"2014 is OVER, Nathaniel" - everyone.
I'm aware, thank you. But you know how it is. We have to wean ourselves off of each delightful film year. And we still have to finish our annual Film Bitch Awards and then we're done. Pinky swear. Speaking of the pink... time to surrender it.
Romance isn't what it used to be in the movies. Even when movies have romance at the core somewhere like American Sniper or Divergent or whatever, it's often presented like a mandatory plot point rather than with any real passion; something to check off for all quandrants rather than get lost in. That makes our Best Kiss, Best Sex Scene, and Sexpot of the Year categories sometimes hard to manage but we press on.
Sex is so integral to life that you'd think the movies would want to claim it a little more rather than ceding it to Netflix originals, Showtime and HBO. When movies do go there they're often surprisingly prim (50 Shades of Grey) or arthouse grim. For the latter see Nymphomaniac, both volumes. Or rather: don't. Unless you're willing to fast forward a lot. It would have been infinitely better as one 90 minute film: faster, funnier, and more focused. [NSFW More...]
But there are still movies to make you swoon like Beyond the Lights, movies to make you marvel at love's capacity like Love is Strange, or movies that play with notions of romance and/or sex in fun (Into the Woods) or terrifying manner (Stranger by the Lake).
Stranger by the Lake and Nymphomaniac both went explicit. It happens more often in art cinema than it use to. Is this the wave of the future?
Beyond the Lights plays with sexploitation in the music industry
Even when movies are going there they present problems for something like our "Sexpot of the Year" category. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is sexy as hell at first in Beyond the Lights but the movie constantly reminds you that she's being exploited and that she's miserable because it's not her true self to be all like "look at my ass. look at my boobs!" thus purposefully killing all boners.
At least until the movies very romantic sexcapades in Mexico. So it's safer to go with movies and actors that gleefully ask you to ogle like Zac Efron in Neighbors.
See all sexpot nominees and best kiss & sex scene over at the Film Bitch Awards pages