Top 17 R-Rated Movies

I was as giddy as a schoolgirl with new clothes when I saw the first trailer for LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, after all the speculation that it would be total shite after a twelve year hiatus. It had John McClane crashing a car into a helicopter in mid air, for God's sake. It couldn't not be good. The news came in last week though that the movie has been rated PG-13, which is an indicator to me that the series has sold out to the masses big time. That's a fucking shame, really, considering DIE HARD is probably the best pure action film of all time. It got me thinking about my favorite R-rated movies, which I now present to you in the company of sexii pictures and write-ups. Their my favorites in terms of entertainment value, ideas about humanity explored, pushing the envelope, revolutionary cinematic value, and plain blood and bullets. Here are my 17 favorite rated R movies.

-AMERICAN BEAUTY-

I'm tired of this Lawrence Welk shit!

The first time I saw this movie, I got giddy. I was 14 or 15, and I didn't understand the subtext of this piece of genius (as if I know everything now, being the 17-year-old genius that I am). What I did understand, was the glee. It was seeing a movie that my parents had explicitly forbidden me from seeing, because of all the sex, language, drug use, and the ending. Seeing it "secretly" during the wee hours of the night while my parents slept in the next room probably enhanced my first viewing more than anything, but on repeat viewings (I've seen it all the way through three times since then), I not only love every scene of the movie, I can appreciate the angst it explores. My family is falling apart right now, with an imminent divorce on the horizon, and I can relate wayyyy too well with the mom's lack of self-confidence and generally fried brain, as well as the dad wanting to re-discover the golden days of no responsibility and all fun. And of course, I can relate with the sexual angst of teenager-hood, of not knowing how to like certain people, how to please others and myself, and perpetually wanting more. AMERICAN BEAUTY, along with FIGHT CLUB and THE MATRIX, closed the door on a century of film with a resounding, refreshing bang, as well as teaching me to "look closer" at film, as well as life.

-APOCALYPSE NOW-

Dun dun a dun dun, dun dun a dun dun!

I don't know if this movie is a bad dream or a good one, but it certainly is a movie that God seemingly directly handed over to man. Maybe the greatest film of all time dealing with war (it's got some competition on the list, as well as THE THIN RED LINE), Coppola's vision of insanity "isn't like Vietnam. It is Vietnam," according to the director himself. Marlon Brando gives maybe his performance (but hey hey, he also has some competition on the list) as Colonel Kurtz, the embodiment of insanity. Martin Sheen, though, gives the best performance of the movie and maybe all of the 70s as Willard, the man sent to Cambodia by the army to kill Kurtz. You knew from the opening scene that the movie was going to be something else, with Willard lying on his cheap motel's bed with the rotating of the ceiling fan slowly turning into the terrifying cry of the helicopters, exemplifying how the violence, the madness, "the horror", consumes all.

-CHILDREN OF MEN-We're almost there.

When I saw CHILDREN OF MEN with my friends on its first day in wide release, I almost had a religious experience. It was that transcending. Not only was I, the film buff, blown away, all of my friends were as speechless as I. It's really something to get a bunch of teenage idiots in complete awe. Emmanuel Lubezki is maybe the best cinematographer working in Hollywood these days, with THE NEW WORLD, THE THIN RED LINE, ALI, and SLEEPY HOLLOW already under his belt, he shot perhaps the most cinematically incredible film I've ever seen in this wowzer of a movie. He and director Alfonoso Cuarón depict one of the bleakest and fully realized dystopian futures ever, where most of the world has fallen into pure chaos, garbage lines the street, and the schools are abandoned, but not forgotten. Clive Owen gives one of the four or five best performances of a very stacked 2006, as Theo, a man who goes from a hopeless, who-cares-about-life loser to the savior of men. There are about a half dozen scenes that will seriously knock you on your ass in terms of there extended takes and extraordinary craftsmanship, as well as punch you in the gut from their emotional power. This is an exceptional film in every way.

-CITY OF GOD-

It was like a message from God: "Honesty doesn't pay, sucker".

Rookie director Fernando Meirelles took a cast full of no-name, first time actors, a script adapted from a 400-page series of memoirs, and a pretty modest $3 million budget, and crafted a masterpiece. There are few artists who can truly capture life on film; the emotion, the energy, the subtleties, but this Brazilian auteur did when it was released 2002. While his follow-up, THE CONSTANT GARDENER, was overblown, over-serious, and boring, CITY OF GOD remains a gem after multiple viewings, and is still right up there among the three or four best movies of this decade.

-THE DEPARTED-Maybe some day you'll wake the fuck up.

Ahh, the sweet smell of perfection. THE DEPARTED is, to me, a perfect film. Its energy is vibrant and in and of itself, every performance rings true (Nicholson is a force of nature, stealing every scene he's in, and DiCaprio and Damon are like two sides to the same coin), and the tension is practically tangible. One of the most amazing things about it is that it runs for an epic 150 minutes. That's a credit to the Mr. Eyebrows himself, for keeping everything in the story so interesting all the while, as well as Thelma Schoonmaker for cross-cutting multiple story lines until the climax of William Monahan's masterpiece script is reached. A masterpiece in every sense of the word, and even though its only eight months old, it's one of my very favorite movies.

-DIE HARD-

Now I have a machine gun. Ho-ho-ho.

Yippie kay-yay, Mr. Falcon (isn't edited TV just awesome?). The definitive action movie, DIE HARD is the one that put Bruce Willis on the map (for better or for worse), telling one of the simplest stories of all time: the good guy beats the bad guys and gets the girl. The cinematography, music, amount of bullets, and Alan Rickman's excellent portrayal as one of cinema's best villains, that German nationalist you love to hate, Hans Gruber. Seriously, who doesn't love seeing him say "shoot the glass!"?

-DO THE RIGHT THING-

You've gotta fight the powers at be!

Spike Lee has never been afraid of a little controversy. Not now, with his 2006 documentary smash WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE (which I have yet to see), not in exploring the post-9/11 scene in New York City in 25TH HOUR, and not when disecting the life of a tumultuous public figure (MALCOLM X). His first big movie, though, was DO THE RIGHT THING, and it remains his best to this day. It's Brooklyn in the hottest day of the summer, and the racial tensions of the diverse neighborhood under examination are rising faster than the thermometer. Featuring one of the ten best scripts in history and a pitch-perfect cast including a lot of terrific characters, DO THE RIGHT THING is a masterpiece, one of a handful of truly perfect films. When compared with trashily-written garbage such as CRASH (which of course the Academy rewarded Best Picture), the escalating emotions and complex ideas are presented with nuance and remarkable thought, despite a lot of the characters acting with so much energy and hate that it sometimes seems like they're screaming directly into the camera. It's a fierece, fiery, take-no-prisoners movie, and I don't know that a more socially relevant film has been made with such quality ever since.

-FIGHT CLUB-

If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, can you wake up as a different person?

FIGHT CLUB is maybe the most important film ever made to me. It is the movie that made me understand the importance of subtext, of reading between the lines. On the surface it's a bunch of guys beating the shit out of each other. Tyler Durden is the man. Marla Singer is just some desperate ho-bag. Dig deeper, though, and you find that things are twisted and chaotic. Isn't that what we want, though, as men? Don't we want some injection of life into our stagnant blood? Don't you just want to grab some guy by the collar and let loose? Or do we want substance? Is life so twisted these days that we must resort to violence to express ourselves or even feel a pulse? I won't even go into how flawlessly made the film is, I'll just leave this as a mini-analysis of the film's subtext. It's like Donkey says in SHREK: "It's like an onion-it's got layers." And hey, who doesn't like seeing Ed Norton pummel Angel Eyes' face?

-THE GODFATHER-

I believe in America.

The AFI came out with their revised list of the 100 best American movies last week, and Martin Sheen said something simple and interesting about THE GODFATHER, which came in at number two. He said: "THE GODFATHER is America's most essential film because it's a film about America". True words, Marty. It's maybe the best film ever made, a scorchingly affecting, incomparably beautiful and gritty portrayal about the defining crime family in cinema, Don Vito Corleone's clan. It's a genuine tragedy, about Vito Corleone's desperate grip on power in the world of crime in New York City. He seemingly has everything, except for his son Michael, who loves him, but doesn't respect him. THE GODFATHER features one of the best casts in history, with James Caan, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, and Diane Keaton giving legendary performances. And of course, their is the Don himself, played by Marlon Brando in what I believe to be the greatest performance in film history.

-HEAT-

You know, we are sitting here, you and I, like a couple of regular fellas. You do what you do, and I do what I gotta do. And now that we've been face to face, if I'm there and I gotta put you away, I won't like it. But I tell you, if it's between you and some poor bastard whose wife you're gonna turn into a widow, brother, you are going down.

HEAT is as epic as movies get, while remaining a human drama. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino give two of their best performances, as the best bank robber in the business and the best cop in the LAPD. De Niro's restraint and subtlety contrast well with the over-the-topness of Pacino, and I think this contrast makes the dynamics of their characters all the more interesting. They're both men who put their work in front of everything else, including the women they're with. This is one of the best character studies in movie history, and it's always involving and tense throughout its sprawling 170-minute running time. It also contains one of best, most pulsating, most immediate shootouts in movie history.

-THE MATRIX-

He is the one.

I think the genius of THE MATRIX is undeniable. It's influence, only eight years later, is evident in the many idiotic rip-offs and cash-ins Hollywood has produced in hopes of another sci-fi re-birth. This is a kind of testament to the incredible filmmaking that THE MATRIX is. It goes where no sci-fi film has gone in its combination of visceral thrills (bullet time, people) and concepts, where humanity has been wiped out basically by itself and it has been reduced to a "virus to the world", as put by Smith. This is on the short list of essential sci-fi films.

-PREDATOR-

If it bleeds, we can kill it.

This is purely primal aggression on film. It's half a dozen of the most badass men in the world going into the jungle to hunt some South American slime and come out all dead at the hands of a certain Predator. All except for Ahnuld, or course. For my money, this could be the best non-stop action movie ever, right up there with DIE HARD (another John McTiernan film). There's no preachiness or pretentiousness or forced messages here, just some major pwnage.

-PULP FICTION-

So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something. His ass.

Can I said anything that hasn't been said about this? I guess I just like it because of Christopher Walken.

-RAGING BULL-

So give me a... stage / Where this bull here can rage / And though I could fight / I'd much rather recite /... that's entertainment.

Although I argue that Martin Scorsese's best film is THE DEPARTED is his best film, mainly because its so damn entertaining while telling one of the best and deepest stories in recent mainstream cinema. That almost seems blasphemous, though, considering what the recent Best Picture winner is up against. Roger Ebert has called RAGING BULL "the greatest study of sexual frustration in modern cinema", as well as one of the best films of the 80s. I agree with both counts. Oh, and by the way, Robert De Niro as Jake La Motta gives the best performance in movie history.

-SAVING PRIVATE RYAN-Earn this.

The jolt that the first twenty minutes of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN gives you is incomparable. It's a unique experience, in that it doesn't wait until the middle or end of the movie to showcase its most incredible scene. You see a man go to a graveyard, and then BAM, you're on Omaha Beach. The intensity doesn't fade away, either, nor does the emotion. Spielberg's movie has a beauty to it, the sentiment that there is enough good in a life to sacrifice much for it.

-THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION-

To this day I don't know what those Italian ladies were saying.

While most of the films on this list feature a lot of blood (what can I say, I am still 17, ya know), this one doesn't really. I love it, though, like everyone else. It tells one of the most emotional, purely artistic stories in history, as both the film and short story by Stephen King (!) have made me cry like a baby. That's why it's on the list. Because of Red and Andy. Because of the unconditional, ever-present feeling of hope, even in its darkest moments.

-SIN CITY-
That's a damn fine coat.

Oh. Yeah. Who doesn't love SIN CITY? It's two hours of kinetic, unique energy, awesome cinematography, and old school, badass storytelling. All three of the stories work, and the score (Rodriguez's own work) is one of the most badass ever. Badass is the best word for this movie. Badass, badass, badass.