Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) Director: Quentin Tarantino Starring: Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivacia A Fox, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine
Without wanting to ignore the rest of the movie, Kill Bill Vol 1's placement on this list has more to do with the House Of Blue Leaves massacre than virtually anything else (except, perhaps, the Pussy Wagon). It was so bloody that Tarantino presented it for Western audiences in cut-avoiding black-and-white (check out the Japanese DVD for the full-blooded version). But gore aside, it's a balletic piece of action cinema in which QT shows off with enjoyable abandon. The film might be an experiment in style over content, but, oh, such style!
The Shining (1980) Director: Stanley Kubrick Starring: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd
When, in 1993, Sam Peckinpah's gloriously gory Western was resubmitted to the MPAA ratings board, the movie went up from an R to an NC-17. As such, with its sense of cowboys operating at the turn of the century, The Wild Bunch should have been the last ever Western, as it took the sense of debunking Western mythology and intense violence to levels that have never been surpassed. The climactic shootout boasts 239 guns, 90,000 rounds of ammo (more than in the Mexican revolution) and 3,642 edits, and is justly hailed as a masterpiece of adult-orientated action - without it, John Woo would not have a career.
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