movies

8 Top-Notch Rom-Coms for Sex Nerds & Smarties

Kate Sloan

A few months ago, I was on the phone with a cute cinephile boy with whom I watch movies sometimes, and he said: “I’m excited to watch more rom-coms with you. I feel like that’s, like, your genre.”

I was surprised, and also touched. Although I’m a lifelong cinephile myself (with thanks to my mother, a former entertainment reporter, who has introduced me to many a movie), I hadn’t given much conscious thought to which genres I love most – but it’s probably true that I’ve seen more romantic comedies than any other type of movie. What can I say – ya girl loves a love story, especially when the two lead characters are funny as fuck!

That being said, obviously not all rom-coms are created equal… so today I thought I’d tell you about 8 of my current faves, which are likely to appeal to the readership of this blog: kinky, witty, silly sex nerds. (Hi; you are my people!) I hope you enjoy these, if you decide to check ’em out!

They Came Together (2014)

Had to start with this one, because if you love romantic comedies, I think you’ll enjoy this incisive skewering of the genre. Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd star as candy entrepreneur Molly and businessboy Joel. Their romance is goofy and sweet, but mostly the joy of this movie is the way it satirizes rom-com tropes while still somehow celebrating them. I hate rom-com parodies that are clearly derogatory toward the genre, and this feels more loving than that, aptly for a romance!

Hit Man (2023)

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that prestige director Richard Linklater made one of my favorite rom-coms, given that he also made one of my favorite comedies (School of Rock) and possibly the most romantic series of films ever (the Before trilogy)! Hit Man stars the magnetic Glen Powell as a nebbish psychology professor named Gary, who gets roped into going undercover as a fake killer-for-hire to help the cops arrest people who are trying to have someone murdered.

We see Gary pretend to be many different hit men, in montages that reminded me of the initial makeover scene in Mrs. Doubtfire [complimentary!!] – and ultimately one of the big messages of this movie is that your identity and self-image are largely constructed, and can be reshaped as you see fit. That’s exactly what happens to Gary when he develops feelings for one of the women he’s supposed to be arresting: she’s trying to hire a hit man to kill her abusive husband, which naturally pulls at sweet Gary’s heartstrings, even as he’s pretending to be an ultra-macho contract-killer. Needless to say, complications ensue! I find this movie really charming, and every time I’ve watched it, I’ve felt inspired to reinvent myself a little (or a lot), like Gary does.

Sleeping with Other People (2015)

Who knew a romantic comedy could tackle the topics of sex addiction and love addiction? And that it could do so sensitively and in a mostly non-stigmatizing way, while still being funny as fuck and deeply romantic? Damn! How did writer-director Leslye Headland do it?! Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie star as Jake and Lainey, two friends who slept together once in college, drifted apart, and then run into each other many years later at a 12-step meeting for sex & love addicts. They opt to stay platonic so they can hold each other accountable while both trying to kick their chronic infidelity habit, but naturally, attraction gets in the way.

I found this one funny in the way that people are funny in real life, which is always nice to see. Jason Mantzoukas, Natasha Lyonne, Amanda Peet and Adam Brody are all wonderful in their supporting roles. Sex nerds, take note: Adam Scott (of Severance and Stepbrothers fame) plays a hot gynecologist (!!), and also there’s a delightful and surprisingly sexy scene where Jake teaches Lainey how to finger herself by doing a hands-on demo with a glass bottle standing in for her vagina. This might be my favorite rom-com at the moment, honestly!

Red, White & Royal Blue (2023)

What if the president of the United States was a woman… and she had a hot adult son who aspired to also go into politics… and that son had an infamous, tabloid-stoked rivalry with the (also hot, also adult) Prince of England… except then the Prince and the First Son fell in love, and had to keep it a secret from the world? That’s my elevator pitch for Red, White & Royal Blue, a sharp political rom-com based on the novel of the same name by Casey McQuiston. (I am obsessed with Casey’s books and am dying for a movie adaptation of The Pairing one of these days! Best romance novel ever!)

Fame/celebrity and managing one’s public image are themes I’m frequently drawn to in movies, perhaps because I was raised by an entertainment reporter and a public relations specialist – so, naturally, I love this movie and its fairly realistic depiction of how such a scandalous gay romance might play out on the world stage. Taylor Zakhar Perez shines bright as whip-smart Alex Claremont-Diaz, while Nicholas Galitzine brings a lovely mix of warmth and wit to the role of Prince Henry. My fellow queers might also recognize Sarah Shahi (Carmen in The L Word) in a supporting role. Hella cute and thought-provoking movie!

Kissing Jessica Stein (2001)

Am I predisposed to like this one because it’s about a neurotic Jewish journalist exploring her bisexuality in New York City (hi, it moi)? Probably. But it’s still a fun film. Based on a play that was co-created by the movie’s two stars Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen, this movie follows the titular Jessica Stein as she decides to try dating women for the first time, after a series of disastrous incidents with men. (Lord, I relate.)

Like most of my favorite rom-coms, this one has several scenes that are just really great conversations, shot beautifully in one of my favorite cities. It raises questions of identity, authenticity, and the nature of love and friendship. Jackie Hoffman is hilarious as Jessica’s bestie/work wife, and Tovah Feldshuh has a hell of a monologue in the third act that makes me cry every goddamn time. I’ve loved this movie for many years and it still holds up!

Palm Springs (2020)

Someone asked me recently whether I’d consider Groundhog Day a romantic comedy, which is a tough question; I think technically it is, but its darkly existentialist time-loop conceit makes it feel more like a dramedy than a rom-com. But Palm Springs is a proper time-loop rom-com – it has effectively identical ‘game mechanics’ to the loop in Groundhog Day, but instead focuses on the question: What if your crush got trapped in the time loop with you?

Andy Samberg stars as Nyles, a guy who’s been re-living the same day over and over for who knows how long. The day in question happens to be a wedding day, but not his wedding; he’s just a guest. Eventually he befriends the maid of honor, Sarah (played by Cristin Milioti), who – through a series of circuitous events – gets stuck in the time loop with him, and they start strategizing together on how to escape. Oh yeah, and naturally they fall in love somewhere in there as well! This movie is somehow just as funny as it is sad, and ultimately it’s a touching illustration of how love makes us feel less alone in the universe. (Jonesing for another wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey rom-com? About Time is a fun watch!)

Ruby Sparks (2012)

Tough to say if this is a rom-com or a horror film; depends on your perspective, really! Real-life married couple Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan star as tortured novelist Calvin and the manic pixie dream girl he writes into existence, Ruby. At first she’s just a figment of his imagination, but then somehow she becomes very real, turning from a literary creation into a corporeal girlfriend. The more independent and self-actualized she gets, the more that incel-coded Calvin starts to freak out – and we watch him deal with his discomfort by trying to control her and subdue her through his writing, to mixed results.

Paul Dano is zany, scary, evil and captivating in this; Zoe Kazan wrote the movie herself, and is pitch-perfect as the titular Ruby, a quirky queen for the ages. I see this as a staunchly feminist film, in that it interrogates (some) men’s need to control women and the havoc they wreak on those women’s personhood – and ultimately, on themselves – by doing so. It’s also a devastating pastiche of the manic pixie dream girl trope (I even felt inspired to write a song called Manic Pixie shortly after seeing this flick for the first time). Big recommend, if you can stomach it!

Long Shot (2019)

When I first heard that Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen did a rom-com together, I found it hard to imagine how that could possibly work; in my head she’s this imperious cool beauty from heavy drama films and he is a scruffy stoner-comedy bro. But of course, they are both fantastic performers with a helluva lotta range, as this movie clearly shows!

Theron plays a vaguely Hillary-coded Secretary of State named Charlotte Field, who embarks on a presidential run. As her go-to speechwriter, she hires down-on-his-luck politics reporter Fred Flarsky (Rogen), whom she knows because she used to babysit him when they were teens. Most of the plot’s twists and turns felt fairly realistic from a political optics perspective (except for the very end, but whatever – we can suspend our disbelief for love!), and Rogen’s performance as a dorky, impassioned, lefty nerd is remarkably natural and fun. I tagged this one #smartie4smartie on Letterboxd because, like a lot of my favorite rom-coms, the lead characters are both brainy as fuck and it’s one of the things that draws them to each other! 🧠💖

 

Dear readers, what are your favorite rom-coms? Feel free to let me know in the comments!

P.S. Want to follow along with my movie-watching adventures? Go add me on Letterboxd!

5 of My Favorite Sex Scenes in Movies

Kate Sloan

I’ve been a movie fanatic since I was a kid. My mom was an entertainment reporter for most of my childhood, so when other kids were playing pretend at daycare, I was seeing movies like Cast Away and Artificial Intelligence in theatres. (And quite possibly playing pretend on my own later, inspired by the stories I’d seen on screen.)

But while my mother’s focus in her media career was on entertainment, mine is on sex – and so, of course, I’m often captivated by sex scenes in movies and television. This has become even more true in the years since “intimacy coordinators” became common fixtures on film sets; sex scenes are all the more interesting now that I know someone has (in many cases) carefully choreographed them and helped the actors discover as much authenticity, intimacy and vulnerability as they are willing to bring to their roles.

There are websites like https://www.mrskin.com which compile screenshots galore of cinematic sex scenes, but many of these scenes are so seared into my brain that I don’t even have to look at pictures to remember exactly what happens. Let’s talk about some of my favorites.

Kissing Jessica Stein is one of my favorite queer flicks. It’s about a neurotic, ostensibly straight woman – the titular Jessica – who, after a string of romantic rejections and mishaps with men, impulsively responds to a newspaper personal ad… written by a woman. That woman is Helen, a feisty and brilliant art gallery manager who is also dabbling in bisexuality for the first time.

Beyond being a deeply funny and relatable story of sexual and romantic exploration, this movie has so much heart, and captures so well the thrill of pushing your own limits sexually. The sex scenes are some of the best scenes in the whole movie. One of them begins with Jessica showing up to their date with a bunch of educational pamphlets about lesbian sex – she’s been doing research! Helen has to talk her down, suggesting that they try it “the old-fashioned way” rather than jumping straight to strap-on gadgets and gizmos.

Both women are nervous about having sex with one another, especially Jessica – and so there’s a great montage where the two women gradually, over the course of several dates, work up to kissing with tongue, and then touching above the waist, and then touching below the waist, and so on. There’s a ton of good communication in these scenes, and they’re so funny and adorable. If only all queer newbies could have a first partner as patient and encouraging as Helen.

Moonstruck is a favorite of my mama’s, so I’ve seen it many, many times. If you’ve never seen it, mainly what you need to know is that it’s a rom-com starring Cher and Nicolas Cage. Intrigued yet? Yeah, you should be.

Nic’s character, Ronnie, is a burly caricature of toxic machismo with a sensitive underbelly. He also happens to be the brother of the man Cher’s character, Loretta, is engaged to, so there’s an added layer of forbiddenness, making it all the more hot when they get together.

In one of the hottest scenes, Loretta and Ronnie are arguing outside his apartment after a fancy date night at the opera, and he yells, “Now, I want you to come upstairs with me, and get in my bed!” In another scene, they’re in her kitchen and they’re arguing again (it’s a recurring theme) and Ronnie literally tips the whole kitchen table over in a flight of passion/rage, kisses Loretta passionately, and physically picks her up in his arms. “Where are you taking me?!” she shouts. “To the bed,” he replies. And he does. 🔥

Pretty Woman is a super problematic movie as far as its representation of sex work, but its two stars, Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, are so gorgeous that I can’t help but find it hot and charming.

My favorite sex scene in this movie is one where Julia’s character, a sex worker named Vivian, walks in on Richard’s character, a rich businessdude named Edward, playing the piano late at night in the hotel they’re staying at. She’s wearing nothing but a bathrobe, which he takes off of her in a slow, sensual way. And then, presumably, they fuck on top of the piano.

It’s because of this scene that having sex on a piano is on my bucket list, though I’m not sure that anyone who owns a grand piano would be willing to let me “borrow” it for this purpose!

Unfaithful is another Richard Gere movie… However, the sex scenes I’m most drawn to in this movie don’t involve him. It’s an erotic thriller about a middle-aged wife and mother, Connie (played by Diane Lane), who randomly meets a hot young Frenchman, Paul, when he tends to an injury she sustains on a dangerously windy day.

An affair begins, and before too long, Connie is routinely sneaking away from her husband Ed (played by Richard Gere) to see her loverboy. He’s a bookseller, and they have many tawdry encounters in his bed, surrounded by towering stacks of books. It’s all very, uh, literary.

In one particularly hot scene, Connie finds herself stuck having lunch with some other married women she knows from whatever suburban middle-class organizations she’s a part of, and Paul walks into the restaurant, surprising her. They both sneak away to the bathroom and fuck in one of the stalls. When Connie comes back out, her friend points out that her blouse is partially unbuttoned. Whoops.

Blue Valentine has a famous scene in which Ryan Gosling’s character, Dean, goes down on Michelle Williams’s character, Cindy, seemingly to the point of climax. While you can’t even see any genitals, this one scene caused the movie to be given an NC-17 rating, though it was later changed to an R rating after pushback from the distributors.

Many critics have noted that it’s likely the scene’s focus on female pleasure that earned it the more mature rating, and that this points out the inherent sexism still prevalent in many industries, including movie-making. But regardless of Hollywood politics, the scene itself is hot as fuck and I will admit I have jerked off to it many times!

 

What sex scenes in movies have you found the hottest and most memorable?

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Self-Isolating and Bored? Here’s 15 Pieces of Media to Entertain You…

Kate Sloan

Dear friends: This is a hard time. I’m proud of you for wherever you’re at, whether you can’t stop crying in bed or you’re doing pretty okay actually (or something else entirely). Whatever reaction you’re having is valid – as long as you’re not one of those “This virus is cleansing the planet!!” ecofascists or a “But people should still pay their rent somehow!!” capitalist.

My friend JoEllen recently published a list of “comfort media” to consume in These Trying Times. I wanted to do something similar, although I will say that not all of these works are necessarily comforting. Some of them are just cathartic, or absorbing, or all of the above. When I’m sad or anxious, sometimes I don’t want to turn away from those feelings – sometimes I want to walk right into them, revel in them, exorcize them from my body.

In that spirit, here are 15 pieces of media, across various genres and formats, that I think you might find helpful right now in one way or another. (A note: all the links to books in this post go to the Powell’s website. Powell’s is a great indie bookstore that you should absolutely support in these tough times if you can, instead of lining Bezos’s already-overstuffed pockets.)

Stephen King, it must be said, is a problematic fave. However, he has written some of the best apocalyptic fiction in the biz. I often find it useful to focus on his terrifying stories in times that are, themselves, also terrifying – because, I reason, I may be having a tough time but at least I’m not handcuffed to a dead man’s bed (Gerald’s Game) or running away from my axe-wielding husband (The Shining).

There are three King novels that feel particularly salient to me in These Times, and they are as follows. Under the Dome is one of my all-time favorite books – it’s a hefty 1,000 pages but the pace is snappy enough to make that seem reasonable, as is often the case with King. In this story, an invisible but impenetrable “dome” descends on a small town in Maine called Chester’s Mill, cutting off its residents from the outside world and plunging the population into a panic. You’ll see familiar moments in this story – grocery store riots, lying politicians – but also moments of hope, triumph, and the goodness of humanity. (P.S. If you like audio formats, you honestly owe it to yourself to read Under the Dome as an audiobook – it’s read by the ever-wonderful Raúl Esparza and is beyond compare in its genre, IMO.)

The King novel most prescient of our current situation is, of course, The Stand, his epic novel about a flu strain engineered by the army as a biological weapon which then gets leaked into the world by accident. It quickly infects and kills over 99% of Earth’s population, and the survivors are left to cobble together some semblance of a new society in the wreckage. There’s lots of good stuff in here about friendship, grit, and goodness – all balanced with plenty of that signature King darkness and evil. This book shows a version of pandemic response that’s far more drastic than anything our world will likely face due to COVID-19, so it’s escapist in the sense that it allows you to think, “Well, things are bad, but at least they’re not this bad.”

I also gotta shout out my favorite lesser-known King novel, the relatively recent Sleeping Beauties, which he co-wrote with his son Owen. This one’s also about an apocalyptic scenario of sorts: all the women on Earth start contracting a mysterious illness where, when they fall asleep, they essentially go into a coma and cannot be awakened. Hilariously, we then get to see what happens when the men of the world are left to fend for themselves. Chaos ensues, obviously. This one isn’t as well-reviewed as some other King novels, but I wonder how much of that is due to its vaguely feminist themes!

If you like podcasts and/or roleplaying games and haven’t yet dove into the amazingness that is The Adventure Zone, you’re in for a treat. It’s my favorite podcast of all time – maybe even my favorite piece of narrative media ever? It has made me laugh and cry more than any other podcast, certainly.

TAZ is the three McElroy brothers (of My Brother, My Brother and Me and Polygon fame) playing tabletop RPGs with their dad. The first campaign, Balance, follows a flamboyant wizard named Taako, a wholesome carpenter named Magnus, and a goofy cleric named Merle as they work to collect 7 dangerous relics from all over their magical world. Start with episode 1; after that, there’s still SEVENTY-SIX more episodes for you to listen to in the first campaign alone. (Yeah, it’s a hugely epic story.) One of the later campaigns, Amnesty, is also a gorgeous blend of comedy, camaraderie, and magical realism.

While we’re talking about immersive fantasy podcasts: have you heard of Hello from the Magic Tavern? It’s an almost entirely improvised narrative fiction podcast about a guy named Arnie who accidentally falls through a magic portal into a faraway fantasy land called Foon. Looking to understand the planet he’s landed on, Arnie sets up his podcast recording equipment at a nearby tavern and begins weekly interviews with various guests from around Foon – swordsmen, shopkeeps, goblins, and royalty – all while backed up by his two faithful cohosts, a self-aggrandizing wizard named Usidore and a horny shapeshifter called Chunt. Start with episode 1 and get lost in Foon – it definitely seems better than Earth right now!

Brilliant comedian and musician Lane Moore wrote a book called How to Be Alone which feels particularly needed at this time. It’s full of thoughts about anxiety, attachment, and the longing for intimacy, but its tone is ultimately hopeful – by the time I finished this book, I felt much better about the idea that I might not always have a partner, or tons of close friends, and that might be okay. If you’re struggling with feelings of loneliness and isolation, pick this one up; reading it is like having a profound chat with a good, smart pal.

Lane is also doing a nightly Twitch show (last I checked, anyway) at 8 p.m. Eastern time, also called How to Be Alone, that you can watch right here. She describes it as being like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse for lonely adults – and don’t we all need that right now?!

Looking for something uplifting to read? You really can’t do much better than Alexandra Franzen’s You’re Going to Survive, for which she interviewed professionals across multiple fields (cuisine! music! fashion! non-profits!) about the hardest moments of their careers and how they got to the other side. I’ve never seen a more striking illustration of the notion that “this too shall pass,” always.

If you’re less about distraction and more the type of person who likes to dive directly into your feelings and face them head-on, I highly recommend the movie Contagion (2011), a fast-paced thriller about a high-mortality virus that originates in bats and pigs and quickly spreads around the world. It’s topping the charts right now on streaming sites and whatnot; evidently a lot of people are turning to it, for one reason or another.

The main thing I found comforting about this film is that the scientific and medical professionals in it are incredibly competent and smart (and are, notably, mostly women). The science presented in the movie was thoroughly researched and the moviemakers consulted professionals in the relevant fields, so one could even say Contagion is educational. On an emotional level, watching the brilliantly-acted suffering of mb Damon’s character – who (mild spoilers here) loses his wife and son within the first few minutes of the movie – is cathartic in the most ineffable of ways. He is us and we are him. Hang in there, mb Damon.

If you like fanfiction – and even if you don’t – the novel-length Sherlock stories written by Katie Forsythe (a.k.a. Wordstrings) are worth looking into. She’s a brilliant writer who explores themes of mental illness through the familiar characters of the Holmes universe. I find it’s very hard to worry about my own problems (or even my own planet’s problems) when I’m tracking Sherlock and John’s journeys through crime scenes, drug hazes, and sexual tension.

All the Best and Brightest Creatures might be my fave. An asexual (but not sex-repulsed) Sherlock gets together with a bewildered-yet-horny John, all while they try to solve mysteries set in place by one Jim Moriarty. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a fanfic story so gripping. And conveniently, Archive of Our Own lets you export fanfic in formats that’ll work on your e-reader, so you can lounge in bed or in the tub with Sherlock and John to keep you company.

It’s all too easy to fall into a YouTube rabbit hole these days, consuming news videos and conspiracy videos galore about the current situation. But why not make your YouTube gallivanting into a more pleasant, educational, and uplifting endeavor? I can’t recommend Philosophy Tube highly enough – it’s a campy-yet-esoteric video series in which the dazzling Olly Thorn presents his ideas on topics as wide-ranging as sex work, witchcraft, and Jordan Peterson. He takes an honest look at the world as it is, and theorizes on ways it could be better, kinder, stronger. His videos are also plenty theatrical and silly at times – this isn’t some dry philosophy lecture!

While I’m talking about YouTube, I would be remiss not to mention the Bon Appetit channel, which is basically porn if you enjoy food, competence, and kindness. Our mess of a planet kind of fades into the background while you’re watching, for example, Claire Saffitz trying to make KitKat bars from scratch, or Amiel Stanek sampling every way to cook an egg. I wish the channel would start putting out videos of the BA chefs making quarantine-appropriate dishes from their own separate homes!

If you are a video game person, you’ve probably already been turning to your games of choice for entertainment and comfort. But if you’re looking for recommendations specific to this moment, I’ve gotta say that the immersive, competitive, and plot-driven nature of the Pokémon games has made them invaluable to me through all of this. You add “pocket monsters” to your team, train them, and battle with them, all while traversing strange lands and meeting interesting people. I would suggest starting with HeartGold or SoulSilver if you’re new to the series – they’re both fairly accessible and they also take longer to get through than most (if not all) of the other main-series games. If visuals are important to you, the X/Y and Sun/Moon versions look much nicer, though they are definitely less challenging than previous iterations.

There’s also the game everyone is talking about right now, Animal Crossing. A new version is out for the Switch but I’m also quite partial to the 3DS version, New Leaf. Animal Crossing is essentially the Seinfeld of games, in that it’s a game about nothing: you have a house in a small idyllic town, and you can make friends with your neighbors, decorate your home, go fishing, buy cute clothes, and just generally lead a low-stakes fantasy existence. If you need a whole other life to distract you from your real life, Animal Crossing is definitely a good option.

Along similar lines, it’s very easy to get absorbed in any Harvest Moon game. The focus of these is farming, which doesn’t seem like it would be that interesting – and indeed, sometimes isn’t – but it has clear goals, and sometimes you need that. You can also befriend (and even marry) other villagers, mine for valuable ores, upgrade your home, take care of livestock, and cook from recipes. My favorite in the series is the very simple and straightforward Friends of Mineral Town.

What media are you turning to these days?