2. Heaven's Gate
I have to admit that when I watched Heaven's Gate I was expecting an absolute bloated mess in the grandest sense. What I got instead was an epic Western with a brilliant underlying theme of moral ambiguity. Yes it's a little too long at 216 minutes but the story is too grand to be cut down. This is the real reason the film bombed. The studio had the film severely cut for theatrical release and just ruined the pace and depth of character that the film possesses. This cutting of the film has been called "one of the greatest injustices of cinematic history". It makes sense that when the director's cut was released critics praised the film as a masterpiece. The strength of the movie lies in the performances of Kris Kristofferson and Christopher Walken as well as the un-relenting nature that Michael Cimino gives to his West. Cimino is able to give his vision of the West the same sense of fury and intensity that he brought to Vietnam in his greatest film The Deer Hunter. While Heaven's Gate doesn't possess a scene as perfect as the Russian roulette sequence in Deer Hunter it still possesses a great amount of intensity and deserves to be viewed in high esteem.