3. Brian De Palma
Over the course of his long and storied career, Brian DePalma has never ceased to be an intriguing filmmaker. His tendencies have always been toward noir which has led to some classic examinations of sex and violence and how we view everything taboo. Films like Blow Out have been shot with a sense of paranoia whereas Dressed To Kill, Body Double, and Black Dahlia went more traditionally gritty and noir like. Side note: How did Black Dahlia manage to NOT work as a film? All of his films have had a major dose of sexuality injected into them, but the following three films ramped up the death toll to new heights. DePalma's take on Mission Impossible was incredibly killy. (new word) I remember the first time I saw it and thought: Wow, I didn't know Emilio Estevez was in this. Well, he didn't make it out of the first ten minutes and by the end of the film the same could be said for most everyone else. DePalma's second time working with Al Pacino yielded one of the best films of his career. Carlito's Way was a gritty look at a career criminal looking to go straight. It was edgy, sexy and violent right down to the final frame. Finally, DePalma's ode to excess. Scarface. Everything about this movie is excessive. From the violence to Pacino's ridiculous "Cuban" accent. From the twists and turns of the narrative to the absurd amount of cocaine in Tony Montana's private stash. This amount of cocaine, I've been told, has never existed in anyone's private stash, like ever. Characters were killed by chainsaws, shivs, bombs, grenades and nearly every type of gun known to man. This film was more over the top than Stallone's arm wrestling opus, Over The Top. Oh, and every major character ends up horizontal by the end.