American Psycho

Carson Wells, Shot By Cattle Gun. American Psycho is a 2000 film by Mary Harron, a film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel of the same name. The film stars Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, with Jared Leto, Josh Lucas, Justin Theroux, Bill Sage, Chloë Sevigny, Reese Witherspoon, Willem Dafoe, and Samantha Mathis. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on April 14, 2000.

Anaconda

Paul Sarone, Crushed/ eaten by snake. Anaconda is a 1997 horror film, directed by Luis Llosa, starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, and Jon Voight. It centers around a film crew for National Geographic who are kidnapped by a hunter who is going after the world’s largest giant anaconda, which is discovered in the remote jungle. Though a box office hit, the film was critically panned. It was followed by the sequel Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid.

Green Mile

The Green Mile is a 1999 American drama film directed by Frank Darabont and adapted by him from the 1996 Stephen King novel of the same name. The film stars Tom Hanks as Paul Edgecombe and Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey.

The film is primarily about Paul and his life as a corrections officer on Death Row in the 1930s. The movie is told in flashback by the protagonist in a nursing home and follows a string of supernatural events upon the arrival of John, a man convicted, but not guilty, of murder.

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor, Best Picture, Best Sound, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Kill Bill

Elle Driver, Eye removal/ snake bite. Kill Bill is a two part epic film by writer-director Quentin Tarantino, starring Uma Thurman as The Bride. Originally conceived as one film, it was released in two separate ‘volumes’ (in late 2003 and early 2004) due to its running time of approximately four hours. The movie is an epic-length revenge drama, with homages to earlier film genres, such as Hong Kong martial arts movies, Japanese Chanbara films, exploitation films and Italian spaghetti westerns; an extensive use of popular music and pop culture references; and aestheticization of violence. Filming took place in California, Texas, Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Mexico.

No country for old men

Carson Wells, Shot By Cattle Gun. No Country for Old Men is a 2007 crime thriller film adapted for the screen and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin. Adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name,[1][2] No Country for Old Men tells the story of an ordinary man to whom chance delivers a fortune that is not his, and the ensuing cat-and-mouse drama, as three men crisscross each other’s paths in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas. The film examines the themes of fate and circumstance the Coen brothers have previously explored in Blood Simple and Fargo.

No Country for Old Men has been highly praised by critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it “as good a film as the Coen brothers…have ever made.”[3] The Guardian journalist John Patterson said the film proved “that the Coens’ technical abilities, and their feel for a landscape-based Western classicism reminiscent of Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah, are matched by few living directors.”[4] The film was honored with numerous awards, garnering three British Academy of Film awards, two Golden Globes, and four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Joel and Ethan Coen), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem).

Pulp fiction

Vincent Vega shot. Pulp Fiction (1994) is an American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino, who cowrote its screenplay with Roger Avary. The film is known for its rich, eclectic dialogue, ironic mix of humor and violence, nonlinear storyline, and host of cinematic allusions and pop culture references. The film was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture; Tarantino and Avary won for Best Original Screenplay. It was also awarded the Palme d’Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. A major critical and commercial success, it revitalized the career of its leading man, John Travolta, who received an Academy Award nomination, as did costars Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman.

Directed in a highly stylized manner, Pulp Fiction joins the intersecting storylines of Los Angeles mobsters, fringe players, small-time criminals, and a mysterious briefcase. Considerable screen time is devoted to conversations and monologues that reveal the characters’ senses of humor and perspectives on life. The film’s title refers to the pulp magazines and hardboiled crime novels popular during the mid-20th century, known for their graphic violence and punchy dialogue. Pulp Fiction is self-referential from its opening moments, beginning with a title card that gives two dictionary definitions of “pulp”. The plot, in keeping with most of Tarantino’s other works, is presented out of chronological sequence.

The picture’s self-reflexivity, unconventional structure, and extensive use of homage and pastiche have led critics to describe it as a prime example of postmodern film. Considered by some critics a black comedy,[3] the film is also frequently labeled a “neo-noir”.[4] Critic Geoffrey O’Brien argues otherwise: “The old-time noir passions, the brooding melancholy and operatic death scenes, would be altogether out of place in the crisp and brightly lit wonderland that Tarantino conjures up. [It is] neither neo-noir nor a parody of noir”.[5] Similarly, Nicholas Christopher calls it “more gangland camp than neo-noir”,[6] and Foster Hirsch suggests that its “trippy fantasy landscape” characterizes it more definitively than any genre label.[7] Pulp Fiction is viewed as the inspiration for many later movies that adopted various elements of its style. The nature of its development, marketing, and distribution and its consequent profitability had a sweeping effect on the field of independent cinema. A cultural watershed, Pulp Fiction’s influence has been felt in several other popular media.

Terminator

Todd Voight, Knife through mouth. The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction action film directed and co-written by James Cameron and distributed by the independent film studio Orion Pictures. It features Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator, Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor and Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese. The film was followed by three sequels. The franchise has evolved to include video games and a television series.

The film takes place in 1984, introducing the concept of a “Terminator”, specifically the titular character (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a seemingly unstoppable cyborg assassin who has been sent back from the year 2029 by a collective of artificially intelligent computer-controlled machines bent on the extermination of the human race. The Terminator’s mission is to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) whose future son, John Connor, leads a resistance against the machines. A human, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), is also sent back from the future by John Connor himself to protect her.

In 2008, The Terminator was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

The godfather

Mary Corleone, Melodramatically shot. The Godfather is a 1972 American drama film based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Mario Puzo and directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola, and Robert Towne (uncredited).[3] It stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard S. Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte and Diane Keaton, and features John Cazale , Talia Shire, Al Martino , and Abe Vigoda. The story spans ten years from 1945 to 1955 and chronicles the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. Two sequels followed: The Godfather Part II in 1974, and The Godfather Part III in 1990.

The Godfather received Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In addition, it is ranked as the second greatest film in American cinematic history, behind Citizen Kane, on the AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) list by the American Film Institute.

Titanic

Jack Dawson, Froze in Atlantic Ocean. Titanic is a 1997 American romantic drama film directed, written, co-produced and co-edited by James Cameron about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson and Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater, two members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ill-fated maiden voyage of the ship. The main characters and the central love story are fictional, but some characters (such as members of the ship’s passengers and crew) are based on historical figures. Gloria Stuart plays the elderly Rose, who narrates the film in a modern day framing device.

Production of the film began in 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the real wreck of the RMS Titanic. He envisioned the love story as a means to engage the audience with the real-life tragedy. Shooting took place on board the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh – which aided Cameron in filming the real wreck – for the modern scenes, and a reconstruction of the ship was built at Playas de Rosarito, Baja California. Cameron also used scale models and computer-generated imagery to recreate the sinking. Titanic became at the time the most expensive film ever made, costing approximately US$200 million with funding from Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox.

The film was originally to be released on July 2, 1997, but post-production delays pushed back the film’s release to December 19, 1997.[4] Upon release, the film turned out to be an enormous critical and commercial success, winning eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.[5] It became the highest-grossing film of all time, with a worldwide total of over $1.8 billion (it is the sixth-highest grossing in North America once adjusted for inflation)

The lord of rings

The Lord of the Rings film trilogy consists of three live action fantasy epic films: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003). The trilogy is based on the three-volume book The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. While they follow the book’s general storyline, the films also feature some additions to and deviations from the source material.

Set in the fictional world of Middle-earth, the three films follow the hobbit Frodo Baggins as he and a Fellowship embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring, and thus ensure the destruction of its maker, the Dark Lord Sauron. The Fellowship becomes divided and Frodo continues the quest together with his loyal companion Sam and the treacherous Gollum. Meanwhile, the wizard Gandalf and Aragorn, heir in exile to the throne of Gondor, unite and rally the Free Peoples of Middle-earth, who are ultimately victorious in the War of the Ring.

The films were directed by Peter Jackson and distributed by New Line Cinema. Considered to be one of the biggest and most ambitious movie projects ever undertaken, with an overall budget of $285 million, the entire project took eight years, with the filming for all three films done simultaneously and entirely in Jackson’s native New Zealand. Each film in the trilogy also had Special Extended Editions, released on DVD a year after the theatrical releases.

The trilogy was a great financial success, with the films being among the highest-grossing films of all time. The films were critically acclaimed, winning 17 out of 30 Academy Awards nominated in total, and received wide praise for the cast and for the innovative practical and digital special effects.

Jackson is collaborating with Guillermo del Toro on a two-part The Hobbit film adaptation, for release in 2011 and 2012.

These are the death scenes we remember long after the actors have screamed, slobbered, cried, coughed, wheezed, or drawn out to William Shatner-esque lengths their final words. They are a perfect combination of acting, writing, film making, image and idea. Some are shocking. Some are sad or bittersweet. Others funny. Some deaths you cheer on. All are memorable.

Let’s begin to experience ten (technically eleven) great ends, and considering the nature of this list, yes, there are spoilers, and if you haven’t seen some of these movies you have some NetFlixing to do.

10. David Carradine walks it out in Kill Bill Vol. 2

When the film’s name is Kill Bill, it’s likely Bill won’t be standing come end credits. And when it takes two films to reach the promised death, it damn well better be memorable.

Quentin Tarantino’s ultimate achievement in Kill Bill isn’t the fantastic sword play, but how he twists a straightforward revenge tale into a subversive, poignant love story during the movie’s final scenes. We expect an action-packed finale between Uma Thurman’s Bride and David Carradine’s Bill. However, Tarantino delivers a climax pivoting on emotional conflict in lieu of bloody, drawn-out combat. Yes, we know Bill must die. He had it coming. Yet, Carradine saunters Bill out to his death with such dignity and warmth, we can’t help but feel for the murderous SOB.

9. Henry Fonda eats a harmonica in Once Upon a Time in the West

So your movie depicts a particularly nasty villain. Guess what? That bastard needs to die (hard). But for the hero to simply kill the baddie isn’t good enough. A quick sucker death for a film’s main evildoer never satisfies an audience’s bloodlust, and I am thirsty. Before the villain departs (hopefully in agonizing pain), he needs to realize the hero has bested him.

Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West pulls off this ego-crushing deathblow to perfection. Not only does Henry Fonda’s family-snuffing villain suffer a slow, gut-oozing demise after losing a duel to Charles Bronson’s Man with No Name, Bronson finalizes his revenge with a symbolic gesture that shuffles Fonda off his mortal coil in utter humiliation.

8. Slim Pickens gets nuked in Dr. Strangelove and Bob Dylan-ized in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

This is my two-for-one cheat. We all know the scene from Dr. Strangelove in which Slim Pickens cheerfully bull-rides a nuke to the apocalypse. It’s iconic. And it’d be a major mistake to leave it off this list. Yet, as far as I’m concerned Slim Pickens owns two brilliant death scenes in cinematic history.

The second and more obscure one (not to mention, the death that inspired me to compile this list) comes from Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Slim Pickens has a minor role as a sheriff helping Garrett search for the Kid. During a shootout he takes a bullet to the stomach. Yeah so what’s the big deal? Cue Bob Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” drop in the eerie setting sun, and the subtle range of emotion Pickens displays as he sits on a river bank dying while his wife mourns in the background. Peckinpah made a career off killing characters in violent, yet visually beautiful ways. Few were as haunting as this scene.

7. Wallace Shawn doesn’t laugh it off in The Princess Bride

It’s THE great scene within a film chock-full of great scenes. The premise is simple. Wallace Shawn must choose between two cups of wine, one of which is said to be poisoned. He picks his cup and his opponent drinks the other. One dies. The battle of the wits has begun. What follows is a gut-busting monologue by Shawn that, well, let’s say over-thinking it is an understatement for his thought process.

The dialogue, tortured logic, the arrogance, the sneaky moves, and that laugh which suddenly falls silent creates one of the most pitch-perfect comedic scenes ever conceived.

6. Marlon Brando absorbs a machete in Apocalypse Now

Much has been written of Francis Ford Coppola’s inability to find an ending for his Vietnam War update of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Yet, it’s hard to imagine a more fitting conclusion to Coppola’s vision of insanity than Martin Sheen slaughtering Marlon Brando as The Doors’ “The End” boils over the soundtrack, all leading to Brando’s enigmatic last words: “The horror… the horror.”

Sometimes improvisation is the gate key to brilliance. It’s a death scene searing with beautiful, yet frustrating poetic madness.

5. John Hurt births a Xenomorph in Alien

Oh, what I’d give to have seen the alien bursting from John Hurt’s chest with an audience in 1979. I’m sure the unsuspecting audience members, jumped, shrieked, and occasionally threw up (yep, those are the type of viewing experiences I crave).

Almost anyone who catches Alien for the first time these days already knows of the infamous dinner scene in which an innocent-sounding cough ends with everyone splattered in blood. The scene’s shock value brought it notoriety. Yet, it’s the sickening, grisly idea of a toothy, penis-shaped beast suddenly blowing your chest inside out that gives power to the scene long after the surprise has worn off.

4. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty fight the law and the law wins in Bonnie and Clyde

Before Bonnie and Clyde, most movie characters who fell victim to lead poisoning grabbed their chest and fell over. No blood. Not even a tear in their clothes. They might as well have died from a heart attack. Nor did you really ever see a gun fire and the bullet hit the human target within the same frame. Then came Bonnie and Clyde and all of sudden the shit got real. The film smacked audiences with the harsh consequences from pulling a trigger. Movie gunfights were no longer constrained to the same bloodless histrionics of children playing army in the woods. Bonnie and Clyde‘s violence — extraordinarily controversial at the time — changed the Hollywood’s depiction of violence. Without it, there would be no Wild Bunch or Dirty Harry or Die Hard. However, even 40 years later, the film’s climax, in which the law shreds the titular bank robbers in a thunderstorm of bullets, remains as visceral and savage as anything seen in today’s hard-R flicks.

3. Janet Leigh showers with a knife in Psycho

There isn’t a frame of film showing a knife blade break Janet Leigh’s flesh. Nor do you see any real T ‘n’ A. Yet, viewers think they see it all.

The 45-second shower murder in Psycho is one of those film moments when editing, music, performance, and cinematography merge in perfect unison to accomplish what film was invented to do: To get into your head and make you believe in things that don’t exist. Was Norman Bates real? No. Were the chances likely that you’d meet a knife in the shower? Definitely, not. Yet, several audience members in the ’60s feared taking showers after witnessing the butchery of Leigh. I can’t imagine a higher compliment for a filmmaker.

2. King Kong can’t fly in King Kong

Personally, I prefer everything in Peter Jackson’s King Kong over the original film, including the Empire State Building swan dive (yes, I’m sure that makes me all sorts of horrible things to film snobs). Yet, it’d be plain-ass wrong to place Jackson’s remake on this list instead of the original. After all, directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack and stop-motion animator Willis O’Brien created one of cinema’s most iconic images: An overgrown monkey swatting planes on the top of a skyscraper before tumbling to the streets. However, Willis deserves extra credit. With clay, rubber, metal, and fur he managed to evoke a sense of wonder and tragedy from an inanimate doll.

1. Margaret Hamilton takes a steam bath in The Wizard of Oz

The Wicked Witch of the West’s fatal comeuppance is simply the most famous, quoted, referenced, parodied death scene in pop-culture history. The scene is so omnipresent it invisibly permeates everyday life, such as mundane conversation (“Can’t go out in the rain today, don’t want to melt”). But why? Part of its brilliance lies in its unexpected simplicity: H2O kills… evil (that was also the witch-slaying tool in L. Frank Baum’s book). But, movies are full of elegant ways to die. Yet few do it with such bravado as The Wizard of Oz. The film delivers a fantastic demise for one of the all-time great villains — clever, original, colorful, grotesque, well-acted, and 100% satisfying in that you feel the bitch got what she deserved. You can’t ask for anything more when it comes to death on the big screen.