The Top R-Rated Movie of All Time Holds a 98% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes
By Jennifer Geer,
7 hours ago
Although your choice of favorite movie can be subjective, there are some flicks that everyone seems to agree on. The top R-rated movies ever made have nearly unanimous positive reviews on movie review sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. We wanted to get to the bottom of what are the most-loved R-rated movies of all time so we took a deep dive into the movie review sites to create a list of the top 30. (For movies that are less well-known, but just as good, check out this list of must-see films you haven’t watched yet .)
To determine the best R-rated movies of all time, 24/7 Tempo developed an index using average ratings on IMDb , an online movie database owned by Amazon, and a combination of audience scores and Tomatometer scores on Rotten Tomatoes , an online movie and TV review aggregator, weighting all ratings equally. Only movies with at least 100,000 user votes on IMDb were considered. Cast and director credits are from IMDb.
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, Chazz Palminteri
Directed by: Bryan Singer
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.
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
“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.
Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia
Directed by: John McTiernan
This film launched a 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 to this day fans continue to quote his character’s defiant “Yippee-ki-yay” line.
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams
Directed by: Tom McCarthy
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 the Sydney Morning Herald describes as possibly “the best newspaper film since All the President’s Men.”
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
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.
Starring: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
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.
Starring: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
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.
Starring: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge
Directed by: Miloš Forman
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.
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong
Directed by: James Cameron
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.
Starring: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Melissa Benoist
Directed by: Damien Chazelle
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.
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
Directed by: Roman Polanski
Arguably Roman Polanski’s greatest film, this stylish film-noir stars Jack Nicholson as a private detective who, while investigating a case of an extramarital affair, stumbles onto a murder plot that includes government corruption. The cynical tone of “Chinatown” reflects the mood of post-Vietnam America.
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn
Directed by: James Cameron
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.
Starring: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong
Directed by: Bong Joon Ho
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 nearly 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 era’s biggest celebrities.
“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.”
Starring: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
The sprawling, visionary Vietnam War drama is based on Joseph Conrad’s book “Heart of Darkness” and shows how men descend into madness as a result of war. Though not fully embraced by audiences and critics when it was released in 1979, “Apocalypse Now” has gained more recognition.
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt
Directed by: Ridley Scott
The tagline for the 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.
Starring: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay
Directed by: Roman Polanski
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.
Starring: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
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.
Starring: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Lawrence A. Bonney
Directed by: Jonathan Demme
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.
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Michael Berryman
Directed by: Miloš Forman
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.”
Starring: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
“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.
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef
Directed by: Sergio Leone
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.
Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
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.
Starring: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
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.
once upon a time in america deserves recognition imo
Anne Bartells
1h ago
I own most of these movies. Too bad my VCR is broken. Aliens, Apocalypse Now, and Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas are top notch. I rarely see a movie that is as well done as those oldies. Dune 2 will be a favorite in years to come.
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