Our Staff Picks column takes you back to a time when video stores reigned supreme and the "Staff Picks" section was the place to find out what films were worthy of one's time. Of course, our version of Staff Picks has a decidedly skintillating angle, as we suss out which films from a certain genre or year with great nudity. This week: Oscar Bait!
Admittedly, Oscar Bait movies do not tend to have much nudity in them. I think it's because the people who want to win the awards are hoping to appeal to as wide of an audience as they can without making them too horny and/or the A-list stars that are typically cast for these films have a bunch of anti-nudity stipulations. Either way, an Oscar Bait movie with actual nudity is harder to come by than one might think.
But what makes an Oscar Bait film? To be honest, it's a wide net but they tend to contain the inspirational and heart-strings-pulling tropes that make tearful Oscar voters give them statues. These movies include underdogs, lessons about racism, historical dramas, biopics, and tender feelings are all made to earn Oscars...even when those movies don't even get nominated.
Here are some Oscar Bait movies with good nudity that are actually enjoyable!
Forrest Gump
Based on a book? Check. Takes place in the 1960s? Check. An underdog triumphing over every possible obstacle with ease and humor? CHECK. Forrest Gump takes the cake when it comes to a heartwarming Oscar-bait film. Tom Hanks plays a man with mental disabilities who never lets that stop him from succeeding in life. As a result, he gets into a mess of trouble and adventures that leave everyone in his life touched for the better.
Robin Wright plays his lifelong love, Jenny, who has a hippie phase that sees her performing "naked" behind a guitar. She is wearing a nude-colored thong and her guitar hides her hooters, but we would run to see that rack any day.
The Reader
Kate Winslet can do two things exceptionally well: dramatic acting and nudity. In this 2008 Oscar Bait drama, she delivers on both. In post-war Germany, a teenager befriends and falls for an older woman whom he reads to. She repays him by...showing off her breasts. Years later they reunite, but now they are on opposite sides of war crime trials. Whoa!
There was plenty more to read in this movie. Actress Jeanette Hain walks through a scene full frontally nude to show off her black bush and her big breasts that are thankfully just barely unobscured by her long hair.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
It's hard to remember that this was a movie that swept the nation and award nominations, but it's true. The movie about the baby who was born old and gets younger was a hit. It was also total Oscar bait. David Fincher directed Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in this curious case of an Oscar bait film that was nominated for 13 awards and only took home three.
It should have won an award for Cate Blanchett's nude body double who makes love to Benjamin Button on the beach. She plays a ballet dancer who looks amazing in all of her scenes and she left us wanting to see her ass for real in this distant beach scene.
Men, Women Children
After the success of the Oscar-winning film Juno, we saw a bunch of twee films like this film and the next one that we will look at. Juno wasn't Oscar bait and it was a surprise that that film was as successful as it was (it's very good! I'm only saying that because it is also very indie-feeling), but a lot of the films that came after that movie tried to replicate what they thought was so special about Juno. This created its own weird type of 2000s-indie-Oscar-bait.
Jason Reitman did direct a lot of these types of films, including this one. This ensemble film casts A-listers, including Adam Sandler playing against type and Jennifer Garner as a mom much like she was in Juno, as it explores just how disconnected modern technology has made people who desperately seek connection. This is explored a little bit with cam girls and amateur pornstars, so that's when we see very skintastic scenes.
Silver Linings Playbook
Personally, this movie feels THE MOST 2000s Oscar-bait-trying-to-feel-twee-and-indie to me. Jennifer Lawrence plays a widow who is determined to learn to dance in order to get through her grief. She and the depressed Bradley Cooper, a man who lost everything and moved back in with his parents, help each other through their hard times by trying to come up with a dance number. This is UBER heartwarming and quirky with A-list stars to bring it all to Oscar bait heaven.
Bradley Cooper suffers some flashbacks from discovering that his wife was cheating on him. You can see his wife's topless shower scene here:
A Dangerous Method
David Cronenberg does not make Oscar-bait movies and this psychological historical film does not seem like typical Oscar bait. That being said, the marketing campaign certainly made this movie seem that way - so much so that audiences were surprised to find that this was a saucier film than any of us expected.
The movie explores the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as they make breakthroughs in the early science of psychology. Keira Knightley is quite good in her role as the horny patient/student/lover who gets spanked by her "therapist"...like...a lot.
The Bonfire of the Vanities
This Brian de Palma movie is very good and it has great nudity. Tom Hanks plays a Wall Street guy who has a lavish lifestyle. Everything comes crashing down when he and his mistress are the drivers in a hit-and-run accident that leaves a Black boy from the Bronx in a coma. Meanwhile, a journalist sees this as the story that can help his career so he tries to exploit the story for everything that it's worth. It has greed being taken down, a sad story, race relations, sex, and sob stories to get the Academy's attention.
The babes in this movie are ON FIRE. Kim Cattrall, Melanie Griffith, and the boobalicious Beth Broderick all give their skin some camera time.
