Our Staff Picks column is a new addition that 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 has a decidedly nude angle, as we suss out which films from a certain genre with great nudity. This week: movies based on books!
Yesterday was Book Lover's Day, so I wanted to highlight fantastic films with great nude scenes that were based on books. Yes, reading is cool...but watching a book? I love that even better! Check out our staff picks for movies based on books:
Mothering Sunday
This recent film by director Eve Hewson delivers some amazing full frontal from British star Josh O'Connor. Based on the 2016 novel by Graham Swift, the story follows an English made working at an estate who has been having an affair with the wealthy man next door for years. Their affair has to come to an end because he's going to be married off, so they have one last tryst.
The book gives us much more about the protagonist's interior life whereas the movie seems to focus more on the emotional connection between the lovers and the fact that he is about to be married. The movie gives us more penis. Yeah, I think I like the movie more!
Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn's 2012 novel Gone Girl was a massive hit - so much so that it was instantly adapted into a film. The entertaining thriller hinges on unreliable narration and plot twists to take us on a suspenseful journey into a woman who goes missing, leaving her husband behind to be a suspect.
As a film, Gone Girl is most notable for its look at Ben Affleck's penis. When the nude Mr. Jennifer Lopez steps into the shower, we can see his peen from the side.
Trainspotting
Trainspotting was written in thick Scottish slang by writer Irvine Welsh. As a result, it can be hard to understand even if you are a native English speaker. The Scottish slang brings realism to the story about junkies in Edinborough and all of the things that they will do to try to score their next fix.
Danny Boyle brought this story to surreal life with his highly stylized and dreamy filmmaking. It also helped that Ewan McGregor starred and showed us his full frontal cock - as did Ewen Bremner. These Ewens know how to hang hog.
Brokeback Mountain
Ang Lee adapted this story into a moving, sweeping film that tells the story of a long affair between two closeted gay ranchers. The original story was written by Annie Prouix and published in 1997 where it went on to get third place in the O. Henry Award competition. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal played the two men who are hired to look after sheep at a grazing range in Wyoming one summer. It's at this seasonal job that they fall for each other.
Famously, they don't know how to quit each other - and they don't. They return to one another again and again over the span of 20 years in this incredibly touching love story. While Jake used a body double for his scenes, Heath Ledger delivered his real dudity!
The Power of the Dog
Speaking of gay ranch hands, Jane Campion's 2021 masterpiece Power of the Dog has very similar vibes and it was also based on a novel with the same title. Thomas Savage wrote the novel in 1967 which is set in 1920s Montana where two brothers become acquainted with a widow and her teen son. Kodi Smit-McPhee plays the gay son wonderfully who withstands bullying from the deeply closeted Benedict Cumberbatch.
Do you know what isn't in the closet? Benedict Cumberbatch's penis!
The Talented Mr. Ripley
I love talking about this book. Considered one of the best psychological thrillers ever written, Patricia Highsmith gave the world psychopath Tom Ripley in 1955. The book turned into a five-novel series that expands Tom Ripley's crimes all over the world. Highsmith is a fascinating writer - more on that in a moment - and I actually think that the 1999 adaptation of her crime novel is really good.
In the book and in the movie, Ripley meets a very charming man named Dickie. He is hired by Dickie's father to convince Dickie to return from Italy to the United States, but Tom is entranced by Dickie. Before long, he is rubbing elbows with Dickie and his girlfriend on the coast of Italy. He forms a lust-filled crush on Dickie which consumes him - and all of them.
I think the film is a great adaptation because it also makes clear what the book only hints at: that Ripley's obsession is also sexual. Yes, he seems to want to be as cool and charming as Dickie, but he also wants Dickie all to himself and the movie makes it fairly clear that Matt Damon's Tom Ripley is gay...and that Jude Law seems to gay-bait him in certain scenes!
Her first novel was Strangers on a Train which is considered one of Alfred Hitchcock's finest films (starring gay actor Farley Granger). She seemed to write a lot about intense relationships, so you might be wondering what her connection to the queer community was. Well, she also wrote a lesbian novel with a happy ending called The Price of Salt (under a pseudonym) which was later adapted into a film: Carol. Patricia Highsmith, an incredibly complicated figure, is behind some of Hollywood's most notable queer stories.
Fifty Shades of Grey
Initially, writer E.L. James was trying to write Twilight fan fiction. What started off with those sparkly and horny vampires wound up transforming into the story of a college student who meets a 27-year-old entrepreneur with a bondage fetish. Cue the kinks!
Jamie Dornan plays the impossibly sexy Christian Grey who is rich, hot, and kinky as all get out. While he is hot in all three films, he starts the trilogy off with a bang by baring his buns and even unzipping his jeans to show us his shaft.
Don't Look Now
Don't Look Now was based on a short story by Daphne Du Maurier who also famously wrote the gothic novel Rebecca. The movie is faithful to her story with a few expansions to hammer home the theme and make the story movie-length. The movie about grief also gave Hollywood one of the most contested nude scenes of all time. People swear that the sex scene in Don't Look Now was real, unsimulated sex between stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.
You can see for yourself here. What do you think?
