Best 20 Films of the 1990s: PART 1Jun 15 '02 (Updated Oct 26 '03) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Because of length problems, I've split my top 20 films of the 1990s into two. Here are #20-#11 as we count down towards the #1 movie of the 1990s.
[Note: I tried to write this all as one review, but I seem to have run up against a word limit? In any case, it stopped typing letters. So this comment features my preamble and #s 20-11 and PART 2 features the Top 10. This also breaks the list up and makes it slightly easier to get through... It's a bit LONG!] I'm not overwhelmingly pleased with this list. If you were to compare it to a list of the best films of the 1970s, it would look pretty weak. But I figure that every list like this is a work in progress. I could change it next week and then who knows what will be where. Lots of the number rankings are flexible as well. The difference between #20 and #10 and #5 is mostly how I'm feeling at this second. Those could change. I also made some rules. The most particular rule was that no director could have more than 1 film on my list. That meant, for example, that Exotica made it, but The Sweet Hereafter and The Adjuster did not. It mean that Miller's Crossing made it, but Fargo and The Big Lebowski did not. And I chose Pulp Fiction over two Tarantino films that I frequently feel are superior. What were some of the films I left off the list and the very very end? Spielberg had two of them, with Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List . The Usual Suspects were rounded up, but finally discarded. Kolya was here for a bit, then left. And I decided on only one sports documentary on my list, so When We Were Kings disappeared at the last minute. I regret having no films by John Woo on the list, even though he made several great ones during this period. The Remains of the Day, Donnie Brasco,The Piano and Short Cuts were all on my list of 30, but just didn't make the final cut. I could certainly revise this list to add them at some point. Naked features David Thewlis in the decade's best performance, but the film around him could be better. And a bunch of films like The Talented Mr. Ripley grow in my estimation with each passing day, but just didn't make the list. And then there are movies like Unforgiven, which I really loved at the time, but I haven't seen it for years, so I don't know if it would hold up as well, and it just didn't leap to my mind anymore. If you're keeping score at home, my list contains *seven* films from 1994, but doesn't include that year's Oscar Winner for Best Picture. That was Forrest Gump. There are no films released in 1992 on my list. That's because of the absence of Schindler's List and I may need to do something about that. Actually, 1992 has more films I regret leaving off than just about any year. But if there are any movies on here you haven't seen, go see 'em. And maybe the list will change. So keep checking. Cinema going is a work in progress. No doors are closed. But now, here we go. Enjoy. 20)Big Night (1996) You see, films can do lots of different things at lots of different values. If more filmmakers knew how to use silence like Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott do with this film, I would really enjoy going to the movies more. In addition to being one of the great "foodie" movies ever made, Big Night punctuates its character study with moments of pure, unabashed joy. Tucci is excellent here, wearing the co-director, co-writer, and co-star hats comfortably and Tony Shaloub is heartbreaking as his frustrated brother who just wants stupid Americans to stop asking for pasta as a side dish to risotto. Wonderful Louis Prima music, a colorfully supporting cast (including Ian Holm, Minnie Driver, and Scott, among others), and the true spirit of romance fill this movie. And the omlet making scene towards the end, it flawlessly measured filmmaking. Bite your teeth into the a*s of life! 19)The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Sentimental, manipulative, Classic Hollywood-style filmmaking gets no better than this. Frank Darabont's film is a calculated tearjerker but it works every single time. In contrast to Don Siegel's claustrophobic approach the equally seminal Escape from Alcatraz Darabont and the brilliant DP Roger Deakins make a truly epic prison movie — epic in both physical and character scale. Both Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman have had excellent careers, but neither has ever been better. And Stephen King has never had such a fine adaptation of his work. As "triumph of the human will" stories go, this is a true winner. 18)Bullets over Broadway (1994) The 1990s weren't Woody Allen's best decade, necessarily, but he kept popping out films each and every year. Sometimes they horrid — Alice or Might Aphrodite. Sometimes they were slight — Manhattan Murder Mystery or Celebrity. But things came together in Bullets over Broadway , the Wood-man's ultimate meditations on the nature of the creative process. Working with the immortal Carlo Di Palma, Allen evokes 1920s New York City in a way a probably never was, but certainly should have been. As the frustrated writer, John Cusack is the perfect Allen proxy and Chazz Palmintieri's Cheech, a mobster and writer, is one of Allen's best creations. I was going to say that Palmintieri should have won the Oscar that year, but Martin Landau did and I'm not going to begrudge him for that. Diane Wiest proves that whenever she collaborates with Woody, it's a sure thing. And whoever would have guessed that all of Jennifer Tilly's annoying mannerisms could be so perfectly matched to a character? 17)Ed Wood (1994) Only the director of Frankenweenie could be so in love with horrible movies to make such a perfect tribute to the master of horrible movies, Mr. Ed Wood. You never know from minute to minute whether Burton is laughing with Wood or at him, but he's certainly the only director who could have made that issue so ambiguous. Ed Wood made hilariously bad films and Tim Burton gets to recreate his worst moments in full detail. The essence of the project is that Ed Wood believed that he was making great movies and who is Burton to argue? And only an actor willing to do absolutely anything could get so head-over-heals invested in a cross-dressing, self-deluded hack. Fortunately, Burton and Johnny Depp are a perfect combination. The supporting cast is deep and flawless. Bill Murray (in one of his three films on my list, if that tells you anything), Max Casella, Jeffrey Jones, and Sarah Jessica Parker are all good enough to keep everything feeling real. And towering above everything is Martin Landau's Bela Lugosi. It's tough for an actor to ask for more than a role that allows you to do an accent, be a drug addict, and play a screen legend and Landau is alone would be a reason to see this movie even if everything else in it weren't so great. He followed this movie with BAPS. I just needed to emphasize that. Special note should also be made of Stefan Czapsky's black and white photography. Czapsky has always done great work with Burton and bad work with everybody else. 16)Dead Man (1995) The second film in a row to feature stylized black and white cinematography as a style choice, but Jim Jarmusch's film goes another way. Everything in the film is raw gritty, including Robbie Mueller's lensing and Neil Young's feedback-heavy guitar score. Jarmusch's film is an elevated academic exercise about an accountant named William Blake (Johnny Depp again) who arrived in a milltown named Machine only to discover that he's already lost his job. Blake is promptly shot and spends the rest of the film in a liminal state between life and death, aided by a Native American named Nobody (Gary Farmer) who is convinced that he's actually William Blake the poet. Dead Man works at the same pace as all of Jarmusch's films, which is to say: slow. But it also has the same vein of hilarious dark humor that colors Jarmusch's world view. The film has a great appreciation of language and its visual style is unique. And the cast? Holy Cow! You've got Robert Mitchum in his final screen role and Crispin Glover as a strange train worker. You've got Alfred Molina, Billy Bob Thornton, Iggy Pop in a dress, Gabriel Byrne, Michael Wincott, and Lance Henriksen. I know, this film is an acquired taste, but to me, it's brilliant. Jarmusch's Ghost Dog is another mastepiece from this decade, but it missed the list because of my "no two films by the same director" rule. 15)Rushmore (1998) There are people who believe that Wes Anderson's first film. Bottle Rocket is also a gem. I don't buy it. The talents of Anderson and his co-writer Owen Wilson simply aren't there in Bottle Rocket and erupt fully bloomed in Rushmore. But while Rushmore has always been hailed as a writers' triumph, you should take a look at the video of the film and then look at the widescreen DVD. The horrible pan-and-scan transfer on the video give argument both for scrappy the format, but also for Anderson's brilliant formalism. Anderson finds comedic genius in precise framing and the endearing clutter of every image. And in Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) and Herman Bloom (Bill Murray again), Anderson and Wilson created two of cinema's classic characters. Max would be the ultimate over-achiever except that he achieves nearly everything on a hilariously lower level. From his subpar grades to his high school theatricals, Max has that "can-do spirit" even if he can't. Bloom on the other hand, has stopped living entirely. It takes the love of the same woman (Olivia Williams's Rosemary Cross) to bring them together and tear them apart. For me, the film's set-up is the slightest bit clunky, but as it progresses and as the love story deepens, Rushmore becomes more and more passionate and funnier and funnier. The Royal Tennenbaums confirmed both Anderson's talent and the fact that his style isn't accessible to everybody. 14)Seven (1995) If the 1990s saw the arrival of David Fincher as a major new cinematic talent, it was almost despite his cinematic output. For my money, this is a guy who has made a total of one totally satisfying film. With Alien3 he overloaded the subtext so much that it essentially killed the franchise. With The Game he orchestrated a masterful set-up but betrayed himself by letting the film devolve into a basic thriller until the annoying end. With Fight Club he had an artistic triumph with the intellectual subtlety of a baseball bat upside the head. And with his latest, Panic Room it's difficult to find anything distinct or subversive at all. Which leaves Seven. Or Se7en as the fanboys like to call it. Seven stands apart from your standard Hollywood police thriller because it has attitude and mood to burn, but then it also throws in brains and even soul. The brains and soul are the product of Morgan Freeman's work as Detective Somerset a man with more connections and brains and trauma in his past than any man can bear. Somerset sees the chance to mentor his hotheaded partner Mills (Brad Pitt) and much as he tries to avoid it, they bond. The film is all about playing into genre archetypes, but the mood and attitude elevate it. Andrew Kevin Walker's aberation of a script (nothing he's done since has had a tenth the skill) provided the demented attitude, taking the audiences to places they weren't prepared to go in a blockbuster film. And Fincher and DP Darius Khondji provided the mood, creating a dark rainy and anonymous city that was like a petri dish for latent sins. Speaking of the creation of alien cities, the brilliant Khondji also should City of Lost Children the decade's most visually inventive film, a great piece of work that would have made the list except that, well, it didn't. Seven displayed an amazing amount of guts for a proportedly mainsteam film and appeared just as we were beginning to appreciate the genius of Kevin Spacey. 13)Crash (1996) From one horrifying film (Seven, I mean) to another, Crash goes down as perhaps the decade's least understood film. And I'm not going to complain that my understanding of the film is flawless. All I know is that I walked out of Crash literally shaking and I winced and stepped back as the first car approached when I next tried to cross a busy street. So you ask me, "Do you actually like Crash?" And I answer, "Heck no." But perhaps I take a step back and say, "But the film did what it set out to do." Crash disgusted a lot of people. And granted... It was disgusting. What's equally disgusting, though, is the number of people who lept to criticize the film as filth, or as pornography without exploring for a second what it was that director David Cronenberg was actually trying to do. I don't really know what would have prompted certain people to see the movie anyway. Crash focuses on Cronenberg's general pet concerns, including the sexualizing of technology and technology's ultimate encroachment on the human body and, more importantly, on the human soul. In a world two minutes into our future, people are incapable of traditional human feelings and sexuality and so they take their need for intimacy to the next level. They seek out violence and deviance and destruction, but when they find it, they discover only temporary pleasure, but more pain and psychic trauma than they can imagine. Crash is basically just one sex scene after another at a certain point, but every sex scene serves to explore the characters. There isn't a single second of gratuitous sex or violence in the film. Or at least not if you actually examine the text. The actors either sleep through their performances (as naysayers may claim) or else they give in totally to Cronenberg's vision. Either way, James Spader, Elias Koteas, Deborah Kara Unger, Rosanne Arquette, and Holly Hunter give some of the least vain star performances you'll ever see. There are very few people to whom I would recommend Crash, but I can only speak for the very visceral effect it has had on me each time I've seen it. The film screws with your mind. If you don't examine what it's doing to, sure you can dismiss the film as trash. But I'd urge you not to. At least the score by Howard Shore (who did at least four of the movies on this list, but didn't win an Oscar before this past year) and the steely cinematography by Peter Suschitzky are beyond reproach. 12)Groundhog Day (1993) Changing gears from the demented to the endlessly pleasant and resourceful and hilarious Groundhog Day, which is certainly my favorite comedy of the 1990s. Mostly the movie is a tribute to the most high concept of ideas (A guy keeps living the same day over and over until he gets it right), the simplest of artistic executions (Harold Ramis is a fine director of comedies, but he doesn't exactly add style to his films so much as he makes way for the laughter), and the most flawless of comedic performances (Bill Murray making his final appearance on this list). What's amazing about Groundhog Day is that no matter how many times you watch it, the internal logic of its premise remains perfect. Sure, a guy couldn't really live the same day over and over again. But if he *could* this is a logical and hilarious progression. Murray goes from bachanal, to suicidal nihilism, to ultimate self-improvement and I buy ever step of his journey. Some people don't like Andie McDowell and that takes away from their appreciation of this film. But for me, she does what she needs to do — she's the beautiful embodiment of professionalism and the kind of woman men would try to change themselves to be with.Groundhog Day is endlessly quotable and after watching this movie, you'll never listen to Sonny and Cher the same way again. 11)LA Confidential (1998) Only a moron would try to adapt James Ellroy's sprawling novel into a film. The book spans decades and has hundreds of supporting speaking roles and dozens of major speaking roles. Every main character has a number of subplots and each subplot goes deeper and deeper into the dark, unwritten history of Los Angeles. So why would you even try? And especially why would you try if your past writing included Highway to Hell and one version of the Assassins script? And who would trust said film if it was co-written and directed by a man whose pedigree included leading Rob Lowe through Bad Influence and kicked-up chick flicks like River Wild and Hand that Rocks The Cradle. Then you factor in a cast led by a bunch of Australians, the farmer from Babe, and an actress who hadn't had a hit in nine years... Well, it's tough to imagine how LA Confidential ended up on this list. But with a script by Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson and Hanson's direction of a bunch of unknowns like Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe, LA Confidential stands out as the best piece of nuevo-noir since at least Body Heat and probably since Chinatown. Helgeland and Hanson streamlined everything and while the film ends up being much less complicated and satisfying than Ellroy's novel, it's inconceivable to me that a better adaptation could have been done. The dialogue crackles and the perversity flies and Hanson fills the screen with canted angles, shadows, and the beautiful photography of Dante Spinotti. LA Confidential transformed Guy Pearce in viewer's minds from the flamboyant drag queen of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert into rigid upwardly mobile cop Ed Exley. Kim Basinger for the first time in who-knows-how-long got to actually act and she channeled the spirit of Hollywood glamour and road it all the way to an Oscar. Kevin Spacey turned off the creepy and turned on the charm and lemme tell you, his performance between slicker and more detailed every time you watch the movie. Danny DeVito, David Strathairn, the remarkable James Cromwell (whose true moment in the sun comes later on this list), and Ron Rifkin round out the supporting cast. But they're all working in support of Crowe, about whom American audience knew relatively little up until this point. Crowe's physical presence in this film is magnetic and he combines impulsive violence with a fragile spirit as Bud White, the cop everybody thinks is an animal, before he shows his soul. Even three Oscar nominations and one win later, this is Crowe's best performance. Hanson confirmed his talent with 2000's Wonder Boys, though his upcoming Eminem movie makes me a little nervous. [CONTINUED IN "PART 2" OF THIS REVIEW, WHICH SHOULD BE PUBLISHED BEFORE THE END OF 6/15]  |
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