Wexler was best known as a cinematographer - he won Oscars for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and Bound for Glory (1976) - and used that background to write, direct, and shoot this partly improvised story of a once-complacent TV cameraman (Robert Forster) who experiences a political awakening as he's paid to witness, firsthand, the quiet revolution that is happening all around him. Here are 50 great X-rated (NC-17-rated and unrated) movies to add to your viewing queue.įor several decades after its release, Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool was difficult to get your hands on, which might explain why it's not as well-known as many of its New Hollywood-era counterparts, which used cinema as a way to express the disillusionment so many Americans were feeling. They may not all be masterpieces (hello, Showgirls), but even a guilty pleasure is called a 'pleasure' for a reason. We pored through each group - X, NC-17, and unrated - to create an adults-only celebration of movies for grownups. In 1990, the X begat the NC-17 rating - though some filmmakers have opted to distribute their movies with no rating at all (the ratings system was, and is, voluntary). When the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) decided to implement a ratings system in November 1968, its purpose was to easily communicate to parents whether a flick would be fun for the whole family… or earn them a visit from child protective services.īut it didn't take long for the adult industry to join the party and co-opt the salacious-sounding X - then take it two steps further by adopting a XXX rating for its spiciest titles.īecause the MPAA neglected to trademark its ratings system (opening the door to that aforementioned porn penetration), rather than compete with or take on the adult industry to bring the X rating back to its original purpose, they dropped it altogether. While the phrase 'rated X' likely conjures up images of the kind of movie to which Travis Bickle might squire a date, the rating's original intention had little to do with the pornography that eventually came to define it.

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