Best Picture Nominees ranked by horniness
Saturday, January 24, 2026 at 11:50AM by Nathaniel R
Since we playin'
As is our annual tradition the Best Picture chart now has a reader's choice poll, some trivia, and multiple kinds of rankings. The titles are listed by nomination count (ties are broken by what kinds of nominations those are) as well as sillier lists for funsies like "most likely to become a Broadway musical", running time, "death count" and more. I hope you'll investigate but here on the front page I thought why not expand on the "Ranked by Horniness" note. Let's take the 10 pictures in tiers of how hot they're running.
Tier 1 'This pussy pops for you'
The tier title is inverted from a brutal kiss-off in the lusty One Battle After Another which practically begins with Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) taunting her mortal enemy Captain Lockjaw (Sean Penn) right into a humiliating erection...
Then she's rejoining her smitten boyfriend Ghetto Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio) in celebration of their revolution. There's clearly lots of hooking up happening within the French 75, too. But One Battle cools off thereafter.
No one can apparently resist Marty's BDE and cat got the cream grin
Edging ahead of One Battle in the DTF arena is the more relentless Marty Supreme a movie that is similarly horned up right from the jump with a secret rendezvous and a cheeky shot of Marty's little swimmers doing their thing to impregnant his married lover (Odessa A'Zion). Marty is always ready for action whether in back of house spaces, hotel rooms, or public parks. Even glamorous retired movie stars (Gwyneth Paltrow) eventually cave to his cocky come-ons.
Your body ain't forget me.
Tier 2 - Fuck, Marry, Kill
Sinners and Hamnet are next on the list and here's something you don't see every day in cinema: Their sexual energy is steamiest when it's focused on marriage. In Sinners Smoke (Michael B Jordan) has a memorable connection with his estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) while his twin Stack (also Jordan) gets it on with a wilder townswoman (Hailee Steinfield). The supporting cast also features another gorgeous married couple (Li Jung Li & Thomas Pang) while young Sammy (Miles Canton) falls for a fellow singer (Jayme Lawson).
Over in Hamnet the tremendous chemistry between Paul Mescal & Jessie Buckley has you immediately immersed in both their physical and spiritual attraction to the other. We witness their first meet curious flirtation, their first time having sex, and jump straight to marriage and multiple childbirths in believably quick succession.
Tier 3 - U up?
Sex isn't always on the brain for our next three pictures but they're the type that might randomly text you for a booty call. The Secret Agent is the horniest thanks to the explicit (in the background) and hilarious "Hairy Leg" sequence but who can forget Wagner Moura's visit to the dentist!, Brad Pitt and Kerry Condon try to resist each other in F1 (they're co-workers) but they go from 0 to 60 like true racers with their first liplock. And over in Sentimental Value, Nora has unpredictably chaotic sexual energy mostly with a co-star (Trier wisely reuniting her with her Worst Person co-star in a case of smart audience misdirection)
Three months later they were inseparable.
Tier 4 - Marital Bliss
The beautiful rapport between quiet manual laborer (Joel Edgerton) and an amiable townswoman (Felicity Jones) goes a long way in selling the deep undertow of Train Dreams when tragedy strikes. The quickly married obviously happy couple are eager to be in each other's arms but often separated.
[Gay Gasp... no homo!]
Tier 5 - Purposefully Neutured
For all the talk of Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein being a faithful adaptation, I'd argue it's not at all since it's so desexualized that it is obviously terrified of both the inherent homoeroticism of Mary Shelley's text and the sexual curiousities that occasionally still slip through to brief visibiity thanks mostly to Elordi's inspired physicality in the role. To invert Drag Race's favourite critique 'keep relying on that bo-dy.'
Meanwhile Bugonia presents an unconfortable and arguably n/a problem in horniness-ranking unless in a 'doth protest too much' kind of way. There's lots of sexual trauma from events before the story commences and sexual desire is such a threat to 'the mission' for Teddy (Jesse Plemons) that he has castrated himself chemically before the film even begins and tragically convinces his malleable cousin to do the same.
Reader Comments (12)
Lol this is a fascinating post. What a fun way to look at this year’s crop of nominees.
Some of us on the spectrum struggle with abbreviations and some different descriptive words so can you explain DTF,BDE,the funny symbol () and especially little swimmers,I had no idea what you were referring to,
DTF: Down To Fuck
BDE: Big Dick Energy (total myth by the way, I would know!!!)
(): Nathaniel being sloppy and forgetting to include something
Little swimmers: SPERM!!!!
Nathaniel, super fun post! I just wish you could be assaying a hornier group of films. While all ten films have their virtues, I don't think any of them have any kind of sexual edge. I've never felt more flaccid than sitting through Marty Supreme (some of the unsexiest onscreen sex of recent memory)! OBAA does have a bit of a horny charge, though. And Wagner Moura in that shirt during the opening sequence of The Secret Agent is worthy of some blood rush!
Eric: I dont know - I'd say its pretty rare to have movies as horny as OBAA, Marty, Secret Agent and especially Sinners competing for best picture. The old guard would have never!
Mike in Canada -- While I wouldn't be as dismissive of this year's crop, I do think Eric has a point. Hollywood was much more open about having sex in movies from the 70s to the 90s and you can see that reflected in Best Picture lineups. Take 1978 as an example, with The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, Heaven Can Wait, Midnight Express and An Unmarried Woman all competing for the top prize. I guess in those older lineups, it just feels like sexuality was more present, not even as a wild provocation but something that was just part of the movies in ways we don't see nowadays, not in the mainstream at least.
"BDE: Big Dick Energy (total myth by the way, I would know!!!)"
What does it mean though,are these American slang as i've never heard them uttered in the UK but then again i've been with my husband for 23 years and we don't have any gay friends and we rarely go out now except for meals together and neither of us are real social media people.
Mr Ripley79 -- Have you ever heard folks say insecure men must have tiny dicks or something to that effect? "Big Dick Energy" is basically the opposite: a confident person, effortlessly self-assured and projecting power. And also, it tends to encourage readings of that confidence in sexual terms, of confidence as something inherently attractive and super hot. Does that make sense?
In this case, Marty is so fucking sure of his own greatness throughout the movie that it often feels like he makes others believe in it, attracting people into his orbit and persuading them. Also... not sure if Nat intended it that way, but there's a lot of chatter in gay circles about the slightest twinks having big dicks (looking at you Gothy Kendoll), so it might be a reference to that, too.
I've heard of small man syndrome when a man acts tough to compensate for having a small stature or some people say this "He thinks he's 10 men"
Adolpho Veloso, come shoot my bedroom.
In your trivia for One Battle After Another, you do not include PTA’s masterpiece There Will Be Blood, which had eight nominations.
While we're at it, Emma Stone has had four colaborations with Yorgos Lanthimos. I think you forgot The Favourite, Nat...