Channel 4 are currently hosting a poll to find out the nation's 100 sexiest cinematic moments. While trying to think of my own, I came up with this poll of my top 10. This will be the first of many such polls which I plan to include on the site over the coming months. Please use the form underneath to tell me your own favourites and I'll feature them on the site as well, or to visit the Channel 4 Poll, click here

MY TOP 10 SEXIEST FILM MOMENTS

DON'T LOOK NOW (1973)

Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland are frighteningly plausible as a couple united and divided by their sadness at the accidental drowning of their young daughter. At no point is this chemistry more evident than in what is probably the greatest love scene ever filmed. In a Venice hotel room, we first see Christie sitting naked in the bath, watching her husband (Sutherland) brushing his teeth. Never has a sense of intimacy been so well evoked. The lovemaking that follows is completely frank and honest, Sutherland and Christie seemingly completely at ease and familiar with each other�s bodies, director Roeg cutting between images of them elaborately entwined, to scenes of them getting dressed again to go out to dinner. As Sutherland pulls Christie on top of him, the scene is intercut with the image of him, now dressed, watching Christie applying her make-up in the bathroom mirror. Both characters seem gloriously comfortable and at peace with one another, despite their mutual tragedy. MORE

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BODY HEAT (1981)

Sweaty take on the �Double Indemnity� theme has Kathleen Turner as the ultimate femme fatale (a role she was to later ape in Steve Martin�s hilarious, �The Man With Two Brains.�) Both Matty (Turner) and Ned (William Hurt at his intense best) are constantly in heat throughout the film. The scene in which they first get it together is a charged, dynamic, wonderfully overblown tour-de-force. Matty, dressed in red, meets and flirts with Ned in a local bar (�You�re not that bright, are you? I like that in a man.�) After inviting him home to listen to her wind chimes, she immediately orders him to leave. He walks away, then hesitates to watch her through a window, staring back at him, willing him to return. Picking up a garden chair, he plunges it through the window, runs in and grabs her. Corny but horny. MORE

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AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999)

Frustrated, middle-aged Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) quits his job and falls for his daughter�s best friend after an epiphanic moment whilst watching her cheerleading. She invades his dreams and fantasies and he has visions of her floating on a bed of red rose petals, or dipping his hand into a rose-filled bath tub where she is soaking. Their eventual, near-sexual encounter in is balmy and erotic, despite falling short of conclusion. Throughout, Lester�s thwarted arousal is tangible and involving. MORE

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THE PIANO TEACHER (2001)

Isabelle Huppert plays Erika, a stern, damaged piano teacher at a prestigious Viennese conservatory. In between violent fights with her mother, she visits sex shops, watches porn and mutilates her vagina with a razor blade. Obsessed with her handsome, young student, Walter (Benoit Magimel) she spells out just what she wants to do with him in a wild, depraved letter, then in the school�s restrooms, gets him aroused then refuses to have sex with him, in the film�s most memorable, frustrating, sexually charged scene. MORE

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HENRY AND JUNE (1990)

A budding Uma Thurman plays June Miller, the object of desire and inspiration of Anais Nin (Maria de Madieros) and Henry Miller (Fred Ward.) The tangible sense of sexual menace that Thurman exudes is way beyond anything you�d expect from a 19 year old, even the photo of her on Miller�s desk exudes sex. The scene in which Anais fantasises about having sex with June, during which she suddenly feels her penis is a particular favourite. Director, Philip Kaufman, seems particularly at home when working with erotic material - �The Unbearable Likeness of Being,� �Quills� etc. MORE

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INTIMACY (2001)

A lonely, lost couple meet in a London flat for weekly, silent sexual relief. The emotional intensity is deliberately raw and untempered. The sex scenes are stark, aggressive and graphically rendered. Their flesh � pasty, blotchy, flabby, imperfect and beautifully human gives an almost physical aura of the clammy goose-bumps of sex in a cold room with an electric bar fire. The early sex scenes ensnare the viewer into immediate involvement with both the characters, despite lack of dialogue, and it is that which gives the viewer a feeling of intimacy with them as the rest of the film dissects the initial apparent lack of emotion and communication. MORE

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BOYS DON'T CRY (1999)

Ultimately brutal and tragic film based on the true story of teenager, Brendan Teena. Biologically a woman, Teena dressed and lived as a man in 90�s small-town Nebraska, unwittingly seducing the local girls and falling in love with white trash slacker, Lana Tisdel (Chloe Sevigny.) Before things get nasty, there�s a terrific scene where Brendan goes down on Lana. Sevigny�s clumsily beautiful face takes up the whole screen for several minutes as she is slowly brought to orgasm in what is one of the most affecting and restrained sex scenes in recent years. MORE

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THE PIANO (1993)

The slow, building passion between deaf-mute mail-order bride, Ada (Holly Hunter ) and Baines (Harvey Keitel), the Maori settler who rescues her piano from the New Zealand beach that she and her daughter have just arrived on. She offers to repay him by giving him lessons, earning her piano back, black key by black key. He insists on exchanging each key for a sexual favour. In a wonderfully erotic scene, he sits at her feet as she plays, gently running his fingers around the holes in her tights. Michael Nyman�s haunting score to the film heightens the emotion further. MORE

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RITA, SUE AND BOB TOO (1987)

Gritty realistic sex with a surprisingly beautiful Bradford backdrop. Bob (George Costigan) drives Rita and Sue, two 16 year old virgins, up to the moors after they�ve been babysitting for him and his wife. The dialogue is crude and basic, �Do either of you two know how to put on a rubber Johnny?� The girls are gauche and loud as he deflowers them, one after the other on the front seat of his car, as they respectively stand outside giving a running commentary. The sex is undignified and quick, but the honesty of its portrayal makes this a warm, affectionately erotic scene, despite passion-killing verbal interruptions such as �It looks like a frozen sausage.� MORE

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THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA - QUEEN OF THE DESERT (1994)

About as feel good as feel good movies get. No sex scenes as such but think Terence Stamp himself is sex on legs as the adorable, world-weary, drag queen, Bernadette. The unspoken romance between Bernadette and Bob (superbly played by Bill Hunter) is both touching and, in my eyes, very sexy, particularly the scene where the pair sit up drinking all night in the desert. Bernadette wakes up the next morning with her make-up running and sand ingrained in that beautifully noble face, but Bob still fancies her, and so do I. Guy Pearce doesn�t look half bad in a frock either. MORE

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