[Ruth]

Originally posted by The_Hitman
The Manliest Movies of All Time.

No girls allowed

20. EDDIE MURPHY RAW (1987)
Okay, so it’s 83 minutes of a man in an obscene purple outfit telling jokes. No guns, no explosions, nothing like that. Swearing, however, is big, clever and very, very manly: Eddie Murphy Raw held the record for the most ‘****s’ for three long years. That’s 223 *****, or a ****-Per-Minute Count of 2.48FPM’s (it was eventually dethroned by Goodfellas, a film that could only manage a paltry FPM of 1.6). Raw also contains, in no particular order; fire-shooting dicks; casual racism; misogyny; fighting; a bitter, pissed-off Eddie Murphy ranting about gold-diggers; Jamaicans with huge schlongs; and, as Eddie’s Dad in a pre-credits sequence, the man’s mother****ing man, Samuel. L. Jackson. Dave Chappelle only wishes he was this manly.

19. HENRY PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986)
The bleakest entry in our catalogue of testosterone, Henry proves that being a man isn’t all fun and games - sometimes it’s murder. This aimless, formless, 90-minute exposition on execution sees Michael Rooker (you know the face but not the name) dispense with absolutely everyone he’s ever met pointlessly and with great aplomb. His best friend, his sisters, the guy who sold him a dodgy TV and random strangers are chopped to pieces, raped, strangled and are hacked up with a buzzsaw before being stuffed in bags and dropped by the side of the road. It’s all in a days work for the monosyllabic personality-vacuum that is Henry. This kind of utterly bleak, pointless, hopeless murder-as-masturbation is the existentialist man’s feast. And Henry films it all with a stolen video camera.

18. DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE (1995)
Like any man, sometimes you get a hangover. It’s inevitable. Naturally, when John McClane gets a hangover, it’s also the day he gets targeted by a European nutjob intent on blowing up New York City. Before long, poor old John is Simple Simon’s puppet on a string, defusing bombs in litter bins and walking around Harlem with ‘I hate niggers’ written on his sandwich board. There’s a reason McClane is so brow-beaten, and it’s not just the terrorist attack – he’s about to divorce his lady wife. Doesn’t she know this guy is a hero? Die Hard With A Vengeance has all the mangredients needed for a filling meal: car chases, gold bullion, dead Germans, hangovers, bombs, quipping, and Samuel L Jackson shouting very loudly. It’s 100% a man’s movie.

17. RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD. Part 2 (1982)
Stallone makes his second appearance in this list, this time cast as an oiled, stripped-to-the-waist human rocket launcher. What most people call Hell, he calls home. If Nietsche had seen this film, he would have changed his ethos to “I blow things up, therefore I am.” With the highest body count in cinema (for at least a year), Rambo made front pages as the most violent film ever made, with faceless baddies dispatched in a manner of ways that rivalled Darwin and the Vinci combined for their inventiveness. If Death were a science, writer James Cameron would be awarded a Nobel Prize. Stallone ventures behind enemy lines to blow up Russian whirlybirds, kill Steven Berkoff, dispense with ‘gooks’ by explosive-tipped rocket, and bring the boys back home. “Do We Get To Win?” Of course, Sly. Men NEVER Lose.

16. THE THING (1982)
How manly is a film that has no women in it? VERY. This 1982 sci-fi classic, set on an isolated scientific outpost in the Antarctic, sees the cast of eight males slowly decimated one by one by an unknown alien creature. Bleak, nihilist, awash with blood and guts and swimming in paranoia, The Thing is a hopeless battle against impossible odds that will, eventually, destroy the whole of mankind. The violence that bubbles under every second of the film make The Thing decidedly male. Despite being bafflingly short on deaths (with just ten), explosions (there are only two) and a complete absence of double-handed gunfights and car chases, The Thing is extraordinarily manly. Man is the warmest place to hide, not woman.

14. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)
You could argue that the sheer, mindless ultraviolence of A Clockwork Orange could only be the product of a male imagination. Then again, the scene in which Alex – our anti-hero, dressed in a white boiler suit and bowler hat – murders a defenceless woman with a gigantic ceramic penis does kind of spell it out for you. Alex and his Droogs do all the things that young boys want, albeit in a kind of weird 70’s way, namely loitering, a bit of the old in-out and beating up tramps with sticks to the music of Beethoven. Okay, maybe not all young boys dream of such violence, but the primal behaviour dished out by Kubrick’s disillusioned youngsters is engrained in the male psyche, so much so that it takes a very unique type of therapy to dilute it. Viddy well, my brother.

13. GLADIATOR (2000)
"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance." Take cover girls, there’s a ****-storm a-brewing. Russell Crowe’s sweaty man-hero is a true screen legend, and not just because he makes the ladies go weak at the knees. Fighting tigers, beheading giant warriors, chucking swords at random people… Maximus has such an abundance of Y-chromosomes, he should bottle them and go into business. Although he’s technically crusading for the honour of his dead family (and despite the fact he goes out like a ***** to the hair-lipped Commodus), you suspect that the reason Crowe’s buff gladiator continues to fight is because, well, he likes it. As do we. Go away lady, this is a man’s world.

7. WALL STREET (1987)
Oliver Stone’s second appearance in the list is this strangely existential economic thriller. Here the violence isn’t physical, it isn’t punches to the throat or a witty quip after decapitating an obvious cliché. Here, the violence is financial: takeovers, contracts and dirty deeds done dirt-cheap are all in a day’s work. Michael Douglas gave the greatest speech in movie history (“Greed is good”) and summed up an entire decade, while Charlie Sheen has never, and will never, be better. On Wall Street, everything can be bought and sold, and everything has its price. This hard edged, capitalist masterpiece shows that war isn’t just fought with planes and tanks. As Gecko's house of cards collapses in a set-piece that rivals the end of Titanic for drama, it shows clearly that being a man involves brains as well as brawns.

6. THE GODFATHER (1972)
Epic and huge, The Godfather is manly, not because it is violent and awash with gore, but precisely because it is not just these things alone. Being a man isn’t just about killing and mayhem. It’s about ambition, betrayal and power - kissing the ring, chopping off a horse’s head, that sort of thing. In this world, it’s kill or be killed, while women are more dangerous than shotguns. The vast ambition, the sheer scope of the film and the scale of Don Corleone’s vast criminal empire dwarves all other gangster films. Make no mistake, The Godfather is a boy’s-own adventure and it has Marlon Brando – a real man’s man, back in his prime - to boot. Here, murder isn’t just a way of life but a career move, and the mafia is a strictly man-only company.

5. COMMANDO (1985)
With the highest onscreen body count of any film ever made upon release, this curt, 86 minute blood fest has the ultimate plot: revenge. The McGuffin is the Governator’s daughter, with nary a sign of a mother figure. Gasp as Arnie punches his way across the world! Grit your teeth as he jumps out of planes without a parachute into crocodile infested waters with nary a scratch! High five as he puns his away across a series of ever gorier death scenes! And finally, camp it up as John Matrix faces off against Vernon Wells’ Bennett, the campest bad guy in cinema history. It’s none-too-subtle face-off – raging hetero versus raging homo, but breeder was always going to beat bummer. A bad episode of 80’s action TV writ large it may be, but it’s got balls the size of ******* Sherman tanks.

3. JAWS (1975)
Part of being a man is knowing that life is finite and ultimately pointless, but staring it straight in the eye nonetheless. Jaws’ slender plot explores this theme to its ultimate conclusion: a shark, nothing more than rows of teeth and a digestive system, tries to eat an entire town. Presumably driven into a blood frenzy by menstruating women, this nameless blue-finned abyss of carnage merrily chomps its way through anything and everything. It’s up to just three men to stop it, and all they’ve got is a wooden boat and balls of steel. By the film’s explosive climax, it’s just Man and Shark in a battle of wits on a sinking boat, as an unstoppable force meets the immovable object – and there can be only one survivor. So manly, the testosterone stings the nostrils.

2. PREDATOR (1987)
Here we have a film so manly, it’s been reported that women who’ve watched it have seen their breasts shrink and their vagina close up as a result. If paintballing in the woods is a natural male hobby (women can’t shoot guns, it’s been proved in labs) then Predator takes the concept and injects it with pure man-juice – there can be no manlier activity than half a dozen muscle-bound hunks running around the jungle with their weapons out. The enemy they face is from another world, but Dutch and his compadres know that if they fire guns big enough for long enough, it can’t stand up to their sheer man-power. Arnie comes out on top (it’s sheer coincidence that he had to strip to the waist to do so) and the movie climaxes with an explosion so big, it’d make Don Simpson pop a boner from six-feet under.

1. FIGHT CLUB (1999)
The ubermensch film for ubermen, David Fincher’s Fight Club is everything a man could ever want from a movie. Paranoid, violent, anarchic and so hip it’s practically an athelete, Fight Club was a wake-up call for man at the end of the century. “You are not the contents of your wallet… you are not your ******’ Khakis,” rants an aggressive Brad Pitt, directly addressing all the wet blanket males in the audience who think Jude Law is an aspirational figure. The narrator, an unnamed, existentially-challenged wimp transforms into a primal beast at the hands of his mentor Tyler Durden, with the two aiming to reclaim humanity and free the corporate slaves from their IKEA-induced stupor. Immense in stylistic and anarchic ambition, unstoppable in its violent vision and awash with soap, Fight Club is THE manliest film of all time. Anyone who disagrees? I’ll meet you at… well… we’re not supposed to talk about it.

Source: shiznit.com

No girls allowed???

I love all the films which I've quoted. I haven't seen all the others, but I'd have to say that the first Rocky is the best Rocky film so far, closely followed by Rocky II.

Haven't seen Miami Vice yet - want to see it soon.

Reservoir Dogs is a great movie - haven't seen it for ages. Am I right in thinking that there's only one woman in it (and she gets shot?!). Apocolypse Now - another great movie.