2. Natalie Portman Vs Mila Kunis - Black Swan
Darren Aronofsky knows how to get under an audience's collective skin, creating provocatively, visceral films built on haunting images and poignant emotional flashpoints. Black Swan is one of his most haunting and brilliant achievements, founded not only on Natalie Portman's exceptional lead performance, but also on the brilliant supporting work of Mila Kunis, on inspiringly sexy form. Portman's engaging, traumatic descent into madness, via a Cronenberg-like body shock horror is the film's chief success, but the equally evocative, equally affecting sex scene between Kunis and Portman is also one of its finest sequences, and not simply for the delightful clash of two of Hollywood's hottest properties. The scene is incredibly authentic, and it all lives on the convincing kiss that kicks it off, which is easily one of Aronofsky's most viscerally affecting scenes, without the need provoke or horrify his audience. Who cares if it probably only happens in Portman's head?