Kinky Romance Featuring Marvel And DC Stars, Stream On Tubi

The plot of Secretary is as intimate as it is weird: after a young woman with a history of self-harm seeks out a new job, she ends up working as a secretary for an overbearing attorney. Business and pleasure begin to mingle when she discovers that her boss is into BDSM and, surprisingly enough, she likes being bossed around and spanked.

However, both of them struggle with their kinky desires, struggling against their mutually naughty needs and the shame their desires cause.

The cast of Secretary is great, especially the kinkster couple at the heart of the narrative. James Spader is magnetically intense, and you don’t have to be a Fetlife account to appreciate how magnetic his intensity is in scene after scene.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is his perfect counterpart, matching his dominant energy with a performance that is simultaneously sultry and submissive.

Their chemistry dazzled audiences when this movie premiered over two decades ago, but trust me when I say all the kinkiness of Secretary hits way differently if you mostly know the lead actors from their respective superhero films. Spader played Ultron in the MCU and Gyllenhaal played Bruce Wayne’s old flame Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight.

The result is a film where Ultron bends Batman’s girlfriend over for an intense spanking session, and that’s just the tip of the BDSM iceberg awaiting comic geeks who stream this film.

Despite (or perhaps because of) its very spicy content, Secretary was a modest financial success. The movie ultimately earned $9.3 million against a budget of $4 million.

While not a monster hit, Secretary was a real critical darling: it received numerous awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination for Gyllenhaal.

Speaking of critics, Secretary has a critical score of 78 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics generally praised the movie for upending the traditional romantic comedy formula with its quirky, kinky story. And while Spader is superb in this role, critics mostly lavished praise on Gyllenhaal’s fearlessly vulnerable performance.

As for me, I thought both performers were a revelation. I was mostly familiar with Gyllenhaal from genre fare like Donnie Darko and The Dark Knight, and I mostly knew Spader as Ultron from the MCU and Robert California from The Office (the Avengers found out that you don’t, in fact, mess with the lizard king).

In Secretary, the performers seriously benefit from the more intimate setting which allows them to showcase their acting talents without any big budget distractions.

Additionally, while the movie is not without some problematic moments, Secretary deserves praise for being such a sex-positive film, one that shows how liberating their new sexual dynamic is for each character. We live in a persistently puritanical culture, one in which even young people are complaining about sex and sexuality onscreen.

After wading through endless puriteen discourse where young audiences complain about seeing anything more than a kiss onscreen, Secretary’s open celebration of even the kinkiest intimacy seems like a breath of fresh air.

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Will you similarly find Secretary a naughty masterpiece or will you want to spank me for recommending it? You won’t know until you stream it for free on Tubi. If this movie is how you find out you have a thing for Ultron controlling when you get to pee, though, I’m sorry.

Or maybe that should be “you’re welcome.”