All those kisses during the Superbowl commercial breaks on Sunday night got us in the mood to talk about macking. To summarize: loved the Audi John-Hughes-style prom night kiss (though it only really works if we assume she did give him her consent to kiss her at some earlier point — maybe a note passed in math class? — otherwise it’s a bit sexual assault-y); really loved Will Ferrell’s mysterious bus ride smooch that you might have missed; really wished GoDaddy had had the balls to make that sexy + smart kiss actually hot and not awkward mouth-noisy icky (and we kind of hate the implication that a person can’t be both sexy AND smart).

Anyway, if you ask a room of people about the best movie kiss ever, chances are that rainy scene from The Notebook starring Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling will get more than a handful of votes.

But if you ask us, the kiss that wins is the one between Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. Don’t get us wrong, that Notebook kiss is good smooching, too — we just think the Brokeback one is even better. It’s rougher and more dangerous — not out in the hills or by a lake, but at home where one of their wives could show up at any moment! Everything is on the line, everything, but they just can’t deny their love! See? (Apologies for the unfortunate music overlay):

So, in honor of all the V-Day smooching soon to be upon us, we’d like you to vote on your favorite kiss. Watch the Notebook scene here and the Brokeback scene here and then pick your favorite (or suggest your own, even hotter alternative).

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****THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED****

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While you’re waiting to win the Fandango Movie Date Night prize, check out their VALENTINE’S DAY MOVIE GUIDE for tips on the perfect movie to see together. Supplement your prize (or have a backup if you don’t win) with a cute VALENTINE’S DAY GIFT CARD FROM FANDANGO for your sweetie (see below). And don’t forget to order a copy of 150 SHADES OF PLAY for after the movie!

Our Bodies, Ourselves. Judy Blume. Flowers in the Attic. If you grew up in the ’80s, chances are these books had a pretty big impact on your sexual development. In other words, as far as V.C. Andrews’ book goes, you probably have a bit of a thing for incest plot-lines. Forbidden love, up in the attic, with your hot sibling! Swoon. But it’s not the only story to explore the erotic potential of fictional incest. Think Angels and Insects, for example, or all those daytime soaps where two lovers find out they’re actually siblings separated at birth. Bummer for them! Hot for the rest of us!

So, tell us… what other titles belong in this incest genre? It could be a book, movie, TV show, highbrow, lowbrow, whatever. We’ll compile a list and publish it on our site soon. You’re welcome.

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All top ten lists are, by their nature, subjective, but this one is especially so — because one person’s “WTF” sex scene is another person’s monkey spanking material. (Exhibit A: we’d qualify a lot of porn as WTF.)

A few qualifications: David Lynch probably deserves a place in this list (okay, David Lynch definitely deserves a place in this list!), but because we’ve already written an entire post dedicated to his effed up sex scenes, we left him off this time. And LAST TANGO IN PARIS should probably be on here, but we are just so damn sick of talking about that freakin’ butter scene. The SHOWGIRLS pool scene is hilarious and weird and WTF hall of fame-worthy, but we already covered that one, too.

Also, we tried to steer clear of most cinematic depictions of rape, because it didn’t seem right to include those scenes alongside crushed-chicken sex and apple-pie onanism. “WTF” just seems a little too jokey of a response to the graphic violent sexual assault in a movie like IRREVERSIBLE. Oh, and we mostly stayed away from horror movies, too, even though it’s kind of a rule of thumb that the scarier the movie, the more messed up the sex is — we just didn’t have the stomach to go there (if you do, you’ll probably enjoy this list).

Which is not to say that some of the sex in the list below isn’t kill-me-now bleak. In fact, you’ll probably want to rent MARY POPPINS after making it to number one. But just in case you actually want more, check out our earlier post, The 20 Most Disturbing Sex-Themed Movies.

10. CRASH (1996)
James Spader plays a TV commercial producer who enjoys lots of vanilla sex with his wife until he’s involved in a car crash and overnight finds himself aroused by three-car pile-ups and the injuries they cause. Turns out there’s a whole community of people who feel the same way (we suppose this notion was more shocking back in 1996, when there wasn’t an internet chat room for every fetish under the sun). The entire movie is pretty WTF, but the, er, climactic moment occurs when Spader’s character has sex with Rosanna Arquette’s open leg wound. Yep, he did. Please don’t make us type that again.

9. PINK FLAMINGOS (1972)
Does it count as a WTF if it’s a John Waters film? Isn’t his name on the billboard kind of a heads-up? You say, “WTF, I want my money back” and the ticket guy says, “WTF, it’s a John Waters movie, what did you expect?” But even for Waters, the scene where a couple has sex with a live chicken between their bodies is out there. And that’s no rubber chicken. It’s an actual, freshly dead chicken from the butcher shop that gets crushed between them while they do it. We’re pretty sure that chicken didn’t consent to be in a three-way chicken snuff film. (Apparently, the crew ate it afterwards.)

8. THE DOOM GENERATION (1995)
How to pick just one fucked up sex scene from this fucked up road movie that makes FREEWAY look like THE LITTLE MERMAID? Could it be when a teen boy eats his own semen? Or how about when another teen boy is castrated by a pair of garden shears, shortly after a MMF threeway? No, we think the winner is when Rose McGowan’s character is raped with a statue of the virgin Mary. Yep, that’ll do it.

7. AMERICAN PIE (1999)
Masturbation is as American as apple pie! The “feel-good” movie of the year. We’re annoyed at ourselves for including this in the list, but how could we not? That would be like compiling a list of the Top 10 Movie Sex Scenes Involving Dairy Products and leaving out Marlon Brando and the butter.

6. HOWARD THE DUCK (1986)
We will forgive Lea Thompson anything — even her TV show CAROLINE IN THE CITY — because she starred in SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL. But we wonder whether she can forgive herself for starring in HOWARD THE DUCK. In this movie, her character strips down to her underwear and attempts to seduce a talking duck, who is on Earth to stop some kind of alien invader. Check out their flirty banter as they lie in bed together (in other words, Thompson read this script and then agreed to star in this movie):

Howard the Duck (checking out Thompson’s butt in her skimpy undies): “I have developed a greater appreciation for the female version of the human anatomy.”
Thompson: “I can’t seem to find the right man.”
Duck: “Maybe it’s not a MAN you should be looking for.”
Thompson (coy): “Do you think I might find happiness in the animal kingdom, Duckie?”
Duck: “Like they say, doll, love’s strange. We could always give it a try.”

She proceeds to fondle him and his duckie plume gets a hard-on, which he embarrassedly apologizes for like he’s just come all over her thigh. She climbs on top of him and Duckie freaks out and says he can’t do it. “I was just kidding,” she says (riiiight), and then the movie goes on like we weren’t just about to witness Lea Thompson having alien duck sex. For the record, this was a Spielberg and Lucas production. WTF?

 
5. BROWN BUNNY (2003)
When we watch Paris Hilton give some douche-bag guy a blowjob on screen, it’s because she’s a total airhead and lost track of her sex tape (oops!). When we watch Chloe Sevigny give some douche-bag filmmaker a blowjob on screen, it’s art. In case you hadn’t heard, Chloe Sevigny’s blowjob was 100% un-simulated. We’re not so sure about Paris Hilton’s.

4. THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE) (2009)
In this Dutch horror film, a German surgeon-slash-mad scientist kidnaps three tourists and turns them into a human centipede by stitching their mouths to each others’ anuses. He refers to the creation as his “pet” and attempts to train “it.” He is vastly entertained when the woman at the center of the centipede is forced to swallow excrement from the man at the front.

Just in case you were starting to think that this film was just a meditation on fascism and Nazi medical experimentation (what, you didn’t get that?!), the direct-to-DVD sequel, THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 (FULL SEQUENCE) (2011), shows a man watching the first film on his laptop while masturbating with sandpaper. Is that what you call meta porn? The man goes on to build his own human centipede out of twelve people — except because he’s just a regular ol’ pervert and not a mad scientist, he uses a staple gun. Oh, and then he rapes the back end of his human centipede with barbed wire.

Reviewing the original in the Chicago Sun Times, Roger Ebert wrote, “I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don’t shine. Wait, did Ebert just make a joke about the ass being a place where the stars don’t shine?! We really, really hope he did. Ebert went on to give the sequel zero stars, which is less shocking than the fact that Ebert had to watch the movie in the first place.

In case you were wondering where such depravity springs from: the director of these movies got his start as a director on the Dutch Big Brother TV series.

3. FAT GIRL (2001)
This French film directed by Catherine Breillat will make you want to lock up your daughters until they’ve passed menopause.

Elena and Anais are two sisters on a family vacation — Elena is 15 and gorgeous; Anais is 12 and chubby. At the start of the movie, they’re both virgins — Elena says she wants to wait for love, while Anais insists it’s better to get it over with by sleeping with a “nobody.” Then they meet a sexy Italian law student who sneaks into the girls’ bedroom at night and tries to seduce Elena… while Anais, who pretends to be sleeping, watches through her fingers. Elena is unsure about sleeping with him and so he convinces her that anal sex doesn’t really count as losing your virginity. You don’t see the resulting anal sex; instead you hear what’s happening (it’s clearly painful for Elena) while watching Anais watching through her fingers — but the effect is at least as disturbing as any of the other more explicit scenes on this list.*

Later in the movie — major major plot spoiler alert here — Elena and and her mother are killed by an axe murderer; Anais escapes but the dude follows her into the woods and rapes her. But Anais tells the police it was consensual — because he was that “nobody” she’d been looking for. Good times.

* For the U.S. version of semi-consensual underage deflowering, see the opening scene of KIDS. With bonus HIV infection! WTF.

2. JACK FROST (1997)
A serial killer is genetically mutated in a car wreck on the way to his execution. In a David Cronenberg movie, he would then become turned on by car wrecks and gaping wounds. Instead he becomes a homicidal snowman. At one point he attacks Shannon Elizabeth in the bath and proceeds to rape her with his carrot penis — at least, we think that’s what’s happening in the scene. But then again, he’s a snowman, so it’s kind of hard to tell. Maybe he’s just stabbing her with his penis-carrot? Kind of makes us miss Cronenberg’s wound fucking.

1. ANTICHRIST (2009)
This Lars Von Trier movie makes his BREAKING THE WAVES seem like a rom com. First you get marital sex — between Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg — that is deeply disturbing thanks to the way it is inter-cut with scenes of their baby boy falling out of his crib and dying — just as the couple climaxes. Dead baby! WTF? But that’s just the foreplay.

Later, Gainsbourg’s character nails her husband’s leg in place using a drill and then smashes his balls so hard they actually come off. She then gives him a handjob. We’ll say that again: she gives his twig-with-no-berries a handjob and when he climaxes — is that even physiologically possible?! — he ejaculates blood. And then — seriously, there’s actually more to come — she takes a pair of scissors and cuts off her own clitoris. Hey, who needs a cuddle now?!

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Most Sensual Congratulatory Kiss
Sally Field to Daniel Day Lewis (Best Actor for Lincoln). Her hands cradling his face and their slow gentle lip-on-lip action put his wife’s lifeless kiss two seconds before to shame.

Best Feminist Moment
A tie between:
In her acceptance speech for Best Actress for Zero Dark Thirty, Jessica Chastain thanked director Kathryn Bigelow, saying “You’ve said that filmmaking for you is not about breaking gender roles, but when you make a film that allows your character to disobey the conventions of Hollywood, you’ve done more for women in cinema than you take credit for.”
AND
After President Bill Clinton introduced Lincoln, Amy Poehler said, “What an exciting special guest! That was just Hillary Clinton’s husband! Oh my god!”

Most Awkward Moment
Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement recipient Jodie Foster, in a speech trying desperately to be funny and profound about singledom, sexual orientation and privacy, but just coming across as painfully weird

Worst Fashion Theme
Plunging neckline (almost) down to the belly button, revealing underboob cleavage and making everyone nervous (hopeful?) for a nip slip. Worst offenders: Jessica Chastain & Amy Poehler.

Cutest Couple
Ben Affleck (winner, Best Director & Best Movie for Argo) & Jennifer Garner (presenter of Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical to Hugh Jackman for Les Miz)

Oddest Couple
Jodie Foster & Mel Gibson, there together as BFFs

Worst Shoes
Lena Dunham, winner of both Best Actress in a TV Comedy and Best TV Comedy for Girls. If you cannot walk in your shoes without them making you look like you have polio, either wear some bedazzled Chuck Taylors or go barefoot. Otherwise, it ironically cramps your famous unorthodox, do-it-my-way style. No one can see your shoes in these floor-length ball gowns anyway.

Best Romantic Dis
Tina Fey: “You know what, Taylor Swift? You stay away from Michael J Fox’s son [the Mr. Golden Globe of the evening].”
Amy Poehler: “Or go for it.”
Fey: “No, she needs some me time to learn about herself.”

Best Sexual Dis
Tina Fey: “Quentin Tarantino [who was nominated as Best Director for Django Unchained] is here — the star of all my sexual nightmares.”

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Maybe you think that nominating specific lines in romantic comedy as bad is kind of superfluous. But that’s probably because you’re thinking only of Kate Hudson’s oeuvre — and forgetting about, say, ANNIE HALL or MOONSTRUCK. Remember when Nicolas Cage told Cher:

“Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn’t know this either, but love don’t make things nice — it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed.”

Man, those lines are as perfect as a snowflake.

And then there’s Nora Ephron (R.I.P.), who single-handedly revolutionized the romantic comedy. The genius of her movies is that there’s something in them for everyone — maybe you swoon over Harry declaring his love for Sally in the middle of a New Year’s Eve party (“I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”), or maybe you prefer the oddball humor of the “baby fish mouth” Pictionary scene, or Harry exclaiming in horror, “That’s it? Some faceless guy rips off all your clothes, and THAT’S the sex fantasy you’ve been having since you were twelve?” And do you remember hearing the line “I’ll have what she’s having” for the very first time?

This is what romantic comedy can be, at its best. Below is what it can be at its worst. (By the way, we limited ourselves to romantic comedies, which is why you won’t find such corkers as “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” from 1970’s LOVE STORY or “Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo,” from 2005’s STAR WARS: EPISODE III.)

Em probably shed a tear during each of the scenes below, despite simultaneously rolling her eyes. Lo refuses to admit seeing most of them, but if she did, she rolled her eyes all the way into the back of her head.

10. AUTUMN IN NEW YORK (2000)

Will (Richard Gere): “You don’t want to die! You want to live!
Charlotte (Winona Ryder): “You don’t think I’ve been through this so many times? I don’t want to give people hope when there isn’t any!”
Will: “Why not? Maybe we need hope.”

Oh right, Will — because your need for a little “hope” is more important than Charlotte coming to terms with the fact that she’s fucking dying. And because you’re an aging playboy who finally — at age, what, sixty-something? — fell in love (with someone three decades younger), she’s supposed to pretend she’ll get better just to celebrate the fact that you love her, you really luuuurrrve her? Try picking on someone your own age next time.

9. FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (1994)

Carrie (Andie MacDowell): “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.”

Oh come on. How about if we punched you in the face for saying that? Do you think you’d notice that? Also, any movie that has Hugh Grant choose Andie MacDowell over Kristin Scott Thomas is just plain wrong.

8. SERENDIPITY (2001)

Sara (Kate Beckinsale): “You don’t have to understand. You just have to have faith.”
Jonathan (John Cusack): “Faith in what?”
Sara: “Destiny.”

First of all, this is the most ridiculous plot line we’ve ever heard of — you meet the guy of your dreams and you decide to intentionally lose his number and hope that fate or faith or destiny or some shmaltzy Hollywood screenwriter will deign to bring you back together. And second: we’re pretty sure that not even Meryl Streep could pull off this line… and yet they hired Kate Beckinsale.

7. NOTTING HILL (1999)

Anna Scott (Julia Roberts): “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”

Oh, infantilism, it’s so charming! The only thing that could have made this line worse is if she’d decided to deliver it in baby talk. Oh, and also: you’re a freakin’ movie star! (Anna Scott the character, we mean.) You make millions of dollars. And yet you’re worried that this is a little intimidating to someone of the opposite sex — a little emasculating, even — and so you downplay it all and turn yourself into a giggling schoolgirl. Woman up!

6. HITCH (2005)

Hitch (Will Smith): “Life is not the amount of breaths you take, it’s the moments that take your breath away.”

in a tie with…

Hitch: “Any man, anytime, has the chance to sweep a woman off her feet. He just needs the right broom.”

Did this screenwriter actually go into a Hallmark store and steal lines from fridge magnets and novelty kitchen aprons?

5. AS GOOD AS IT GETS (1997)

Melvin (Jack Nicholson): “You make me want to be a better man.”

You can almost hear the drum-roll in the background in the moments leading up to this line: here it comes, five… four… three… two… one… BAM! We like to think that we hated this line the very first time we heard it, that we detected a self-satisfied smirk on Nicholson’s face when he uttered it. Or maybe we just hate it because it’s been more overplayed than a Cher song in a gay night club. Mostly, though, we’re just pissed that this movie ruined what is — we admit — an admirable sentiment. Imagine if you accidentally quoted this movie? The horror!

4. LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS (2010)

Jamie (Jake Gyllenhaal): “Sometimes the things you want the most don’t happen and what you least expect happens. I don’t know — you meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet one person and your life is changed forever.”

Wow, that’s deep, Jake. That’s poetry. That’s, like, something we’ve never been able to put into words before — that feeling — and you just nailed it. If you just took out all the uppercase letters and added a few line breaks, you’d have a prose poem on your hands. Lovers the world over would weep in gratitude at finally having the words to express their feelings.

3. GHOST (1990)

Molly (Demi Moore): “I love you. I really love you.”
Sam (Patrick Swayze): “Ditto.”

This is one of those lines — which later becomes a major plot point — where you can practically hear the screenwriter gleefully rubbing his or hands hands, like, Man, that is pure rom com gold!
Also, a grown man who can’t say those three little words? We’re sorry, but we saw DIRTY DANCING and we’re just not buying it.

2. JERRY MAGUIRE (1996)

Jerry (Tom Cruise): “You complete me.”

The commitment-phobic sports agent lays it all bear for Dorothy (Renee Zellweger) in front of a bunch of her sister’s friends. We shudder to think how many couples subsequently included this line in their customized wedding vows. (Because Hollywood says it so much more beautifully than all that “in sickness and in health” crap.) We’re pretty sure this line was included just to reassure the girly girls in the audience that they hadn’t just watched a sports movie. Even Em gagged on a spoon.

1. JERRY MAGUIRE (1996), again!

Dorothy: “You had me at hello.”

Yep, JERRY MAGUIRE successfully scored the two top spots in this list. We considered combining the two into one entry, but they are each so bad — and for very different reasons. Our major beef with this one — besides its general mawkishness — is that it’s weak weak weak. (Well, that and the fact that Zellweger always squints her eyes like a newborn puppy.) The dude already told her he didn’t really love her like crazy cakes, he was just fond of her son… and then all he has to do is show up looking all Tom-Cruisey and she forgives him on the spot. As if not being in love with someone is something you get past on your way home from the supermarket. The subsequent, inevitable meme (You had me at restraining order; You had me at two kegs; etc.) made us feel only slightly better about this line.

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If you spend a lot of time analyzing movie sex scenes like we do, you might find yourself rolling your eyes at how many on-screen couples manage to have sex without ever showing any skin…or who fall asleep with a sheet covering them just so…or who always put on a shirt and underpants when they get out of bed to pee, no matter how raunchy things just got. Where’s the nudity? Where’s the raunch?

And even when there is nudity, it isn’t always what it seems: It’s not uncommon these days for actresses to wear band-aids over their nipples during shooting, and then nipples are added later, in CGI (with the actresses’ full permission). We’re not sure what this accomplishes, exactly — except put a bunch of body doubles out of work.

Fortunately, there are still some directors around who are very, shall we say, comfortable with on-screen nudity. And we mean the real kind — not the CGI kind. Only after we finished this top 10 list did we realize it was entirely male, which we suppose shouldn’t surprise us — after all, most of the nudity is female. But we dug up male nudity — or, at least, equal-opportunity nudity — where we could. You’re welcome!

10. Lars Von Trier
Is there anything Lars Von Trier is afraid of when it comes to movie-making? (Except perhaps slapstick humor — we can’t quite see him going with a banana peel gag.) This Danish filmmaker makes very smart films, which might make you feel like less of a perv about all the nudity if the works weren’t also extremely disturbing. He is one of the founders of the purist avant-garde film movement Dogme 95, which shuns special effects and other Hollywood gimmicks — which is perhaps why he’s known for showing unsimulated sex in his films like THE IDIOTS (1998) and ANTI-CHRIST (2009), as well as full-frontal nudity of both the male and female variety. Oh, and his company, Zentropa, also produces hardcore pornography. Who doesn’t have a hardcore porn-producing hobby these days?

9. Judd Apatow
Judd Apatow was so annoyed at a test audience’s squeamish response to a penis in WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY (2007) –which he wrote and produced — that he announced, “I’m gonna get a penis or a vagina in every movie I do from now on. … It really makes me laugh in this day and age, with how psychotic our world is, that anyone is troubled by seeing any part of the human body.” That might explain the closing-credits penis montage in SUPERBAD (2007), which Apatow produced. “America fears the penis,” he said. “And that’s something I’m going to help them get over.” The offending schlong in WALK HARD — which appears behind John C. Reilly’s head in an orgy scene — made the cut, though from a different angle than the original, to reduce the delicate audience’s exposure to too much ballsac. Apatow also produced FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL (2008), which features Jason Segel’s awesome nude breakup scene.

8. Adrian Lyne
Adrian Lyne’s movies are pretty much synonymous with dark sex — think, 9 ½ WEEKS (1986), INDECENT PROPOSAL (1993), FATAL ATTRACTION (1987), LOLITA (1997), and UNFAITHFUL (2002). But on the set, while shooting nude scenes, Lyne claims the atmosphere is much lighter. He says he sets the mood by acting like a “demented cheerleader,” shouting encouragement like, “Good, good, good. Give me a little more of that. Show me your beast. Water, water! Great!” He’ll even pop a bottle of bubbly to help his actors relax, like when shooting that kitchen sink scene between Glenn Close and Michael Douglas in FATAL ATTRACTION. Directing this sort of thing, he says, is like a “bizarre kind of menage a trois” with the actors.

7. John Waters
Like Lars Von Trier, John Waters is a fan of equal-opportunity, full-frontal nudity and unsimulated sex scenes — but only Waters includes real live chickens between his actors’ bodies while they do it (that was 1972’s PINK FLAMINGOS). And while we find it hard to defend his infamous dog poop scene, we will say that most of his nudity makes a point — his life’s work examines sexuality, homosexuality, and gender issues.

PINK FLAMINGOS was part of a trio that Waters labeled the TRASH TRILOGY, along with FEMALE TROUBLE (1974) and DESPERATE LIVING (1977). These early films are the filthiest and starred his personal troupe of actors known as the Dreamlanders, including Divine and Mink Stole (with names like that, you could hardly expect them to keep their clothes on); he’s also a fan of casting pornstars.

Until THE WIRE came along, John Waters was pretty much the only reason most Americans ever thought about Baltimore.

6. Steven Soderbergh
So there’s no dog poop in Soderbergh’s films, and you probably won’t find any snuffed chickens, either. This director manages to be incredibly racy (e.g. SEX, LIES, and VIDEOTAPE, 1989) while maintaining his mainstream Hollywood status with movies likes CONTAGION, ERIN BROCKOVICH, and the OCEAN’S ELEVEN franchise. You’d think that to achieve this, you’d have to focus exclusively on female nudity — but he just proved this theory wrong with MAGIC MIKE (2012). Okay, sure, there was plenty of female nudity in there, too, but we’ll take it.

In 2009’s THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, about a Manhattan call girl, Soderbergh tried — unsuccessfully, in our opinion — to prove that pornstar Sasha Grey could actually act. But with that film he did manage to make one of the raciest R-rated movies we’ve ever seen.

His position on this list was almost rescinded for calling his 2002 movie with Julia Roberts and Blaire Underwood “Full Frontal” when it didn’t contain any nudity, let alone full-frontal nudity.

5. Michael Winterbottom
How could you not shoot nude scenes with a name like that? Winterbottom (see, you’re giggling, right?) is most famous for the porn-lite (or maybe just porny?) film 9 SONGS (2004), which follows one couple’s sexual activity — masturbation, bondage, oral sex, erect penises, labia, unsimulated intercourse, the lot.

He warmed up for this film with 1998’s I WANT YOU, about a mute 14-year-old boy who likes to record couples, in all their naked glory, having sex. If you never thought you’d see a semi-erect penis (with balls!) in an R-rated movie, then you need to see this movie.

His latest film is the forthcoming TRISHNA, an India-set reworking of Tess of the D’Urbervilles (yes, that novel from Fifty Shades of Grey!), which apparently features a whole lot of nude Frieda Pinto.

4. Bernardo Bertolucci
He made LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972), okay? Can we just stop right now? Alright, he also made THE DREAMERS (2003), in which a young American student hangs around nude with a Parisian brother and sister. As you can imagine, all sorts of sex games ensue. And who could forget Liv Tyler’s boobs and pubic hair in 1996’s STEALING BEAUTY?

3. Blake Edwards
Some of this director’s nude (or near-nude) images are surely burned into your brain: Bo Derek on the beach in 1979’s 10 (oh yeah, and the full-on nude orgy in the same film); the glow-in-the-dark condom scene in 1989’s SKIN DEEP; a topless Julie Andrews (!!) in 1981’s S.O.B…. it’s okay, it’s okay, Edwards was married to Mary Poppins until his death in 2010. And it was all very meta: S.O.B. is a film within a film about a fading movie producer who wants to get a famously wholesome actress (whom he happens to be married to, get it?) to appear nude on screen to resurrect his career. So it was a statement about gratuitous nudity, you see?

2. Philip Kaufman
Philip Kaufman’s 1990 HENRY & JUNE was the first film released by a major studio to be rated NC-17. That’d be Henry Miller, in case you’re wondering. If you want to know exactly how nude this film gets, you could rent it… or you could just read the unintentionally hilarious “parents’ guide” to the film on IMDB. (Apparently parents need to be warned about any “moaning” in the movie, in addition to scenes when “There are two women that are briefly shown doing an acrobatic trick nude.”)

Kaufman is also responsible for QUILLS (2000), the de Sade movie which brought BDSM to Hollywood before E.L. James was even penning Twilight fan fiction. Not to mention 1998’s UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, which features not nearly enough Daniel Day-Lewis nudity, if you ask us. But fans of Lena Olin’s naked form will not be disappointed.

1. Edward Zwick
Edward Zwick may not have directed as much on-screen nudity as the other people on this list (unless we missed something in 1989’s GLORY), but he takes the number one slot because he is the only director, to our knowledge, who got naked himself while shooting a nude scene.

The movie in question is 2010’s LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS, which apparently a lot of people liked, though we have no idea why. But it sure does have a lot of nudity! Anne Hathaway was nervous during the nude scenes and when Zwick asked how he could make her more comfortable, she asked him to disrobe. He then climbed into bed, naked, with Hathaway and her co-star, Jake Gyllenhaal, to help lighten the mood.

We bet he’s kicking himself now that Demi Moore never asked him to join her in that nude bathtub scene in 1986’s ABOUT LAST NIGHT.

HONORABLE MENTIONS…

David Lynch
He of course belongs in the top 10, but we’ve already written about him in depth on our site this year (check out the Top 10 Effed-Up Sex Scenarios of David Lynch), so we’re just trying to be fair.

Michael Cristofer
He should probably get an award for special contribution to Angelina Jolie nudity, thanks to 2001’s ORIGINAL SIN and 1998’s GIA.

Ken Russell
We’re recognizing him for his extended nude wrestling scene between two men in WOMEN IN LOVE — it featured full-frontal male nudity in 1969! And Paul Verhoeven should really be on here, too, for SHOWGIRLS (1995) and BASIC INSTINCT (1993): Sharon Stone once called herself and Michael Douglas “the horizontal Fred and Ginger of the nineties” because of how choreographed their main sex scene was in BASIC INSTINCT. It took three days just to shoot that one scene! Now that’s commitment to the nude cause.

This post originally appeared on SundanceChannel.com

While the topic of women’s rights doesn’t have the box office draw of a bunch of dudes getting wasted at a bachelor party, say, or a bride-to-be getting diarrhea in the middle of the street, there are many excellent movies that cover various aspects of the War on Women (either directly or metaphorically)—workplace discrimination, violence against women, restricted access to abortion, sexual harassment, and all that fun stuff. So when you make a bag of popcorn for one of these movies, not only will you be entertained, you’ll also be spending some quality time thinking about women’s rights. In other words, you can feel virtuous about that time on the couch. You’re welcome!

10. WORKING GIRL (1988)
What was it about the eighties? Sure, we enjoyed ERIN BROCKOVICH kicking ass in a push-up bra in 2000 (especially the “634 sexual favors” scene), and pretty-in-pink Reese Witherspoon certainly put a few sexist lawyers in their place in 2000’s LEGALLY BLONDE. But for a comedy about women not being taken seriously in the workplace—whether it’s due to their looks, their background, their catty and competitive female boss, etc.—you can’t beat WORKING GIRL, with Melanie Griffith riding the Staten Island ferry to the tune of Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run.” The film almost (almost) convinced us that actress Melanie Griffith is just pretending to be a total airhead. Of course, this being the eighties, the kick-ass heroine spends a remarkable amount of time in her skivvies, and says things like, “I have a head for business and a bod for sin. Is there anything wrong with that?” Okay, Jessica Rabbit. Still, we are forever indebted to this film for reminding men everywhere that itchy scratchy “sexy” lingerie is not at the top of most women’s birthday wish lists.

9. ANTICHRIST (2009)
In the world of director Lars Von Trier, the battle of the sexes is a literal one—gory, violent, and almost unbearable to watch. ANTICHRIST was a polarizing film: some viewers found it unforgivably misogynistic, while others found it a gorgeous meditation on guilt, grief, and sex—and the intertwining of the three. It’s an arthouse horror film, which means you get smashed testicles (Willem Defoe’s) and a self-butchered clitoris (Charlotte Gainsbourg’s), and yet the violence is meant to serve a higher purpose: demonstrating the meaningless of everything. Or maybe it’s a lesson in just desserts for a man who is obnoxiously sure he knows what’s best for his little wife. Either way, Von Trier’s message is clear: the battle of the sexes will not end well for anyone. In case you need another reminder—less bloody, but emotionally, just as gory—may we suggest IN THE COMPANY OF MEN (1997). ANTICHRIST airs Friday November 16th at 12 am on the Sundance Channel.

8. THE ACCUSED (1988)
THE ACCUSED did more to undermine the “she was asking for it” bullshit rape “defense” than any other movie to date. In it, Jodie Foster (who won the Best Actress Oscar that year) plays Sarah Tobias, a poor, uneducated woman who goes to a bar in a mini skirt, gets high, and then gets gang-raped, while a bunch of other men cheer on the attack. If you came of age around the time this movie was released, as we did, you probably still get chills remembering it. (Which is probably why the 2007 movie THE BRAVE ONE got made. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but how awesome was it watching Jodie Foster grab a gun to avenge her own sexual assault and the murder of her husband? Pretty awesome, if you ask us.) THE ACCUSED is the ne plus ultra of rape movies; other titles lean more toward the rape-and-revenge genre—so satisfying to watch, even if feminist critics are divided on the topic. Some of our favorites in this area are THELMA AND LOUISE (1991), THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2011), IRREVERSIBLE (2002), RAPE ME (2000), EXTREMITIES (1986), and SUDDEN IMPACT (1983), the Dirty Harry film that spawned the catchphrase, “Go ahead, make my day.”

7. BLUE VELVET (1986)
Is Isabella Rossellini, as nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens, a femme fatale, a damsel in distress, a symbol of domestic violence, or the Oedipal mother every son secretly wants to fuck? And does Kyle MacLachlan, as college student Jeffrey, want to save Dorothy or fuck her or hit her or be mothered by her—or all of the above? It depends on which critic you ask. Suffice it say, this role conveys the incredibly complicated relationship Hollywood (and beyond) has with female sexuality. In the end, Jeffrey falls for sweet-faced Sandy (Laura Dern), who dreams about robins as a sign of hope. Which certainly didn’t earn David Lynch any Feminist of the Year awards. Still, it’s hard to blame someone for choosing robins after they’ve lived in Lynch’s world for a while.

6. THE BURNING BED (1984)
Sometimes the war on women is perpetrated by an army of one, a person who is supposed to love and honor his wife/girlfriend. Recent statistics suggest that one in four women has experienced domestic violence and that between one and three million women experience abuse by a former or current partner every year. Which makes this 1984 made-for-tv movie — starring Farrah Fawcett and based on a 1980 non-fiction book — still depressingly relevant. It tells the story of the thirteen years of brutal abuse Francine Hughes suffered at the hands of her husband before she set fire to their house, killed him and was ultimately found not guilty for it by reason of temporary insanity. It’s one of the most realistic and therefore chilling portrayals of domestic violence made for the screen, small or big. For better or worse, Hollywood can’t seem to get enough of domestic violence storylines. To list just a few: WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT, ONCE WERE WARRIORS, BOYS ON THE SIDE, SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, THE COLOR PURPLE, ENOUGH, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES, KINDERGARTEN COP (seriously!), RAGING BULL, THIS BOY’S LIFE, WHERE THE HEART IS… Man, we’re depressed just reciting that list.

5. I’M NOT THERE (2007)
Six actors depict Bob Dylan in this po-mo bio-pic, and the one who received the most acclaim (not to mention a Golden Globe award and Oscar nomination) is Cate Blanchett. Somehow it took a woman to convey the very Bob-Dylan-ness of Bob Dylan. The film is as much about who Dylan isn’t as who he is, and in fact, Dylan was known for fabricating autobiographies for himself in his early years. Dylan dodges various identities and then is consumed by them, he trades one identity for another and still another, and he’s still “not there”—which should sound pretty familiar to anyone familiar with the women’s movement. Cate Blanchett turns Dylan into a kindred spirit of sorts—while proving that anything men can do, women can do just as well, if not better. Other women theatrically and successfully impersonating men include Linda Hunt in THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (1982), Tilda Swinton in ORLANDO (1992), and, of course, Lady Gaga as a drag king at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. Tune into the Sundance Channel on Tuesday, November 20 at 5:45 pm to watch I’M NOT THERE.

4. THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975)
Based on the 1972 satirical thriller of the same name, this cult classic follows a young mother/photographer who begins to suspect that all the pretty, passive, submissive housewives in her new suburban neighborhood are actually robots controlled by their husbands. Not to be confused with the 2004 remake starring Nicole Kidman, which sacrilegiously abandons the entire feminist message of the original in favor of a women-against-women plot and terrible jokes. Apparently the producers of the remake were operating under the assumption that by 2004 we were living in a post-feminist world. But the fact that Roe v. Wade is in danger of being overturned, that men are legislating forced, medically unnecessary ultrasounds, that rape victims (especially in the military) don’t receive justice, and that women are still only paid 77 cents for every dollar men make today, we’d say the original stands up pretty well almost forty years later.

3. THE CRUCIBLE (1996)
Arthur Miller’s screenplay for this film is based on his 1952 play of the same name, which was inspired by his friend Elia Kazan’s testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee—to avoid being blacklisted in Hollywood, Kazan named a bunch of (Communist) names. The story is just as compelling in 2012, though now the false accusations, misogyny, and hysteria are more likely to call to mind U.S. Representative Todd Akin, who famously claimed, while explaining his “pro-life” position, that women who are victims of what he called “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant. We’re pretty sure Akin would vote for bringing back burning at the stake if he could. Catch THE CRUCIBLE on the Sundance Channel Saturday, November 24 at 1:45 am.

2. 9 to 5 (1980)
The feel-good sexual harassment and discrimination comedy of the decade! We love the song, we love the film, we love Dolly Parton, we love Lily Tomlin, we even love Jane Fonda. We’re pretty sure that every woman who’s ever been harassed in the workplace, called “my girl” by her male boss, paid less than men for the same work, hit the glass ceiling, or been looked in the boobs instead of the eyes has fantasized about 9-to-5-style revenge. As Parton’s character Doralee says to her boss, “If you ever say another word about me or make another indecent proposal, I’m gonna get that gun of mine, and I’m gonna change you from a rooster to a hen with one shot! And don’t think I can’t do it.” If new laws had theme songs, “Working 9 to 5″ would be the Lily Ledbetter Act’s. For a sexual harassment movie without a bouncy uplifting soundtrack, try NORTH COUNTRY (2005) with Charlize Theron instead.

1. ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968)
Maybe you think this is just a horror film about the spawn of—plot spoiler alert—Satan. But Mia Farrow’s Rosemary character also happens to be a pretty good stand-in for a woman’s right to choose. Creepy so-called doctors claiming they know what’s best for a pregnant woman? Check. Junk science? Check. A decision-making process completely out of the mother’s hands? Check. Ideology and doctrine to blame? Check. Threats to a woman’s sense of her own sanity? Check. A woman backed into a corner and forced to do what everyone else wants? Check. Check. Check. Necrophilia joke? Okay, that’s just in the movie. For a more literal take on the right to choose, check out VERA DRAKE, IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK, and even DIRTY DANCING (hey, at least they actually went through with the abortion in that movie, rather than allowing the character a convenient last-minute miscarriage).

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This article originally appeared on SundanceChannel.com

ROSEMARY’S BABY is part of Sundance Channel’s SCARY POLITICS series — it airs on Election Day, November 6th, at 9PM, at which point we’ll know if progressive values prevailed or if Satan won.

You hear a lot these days about Republicans rolling back women’s rights all the way to the ’50s and ’60s: vowing to defund Planned Parenthood; to allow employers to decide whether or not their female employees can have their contraception covered; to put the rights of an embryo above those of a woman via the Personhood Amendment; to outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape, incest, and threats to not only the health but the life of the mother. They won’t even commit to laws ensuring equal pay for women doing the same work as men!

Take the viral video recently making the rounds, featuring the classic women’s lib anthem from 1964, “You Don’t Own Me” by Lesley Gore. After a variety of women (some famous, some not) lip sync all the lyrics (“Don’t tell me what to do…I love to be free to live my life the way that I want”), Gore says to the camera, “It’s hard for me to believe, but we’re still fighting for the same things we were [in the 60s]. Yes ladies, we’ve got to come together, get out there and vote, and protect our bodies. They’re ours. Please vote.”

Another piece of ’60s pop culture that’s scarily relevant to today’s political landscape is a film now airing on the Sundance Channel: the 1968 classic horror film ROSEMARY’S BABY, based on the bestselling 1967 novel of the same name, which tells the tale of a young woman who’s tricked into conceiving the Devil’s spawn in late 1965. (The baby’s due in June of the next year, get it? Born 6/66!) “You Don’t Own Me” could have been its theme song.

The film is directed by Roman Polanski, who isn’t exactly the poster boy for the feminist freedom fight against injustice (he’s still wanted in the U.S. for unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl when he was 43, back in 1978). And yet ROSEMARY’S BABY is a perfect expression of the growing feminist movement of the ’60s: it captures the tension between the old-school traditions of a patriarchy built on female subjugation and the new-found power and will of the modern woman who is curious, smart, and fiercely independent.

At the start of the film, Rosemary Woodhouse is actually pretty old-school herself: a naive, Catholic, country girl who’s now a homemaker in the big city, married to a D-list actor whom she dotes on. He walks in the door, and she’s got a sandwich ready for him. But when he and his newfound besties, a geriatric couple who live next door, start controlling her every move, including every aspect of her pregnancy, she starts getting suspicious — and starts fighting back.

The craziest thing about this movie — besides the Satanic orgy with all the naked AARP members — is how many scenes call to mind topical political issues of today:

Read the rest of this post on the SUNDANCE CHANNEL blog.

This list originally ran here on the SUNDANCE CHANNEL.

Some things to keep in mind about our list: To make the cut, the films actually had to have some redeeming qualities (so, sorry BOXING HELENA and HUMAN CENTIPEDE!). We tried to pick films that represented ten different extremes — after all, variety is the spice of (sex) life! And while some of the “extremes” in this list are indeed criminal, others are simply lifestyle choices — and in no way do we mean to impugn the latter by including alongside the former.

Have fun walking on (the cliff edge of) the wild side!

10. 
BELLE DE JOUR (1967)

Catherine Deneuve, fabulously dressed in outfits designed by the then-little-known Yves St. Laurent, stars as an upper-class, Parisian housewife who can’t bring herself to have sex with her husband when he comes home at night — but fucking strangers for money at the local brothel in the afternoons seems to be no problem. (“Belle de jour” is the French term for a day lily, which only blooms during the day.) Some might think the story was boundary-pushing for its time, but get this: it’s based on a novel published in 1928! Directed by Luis Bunuel, promoted by Martin Scorsese for its 2002 DVD-release, and ranked #56 in Empire magazine’s list The 100 Best Films of World Cinema.

Runner Up in the Prostitution Category: VIVRE SA VIE

9.
BREAKING THE WAVES (1996)

Non-monogamy often gets a bad wrap, and BREAKING THE WAVES doesn’t exactly reverse that trend. When a Norwegian oil-rig worker breaks his neck and loses his ability to perform sexually, he encourages his simple-minded wife to take new lovers and report back about her escapades. As her affairs grow more deviant and his recovery improves, she mistakes correlation for causation. Needless to say about a Lars von Trier film, it does not end well. Called one of the 10 best films of the 1990s by both Roger Ebert and Martin Scorsese.

Runners Up in the Polyamory Category: BELLE EPOQUE, UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, HENRY & JUNE

8.
SICK: THE LIFE & DEATH OF BOB FLANAGAN, SUPERMASOCHIST (1997)

This is probably the least Sundance-y inclusion on our list (thanks to the nail-in-the-penis footage), and yet it was indeed a Sundance Film Festival documentary.  In fact, it won a Special Jury Prize. SICK details Flanagan’s use of masochism not only for sexual gratification, but for regaining some control over his body, which was ravaged — and ultimately defeated by — by cystic fibrosis.

Runner Up in the Masochism Category: THE PIANO TEACHER

7. 
CRASH (1996)

Not to be confused with the 2004 Academy Award winner for best picture about race relations in L.A. No, this 90s movie — based J. G. Ballards’s 1973 novel of the same name, directed by David Cronenberg and starring James Spader and Holly Hunter — is all about symphorophilia: sexual arousal from staging and watching a disaster. In this case: car crashes. It received crazy mixed reviews: Roger Ebert gave it 4 out of 4 stars; we gave it a big goose egg for making soda come out our noses during the ridiculous sex scenes. Still, it won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes that year. Go figure.

Runner Up in the Paraphilia Category: Pixar’s CARS (just kidding)

6.
SPANKING THE MONKEY (1994)

This is probably the closet thing you’ll ever get to a lighthearted film about incest, except for maybe THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE (but with that, the incest was just a side plot, so it doesn’t count). Still, SPANKING is pretty dark — which is to be expected when your main character ends up in a sexual relationship he’s not happy about with his own mother (we mean, if he were happy about it, that’d be a whole ‘nother story). It won the Audience Award at Sundance and the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.

Runners Up in the Incest Category: THE WAR ZONE and THE HOUSE OF YES

5. 
KISSED (1996)

It’s a challenge to make necrophilia seem romantic and hot, but Canadian filmmaker Lynne Stopkewich kinda pulls it off in her film adaptation of Barbara Gowdy’s awesome short story “We So Seldom Look on Love” (from her short story collection of the same name). The book gets away with more, but the movie holds it own thanks to Molly Parker’s creepy performance (Parker showed up later in a few episodes of SIX FEET UNDER and more recently in DEXTER — guess she kinda has that death-obsessed look). Plus, it’s got the craziest money shot we’ve ever seen.

Runners Up in the Necrophilia Category: QUILLS and CLERKS

4.
SHAME (2011)

Starring Michael Fassbender and his penis, SHAME is the least sexy movie about sex — because it’s not about desire, but about compulsion and unyielding need, which is rarely pretty (despite Fassbender’s perfectly toned abs and glutes). The film wore it’s NC-17 rating with pride, and it worked: SHAME became the second-highest grossing film with that rating, just behind SHOWGIRLS.

Runners Up in the Sex Addiction Category: AUTO FOCUS and DECONSTRUCTING HARRY

3.
LOLITA (1962 and 1997)

First of all, if you have not read this book yet, don’t even think about watching these movie adaptations. In fact, don’t even think about finishing this Top 10 — go download Nabokov’s 1955 novel for your Kindle or Nook right now and then come back. We’ll wait.

Got it? Good. Now, without giving anything away, we CAN tell you that these two productions — the first by Stanley Kubrick and the second by Adrian Lyne — are two totally different stories, so different in fact that it’s hard to believe they’re based on the same novel. Each is a vivid reflection of the time in which it was made, and what you could get away with cinematically (though Lyne’s much more blatantly erotic version still had a hard time finding an American distributor). The former is a goofy comedy-drama, the latter is all lyrical, dark and serious. (We’re partial to the 1997 version as a better — but still imperfect — representation of the novel.)

Neither film won any major awards, which is no surprise: no film adaptation, past or future, could ever capture the greatness and complexity of the original novel — they’ll always be slight disappointments, even if they are decent films.

Runners Up in the Pedophilia Category: HAPPINESS and HARD CANDY

2.
9 1/2 WEEKS (1986)

In the sexual control freak category, there is of course the classic 9 1/2 WEEKS. What starts off as a hot, experimental, Cosmo-inspired fling — fun with blindfolds and strawberries, private strip teases, playful cross-dressing, and public sex — ends as a toxic relationship about control, manipulation and degradation (and not the fun, consensual BDSM kind).

It had a $17 million budget for director Adrian Lyne but only grossed $7 mil at the U.S. box office. At a pre-screening of 1000 people, only 40 people stuck around until the end, with 35 of those people saying they hated it. It was nominated for three Golden Raspberries, including worst actress. But — and this is a big “but” — it became a cult classic and, thanks to video sales, eventually grossed more than $100 million internationally. Even Roger Ebert gave it 3 1/2 stars for the believable chemistry between Kim Bassinger and Mickey Rourke. So while it’s a bit cliche by now, we feel we would have been remiss in our duties had we not included it in a Top 10 of sexual extremes.

Runner Up in the Control Freak Category: LAST TANGO IN PARIS

1.
SECRETARY (2002)

Unlike 9 1/2 WEEKS, this is the tale of a successful — and consensual — BDSM relationship. It’s really one of the only decent positive depictions of a dom/sub relationship in film. And despite the bondage gear and the spanking episodes and the power plays, it’s quite an adorable little love story. The fact that it’s feminist — Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character figures out what she wants and actively gets it — is just icing on the kinky cake! SECRETARY took home the Independent Spirit Award for best first screenplay and a Gotham Award for best breakthrough performance by Gyllenhaal.

Runner Up in the Feel-Good BDSM Category: THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE
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