Movie sex scenes

Watched, in the past few days, both "Friends With Benefits" and "An Education." Obviously one is low/middle brow, one is high brow. Regardless, sex is a huge theme in both.

Anyway, in "Friends With Benefits," they have an extended sex montage. It's not steamy - and actually a decent representation of how real couples actually do it. Some laughter thrown in. Some repositioning. Etc., etc., etc.

AN EDUCATION SPOILER ALERT













In "An Education," we are spared the big scene. There's a huge build-up, with the main character obsessing over losing her virginity - she wants to wait for her 17th birthday. Her birthday arrives, the scene is set, and we rejoin the couple the next morning in their hotel room. She's standing at the window by this point, fully clothed. Almost reminded me of the handling of Josh Brolin's death in "No Country For Old Men."

I was compelled to start this thread because someone mentioned on the movie thread that "In Time" needed a sex scene to establish chemistry between the two romantic leads. Personally, I am realizing that sex scenes in movies don't really do it for me. Most of them seem gratuitous. They drag on too long. It's all been done before. There's frequently little value added. My wife and I have a very health relationship. But her and I both are apt to say, "All right, we get it" when the sex begins in a movie.

What do you guys think? Are Hollywood directors and actors just bad at integrating sex into their films? Am I totally off base? Do some of you - as was indicated in the "In Time" comment - think they add to your viewing experience?

 

Better than Deliverance?

 

The Deliverance sex scene gave us James Carville

 

Body Heat:Literature as Basic Instinctornography

 

The shock value and awesomeness of Apollonia's wedding night in "The Godfather" had profound, lasting affect on one 12-year-old viewer.

 

Emmannuelle in Space just wouldn't have been the same without those beatifully written and acted cenes. Oh wait. I think that was a series, not a movie.

 

Sarah Holmcomb, the same girl who played Maggie in "Caddyshack."

 

Another vote for Body Heat.

What about Sea of Love with Ellen Barkin climbing all over Al Pacino?

 

Roles in two legendary movies, then disappeared.

 

Woody Allen using the Orgasmatron in Sleeper is pretty steamy.