Sex/Life in L.A. 2: Cycles of Porn. Here, he finds that—surprise!—L.A. remains a pretty dang sleazy, down-and-dirty spot.

Focusing on the lives of gay men involved with pornography, we meet the inhabitants of a cyber-voyeur hotel, in which several young men live for free but have to be exposed 24/7 on a Web site. We also catch up with some of the sexually active men from nine years previous, as they discuss their relationship to sex and how it’s evolved over the years.

Perhaps most fascinating is the age shift—the fact that older men have become a staple of gay porn. But rather disturbing is his coverage of barebacking porn, in which gay men mount each other sans protection. It’s an odd section of the film, and Hick, to his discredit, never asks any truly challenging questions about the ethics of creating unsafe-sex porn. — Matthew Hays