Metroland (1999)

American audiences can travel back in time, and over the pond, to experience English life during the late ’70s thanks to Metroland (1997). Not to be confused with the BBC documentary Metro-land (1973), this romantic dramedy is based on the same-named novel by Julian Barnes. The film follows Chris (Christian Bale) and Marion (Emily Watson) Lloyd, a young married couple living in a London suburb called Metroland. But their happy home is disrupted when Chris’s old friend Toni Barbarowski (Lee Ross) visits. The carousing cohort’s wild ways remind Chris of how free he felt during the 1960s. At that time, he was living as a beatnik photographer in Paris. He had a beret and a groovy French girlfriend named Annick (Elsa Zylberstein). As Chris questions his current life, he encounters Joanna (Amanda Ryan). She’s a beauty who comes on to him, but he refuses when he discovers Toni set it all up so he could split Chris from his wife — leaving her fair game for himself. With friends like that, who needs enemies? Before Bale became Batman, he dropped his cape and pants to flash his flesh in this flick’s flashback. Check out his naked T&A as his character sows his wild oats 53 minutes into the movie. If that’s not hot enough, the hottie later struts his stuff in the buff while searching for a condom in a London flat. The skintastic act means we get to see Bale’s butt, bush, balls, and peen! Who says the suburbs are boring?