The Best R-Rated Movies of All Time

“The Deer Hunter” is among the most haunting films to deal with the effects of the Vietnam War on U.S. soldiers. With relentless realism, the movie follows a group of friends from a working class town in Pennsylvania before, during, and after their tours of duty. The film won five Academy Awards in 1979, including Best Picture.

Edward Norton plays a neo-Nazi who, after three years in prison, comes home reformed and attempts to prevent his younger brother from following in his footsteps.

“This Is Spinal Tap” is Rob Reiner’s hilarious send-up of heavy metal rock ‘n’ roll. Told in documentary style, the movie follows the peaks and valleys of the career of the fictional British metal band Spinal Tap. Smartly written by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Rob Reiner, and Harry Shearer – all of whom appear in the film – the comedy is chock full of quotable moments.

With a 96% Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score, critics consensus on the site describes the film as “tension-soaked drama shaded in black humor.” The movie about a bank robbery that turns into a hostage stand-off received six Academy Award nominations, winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

This historical drama about King George VI of England and the speech therapist who helped him overcome his stammer won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor (Colin Firth as the titular king), Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.

In pre-Civil War New York state, a free black man named Solomon Northrup is kidnapped and sold into slavery, where he remains for more than a decade. Northrup’s memoir of the experience, published in 1853, is the basis for this “unflinchingly brutal” but also “brilliant” film — as Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus calls it.

In “Stand By Me,” based on a Stephen King novella, four youngsters embark on a quest to find the body of a missing boy, meeting numerous challenges along the way. While it was nominated for an Academy Award and two Golden Globes, among other honors, it didn’t take home any major awards — but today it is considered one of the key youth films of its era and has even inspired an annual Stand By Me Day in Brownsville, Oregon, featured in the film.

John Singleton became the first African American nominated for a Best Director Oscar for the film about the experiences, relationships, and aspirations of three young black men living in the impoverished Crenshaw neighborhood of Los Angeles. The Critics Consensus on Rotten Tomatoes says the film “observes urban America with far more depth and compassion than many of the like-minded films its success inspired.

From Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam comes this dystopian comic fantasy with loose ties to Orwell’s “1984.” Set in an oppressive future, it follows a low-level bureaucrat (Jonathan Pryce) on a liberating adventure.

“Wild Tales” is an Argentinian Spanish-language anthology film comprising six shorts, four of which are based on the Argentine director Damián Szifron‘s own life. All shorts fall within the realm of dark comedy, exploring themes of violence and vengeance.

This award-winning drama based on a novel by Emma Donaghue depicts the day to day confinement of a young woman and her 5-year-old son who are prisoners of a man who abducted her seven years prior.

Years after the whirlwind romance depicted in “Before Sunrise,” Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) reunite for another romantic encounter. “Before Sunset” ranks among IMDb’s top 250 movies of all time. It was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Chazz Palminteri drew upon his own childhood experiences when crafting the one-man play upon which this film adaptation is based. He stars as a neighborhood mob boss who takes a local boy under his wing to the chagrin of the boy’s father (Robert De Niro). The story also explores racial tensions in the 1960s Bronx.

A comedy about as dark as they come, “Fargo” won Oscars for the Coens for Best Writing and for Frances McDormand for Best Actress. The plot is set in the desolate winter landscape of Fargo, North Dakota, and revolves around an indebted car salesman (William H. Macy) who hires two thugs to kidnap his wife and hold her for ransom to be paid by her rich father. The scheme falls apart when the thugs shoot a state trooper.

“Raging Bull” was one of the best movies of the 1980s, a brilliant and disturbing look at the life of self-destructive middleweight boxing champion Jake LaMotta. Martin Scorsese shot the film in black and white, which adds to the grimness of LaMotta’s life.

“The Terminator” was an early directorial effort from James Cameron. The film quickly became an iconic action movie thanks to its inventive plot. A human soldier and a killing cyborg are sent back from the future — one to protect a woman and her unborn child, the other to kill them.

Three years before appearing in Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” Matthew Modine played the title character in this period drama. Mentally scarred by the Vietnam War, Birdy undergoes extreme alienation and delusion upon his return home. It won the Grand Prize of the Jury at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.

Quentin Tarantino’s debut feature “Reservoir Dogs” is considered by many the definitive work of American independent cinema of the early 1990s. The movie fused arthouse and genre filmmaking and catapulted its director to superstardom.

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” stands out thanks to its relentless creativity, driven by film director Michel Gondry and co-writer Charlie Kaufman. The film won the Best Writing – Screenplay Oscar in 2005. The clever direction and original screenwriting help highlight a story of heartbreak, in which two former lovers attempt to remove all memories of their failed relationship.

Director Jim Sherian’s impassioned film of Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland wrongly imprisoned for a terrorist attack in England in the 1970s gained seven Oscar nominations. The movie grossed just over $65 million worldwide, but only about $25 million domestically. Daniel-Day Lewis, who had already won a Best Actor Oscar in 1990, lost Best Actor to Tom Hanks for “Philadelphia.”

Is Roger ‘Verbal’ Kint (Kevin Spacey) a con artist with cerebral palsy, just a two-bit thief, or a fearsome murderous mobster known as Keyser Söze? The movie’s plot revolves around cocaine and a ship explosion. For his duplicitous performance, Spacey won an Academy Award.

“The Departed” is director Martin Scorsese’s immersive look at Irish gangster life in Boston. The film took home four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. The film packs the star power of actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Martin Sheen, but it is Jack Nicholson’s menacing portrayal of the mob boss that dominates the movie.

This film launched the successful action series starring Bruce Willis. In this first installment Willis, as a New York cop John McClane, tries to save the lives of his wife (Bonnie Bedelia) and other people taken hostage by terrorists in Los Angeles. The film catapulted Willis into the action film pantheon, and fans continue to quote his character’s defiant “Yippee-ki-yay” line.

Child molestation and cover-ups by the Catholic Church in Boston, as exposed by the Boston Globe, form the theme of this unsettling film, which is described by the Sydney Morning Herald as possibly “the best newspaper film since All the President’s Men.”

Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” scored four Oscar wins in 1992 including best director and best picture. He both directed and starred in the film appearing as William Munny, a pig farmer-turned-bounty hunter. The film opened as a number one box office smash and was one of Eastwood’s biggest financial successes.

After returning from service in Vietnam, Travis Bickle is unstable and adrift, working nights as a taxi driver on the decrepit streets of New York. Full of undirected rage, he decides to make the world a better place by rescuing a child prostitute from her pimp.

In this neo-noir psychological thriller, a man without the ability to form new memories becomes obsessed with finding the people who murdered his wife and left him with anterograde amnesia.

Based on Peter Shaffer’s Tony Award-winning play of the same name, this account of the life and successes of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — told through the eyes of his rival, Antonio Salieri — dominated the 1985 Oscars. “Amadeus” won eight Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.

James Cameron’s “Terminator 2” excels in many of the aspects that action movie fans appreciate most, such as visual effects and tense action sequences. It stands apart from the average action flick thanks to its refined characters and philosophically intelligent storyline. The movie is a haunting tale of post-apocalyptic possibilities and a perfect popcorn action movie rolled in one.

This “intense, inspiring, and well-acted” music-fueled drama (according to critics consensus on Rotten Tomatoes) tells the story of an ambitious young would-be jazz drummer and his taskmaster teacher. The film won three Oscars, including a Best Actor statue for J.K. Simmons.

This romantic drama follows two young train travelers who connect on a trip from Budapest to Vienna and decide to spend a single night together before each goes his or her separate way in the morning.

Arguably Roman Polanski’s greatest film, this stylish film-noir stars Jack Nicholson as a private detective who, while investigating a case of adultery, stumbles onto a murder plot that includes incest and government corruption. The cynical tone of “Chinatown” reflects the mood of post-Vietnam America.

James Cameron’s powerful follow-up to director Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror film “Alien” was hailed as “the best monster movie of the year,” “state-of-the-art science fiction,” and “the rarest of sequels” — one that’s at least equal to the original. Sigourney Weaver is back as Lieutenant Ellen Ripley and once again must fend off some of the most vicious extraterrestrial beings ever imagined on film.

South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” surprised many by winning Best Picture at the 2020 Academy Awards despite being among the lesser seen nominees. Reception of the film has been near universally positive, however, especially among critics. The film tells the story of a lower-class family that dupes a wealthier family into employing them with unexpected results.

Based on James Ellroy’s novel of the same name, “L.A. Confidential” follows three detectives trying to solve a murder in 1950s Los Angeles. They must navigate the confluence of corrupt police, organized crime, and the biggest celebrities of the era.

“Good Will Hunting” is about a janitor who’s secretly a genius, his life rapidly changing once his talents are discovered by a university professor. However, along the way he meets someone special and must decide what’s most important to him.

Steven Spielberg won the Oscar for Best Director (the film won four more, too) for this inspiring account of a group of GIs in WWII. The soldiers push into enemy territory to save a paratrooper whose three brothers have been killed in action. The critic consensus Rotten Tomatoes calls it an “unflinchingly realistic war film [that] virtually redefines the genre.”

The sprawling, visionary Vietnam War drama is based on Joseph Conrad’s book “Heart of Darkness” and shows how men descend into madness as the result of war. Though not fully embraced by audiences and critics when it was released in 1979, “Apocalypse Now” has gained more recognition.

The tagline for sci-fi horror film “Alien” states: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Plenty of people could be heard screaming in theaters when the movie was released in 1979, however. Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror classic overcame wary studio executives and numerous rewrites on its way to the big screen, where it found immediate commercial success. The story follows crew members of the spaceship Nostromo as they’re picked off by an alien creature.

Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist” is based on the autobiography of Polish composer, Wladyslaw Szpilman, during World War II. The film earned Polanski — currently a U.S. fugitive — an Academy Award for Best Director.

The murder scene in the shower in “Psycho” almost instantly became a cultural landmark and is among the most famous in movie history. Adding to the tension of this taut thriller that starred Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh was the music by Bernard Herrmann that projected impending doom. “Psycho” is Hitchcock at his suspenseful best.

One of the greatest thrillers ever made puts F.B.I. cadet Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) on the trail of a dangerous serial killer. Seeking help, she turns to a devious psychopath by the name of Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Based on Ken Kesey’s timeless novel, this blockbuster dramedy follows a rebellious soul (Jack Nicholson) into a mental institution. It won five Academy Awards and yielded a series spin-off called “Nurse Ratched.”

“Pulp Fiction,” Quentin Tarantino’s follow-up to “Reservoir Dogs,” is among the 1990s’ most definitive films. A wildly inventive mix of crime, film-noir, and comedy, the movie scored the Palme d’Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. Its reputation has held up well over the past 25 years, with 96% of audiences giving the film a positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Real-life New York mobster Henry Hill is the subject of this biographical crime drama based on the book “Wiseguy” by Nicolas Pileggi. “Goodfellas” portrays the story of Hill’s rise through the ranks of the organized crime world and his descent into drug addiction and unsanctioned dealing.

The poster child of the Spaghetti Western, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” tells the story of a tenuous alliance of gunslingers, among them the iconically laconic Clint Eastwood, who are looking for Confederate gold. The film was directed by Sergio Leone, with an unforgettable movie score from Ennio Morricone.

Based on a Stephen King novella, this historical prison drama about two imprisoned men was trounced at the box office by the likes of “Pulp Fiction” and “Forrest Gump.” It was then re-released in theaters after receiving seven Oscar nominations, which helped recoup some of the loss.

Nevermind sequels, “The Godfather: Part II” is widely hailed as one of the greatest films of all time. The film chronicles Vito Coreleone’s (Robert De Niro) rise to power in the Mafia along with the struggle of his son (Al Pacino) to maintain power decades later. The film won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for De Niro, and Best Director for Francis Ford Coppola.

This black-and-white drama tells the story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German industrialist who saved the lives of over 1,000 Jews during WWII. A passion project for Steven Spielberg, it won seven Academy Awards. The director redirected both his personal salary and some of the film’s profits to create the USC Shoah Foundation, which is dedicated to Holocaust survivors.

One of the greatest and most influential films ever made launched several high-profile careers and took home three Oscars. It was also a critical and commercial smash, reportedly sitting on top of the domestic box office for 23 weeks in a row. Behold the story of the Corleone crime family, whose power is threatened by a new foe.