Whenever journalists run out of material to write about, or want to give their mouths a rest from kissing Socialist politicians’ asses, they compile lists. Here’s one featuring the “Sexiest Movies“, for example.
Now as any fule kno, “sexy” is as much in the eye of the beholder [sic] as “taste” is when comparing, say, wines. What causes paroxysms of delight in one may cause another to gag — such as a sweet dessert wine, a dry red wine, or seeing Rosie O’Donnell in leather.
My apologies… give me a moment, here:
Anyway, I think I’ve made my point. Here are the movies adjudged “most sexy” by whatever people answered the survey:
I must admit I haven’t seen all of them, but let me state that homo / lesbo movie sex scenes do nothing for me — they turn me on about as much as watching animals mate on NatGeo TV shows — which eliminate some from the list altogether.
I am likewise uninterested in movies whose aim is to seduce an underage virgin girl (or boy), which takes care of Cruel Intentions, American Beauty and Notes On A Scandal, none of which are sexy other than for prurient interest. (Also Lolita: the movies and the novel.)
I think we need to define what constitutes a sexy movie: one raunchy scene (e.g. Basic Instinct ), a whole bunch of nudity with some sex (Eyes Wide Shut ) or explicit sex scenes.
Let me clear the latter out of the way first: 9 Songs, Gaspar Noël’s Love and Catherine Breillat’s Romance and Anatomy of Hell (French: Anatomie de l’enfer ) are pretty much just bonkfests all the way through. (The last three are also, whether by design or by mistake, among the most depressing movies ever made, and 9 Songs isn’t far behind. You have been warned.) Shows that have sex as the central theme are seldom sexy, which is why 50 Shades and Secretary, for example, are terribly unsexy. (I thought Secretary was funny, which just shows my taste.) If you’re going to watch a movie just for sex, rent Oui Girls, Up ‘N Coming or The Young Like It Hot and have done with it.
As for the rest: the Jack Nicholson version of The Postman Always Rings Twice is sexier than any of the movies on the list, as is Dennis Quaid’s The Big Easy (Ellen Barkin: “I haven’t ever had any luck when it comes to sex.” Dennis Quaid: “Well, chère, your luck’s about to change.”)
I haven’t seen Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona because I’m not a huge fan of his movies, but I’ve been told that it’s brilliant — unlike all his other stuff except Midnight In Paris, which is — so I’ve put it on The List.
So there you have it: twelve of the thirteen “sexiest” movies fail the Kim Test for sexy. Whether that says more about me than it does the respondents, I’ll leave up to you.
Shallow people watch movies for the sex.
Starting in the 50’s movies have been on a downward tread to total retardedness. I’ll take a 40’s noir over just about anything out there. Subtleness is an elixir.
Your list is different from mine. The one movie you don’t have that works with my wife is”Dirty Dancing”.
Regarding ‘sexy’ films; mainstream sex films generally have too little sex, filmed awkwardly to avoid a strong rating, and porn films generally have too little plot acted too awkwardly to be believable.
The core problem being that sex is awkward. Seen without the haze of hormonal interest, it reminds us a little too strongly that on some levels we are animals. This is why straight people are turned off by homoeroticism focused on their own sex. Men exposed to lesbian eroticism may be turned on by on of the parties (and similarly for women and get eroticism) but watching ones own sex bed-romping smacks of the ‘nature films’ they used to show us in school, with insects extruding and receiving various protuberances. It’s vaguely creepy.
I have low tastes, and have enjoyed any number of frankly pornographic films. The only ‘erotic’ film I consider a full bore success is the 1975 STORY OF “O”. It is, in my opinion, a great deal more erotic that the notorious book on which it is based, which tends to drone.
That isn’t a list of sexy movies.
It’s a list of sexually-oriented movies, and the only “sexy” thing about most of them is some nudity, mixed in with a dark anti-sex message.
Back before Fifty Shades of Grey (Gray?) made it to the screen, I discussed it with a woman in the Sierra Club* who had read the thing. I haven’t desired to waste my time. I said that it was Young Adult Fiction for people who felt too old to be reading Young Adult Fiction anymore. I’ve read Story of O, and yes it does drone, but it was written as some sort of love letter by the author, a Frenchwoman, to her lover, the publisher, so it had some sort of literary pretension. The relationship of the author and the reader also ensured that it got published with minimal editing.
*I’ve said before, perhaps here, that there are a lot of women in the Sierra Club, but, they are like the men in Alaska; The odds are good, but the goods are odd.
I can honestly say, with no small amount of pride, that I have never seen ANY of the movies listed or mentioned in this post. None.
As you said, “sexy” is as different to 350 million people as the 350 million are themselves. Watching movies with folks acting through the “big nasty” does nothing for me. Why should I pay today’s prices for soft porn partial skin and rumpled bedsheets when I can invest that money in something that will please my Significant Other and get me closer to my intended destination? When she comes home to lit candles, a bottle or two of her favorite wine, and “her music” playing softly, that’s what works in our house. TV, Netflix, none of those distractions ever comes into play. We are the only things getting turned on around here.
cirby stole my thunder. I’m pretty sure I’ve only seen two of the titles on the list, and I checked out of one of them when they decided we needed to see Kevin Spacey jerking off in the shower. Affection between people can be depicted without gratuitous humping & pumping. To wit, one of my favorite grown up love stories, 84 Charing Cross Road.
If you want your date to come out of the theatre In The Mood, the black-and-white classic l’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934) is unsurpassed AFAIK.
There are no sex scenes as such. It’s also an enjoyable movie for men, not a pandering tearjerker or fairy tale. The denouement, after the scenes of sorrow and longing, will getcha. It’ll get anyone.
I haven’t seen any of the movies on your list. I did once see the movie from which you got the picture of the fat chick in leather. I would happily watch it again as long as I could fast forward through everything except the scenes with Dana Delany.
It’s not “my” list.
Schofield’s Law of popular culture; We remember the popular culture of eras past so fondly because, mercifully, we don’t actually remember all that much of them.
Why do I bring this up? Because TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT came out in 1944, and I will bet that there were plenty of ‘Woody Harrelson’s around. They have faded into deserved obscurity, and Bogart hasn’t.
I greatly enjoy the fruits of the video revolution. Being able to actually own movies and watch them when you damn well want to is wonderful. But they come with a downside; with the advent of durable video storage like DVDs, how long will it take us to forget, for example, the Disney LONE RANGER?
Give me the brain grater! That was a DISNEY MOVIE? I thought it was some idiot indie company that gave entirely too much latitude to the writer who wanted to deconstruct (with a hammer) the Lone Ranger story as told by sane adults. A dead crow hanging out of Johnny Depp’s hair? And he looked like he was experimenting with makeup for his Jack Sparrow role. Squanto in the story of the Pilgrims, who mourned the death of everyone in his village, did not dress that way. It’s doubtful the Pilgrims would have let him live, let alone into their camp to tell them how to ensure their crops grew well.
I like a lot of Disney work, but their live action films have always been hit-or-miss, and the misses have frequently been stinkers. The idea of doing a Lone Ranger remake in this day and age of ethnic over-sensitivity was ridiculous when LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER came out back in 1981, much less 2013.
Also, will somebody please make Disney STOP going back and trying to make films out of THE JUNGLE BOOK? They’ve done it, what, five or six times and haven’t even come freaking CLOSE?
They’ve tried five times? I’ve been ignoring them so much I thought it was just once, but I could never say when it was.
The only Disney live action movie I want to see is the one they used as the basis for animating Peter Pan, that was filmed on a bare soundstage. I couldn’t tell you who played Peter or Wendy or Captain Hook, but I saw a short clip of it decades ago, and it was like a Shakespearean play with its lack of scenery/distractions.
This reminds me of the joke about the difference between the feather and the chicken.
Sex is subjective, it kind of depends upon which side of the mountain you are standing on when viewing, when I saw the movie ‘Tom Jones’ over 50 years ago and I was 19 years old it was pretty interesting, I saw the same movie a year ago on my TV and it was a bit funny, kind of. Same with the real nasty stuff, over 30 years ago my wife (now ex) and I rented the movie ‘Deep Throat’ when the kids were gone to summer camp and we watched about half of it and both looked at each other and agreed it was boring just watching poking and sucking without much of a plot.
In order for a movie seen to be interesting sex there needs to be a strong emotional attachment to the characters and a bit of suspense and excitement with a bit of skin, nothing compares with the small of a woman’s back and the swell of a hip, and then leave the rest to the imagination. I used to see some of the soft core stuff on cable years ago and it was stupid and the bit of hard core was about as nutty as watching a gynecologist give a lower plumbing exam which I never hope to see. As stated above, bonking is not a spectator sport.
Kim, that link goes to The Sun. You are not their target audience. Their target audience is those barely able to read.
My people.
At the top of my list is Claude Lelouch’s, “A Man and A Woman”.
Oooohhhh stop that. Anouk Aimee…
How about swash-buckling?
1938, Errol Flynn in a loose adaptation of Howard Pyle’s ROBIN HOOD!
Danny and Peachy and John Huston… THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING!
STORY OF O.
My Very Significant Other and I saw it in a artsy theater in the 1970s.
Outside on the sidewalk, [redundancy alert] angry feminists paraded against wimmen-folk going ‘all-in’.
We thought the movie’s loose adaptation was too soft by magnitudes, the writers/directer(s) and talent tried to play safe.
Although… the book instigated a life-time of writing erotica in your humble correspondent.
LE MANS with James Garner.
Noise! Crashes! Lusty groupies!
And as I near my dotage, I get all a-quiver watching cooking shows.
That Guy Fieri… I tell ya!
God damn you Kim. I can never un see Rosie. Oh God make it stop.
Wow, wife and I just watched the ‘Big Easy’ and that one really wears well over time. “Dennis Quaid’s The Big Easy (Ellen Barkin: “I haven’t ever had any luck when it comes to sex.” Dennis Quaid: “Well, chère, your luck’s about to change.”)”
Thank you because that was my first time watching that delightful movie.
I would push “Body Heat”, “Original Sin”, and “The Hot Spot” for (dis)honorable mention. Lots of heat and twists and turns in the plot lines.
All of the movies on this list have something in common: I have never seen any of them. And I feel no need to change that.
In addition, out of the 13 films on the list, I only recognize four titles. I’ve never even heard of the other nine.