Bound (1996)

Tattoo-Touching and Lesbian Kissing

The Wachowski brothers' debut film was this clever thriller and stylishly sexy neo-noir crime film. Two leading actresses portrayed a scheming pair of femme fatales who experienced a believable, titillating, Sapphic sexual liaison:

• butch lesbian and ex-con plumber Corky (Gina Gershon)
• breathy, Chicago mobster's bisexual girlfriend Violet (Jennifer Tilly)

While Corky renovated the next-door apartment, they both plotted to abscond $2 million from Violet's boyfriend Caesar (Joe Pantoliano) while engaging in steamy girl-on-girl scenes.

In a sofa seduction scene with her bulging cleavage showing, black lingerie-wearing Violet asked: "Do I make you nervous, Corky?" and then admitted boldly: "I'm trying to seduce you." With a tantalizing request, she urged Corky to feel her breast's tattoo. She then moistened Corky's finger by sucking it in her mouth and then placed it between her legs, as she confessed and proved her true feelings:

"Isn't it obvious? I'm trying to seduce you...I've wanted to ever since I saw you that day in the elevator. I know you don't believe me, but I can prove it to you. You can't believe what you'd see, but you can believe what you feel. I've been thinking about you all day."

She then begged for a kiss ("Please, kiss me") with their mouths close to each other in full-closeup.

Crash (1996)

Auto-Erotic Crash Kiss

David Cronenberg's coldly-erotic drama was deliberately controversial and repulsive with slightly depraved, raw scenes involving fetishistic individuals who had survived gruesome automobile crashes and felt compelled to rewatch and also re-enact the auto accidents.

In the film's startling conclusion that further explored the characters' obsession with the sexual energy derived from crashes, TV commercial producer/director James Ballard (James Spader) deliberately rear-ended his icy-blonde wife Catherine's (Deborah Kara Unger) sports-car.

After she was thrown from the car onto the ground next to the wreck, he made love to her from behind, after learning that she was all right. He also promised her a more deadly crash the next time:

"Maybe the next one, darling. Maybe the next one."

Jerry Maguire (1996)

Prolonged and Sensual Goodnight Kiss

Writer/director Cameron Crowe's popular sports-related romantic drama told about the life of an egotistical sports agent. It told of his developing relationship:

• high-powered, mid-30s Sports Management International agent Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise)
• 26 year-old single mother Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger)

After he finished his date with her on her house porch, he hesitated to give her a kiss. She responded by aggressively and impulsively grabbing him behind the neck, pulling him close and kissing him on the lips. Then they gave each other a perfunctory 'goodnight', but they didn't part.

As he slowly moved her shoulder wrap to the sides, he accidentally pulled her thin black dress straps loose ("Oops!"). When slowly re-tying them behind her neck (after suggesting: "Let me fix this"), he kissed her on the side of her neck, on her shoulder and on her bare chest - and on her lips.

The Build-Up from a Goodnight Kiss to an Invitation to Come In

As he continued to kiss her, she told him:

Dorothy: "I think you should not come in. Or, come in, depending on how you feel."
Jerry: "The same to you."
Dorothy: "No, I have to go in. I live here."
Jerry: "Right. I'll come in."
Dorothy: "Good. Are you sure we want to do this?"

She agreed when he replied: "Oh, hell, yes." After she briefly checked with Nanny Chad (Todd Louiso), the scene followed them inside the house, where she stripped him of his T-shirt in the living room (serenaded by a tape of jazz tunes), and then into her bedroom, where they laid embracing on her bed. He cautioned: "You know this is gonna change everything" (she responded: "Promise?") before they had sex together.

Kissed (1996)

Corpse Kissing

Lynne Stopkewich's debut film was a controversial and provocative limited-release independent film about the taboo subject of necrophilia.

The main character was sympathetically-portrayed as:

• Sandra Larson (Molly Parker) - an assistant at the Wallis Funeral Home

Fascinated with death from her early childhood, she exercised her obsession with finding spiritual calm and erotic attraction to the dead, by kissing a corpse in a coffin ("I've always been fascinated by death. The feel of it, the smell of it, the quietness of it").

In the film's most talked-about scene about 45 minutes into the film, she had sex with the corpse of an accident victim under harsh and glaring flourescent lighting in the embalming room. In her panties and bra, she first twirled around and circled the table holding the corpse. After stripping her clothes off, she then moved onto the end of the metal table, climbed on, and straddled the pallid body. The intensity of her sexual feelings glowed a bright white before the scene ended.

By the film's grim ending, her romantically-obsessed student boyfriend Matt (Peter Outerbridge) learned of her love of death, so he decided to commit suicide by hanging himself naked (with her present, in his room filled with lit candles) in order to be with her forever. When she tried to stop him and professed to love him, he replied: "No, you don't Sandra, but you will" before he kicked over the stool and ended his life.

When she was alone with Matt's corpse at the funeral home, she thought to herself:

"Matt was gone, but not his energy. His star was the brightest I've ever seen, exploding and surrounding us. His love was so intense. I felt burned. Love is about craving, our craving for transformation, and all transformation, all movement happens because life turns into death. (She kissed his lips) I still work at a funeral home. I'm still compelled to cross over. But now I see Matt and I look into the center."

(William Shakespeare's) Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Kisses in Life and Death

Australian writer/director Baz Luhrmann's hip, retro-futuristic version of Shakespeare's tragic play about star-crossed lovers starred:

• the lovely Juliet Capulet (17 year-old Claire Danes)
• Romeo Montague (21 year-old Leonardo di Caprio)

The film featured a flamboyant modernizing with gang warfare between the Montague and Capulet Boys, guns, and MTV-style filming.

The young couple from opposing families first met at a costume ball, where "bright angel" Juliet was wearing angel wings, while he was dressed in knight's armor. They first saw each other on opposite sides of an aquarium tank (with colorful fish), and soon flirtateously kissed each other in an elevator after love at first sight - although Romeo was dismayed to learn that she was a Capulet.

Love at First Sight at the Costume Ball

Following the crucial balcony scene, they plunged into a swimming pool where they kissed below and above water.

In the climactic double-suicide scene at film's end, Juliet regained consciousness on a flower-strewn altar lit by 2,000 candles just as Romeo was poisoning himself with a lethal drug (bought from a drug dealer). He thought she was dead in the Capulet vault, although her death by poison was only faked. She noticed his small poison vial and remarked: "What's here? Poison? Drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me after?" Hoping to taste a drop or two of poison from his lips, she kissed him just as he expired.

She sobbed, her cries echoing in the immense chamber. She noticed Romeo's semi-automatic hand-gun, picked it up, and cocked its trigger. She placed the gun barrel to the left side of her head and pulled the trigger - to be together with Romeo and join him forever. The scene concluded with a short montage of their loving relationship seen earlier.

Star Trek First Contact (1996)

Borg-Android Kiss

This was the eighth film in the action-oriented science fiction series, and the first without the members of the original cast of Star Trek.

Captured android Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner) (with an implanted emotion chip) from the USS Enterprise was threatened by the sexy and cunning Borg Queen (Alice Krige), an arch-enemy and the leader of a cybernetics-enhanced race:

"You are an imperfect being, created by an imperfect being. Finding your weakness is only a matter of time."

The Borg Queen's mission was to absorb or assimilate all other species or cultures into their collective consciousness:

"We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own."

She attempted a seduction of Data by grafting organic, human flesh onto his arm (she assisted him in his goal to become more fully human) and the promise of having sex with him. Their full profiles filled the frame as she kissed him:

Borg Queen: "Are you familiar with physical forms of pleasure?"
Data: "I am fully functional. Programmed in multiple techniques."

Her plan was to have him surrender encryption codes that would allow her to take over the USS Enterprise.