The Film Experience

Our Year in Review party continues! Cue mood music.

Since The Film Experience obsessives over actresses almost daily, the actors could use a little spotlight from time to time. So this entry into our year in review party is a beauty break starring the year's best man candy in cinema ...with a little TV thrown in for extra flavor.

15 A superhero... but which one?
Any of The Avengers will do but if actors are going to be expected to be on special diets and grueling workout routines daily for those spandex ready bodies, you'd think Marvel would let them go shirtless for more than 10 seconds each movie. Chris Evans is still the most delicious among them but we'll give this round to Paul Rudd for the sleeker non-steroidal fitness regimen (which we hope becomes more the norm because Henry Cavill's Superman body is so cartoon weird; it's like a giant chest and shoulders with random stick appendages and face).

Runner up goes to Chris Hemsworth When Wet: in that silly pool of visions in Age of Ultron; shipwrecked and starving but still somehow maintaining the workouts in In the Heart of the Sea; or even just those carefully wet stray Blackhat bangs

Fourteen more people or categories after the jump. But fair warning... it's slightly nsfw. So it's a good thing you're on Christmas break. In the immortal words of Tina Belcher...

14 [Tie] Great Body / Terrible Personality
Karl Gusman in Love and Jamie Dornan in 50 Shades of Grey have instant drool outsides but beauty proves skin deep. Inside one's a whiny ignorant American narcissist who continually mistreats his women and the other is a control freak with as yet untold ISSUES, all caps intended. Who wants to sign contracts before sex? Papercuts are lousy foreplay.

You'd touch his butt, too.

13 Alexander Skarsgård in The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Because if anyone can get away with playing a man who sleeps with his girlfriend's underage daughter and not make you instantly loathe him, but stay engaged in the intra-family drama it's him. (Bonus points for those Tarzan stills.)

12 Chris Pratt in Jurassic World
Bless Pratt for not losing the funny when he found the body. And for providing such charm to the otherwise charmless 'passable karaoke version' of Jurassic Park. Bless costume designer Daniel Orlandi for putting him in those tight stretchy pants.

11 Jude Law in Spy
Still got it. Especially in a tux.

10 Special Prize in Naked Coupling
Wagner Moura & Clements Schick in Futuro Beach. Fine performances. Fine chemistry. Fiiiine.

09 Daniel Wu in Into the Badlands
The acting may be a little wooden but in the end there's still wood. (Are any of you watching this show? It's kinda bad but the Wu keeps me watching)

Tab & Tony Perkins, lovers on a double date

08 Tab Hunter in Tab Hunter: Confidential
2015 was a fine year for documentaries about screen stars with high profile titles about Ingrid Bergman and Marlon Brando leading the pack. But how about this loving entertaining expose of 50s teen heartthrob and box office draw Tab Hunter and his secret gay life? The film came from prolific documentarian Jeffrey Schwartz (I Am Divine, Vito) and he made great use of movie, tv, game show, and Oscar clips with Tab's All American blonde beauty and blazing white smile front and center.

07 [Tie] Dream Boyfriends
Sam Elliott for sweeping Blythe Danner off her feet and back on the bicycle in I'll See You In My Dreams. And Emory Cohen's huge heart in Brooklyn of course. dat accent. dem lips doe

06 Michael B Jordan in Creed
It's not the muscles but the sensitivity. Okay okay the sensitivity encased in the muscles. Seriously Michael B Jordan is such a strong actor and has been since way back in the Friday Night Lights days. Oscar nomination please. Now would be a great time since he's better than the expected nominees.

05 [Tie] Be Erotically Intoxicating! Your Plot Depends On It
Louis Garrell has to be carnal enough to send Saint Laurent's life unravelling and James Marsden has to wreck everyone with his irrestibility while also being a touch gone to seed in The D Train. They both succeed and how.

04 The Countess's Men in American Horror Story: Hotel
People complained that the men circling our pop diva turned actress/vampire looked alike without quite realizing that that was the point. Eventually Hotel spelled it out for the viewers but why complain with so much dark haired, pale, cheeks-for-days masculine beauty via Cheyenne Jackson, Matt Bomer, Finn Wittrock, and Wes Bentley none of whom anyone would ever kick out of bed unless they were sensible enough to notice the bloodstains, daggers, and dead bodies around them. And even then...

P.S. Despite it's visual pleasures Hotel is the weakest and dullest season ever of this show that may have now outstayed its welcome.

03 Joe Manganiello in Magic Mike XXL
For stepping it up comically with a freshly pumped role in the sequel. For actually showing it off in the surprisingly modest sequel. For giving it to the very interested and rarely better Andie MacDowell and above all that ace convenience store scene.

02 Oscar Isaac in Ex Machina
What a performance. And what, um, cleavage. And how brilliant to exude so much carnality in scenes that don't ask for it, to keep his prey/guinea pig (that'd be Domnhall Gleeson) continually off balance and under equipped for the mind games to come. Bonus points for that maverick charm as the galaxy's "most daring pilot" in Star Wars: The Force Awakens but we wish he were in more of the movie.

01 Matthias Schoenaerts in... well... everything
People's Sexiest Men Alive, whoever they've been recently (we don't track it) got nothing on the Belgian Brando. One of the hardest working men in showbiz had lead romantic roles in Far From the Madding Crowd and A Little Chaos. In either of the films you could have practically ripped him from any still and placed him on a romance novel cover for instant bestseller action. His suave art dealer gifted The Danish Girl with extramarital sexual heat. And that wasn't even all. He just kept giving it to us. He also remade one of his Belgian hits (The Loft) for America and headlined the festival hit bodyguard thriller Disorder co-starring Diane Kruger to great effect.