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Winona Ryder and Christian Bale in Little Women

We all know there's no sex in Alcott. But this movie gets so much right it can't help producing, like a red ripe cherry on top of a charlotte russe, the should a-been sexual reality between Winona Ryder's earnest Jo and Christian Bale's gracious, lovable, eminently trustworthy Laurie. From the first moment they meet it's clear even to Aunt March that the two of them belong wrapped up in each other's bear's paw quilts. They may have been too well cast. Everyone has always griped affectionately about Alcott having Jo refuse Laurie and eventually mate with the slightly seedy Mr. Bhaer; here the flummox is compounded, because Ryder's rejection of Bale and union with Gabriel Byrne, who looks as if he reeks of stale tobacco and whiskey, feels like sabotage. We got to see Hester Prynne and Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale hump like pagans. Why not Jo and Laurie feverishly coupling in the attic? Ah, well. Maybe that was Alcott's point: sex isn't always destiny.

Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman in While You Were Sleeping

This movie was so aggressively adorable I kept looking for Jim Henson's name in the ending credits. Everybody in it was as cute as a bug--no one is cuter than Sandra Bullock, and Bill Pullman has matured into such a modest, rugged cuteness that you want to put him in your pocket. So, you don't think cute people have sex, too? Sure they do: it is, we can presume, cute sex, and though I can't vouch for it personally, I'm sure it's close to or just as good as regular sex. When Bullock and Pullman crinkle their eyes at each other and start slipping around in the snow, they both seem so happy that they found someone just as cute as they are. You can almost picture them naked in bed wearing match-ing giant Tasmanian devil slippers while "Daydream Believer" plays in the background and a puppy chases his own tail nearby.

Helena Bonham Carter and Julian Sands in A Room with a View

My wife still gets all hot under the hell over the way Julian Sands kisses Helena Bonham Carter's neck and chest in the last shot of this masterpiece, which comes as close to a million-dollar weekend getaway as any movie ever made. It's true, that last scene at the window is a hair-raiser; if the movie had lasted for a few more moments, we would've seen Edwardian lace fly like confetti at homecoming. (What I wouldn't do to see Bonham Carter, that apple-cheeked angel, on her back, ruffles in the air, her eyes glazed with lust...) The whole movie revolves around the instinctive goona-goonas Sands and Bonham Carter have for each other but can't consummate. They say nothing to each other, and yet he knows, and she knows but can't admit it.

The key moment is their first kiss: he strides up to her in the middle of an Italian barley field, grabs her and starts eating her alive like this is Emmanuelle in Tuscany. She bites back, and for a brief instant, memories you have of Bonham Carter in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Sands in Boxing Helena evaporate completely. That one moment of passion punches a hole in this movie the size of Reverend Beebe's balls (watch the film). From then on, we're wondering how many petticoats Sands is going to have to unpeel before he gets his eyes on the prize.

Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia in When a Man Loves a Woman

How sexy can a movie be when it deals with alcoholism, co-dependency, kids and recovery culture? (Why didn't they throw in a few Republican congressmen and finish us off?) But as a matter of fact, we have Andy Garcia as the Solid Bronze überhusband and Meg Ryan as the snarky, swivel-hipped substance abuser; they could be playing George and Barbara Bush and the amps would still flow. If you can bite the bullet through the acres of suffering and co-dependency BS, this is one seriously romantic movie. Ryan cuts her natural perkiness with an air of self-destructive crisis, and Garcia's charms curl into everyone's hair, even little Tina Majorino's. Honestly, would you tope like an Irish sailor if you went to bed with this man every night? Wouldn't you want to remember everything the next day? When Garcia confronts Ryan at an AA meeting and says to an oblivious group of ex-rummies that his wife has "600 different kinds of smiles ... they can make you laugh out loud, just like that," the two lock lips, and mean it--these two aren't married in real life? Why haven't I ever seen Ryan kiss hubby Dennis Quaid with this much conviction?

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