3. Lone Star (1996)
Lone Star is a fantastic - and extremely under-appreciated - little film that has no nudity, pretty much no violence despite revolving around a murder, and the single, solitary line of bad language is "Frontera, Texas: gateway to inexpensive pussy", aside from "Pendejo!", the Spanish word for asshole. This is definitely one of the more interesting choices because it makes us consider whether a film's context should be considered in conjunction with its
content; should the educational quality, and the moral centre of the film acquit it from being rated R on the grounds of its use of racial epithets? Would the film not be an important one for adolescents to watch, and its firm opposition to these discriminatory dynamics would ensure that the behaviour is not deemed imitable by kids. It is a serious-minded, brilliant look at both the history of Native Americans and immigration in general. A tangential film to compare it to might be Shane Meadows' excellent
This is England; a brutal, unforgiving film which nevertheless has an important message about the destructive power of prejudice, though this is far more hard-nosed than Lone Star.