15. Japón (2002)

Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas' audaciously impressive sophomore drama "Battle in Heaven" and his masterful yet undistributed third feature "Silent Light" are cinematic works of poetry that challenge, enlighten and barely get seen by American audiences; the very inclusion of Reygadas' raw, more blatantly sensationalistic debut feature here is important because (a) "Japón" has the 15th most god-awful sex scene we've ever witnessed, and (b) said sex scene's button-pushing tastelessness is so over-the-top that maybe its artistic value could potentially be argued by someone who only sees it for the first time after reading this. (Is that a recommendation or a dismissal? Yes.) Non-professional actor Alejandro Ferretis plays a craggy, arthritic painter who retreats from Mexico City to the remote canyon town Aya with intentions to kill himself. Welcomed to stay in a barn belonging to the elderly widow Ascen (Magdalena Flores, an amateur who sometimes looks to the director for cues while filming), our nameless protagonist masturbates to thoughts of his incredibly old landlady making out with a nubile swimsuit babe. Then he goes as far as to proposition his host, and the acceptance is explicitly played fully nude: "Lie down, madam," he tells the frail and unattractive woman, then "Now turn around please." Telling her how and where to position herself, an effort made more awkward in that it's improvised, Ferretis finally fucks this ancient broad in a filthy little room, every sagging pound undulating accordingly as she looks entirely uncomfortable to be performing. Naturalistic? Courageous? Or empty provocation? Maybe it's all three, and hey, we don't want to watch it! —Aaron Hillis

14. 8 Mile (2002)

Once upon a time, Brittany Murphy was the loopy, likable, less-pretty but plenty funny sidekick in "Clueless." The distance she's traveled since then, most of it downhill in a distinctive spiraling pattern, has never been better epitomized than in the "love" scene in Curtis Hanson's devoutly gritty and deglamorized Eminem biopic "8 Mile." For the sake of unburnished naturalism, Murphy's aspiring model Alex and Eminem's aspiring Eminem Jimmy "Rabbit" Smith furtively hump in a quiet corner of the automotive factory in which Rabbit works, unaccompanied by any sound other than that of their own heavy breathing. For the sake of unburnished (if oversharing) naturalism, we also learn that when it comes to impromptu acts of intimacy, Alex likes to smooth the way with a little spit. But it's not that palm-licking act of DIY lubrication that makes the scene so, well, gross — it's the stultified, slack-jawed expression on Murphy's face, which makes it clear that even during the duration of a quickie her attention has wandered, perhaps to whether or not she'd set her VCR to tape that night's episode of "Gilmore Girls." A supposedly spur-of-the-moment, passionate knee-trembler comes out looking as memorable and enjoyable as two perfunctory minutes spent pumping gas. —Alison Willmore [Watch this clip at DailyMotion.]

13. Ciao! Manhattan (1972)

The most depressing, exploitative scene in a film that's almost unwatchably demoralizing throughout has got to be the final surrender of Edie Sedgwick to the dopey drifter who picks her up on a freeway at the beginning of "Ciao! Manhattan." "Butch" (Wesley Hayes) brings "Susan" (Sedgwick) to her home, an empty swimming pool on her family's California estate, and she's a tragic sight: her upper crust diction has melted into a halting, methy drawl; two hard, painful baseballs are perched on her ribcage where her breasts used to be; and her famous grace has given way (when she can get off the floor at all) to a lolling, herky-jerky sway. Susan muses toplessly about her years in New York while Butch pretends to be interested and waits for the sex scene to arrive. When the two finally do begin making out, just the sight of Hayes's greasy face latched to Sedgwick's miraculously lovely profile is enough to get your gorge up. Worse is her lethargic, near-comatose affect in a series of invasive close-ups; you don't know if she's about to vomit (which would have been my choice) or pass out. The necrophiliac vibe of the scene is uncomfortably close to the story she tells earlier of entering the apartment of a famous photographer in New York for a drink and waking up to a rape in progress. Directly after this unholy consummation, Susan is taken to a psychiatric hospital for shock treatments, but not before she's molested by a doctor played, in a morbidly appropriate choice, by none other than French tickler Roger Vadim. —Michelle Orange

12. The Specialist (1994)

After spending the first hour of this dreadful thriller cooing "sexy" assassination plans to each other over the phone ("I heard that you...control your explosions." "I never thought blood could be so...sticky."), stars Sharon Stone and Sylvester Stallone finally meet face to face (and, in record time, crotch to crotch). Unfortunately, both stars seem far more excited by their own physiques than each other's, and so their fateful pairing becomes two hardbodies preening for the cameras like some sort of weird human approximation of peacock mating rituals. And the typically exhibitionistic Stone, who doesn't wear a single bra in the entire picture (as if making her own private sequel to "Basic Instinct," where she famously wore no panties), is surprisingly overshadowed by Stallone; their slo-motion clinch in a steamy shower is basically just one rigorous exploration of Stallone's ass after another. Even in the rare moment Sly attempts to express a little interest in his co-star, it backfires thanks to some untimely editing: as the scene begins, Stallone cradles Stone's head in his hands and grumbles "Let me see that beautiful face," whereupon director Luis Llosa cuts to a wide shot of the two in profile, with Stallone blatantly staring at Stone's boobs for a solid three seconds. Don't worry Sly. Yours are still bigger. —Matt Singer [Watch this clip at DailyMotion.]

11. Munich (2005)

Steven Spielberg's semi-fictionalized aftermath to the 1972 Olympic Games tragedy, in which Palestinian terrorists calling themselves Black September took 11 Israeli athletes hostage before murdering them all, is obviously every bit as earnest as "Schindler's List." Yet there's a literally climactic sex scene between Mossad agent-turned-counterterrorist assassin Avner (Eric Bana) and his wife that's unintentionally hilarious — or at the very least, silly — when it means to be cathartic. Wracked with guilt over the eye-for-an-eye vengeance he hath wrought, Avner stares blankly at the ceiling while lying in bed. His wife strokes his face, but he's lost in thought. Cue traumatic flashback fantasy: a Black September baddie in camo face paint gets out of a helicopter, then we're back to our hero, getting on top of his lover as unsubtle Israeli singing swells on the soundtrack. He's distant as he pumps away, still remembering the massacre, which cuts back just as Avner whips his sweaty, backlit mane back in slow-motion with "Flashdance" bravado. The ridiculous zenith of this extreme parallel editing may have theoretically worked in Tony Kushner and Eric Roth's screenplay, but it's a mood-wrecker in practice: Timed just as the hostages are shot and blown up in his vision, Avner has a big ol' crying, drooling, impassioned orgasm (a bit too reminiscent of when Bana's Dr. Banner transformed into the Hulk), an intended moment of moral complexity made clunkily simplistic and laughable. If something positive can be taken away from this, it's that Spielberg has at least honed his perfect Ron Howard parody. —A.H. [Watch this clip at YouTube.]

[Photos: "Japón," Tartan USA, 2002; "8 Mile," Universal Pictures, 2002; "Ciao! Manhattan," Maron Films, 1972; "The Specialist," Warner Bros., 1994; "Munich," Universal Pictures, 2005]