One of the eternal questions of our time: which film critic would be better in bed, Rolling Stone's Peter Travers or The New Yorker's David Denby? The Los Angeles Times' Carina Chicano or the Grey Lady's Manohla Dargis? The answers are hidden within their movie reviews. Read on to find out who named Heath Ledger "the pansexual art-house heartthrob of 2005" and which critic has a lip fetish. — Sarah Harrison
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Peter Travers
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Kenneth Turan
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Manohla Dargis
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A.O. Scott
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David Denby
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Carina Chocano
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Rolling Stone
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Los Angeles
Times
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The New York Times
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The New York Times
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The New Yorker
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Los Angeles
Times
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7/10
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5/10
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6/10
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2/10
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6/10
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4/10
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Likely prowess in bed |
Potential for dirty talk
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7/10
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2/10
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6/10
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3/10
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6/10
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6/10
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Ability to appreciate female beauty |
9/10
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5/10
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5/10
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7/10
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8/10
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2/10
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Ability to appreciate male beauty |
6/10
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7/10
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8/10
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5/10
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7/10
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4/10
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Biggest turn-on
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Dominant women
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Youth
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Ankles
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Real estate
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Lips
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Wild hair
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Travers is the randiest critic of the bunch, raving about hot women and observing all kinds of sex. He observes people "screwing like rabbits in a field," (Match Point); he "can feel the texture of a kimono and the heat of a blush on a young girl's cheek" (Memoirs of a Geisha). There is an occasional BDSM undercurrent to his writing: a woman can be "a gorgeous tower of power" (Kill Bill Volume I) " or a "femme fatale, a leggy business exec in spike heels shiny enough to reflect her flirty eyes." (Derailed).
Travers likes Uma Thurman. She's "seriously gorgeous" (Prime), and "no one beats Thurman for sizzle. She's a warrior goddess" (Kill Bill Volume I). He also likes Scarlett Johansson: " I've elevated the rating by half a star because Scarlett Johansson is a luminous camera subject." (The Island) Scarlett is "dazzling" (In Good Company), she is "tart and terrific," she exudes "enough come-on carnality to singe the screen" (Match Point).
He can get behind an hourglass figure — "Simpson's body is unimpeachable," (Dukes of Hazzard) — but he's not averse to "sexy British beanpole Keira Knightley" (Domino). In fact, "Knightley is a lippy, tantalizing ball of fire" (Pride and Prejudice) and a "real hottie" (Bend it Like Beckham). Travers could also go for Clive Owen, who's "James-Bond handsome," "strapping" (Derailed), and "in full sexy smolder" (Sin City).
The Wedding Crashers'dance of bare butts and bouncing breasts reminds us what trippy turn-ons movies can be." But he wants a movie to be "more than a masturbatory fantasy" (Kill Bill Volume I). Pride and Prejudice fit the bill through its "erotic battle of wits." Even King Kong tugs at his heartstrings, because Naomi Watts is "funny, sexy and moving" and Adrian Brody "radiates a romantic intensity." The actors "make you believe — not in an erotic fantasy, but in tenderness and longing."
 Kenneth Turan believes that sex and thinking are not to be mixed. "Common sense and sexual passion don't often exist in the same time and space" (Sex and Lucia)." He's a romantic at heart and is all for " separating sexuality from that great and frustrating unmentionable, romantic love, the one thing that cannot be measured." (Kinsey).
Turan's also into youth. He observes Keira Knightley, "one of the hot young things of the moment" (Domino) and Amanda Peet, "lively and funny as well as young and beautiful" (Something's Gotta Give). In Closer, Natalie Portman is "a youthful exotic dancer." Keanu Reeves can play "a handsome young doctor" (Something's Gotta Give), and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is "young and awfully handsome" (Bend it Like Beckham).
If you're not young, a stormy persona could get Turan's attention. Daniel Day-Lewis is "all menace and malevolence, and he has our complete attention whenever he's on screen" (Gangs of New York). Clive Owen is "hot-tempered, pigheaded and darn good looking" as he "alternately smolders and swears" in Closer. Johnny Depp is "a handsome scoundrel" (The Libertine).
But don't expect Turan to sweep you off your feet; he's prone to understatement. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are a "compellingly attractive on-screen couple" (Mr. and Mrs. Smith). Sex and Lucia "specializes in pleasant eroticism" and features a "pleasant fantasy." But if you've got a flair for drama, he'd love you to do the sweeping, as did the "dashing Hook" in Peter Pan, or the "appropriately handsome and dashing" James Franco (Tristan and Isolde).
Dargis might actually enjoy long walks on the beach. She luxuriates in movies that " involve sad-eyed lovers under the spell of impossible desires" (2046) and scenes with couples who "combust beautifully" (Something New). A huge fan of romantic comedy, Dargis thinks "there's something reliably agreeable about watching two pretty people go through the usual romantic motions" because "plausible straight romances are as rare (and tiny) as gemstones" (Something New). She's not devoid of irony, however, and enjoys the film where you can " fully indulge in the pleasures of romantic clichés and wink at them too" (In Her Shoes).
Manohla has no patience for such a "simplistic view of sex that there's no room for its pleasures or powers — creative,social, cultural, political" (The Libertine). She balks at "repellent" sex scenes, "when it would be easier, certainly more pleasant, to look at the ceiling, the floor, anywhere but the screen" (Battle in Heaven). She disdains even "superclassy sex workers," because "while serving a new customer every six months certainly sounds less untoward than, say, turning six tricks a night in a day-rate motel, who's kidding whom?" (Memoirs of a Geisha).
She is hot for Brad Pitt. "There is something reassuring in the knowledge that a film with Brad Pitt will at least give us the pleasure of his company" (Tristan and Isolde). It takes George Clooney to relieve Pitt "of the burden of being the most beautiful man in the room," but when he does the "results were nose-tickling fizzy, as playfully sexy and artless as the most classic of screwball pairings" (Something New).
But Manohla also appreciates the regular guys, the "sexy if never sexed-up fathers and husbands (and widowers), decent, ordinary middle-aged men one push away from becoming extraordinary" (Firewall). She also has a thing for ankles. She thinks that "you need just the right ankle to get the temperature rising" She's observed it "in Double Indemnity when Barbara Stanwyck, wearing the world's most perfect ankle bracelet, walks down a staircase and into Fred MacMurray's life. In Derailed the ankle in question belongs to Jennifer Aniston." After "pondering those flashing ankles," she realized that "when the mind fixes on ankle flesh it is a sure bet that we are in trouble" (Stay).
Practically asexual, A.O. Scott prefers the "most risqué" moment in a movie to be "ocular intercourse" that "stands in for the more vigorous variety, which is kept mainly off screen" (Casanova). If Scott had his druthers, sex scenes would be "mostly talk," because "there are still a few filmmakers who are capable of infusing the bodily expressions of erotic desire with dramatic force and psychological meaning." (Closer).
He disdains overly simplified screen relationships because "love is not a puzzle that can easily be solved" (5x2), and yearns for " the fact of sex and the possibility of heartbreak, which is to say the very conditions of romance itself" (Shopgirl). He could have Freudian complexes: while he appreciates characters who are "free of hangups and neuroses," he laments that "their healthy, cheerful attitudes make them phenomenally boring" (Better than Sex).
What Scott does appreciate is a nice apartment, and he finds Woody Allen to be "an unrivaled pornographer" of real estate who keeps "local audiences sighing and moaning" (Melinda and Melinda). He barely notices Scarlett Johansson in Match Point; instead he relates to "the lust for high-end real estate."
However, Scott is not immune to the powers of Julia Roberts, who possesses a "willowy radiance" (America's Sweethearts) and a "considerable magnetism." (Closer) He participates in the "obligatory ogling of Paris Hilton and Elisha Cuthbert" (House of Wax) and finds Sarah Silverman "reasonably pretty" (Jesus is Magic).
Johnny Depp is Scott's paragon of male beauty, with "the kind of face that justifies the existence of cinema" (Blow) . Heath Ledger, "the pansexual art-house heart throb of 2005" (Casanova), ranks high on his list, as does Billy Crudup, who is "smoldering" (Almost Famous) with "fine" features (Stage Beauty). 50 Cent has " a certain truculent charisma" (Get Rich or Die Tryin'), and Orlando Bloom is "cute" (Elizabethtown).
David Denby wants more sex in movies because "there isn't that much of it, and almost none that is convincing" (Match Point). If explicit, it can be "too distanced and oddly framed to be pornographic" (The Brown Bunny). But Denby also dislikes relationships that are "as asexual as possible" (The Terminal) or "so placid [the actors] might be a young suburban wife and a handsome lawn man smooching in an afternoon soap opera" (Troy). So even if the sex is "violent, uncomfortable," "ending in loud cries" and "photographed straight on, without lyricism or sensuality," Denby appreciates that he can still "feel the heat on their skin, and their frustrated longing to break through to each other" (Twentynine Palms).
And he thinks sex should be fun! Denby likes Kinsey because it's "playful and happy and even naughty. It's partly a scientific brief, partly a song of sex, and it's enormously enjoyable."
He's not into geishas. "A beautiful young woman whose breasts have been flattened, her face whitened and painted over with a mask . . . none of this, as enticements go, raises my pulse rate above its usual listless beat" (Memoirs of a Geisha).
Denby is undeniably a lip guy. Joaquin Phoenix "is a remarkable-looking actor, with deep-set blue eyes, a long chin, and a scarred upper lip" (Walk the Line). Jonathan Rhys-Meyers "has widely spaced blue eyes, slightly flaring nostrils, and a flattened upper lip" (Match Point). Scarlett Johansson "too, has an unusual upper lip, curved and fleshy" (Match Point). Bill Murray has "thin lips that he presses together in an act that suggests self-containment more than disapproval" (Broken Flowers). Charlize Theron has " a smile like a sunburst" (Monster), Kirsten Dunst has an " eyetoothy smile" (Elizabethtown). Catherine Keener has a "big smile," and Steve Carell has a "too-bright smile" (40 Year Old Virgin).
It would be remiss to leave out Denby's "addiction to porn," which he detailed in his 2004 book, American Sucker. In it Denby describes how "In the solitude of night, and in my little study at home, where mighty volumes of Plato, St. Augustine, Hegel, Montaigne, Nietzsche loomed over the desk, the kneeling young women awkwardly turned their eyes to the camera."
Carina Chocano probably has a drawer full of unsent love letters and a phone crowded with exes' phone numbers. She writes as if she's spent a lot of time contemplating "modern romance and its fearsome adversary, modern life" (Fever Pitch), yet wondering if it might be "true that modern life doesn't provide the obstacles that make for decent barriers to romance." In the end she decides that "the disappearance of traditional obstacles has only led to a rise in creative barricading. We have DIY love problems now" (A Lot Like Love). It gets worse. To Chocano, life is full of "lonely people trying to connect with each other through love, art, the Internet and whatever other means they can think of" while overcoming the "increasing difficulty of doing so in a world full of barriers" (Me and You and Everyone We Know.)
Chocano has probably suffered from several broken hearts:"it doesn't take being a cad and a libertine to leave
a trail of dead relationships in your wake anymore. Anyone can do it" (Broken Flowers). She hates the clichés of "rom-coms," which treat "love like a pretty accessory to be stored in a plastic box and shoved in the back of a closet when it proves impractical." But Chocano admits that a movie can be a "sweet, funny and gripping romantic adventure" (The Edukators), "bawdy, self-conscious, jaded and still sweetly optimistic" (Happy Endings) or an "oddball love song" (Me and You and Everyone We Know).
Her descriptions of attractive people are similarly reserved, possibly because she feels that "most disconcertingly pretty things . . . get boring fast" (Sin City). Yet she finds Jonathan Rhys-Meyers "almost absurdly sexy" (Match Point). She's a fan of Vince Vaughn, who is "big and quick and smart" (Wedding Crashers) and of men who are "sexy in a forlorn, wild-haired way, more Byronic hero than peer gone wild" (Pride and Prejudice).
Sex scenes are not Chocano's thing. Her descriptions are generally straightforward: " a sudden, waterlogged tryst in the heather" (Match Point) or "the women meet on the beach, where they dance naked" (Eros). She prefers " smart, spare, elegant and understated" (Shopgirl) scenes, where the actors "crackle with wit and charisma, and they give off so much sexual heat it's a wonder they don't burst into flames" (Walk the Line). To Chocano, "near-kisses are more heavily charged than all the nudity-for-art's-sake in the world" (Pride and Prejudice). n°
©2006 Sarah Harrison and hooksexup.com, Inc.
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, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
