When our future robot overlords rise, they will recognize this film as the zenith of humanity’s attempt to process sexuality.
99. The Last of the Mohicans
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe
Directed by Michael Mann. 1992
Because sometimes, you just want a big strapping hero who looks good in leather to kiss you behind a waterfall. Or so I am told.
98. Like Water for Chocolate
Starring Marco Leonardi, Lumi Cavozos
Directed by Alfonso Arau. 1992
Eating and sex have long been intertwined; they are both among the most sensual experiences one can have. This melodrama centers around Tita (Lumi Cavozos), a woman not free to love whom she chooses, whose anguished tears fall into the food she cooks and stokes passion in all who eat it.
97. XX/XY
Starring Mark Ruffalo, Kathleen Robertson
Directed by Austin Chick. 2002
Various sexual pairings featuring three New Yorkers (Ruffalo, Robertson and Maya Stange)? XX/Xwhy not?
96. Wild Orchid
Starring Mickey Rourke, Carre Otis
Directed by Zalman King. 1989
Rourke spent the ‘80s as the king of the overheated erotic thriller and he closed out the decade with a bang…and a whimper. None of this movie really makes sense: Once again, he plays an unfathomably mystery to the opposite sex that can only be understood after what seems like weeks of intercourse.
95. How Stella Got Her Groove Back
Starring Angela Bassett, Taye Diggs
Directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan. 1998
Remember that old Eddie Murphy stand up bit about the woman who finds on a tropical island, lonely, when she meets Dexter St. Jock walking down the beach? Taye Diggs is Dexter St. Jock in this scenario, the younger man who fans Bassett’s dying sexual embers.
94. Love & Basketball
Starring Sanaa Lathan, Omar Epps
Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. 2000
Despite the abundance of balls, basketball isn’t the sexiest of sports – unless you play strip basketball, which is precisely when this romantic drama becomes something else entirely.
93. Wild at Heart
Starring Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern
Directed by David Lynch. 1990
Every David Lynch movie is like a fever dream that the characters within it can’t wake up from. And in this fever dream, Cage and Dern set the world on fire by having sex all the time.
92. The Story of O
Starring Corinne Clery, Udo Kier
Directed by Just Jaeckin. 1975
Somewhere, there was a film producer who saw Jaeckin’s Emmanuelle and said, “Make me the same kind of soft-focus soft-core porn, but make it explicitly about sadomasochism.”
91. Crazy Stupid Love
Starring Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling
Directed by Glenn Ficarra, John Requa. 2011
Ask anyone (especially a comedian) and they’ll tell you that funny is sexy. Which is why the scene where Jacob (Gosling) takes Hannah (Stone) home, planning on executing a one night stand but falling in love, works so damned well.
90. She's Gotta Have It
Starring Tracy Camilla Johns, Tommy Redmond Hicks
Directed by Spike Lee. 1986
Lee’s directorial debut is all about the sexually liberated Nola Darling (Johns) and the three men whose lives she rotates in and out of as it pleases her.
89. Boogie Nights
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. 1997
This is another film whose shifts in tone – from ‘70s porn fantasia to ‘80s VHS-drug nightmare – keep it from being higher on the list. But when Wahberg’s Dirk Diggler films his first scene, with Moore’s Amber Waves, it’s grand.
88. Sleeping Beauty
Starring Emily Browning, Rachael Blake
Directed by Julia Leigh. 2011
There’s sexy-sexy and creepy-sexy and this is a flick that blurs those lines something fierce. Browning plays a high-end escort who gets paid to sleep naked next to old dudes. See? Creepy.
87. White Palace
Starring Susan Sarandon, James Spader
Directed by Luis Mandoki. 1990
Susan Sarandon has been making films that’d feature her in the all-together since the beginning of her career and saw no reason to stop in her 40s, which is when she made this May-December romance. And there is absolutely something to be said for women of a certain age.
86. Barbarella
Starring Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law
Directed by Roger Vadim. 1968
You could probably stop watching after Fonda’s opening-titles zero-gravity strip tease, but then you’d miss the daffiness of a space opera about a woman who saves the universe by having sex with everyone.
85. Shame
Starring Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan
Directed by Steve McQueen. 2011
Michael Fassbender’s giant penis was the butt of many a joke during Shame’s Oscar campaign, but his character’s descent into a sex-addiction tailspin is alternately titillating and repulsive.
84. To Have and Have Not
Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall
Directed by Howard Hawks. 1944
“You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow.”
83. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman
Directed by Richard Brooks. 1958
Even though this adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ play removes the thread of homosexuality that explains why Brick (here played by Newman) wants nothing to do with his wife (Taylor), the film offers the considerable pleasures of watching two of Hollywood’s sexiest stars fence with each other, occasionally while wearing lingerie.
82. The Year of Living Dangerously
Starring Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver
Directed by Peter Weir. 1982
In 1982, Mel Gibson was the sexiest man on the face of the Earth. And Sigourney Weaver was no slouch. So to pair them in a romance set against a brewing revolution in Indonesia … not too shabby.
81. Wild Things
Starring Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell
Directed by John McNaughton. 1998
Teachers and students. Conmen and car washes. Murder and one of the hottest ménages – between Dillon, Campbell and Denise Richards – of the ‘90s.
80. Love and Other Drugs
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Anne Hathaway
Directed by Edward Zwick. 2010
If you think of this as the “Catwoman has all kinds of sex” movie, then you’re in pretty good shape. It’s better than the “kind of maudlin film in which a girl with cancer has lots of sex with a shallow pharmaceutical salesman” it actually is.
79. Eyes Wide Shut
Starring Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman
Directed by Stanley Kubrick. 1999
Few movies about lust are quite as antiseptic as Kubrick’s final film, about a marriage unraveled by temptation, indulgence, and crazy-ass masquerade orgies. Even though there’s copious amounts of Kidman skin on display, it feels like it’s presented under a microscope.
78. Vampyros Lesbos
Starring Soledad Miranda, Dennis Price
Directed by Jesus Franco. 1971
As if vampires weren’t sexy enough, lesbian vampires? Come on!
77. Sex and Lucia
Starring Paz Vega, Tristan Ulloa
Directed by Julio Medem. 2001
A film filled with lust, romance and two hot Spanish female leads had to be on this list. Sex and Lucia is internationally acclaimed and dives into the world of a writer looking for material and he soon finds it between passionate sex with a stranger and a woman who is in love with him. This romance/drama is worth the watch.
76. Titanic
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet
Directed by James Cameron. 1997
Yes, it’s mostly about a giant boat. And Billy Zane’s wig. But it’s also about culture, class, nude sketching and steamy backseat sex.
75. Notorious
Starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. 1946
Hitchcock was a filmmaker in full control of his gifts when he made this crackerjack spy thriller, which starred Grant as an American agent who needs Bergman’s daughter of a Nazi spy to trek down to Brazil and insinuate herself with a band of Hitler’s finest who fled to South America after the war. Of course they fall in love…who the hell wouldn’t fall in love with either of them?
74. Shakespeare in Love
Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes.
Directed by John Madden. 1998
A romantic comedy about the creation of a romantic tragedy, complete with swordfighting, crossdressing and the following line of dialogue: “I saw him kissing her bubbies.”
73. The Lover
Starring Jane March, Tony Leung Ka Fai
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. 1992
A 15-year-old girl living in 1929 French Indochina falls in love with a wealthy Chinese man. They engage in a passionate affair in the weeks leading up to his arranged marriage. Her family eventually encourages the affair so they can pay off their debts. It’s basically Lolita set in Vietnam with a character named Chinaman (it was a different time).
72. Room in Rome
Starring Elena Anaya, Natasha Yarovenko
Directed by Julio Medem. 2010
Alba meets a stranger, Natasha, at a nightclub in Rome. She convinces her to come back to her hotel room for the night. Natasha resists her at first, but as the night continues their relationship deepens as they slowly fall in love. The Spanish know how to make movies.
71. The English Patient
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche
Directed by Anthony Minghella. 1996
This WWII romance won nine Academy Awards in 1996 and it’s no wonder with its storyline between Ralph Fiennes who plays a wounded soldier and the nurse who is taking care of him, played by the beautiful Juliette Binoche. Fiennes has flash backs of a love affair in the past and he enters a world full of romance, politics and tragedy.
70. Angel Heart
Starring Mickey Rourke, Lisa Bonet
Directed by Alan Parker. 1987
As the story goes, Bill Cosby treated the kids on the Cosby Show much like his own children – so when he got wind of the fact that Bonet spent one of her hiatuses having crazy voodoo sex with Rourke in this New Orleans-set murder mystery, he had her fired.
69. Brokeback Mountain
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger
Directed by Ang Lee. 2005
If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then Ennis del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) are the fondest guys in the world, since the only place they can be their true selves is on the slopes of Brokeback Mountain. Love is longing and there are few cinematic manifestations of longing as poignant as this.
68. Maurice
Starring James Wilby, Rupert Graves
Directed by James Ivory. 1987
Here’s a thought exercise: What if Harry Potter and Ron Weasley weren’t wizards, went to Cambridge in the early 1900s, fell in love, and their illicit affair was documented in a stately Merchant-Ivory motion picture chockablock with furtive glances and cord-knit sweaters?
67. My Summer of Love
Starring Natalie Press, Emily Blunt
Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. 2004
You know the old story: two young people from opposite sides of the tracks meet cute, start spending time together, try on dresses, take psychotropic drugs, have lots of eager sex, make a murder pact. And so on and so forth.
66. Once
Starring Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglova
Directed by John Carney. 2006
A heartbreaking romance between two musicians – named only Guy and Girl – who meet in Dublin, collaborate on breathtaking songs, and then go their separate ways. But the songs…they’re so intimate, so pregnant with barely restrained emotion, they are as sexy as anything on this list. Even if they’re always wearing sweaters.
65. Swimming Pool
Starring Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier
Directed by Francois Ozon. 2003
Envy is a fundamentally human trait and for Sarah (Rampling), a British author cresting into the autumn of her years, what she envies is the life of her surprise houseguest in the French countryside, Julie (Sagnier), who sifts through one-night stands like a croupier through cards.
64. Mississippi Masala
Starring Denzel Washington, Sarita Choudhury
Directed by Mira Nair. 1991
Despite his long reign as a Hollywood sex symbol, you can count on one hand the number of sex scenes he’s filmed. So this is a unicorn of a movie — about interracial tensions in the South — with a crackerjack of a sequence in which Washington’s entrepreneurial carpet cleaner finally consummates his romance with Choudhury’s motel clerk.
63. Quills
Starring Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet
Directed by Philip Kaufman. 2000
Here’s a biopic of the Marquis de Sade – as I’m sure you know, the man for whom the term “sadism” is named. So you can imagine just how much carnality is on display. (All of it.)
62. Desperado
Starring Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek
Directed by Robert Rodriguez. 1995
The first time we see Salma Hayek in the film – also the first time American audiences laid eyes on her – she’s crossing a street. And two cars crash in the background, the drivers transfixed by her. By the time she hooks up with Banderas’ revenge-bend gunman – who spends most of the movie thrusting bullets at people with his velvet-clad hips – you can’t really take much more south of the border hotness.
61. Gilda
Starring Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford
Directed by Charles Vidor. 1946
There’s a reason why the inmates of Shawshank Penitentiary loved watching this movie. Because with a flip of her hair, Hayworth could make criminal go straight.
60. Henry and June
Starring Fred Ward, Uma Thurman
Directed by Philip Kaufman. 1990
The first movie to earn both an NC-17 rating and an Oscar nomination, this biographical rompathon follows Henry Miller (Ward) and his wife June (Thurman), who welcome French author Anais Nin (Maria de Medeiros) into their lives.
59. Lolita
Starring James Mason, Sue Lyon
Directed by Stanley Kubrick. 1962
Vladimir Nabokov’s novel was always going to be a tricky one to adapt, given that it’s about the statutorially illicit relationship between the middle-aged Humbert Humbert (Mason) and the barely teenaged Lolita (Lyon). And Kubrick strained against the MPAA’s harsh restrictions. But the tension between what he could show, and could only hint at, lets the viewer fill in the blanks in an even more pulchritudinous fashion.
58. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down
Starring Victoria Abril, Antonio Banderas
Directed by Pedro Almodovar. 1989
An obsessed mental patient (Banderas), an ex-porn star (Abril), and lots of rope – what could’ve been an incredibly uncomfortable kidnapping drama becomes, in the hands of director Pedro Almodovar, a vibrant and explicit farce.
57. Double Indemnity
Starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck
Directed by Billy Wilder. 1944
As classic a film noir as you’ll come across: An insurance agent (MacMurray) falls for a woman (Stanwyck) looking to dispose of her husband. He wants her, she wants money, he helps her, she screws him. No one comes out clean. But it’s the best kind of dirty.
56. Lust, Caution
Starring Tony Chiu Wai Leung, Wei Tang
Directed by Ang Lee. 2007
If you’re not familiar with the term “honey trap,” it’s an attractive, usually young female spy who uses the gifts of her gender to infiltrate, ingratiate and, in some cases, exterminate. In this period piece, set in China during the 1940s, a meek college student (Tang) is recruited to kill a high-ranking member of the occupying Japanese government. But first, she’s got to get very, very close to him.
55. Black Swan
Starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis
Directed by Darren Aronofsky. 2010
Passion. Obsession. Perfection. And that’s just the sex scene between the rival ballerinas played by Portman and Kunis.
54. Risky Business
Starring Tom Cruise, Rebecca De Mornay
Directed by Paul Brickman. 1983
If a teenager dancing around in his underwear is your cup of tea, then bully for you. But if a teenager who becomes a pimp and has rocking subway sex with a hooker that looks a lot like Rebecca De Mornay pops your cork…then you’re in business.
53. Match Point
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Jonathon Rhys Meyers
Directed by Woody Allen. 2005
Any movie with Scarlett Johansson is already sexy. But you can’t top this performance as the mistress to a wealthy family man. Woody Allen’s screenplay is filled with greedy and selfish characters, but Johansson’s lust-driven Nola will haunt your dreams (both good and bad).
52. Indecent Proposal
Starring Robert Redford, Demi Moore
Directed by Adrian Lyne. 1993
You know the deal: Robert Redford’s rich old d-bag offers a delightful, broke married couple (Moore and Woody Harrelson) a million dollars for a night with the missus. Redford makes the d-bag the most charming d-bag you’ve ever seen and, well, 1993 was a very, very good year for Demi Moore.
51. Emmanuelle
Starring Sylvia Kristel, Alain Cuny
Directed by Just Jaeckin. 1974
In the wake of Last Tango in Paris, high-end soft-core porn was a “thing,” so Columbia released this French tour through Bangkok seen through the eyes of the mega-sexual title character (Kristel).
50. The Graduate
Starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft
Directed by Mike Nichols, 1967
Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is a disillusioned college grad. Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) offers him a no-strings attached sexual relationship. It ‘s basically every teenage boy’s MILF fantasy. Hoffman and Bancroft nail their performances so perfectly we ignore the relatively small six-year age gap between the two.
49. The Notebook
Starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams
Directed by Nick Cassavetes. 2004
Set in the south in the 1940s, Ryan gosling romances the well-to-do Rachel Mcadams but they end up being torn apart by their social class standings. Originally a novel by Nicholas Sparks, director Nick Cassavetes made sure to include the steamy kissing-in-the-rain scene from the book, and you can probably guess where the two end up next.
48. Eros
Starring Robert Downey Jr. and Gong Li
Directed by Wong Kar-wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni. 2005
Three directors, each of which has films elsewhere on this list and know their way around cinematic desire, made an anthology film about sex. It can be a bit hit and miss – Soderbergh’s segment, while interesting, is just Downey’s ad exec recounting dreams to Alan Arkin’s therapist – but when it hits, it hits hard.
47. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
Directed by Doug Liman. 2005
It’s like a game of fuck-marry-kill but with just one person: your spouse. (It doesn’t hurt that this is the action-thriller Pitt and Jolie fell in love while making, and you can see those sparks flying…along with the bullets
46. Atonement
Starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley
Directed by Joe Wright. 2007
There is a scene, early on in Atonement, in which Knightley’s manor-born lady meets McAvoy’s son-of-the-help meet in a library, late at night, and make the shelves quake. Then the movie’s all about guilt and war and regret and disease and not-sexy nurses…but it starts really well.
45. The Piano
Starring Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel
Directed by Jane Campion. 1993
This romantic film won “Best Picture” at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993 for a reason. Holly Hunter plays a mute woman in the 1850s that is shipped off to New Zealand for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner. Her husband sells her beloved piano to a local plantation worker, played by Harvey Keitel. Hunter can earn the piano back from Keitel, but it involves giving him music lessons, and a few other things.
44. The Fabulous Baker Boys
Starring Jeff Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer
Directed by Steve Kloves. 1989
Michelle Pfeiffer, draped atop a piano, barely wearing a red dress, singing “Making Whoopie.” Boom.
43. In the Mood for Love
Starring Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung
Directed by Wong Kar-wai. 2000
Lust, longing and the tension between the two is the glue that binds Chow (Leung) and Su (Cheung), neighbors, collaborators, unconsummated lovers. It’s a movie that leaves the viewer aching.
42. Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love
Starring Sarita Choudhury and Indira Varma
Directed by Mira Nair. 1997
If you’re gonna make a movie about the fabled Indian guide to sexual harmony and awesome, you’d better make it this randy
41. Cruel Intentions
Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phllippe
Directed by Roger Kumble. 1999
This modern-day adaptation of Les Liasions Dangereuses – the same source material as Dangerous Liasions (which sits higher on this list) – takes all of the 18th century French palace intrigue and sexual manipulation and sets it in upper-crust NYC, among prep school students, some of which are played by Reese Witherspoon, Selma Blair and Josh Jackson. Gellar brings it in a way she never has since.
40. Marriage Italian Style
Starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni
Directed by Vittorio De Sica. 1964
Loren at her most Loren-iest. Sultry. Smoky. And, even though she’s playing a prostitute who falls for Mastroianni’s businessman, somehow pristine.
39. Gia
Starring Angelina Jolie and Faye Dunaway
Directed by Michael Cristofer. 1998
Tragic story, to be sure: Gia Carangi (Jolie) was a Philly kid who came to NYC to be a model, became the biggest model in the world, until drugs and, ultimately, AIDS took her life at 26. But Jolie is incandescent in the role and fully embodies the hedonistic rebel at the center of this HBO flick. Fully.
38. Dirty Dancing
Starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey
Directed by Emile Ardolino. 1987
Yeah, I know. You’ve seen this movie to death on TNT and VH1 and whatever sexual charge it had has been nullified. But if you remember the effect Patrick Swayze, swiveling hips and classic soul had on a generation of girls who’d spent their youth watching shitty boy bands and hair metal. Liberation is a wonderful thing.
37. Last Tango in Paris
Starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. 1972
Two wounded people meet at an empty Parisian apartment and decide to embark on the kind of anonymous, rambunctious, immolating sexual affair that, occasionally, requires the use of condiments as lubricant. Possibly the best movie to ever earn an X rating upon release.
36. Some Like it Hot
Starring Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis
Directed by Billy Wilder. 1959
Maybe the best descriptor of Marilyn Monroe came from this seminal Billy Wilder comedy: “Look how she moves! It’s like Jell-O on springs.”
35. sex, lies and videotape
Starring James Spader and Andie MacDowell
Directed by Steven Soderbergh. 1989
Back before life was processed through a cell phone screens and streaming windows, Soderbergh broke through with this Sundance gem, about a man (Spader) unable to achieve intimacy – he can only capture it on tape.
34. The Hunger
Starring Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie
Directed by Tony Scott. 1983
David Bowie is a creature out of time, so it made perfect sense for him to play a vampire, opposite the similarly impossible Deneuve, as his mistress and sire. But when Bowie starts to age, mysteriously, they turn to Susan Sarandon’s young scientist for help. Bloodsucking, and other-sucking, ensues.
33. The Talented Mr. Ripley
Starring Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow
Directed by Anthony Minghella. 1999
Lust is at the heart of every film on this list, but when lust is unrequited, it can turn ugly. Murderously ugly. Which is precisely what happens when Tom Ripley (Damon) becomes smitten with Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), who glistens like an Adonis on the sun-dappled beaches of the Italian coast.
32. A Streetcar Named Desire
Starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh
Directed by Elia Kazan. 1951
No one had been as muscularly sexual on screen as Brando was when he first hit the screen, and he never smoldered quite like he did in Elia Kazan’s Tennessee Williams adaptation.
31. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche
Directed by Philip Kaufman. 1988
Daniel Day-Lewis plays a sexually active Czech doctor in the late 60s who is swooned by Juliette Binoche. She thoroughly convinces him to be a one-woman man for her, but the two are soon torn apart by the Soviet invasion. Seduction and politics pair very well together in this flick, but the scenes of Binoche stripping for the first time puts this 1988 film at a whole other level.
30. The Thomas Crown Affair
Starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo
Directed by John McTiernan. 1999
This is a film that exudes class and style and the kind of sex you can have when you have class and style. Bored tycoon Thomas Crown (Brosnan, never better) pulls elaborate heists to stop being bored, which brings him into conflict with an insurance investigator (Russo) whose heart he can’t steal. Also, the sex scenes look like they were shot by Architectural Digest. Lush as shit.
29. 10
Starring Dudley Moore and Bo Derek
Directed by Blake Edwards. 1979
Ah, the ’70s, when you could make a romantic comedy about a man (Moore) going to great lengths to cheat on his wife (Julie Andrews) with a goddess in cornrows (Derek).
28. 9 Songs
Starring Kieran O’Brien and Margo Stilley
Directed by Michael Winterbottom. 2004
What if you made a mix tape, but instead of music, it was people explicitly shagging themselves silly? (Okay, there is actual music, from bands like The Dandy Warhols, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Franz Ferdinand, among others.)
27. Blue is the Warmest Color
Starring Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos
Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. 2013
The explicit, extended dance-mix sex scenes notwithstanding – some may say that lesbians don’t actually have sex like this, while others say it’s a work of fiction, so cut it some slack – this Cannes award winner does get at the youthful quest to find yourself in someone’s arms, regardless of gender.
26. Chloe
Starring Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried
Directed by Atom Egoyan. 2010
Amanda Seyfried going to town on Julianne Moore is worth the price of admission. Whatever you’re charging.
25. Breathless
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. 1960
Jean-Paul Belmondo is a French bad boy (if there is such a thing) on the run from the law. Jean Seberg plays his American girlfriend keeping him an arm’s length away, but it’s her iconic hairdo that stands out in this New Wave flick. Her pixie cut is as hot today as it was in 1960.
24. The Seven Year Itch
Starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell
Directed by Billy Wilder. 1955
Sure, there’s a story here: A faithful husband (Ewell) sends his wife and son to the country for the summer and begins having uncontrollable and hilarious fantasies about how he would seduce the blonde actress (Monroe) who just moved in upstairs. But, let’s be honest: It’s all about Monroe’s most famous dress blowing up.
23. The Postman Always Rings Twice
Starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange
Directed by Bob Rafelson. 1981
A remake of the 1946 film of the same name, Jack Nicholson plays a drifter who gets a job in a rural café run by Jessica Lange. These two 80s heavyweights inevitably succumb to each other’s temptations and plot to hill her husband. Besides Nicholson and Lange in their prime, this movie also showed the kitchen could be a playground for wild, sexual fantasies.
22. Bull Durham
Starring Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon
Directed by Ron Shelton. 1988
“I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.” Costner’s Crash Davis, ladies and gentlemen.
21. The Last Seduction
Starring Linda Fiorentino and Bill Pullman
Directed by John Dahl. 1994
Fiorentino’s Bridget is like a shark, a predator who will do, steal, shag whatever she wants and whoever is standing in the way of getting what she wants. And she always ends up on top. Even when against a chain link fence.
20. Belle du Jour
Starring Catherine Deneuve and Jean Sorel
Directed by Luis Buñuel. 1967
Looking for a respite from her sexless marriage, Severine (Deneuve) decides to become a top-shelf prostitute while her husband is at work – and, in the process, gets to live out her BSDM fantasies.
19. Little Children
Starring Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson
Directed by Todd Field. 2006
We’ve seen a lot of Kate Winslet over the years – like, a lot – but here she manages to be both average (as a underappreciated housewife) and exceptional (in her sexual hunger for Patrick Wilson’s married dad). Laundry rooms have rarely been this hot.
18. Blow-Up
Starring David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. 1966
If you watched Austin Powers and got the sense that it was parodying something but couldn’t put a finger on exactly what – it was this, a super-mod look at Swinging London followed a fashion photographer (Hemmings) who spies a couple in flagrante in the park and starts snapping pics. It’s only when be enlarges those photos that he sees a murderer lurking in the background.
17. And Then God Created Woman
Starring Brigitte Bardot and Curd Jürgens
Directed by Roger Vadim. 1956
Brigitte Bardot… C’mon
16. Bitter Moon
Starring Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas
Directed by Roman Polanski. 1992
Broken couples, bondage and dominance, temptation and revulsion — with Polanski at the helm, what could’ve been a laughable exercise in basic titillation becomes a taut exploration of the depths people will go for emotional resolution.
15. Dangerous Liaisons
Starring Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer
Directed by Stephen Frears. 1988
Sex and power. Gender and status. Passion and cruelty. Glenn Close and John Malkovich as master 18th century manipulators, twisting the fates of Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman – in her screen debut – and Keanu Reeves around their petty fingers. And Malkovich’s seduction of Thurman’s Cecile is truly a sight to behold.
14. Basic Instinct
Starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone
Directed by Paul Verhoeven. 1992
The leg-cross heard round the world. Stone at her most predatory. Douglas at his most baffled by lesbians. An ice pick at its most stabby.
13. American Gigolo
Starring Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton
Directed by Paul Schrader. 1980
Apparently, it’s hard out there if you’re as impossibly handsome as Gere’s Julian Kaye, getting paid to have sex with beautiful women (and, occasionally, men). I mean, yeah, he gets framed for murder, but still.
12. A Walk on the Moon
Starring Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen
Directed by Tony Goldwyn. 1999
Diane Lane plays a married woman who encounters a random stud who unlocks her true self. Yeah, there’s been a lot of that on this list. Here, though, the random stud is Viggo Mortensen, playing a ’60s bohemian sex god.
11. Before Sunrise
Starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy
Directed by Richard Linklater. 1995
There is no sex in this movie, the story of a pair of strangers who meet on a train and spend a magical day together in Europe. They share words, and a few kisses, but it’s as intimate as anything else on this list.
10. Mulholland Drive
Starring Naomi Watts and Laura Harring
Directed by David Lynch. 2001
Lynch movies all feel like waking dreams and this one is no different. But there’s a romance at the center of this one—a desperate romance, between Watts and Harring (playing women lost in Los Angeles, for different reasons)—that gives it a sultry, yearning spark.
9. 9 1/2 Weeks
Starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke
Directed by Adrian Lyne. 1986
So much of this film has become cliché in the almost 30 years since its initial release: the remote, mysterious man (Rourke) who’s all about control; the repressed, undersexed woman (Basinger) who just needs to be drawn out of her shell; the hypersexualization of groceries. But, you know, it all still works.
8. Secretary
Starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal
Directed by Steven Shainberg. 2002
Hollywood has never been overwhelming good at depicting dominant-submissive relationships without being overheated or resorting to poking fun. But this one — about a lawyer and his executive assistant who find, in each other, exactly what they need — takes BSDM for what it is. Hot as shit.
7. The Dreamers
Starring Michael Pitt and Eva Green
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. 2003
What kind of movie do you make when you’ve got three impossibly beautiful people (Green, Pitt and Louis Garrel), an apartment in Paris, a general distaste for clothing, and a bathtub built for two? Exhibit A.
6. Bound
Starring Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon
Directed by The Wachowskis. 1996
The Wachowski siblings’ first film, a low-budget neo-noir, asks two simple questions: What if the gun moll (Tilly) was smarter than her gangster boyfriend and can anyone resist Gina Gershon in a dirty tank top?
5. Y Tu Mama Tambien
Starring Maribel Verdú and Gael Garcia Bernal
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón. 2001
Two teenaged friends (Bernal and Diego Luna) head out on a road trip, with a older woman they meet at a wedding (Verdu) along for the ride. They are all at various stages in their lives: the boys are on the verge of manhood and the woman is, well…not. And they all, in various pairings, have sex with each other. Afterwards, none of them are the same.
4. Body Heat
Starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan. 1981
Kasdan set out to make a modern-day film noir, with Turner – making her film debut – as the femme fatale and Hurt as the sap drawn into her web of deceit, lust and greed. Also, everyone is sweating all of the time. Could be because it’s set in Miami; could be because of all of the sex.
3. Don't Look Now
Starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland
Directed by Nicolas Roeg. 1973
A couple, shattered by the drowning of their daughter, seek solace in Italy, wrestle with the occult, and engage in a sex scene so explicit that not only was the film rated X in the UK, but there is still some debate over whether there was actual penetration.
2. Unfaithful
Starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane
Directed by Adrian Lyne. 2002
The seemingly immortal Diane Lane did her career-best work here, as a wife and mother who gets caught off-guard by a swarthy Frenchman (Olivier Martinez) who lives in an eternally smoky bookstore and always seems to get stuck in rainstorms. Her poor husband (Richard Gere) never had a chance – not when so much candle-lit lovemaking is involved.
1. Out of Sight
Starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez
Directed by Steven Soderbergh. 1998
It’s the scene in the bar that does it – which blends the seduction small-talk between George Clooney’s larcenous escaped convict and Jennifer Lopez’s underestimated U.S. Marshall with the hotel room strip-tease. Two movie stars, at the height of their sex appeal, in the hands of a filmmaker who knows how to take his time, like sipping a good bourbon. (That scene in the trunk ain’t bad either.)
