'Tis the season for best-of-the-year lists, and once again The New York Times Magazine has taken a more inventive approach to the traditional numerical rundown. In what has quickly become one of our favorite holiday traditions, they've rounded up their favorite performers of the year for a series of shorts that illustrate a very specific cinematic theme.
This year that theme is the movie kiss.
The magazine created nine couples — some likelier (Kristen Stewart and Chadwick Boseman) than others (Timothy Spall and David Oyelowo) — and asked them to pucker up. And, while watching Steve Carrell and Laura Dern ravage each other on a park bench suits us just fine, none of the vignettes compare to the thrill we got from watching Benedict Cumberbatch and Reese Witherspoon smooch. Yes, they have Hollywood's two best last names, but these are two of our favorite actors working right now, and though they've yet to star as lovers, we now know just what it would look like if/when they do. In a word: perfect.
To watch Cumberbatch and Witherspoon, along with Julianne Moore and John Lithgow, Miles Teller and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Rosario Dawson and Jenny Slate swap spit, click here.