The 30 Sexiest Movies of All Time

The horror genre is full of exploitative fare with sexy coeds nixing their knickers before getting offed by some masked, socio-psycho slasher. Well, X is technically that, but it’s also a lot more. It’s a skilled filmmaker (Ti West) executing quite the self-aware, sex-positive picture with a stellar cast at its core. So, yes, there’s graphic violence and gore, but there’s also a lot of headboard action from the likes of Kid Cudi, Mia Goth, Brittany Snow, and Jenna Ortega.

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Joe Wright’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s late-19th-century portrait of Russian high society stars Keira Knightley and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a pair of aristocrats who should, but absolutely cannot, keep their eyes and hands off one other. Panting with anticipation, the two act out this seductive dance—she, dripping in opulence; him, oozing with sexual impulse—eventually giving in to an affair. And, sure, it’s lacking when compared to the original text, but damn if it isn’t hot on that big screen.

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A departure for director Mira Nair, whose Salaam Bombay! is a cinematic masterpiece, Kama Sutra is an erotic depiction of love and all its consequences. Though difficult to watch at times, Nair’s tale of love somehow glows—the light dancing off bare bodies and the jewel tones signature of the country. As for the players, you have Tara (Sarita Choudhury) and Maya (Indira Varma), friends-turned-foes, each tapping the ancient sex manual for reasons all her own.

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Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan drop trou in this big-screen adaptation of the love-to-hate-it E.L. James best seller about a bondage enthusiast and the virginal subordinate who makes him grow a heart. The narrative is—let’s just say, gratuitous—but in the hands of director Sam Taylor-Johnson and stunt coordinator Melissa Stubbs, we get explicit kink, complete with orgasm balls, nipple clamps, and spreader bars, awash in the female gaze.

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Alfonso Arau’s titillating romance, mixed with magical realism and adapted from the novel by Laura Esquivel, unfolds in a Mexican border town at the turn of the century. It’s here where Tita (Lumi Cavazos) and her Pedro (Marco Leonardi) have been forbidden to marry. Heartbroken, Tita, who is also a talented cook, pours her passion, desire, and longing for Pedro into her dishes, causing those who devour them to feel the very emotions boiling over inside of her.

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More sensual than sexy, really, Céline Sciamma’s 18th-century romance burns with the sexual tension and onscreen chemistry ignited by her two leads, Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel. As Marianne and Héloïse spend time alone together on a secluded island somewhere off the coast of Brittany, France, their desire builds and builds. But like the ebbing and flowing of the ocean, their time together is organic, heady, fleeting. And it all amounts to one satisfying masterpiece.

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South Korea’s Chan-wook Park, the virtuoso behind similar psychosexual thrillers as Thirst and Stoker, outdid himself with this arresting tour-de-force about a con-man posing as a count, a beautiful pickpocket pretending to be a handmaiden, and the affluent niece of a book collector they’re trying to swindle. Adapted from a novel called Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, Park’s glossy puzzler is full of twists and discoveries, violence and revenge, and, thankfully for our purposes here, simmering sexual tension that finds its way to satisfying climax.

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Zendaya in that dress. John David Washington with that furrowed brow. These two very attractive people spend a lot of Sam Levinson’s black-and-white chamber piece at odds (perhaps some will find even their arguing sexy), but also often under the other’s spell. Filmed entirely during the height of the pandemic, this two-hander explores not only an appreciation for the human form, but the themes of trust that are inherent to any sexual relationship, and in particular the gray areas in between.

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Dear God, Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney disrobing in Steven Soderbergh’s stylish crime drama was a serious high point in late-’90s cinema. The two butt heads at first—he’s a bank robber; she’s the U.S. Marshall he’s kidnapped—that is until the laws of attraction override their good judgment. Bolstered by a solid narrative that’s also funny at times, this sexy Soderbergh hit reworks the classic love scene into a fantasy come true.

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Set in the Yorkshire wilds on the cusp of springtime, God’s Own Country sees both its secluded backdrop and lonely protagonists go through quite the transformation. A romance that echoes the forbidden love story trapped in Brokeback Mountain, Francis Lee’s sensitive yet powerful portrayal of pent-up passion between British farmer Johnny (Josh O’Connor) and Romanian right-hand man Gheorghe (Alex Secareanu) is at once achingly romantic and unbearably hot.

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Luca Guadagnino never skimps on pulsating human desire in his films. From A Bigger Splash to Call Me by Your Name, the filmmaker loves to bring his cast to climax and back, usually with several encores before the final credits roll. Perhaps the sexiest of the batch is I Am Love, an electrifying drama starring a remarkable Tilda Swinton as a married woman whose sexual awakening throbs at the hands of a young chef whose skills extend way beyond the kitchen.

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Though this erotic concert film from Michael Winterbottom, one of Britain’s singular filmmakers, has been called a “scandalous experiment,” a “provocative romance,” and the all-encompassing “art film,” we’re just going to call it what it is: porn, it’s porn. The story follows a glaciologist and an American tourist who alternate rock concerts for orgasms throughout the cheeky 69-minute duration of the reel. And, yes, all the sex is real. Unsimulated. Untouched. Real. And sure to get you off well before the encore.

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Is there anything hotter than Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek going at it in Robert Rodriguez’s campy cartel thriller? Well, maybe Antonio Banderas sporting a rock star coif and Salma Hayek wearing his suit jacket as a dress as the two casually exit a crime scene they set ablaze. All that and then some goes down in this 1995 neo-Western revenge flick that not only set up shop in the lair of filmmaking folklore, it helped turn Salma Hayek into a household name.

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Okay. So now we would now like to turn your attention to the body-rolling stylings of a group of male strippers in Newark, New Jersey. This one comes to you in documentary form—graphic, NSFW documentary form, that is—and while it gives ample time to the community and the adoring fans the men entertain, it does not skimp on interviews, dance footage, and straight-up dick play with Tyga, Raw Dawg, and others. Things definitely get … wet.

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A newer release (Netflix debuted this one on its platform in 2020), Angel Kristi Williams’s gorgeously shot romance is at once a love letter to Washington, D.C., and a portrait of Black intimacy. Stars Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing and Kofi Siriboe radiate with sensual, soul-mate chemistry as Stevie, a law student, and Isaiah, a rising painter. Throughout the 90-minute reel, the two can hardly keep their hands off one another. And, trust us, you won’t want them to.

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Nagisa Oshima’s retelling of a true crime in prewar Japan is still considered controversial due to its graphic, unsimulated sex scenes. The film chronicles the sexual obsession between a maid and a married man that ends in a bloody mess.

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William Hurt and Kathleen Turner get the mercury rising in Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 film noir, about a woman who employs sexual persuasion to get her lover to murder her husband. It’s the role that launched Turner’s career, and it’s the seduction we dare say is hotter than Double Indemnity.

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OK, so this '80s classic probably doesn’t deliver the same effect today as it did when you first secretly watched it at a sleepover without your parents knowing. But with those soulful tunes, Patrick Swayze’s dance moves, and that one scene, this PG-13 number can’t help but still feel taboo.

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You may know this one better by its teen-heartthrob remake starring Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, Cruel Intentions. But no cheap imitation can hold a candle to Stephen Frears’ almost-disturbing roll in the sheets starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Glenn Close, and John Malkovich. Bosoms be plenty.

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In Lisa Cholodenko’s romance, Ally Sheedy is hardly recognizable as the Shermer High basket case who made her famous. Here, she plays a jaded photographer whose liaison with the girl next door—or rather, one floor below—draws her out of her heroin-induced pseudo-coma.

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