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Top films of the 90's
Although I realize that we still have another year left in the decade (and the millennium too!), now seems like a good time to sit down and decide what I liked most out of the 1990's. It's a great decade, with many worthy contenders. Just as I did in my listing for the best of 1999, I really had to just pick the ones I enjoyed, or was moved by, the most. As I said before, I have real problems with such ranking. I'm really not very good at it. Also, you really can't compare two films, especially when they're so different. I mean, it's one thing to look at "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Thin Red Line" and compare them. It's quite another to look at "The Thin Red Line" and "The Iron Giant" and try to compare them.
1. Schindler's List
I suppose there was little doubt that this would be somewhere on my list. Looking at the film now, I have my share of problems with it. But when you're watching it, all those problems melt away and you're pulled into the story of Oskar Schindler, a Nazi war profiteer who saved the lives of over 1,000 human beings in World War 2.
My problem with it? Well, it's phenomenally melodramatic! In fact, it's the perfect exercise in melodrama. This kind of film can be extremely frustrating when you look at it later. "How was I pulled in?" you ask. That's just it. You ask this question because you are pulled in while you're watching the movie. It's so seamless that you don't feel you're being tugged at ever.
Liam Neeson could never work again and his name would be forever known after this movie. Ben Kingsley gives his best performance since "Gandhi", and Steven Spielberg has given us perhaps one of his best films ever.
2. Hoop Dreams
If you're going to see a movie about kids in an inner city, why would you bother seeing a movie like "Menace 2 Society" or "Boyz in the Hood"? True, they are both astounding movies. But truth is not a prerequisite in any movie. Real kids are more like what we see in "Hoop Dreams", a movie about kids just trying to get to school on a Basketball scholarship, because they know they don't have the money to go otherwise. It begins in high school, where two young African American students are showing talent in the game of basketball, and it takes us through six years of their lives, through the first year of college.
I think the most important part of this film for me is the idea of family. It's family that keeps these students in line. The idea that the family of these two young students is keeping them on the right track, and the idea of being able to help them later is another incentive.
3. Goodfellas
As I think back to this film, I realize one important detail. It's fortunate that we're able to see Henry Hill (played as an adult by Ray Liotta) as a child before we see him as an adult. As a child, we see him eager to please; he just wants to help his family and fit in with the guys he sees at the cab stand. It's important we learn to like him here, because he is not a nice man when he grows up. In fact, he's a true cad. From the opening scene of Hill opening the car so his friends Tommy (Joe Pesci) and Jimmy (Robert DeNiro) can kill a man in his trunk, we know that something's not right with our narrator.
So what holds us to this film? We see him as a child. Hill's father was "always pissed off about something" and his brother was in a wheelchair. But right across the street is a group of guys who fit right in anywhere. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that? But as Henry grows up, we see the dark side of the world he's chosen. As he gets higher and higher up in the ranks, he becomes mean to his wife, mean to his mistress, mean to his children, and lying to Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino), the mob boss who Henry once worshipped.
This film is a true character driven film. We see the price and allure of power, absolute power.
4. The 3 Colors Trilogy
I suppose it's kind of a cop-out to count these three films as one. But they just don't work as 3 separate films. Nor are they supposed to. The three works hold together as one all-inclusive piece of work, and a powerful one at that. Individually, they're not that great. In fact, I don't think the second one is much at all. At least, not by itself. But when considered with the rest of the group, we see the intentions of the director. See it. See it many times.
5. Fargo
So this is what the Coens were up to all those years. The Coen films have always held a certain appeal. They never quite fit in with the world; and this is no exception. At the head of it all is Sheriff Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), a gifted police officer who, as we first meet her, looks at a few tire tracks and a corpse, and then describes what the crime must have been like…accurately.
Unlike a few of these previous films, I must cut off here for a different reason. Quite honestly, if I tell you much more I'll be giving away secrets. However, William H. Macy gives a great performance as the catalyst, a car salesman who desperately needs money.
6. JFK
Proof that the truth isn't necessary for a movie. It's not "what", but "how" that's important. Anyone who's been paying attention to the real case of Clay Shaw would know that some things in this movie are not even remotely possible; that Jim Garrison was less a competent District Attorney than an obsessive loon. I don't mean to say that Oswald acted alone. I mean, it's pretty unlikely that he did. But that's not important. What is important is how Garrison (Kevin Costner) attempts to shed some light on exactly how President John F. Kennedy was killed.
The film is hypnotic. You can't help but be drawn into the conspiracy. Witness, readers, one of the last films Oliver Stone made before his ego went truly out of control.
7. Pulp Fiction
I have a feeling that everyone at least knows what this is. 4 episodes in the lives of a few people involved with the underbelly of Los Angeles crime. Not since David Mamet have I seen profanity sound so much like poetry. Something as simple as a Quarter Pounder can bring 5 minutes of entertaining dialogue. And that's what's important.
Seeing this, you know two things. First of all, director Quentin Tarantino is in love with every shot he puts on screen. Second of all, his shots are innnovative and refreshing. This doesn't mean that he's doing anything new. Just as was true with Orson Welles and his masterpiece "Citizen Kane", Tarantino isn't doing all new things on screen, but he's putting things together in ways that haven't been done before.
You want specifics? See the movie.
8. The Blair Witch Project
I don't know, there's not a whole lot I can say about this that I didn't already say previously when I listed it #1 of 1999. It fits into this list so well because of it's significance as well as it's overall creepiness.
9. The Sweet Hereafter
Director Atom Egoyan's 1997 masterpiece tells the tale of a bus crash that killed 30 children and destroyed the lives of their families and the survivors of the crash. The story was told both from the day of the crash, and also from the perspective of a lawyer (Ian Holm) who was looking to make some money out of litigations.
This was released at about the same time as 1997's "Titanic", and I must admit that I was drawn to tears by the deaths of 30 children much more quickly than I should have been by the deaths of more than a thousand people. I don't regard "Titanic" as a bad movie, but "The Sweet Hereafter" holds its own.
10. Character
Dutch director Mike Van Diem's story of a boy who grows into a lawyer, despite numerous interventions from the town bailiff, Dreverhaven. The very name gives me chills, and his role in the film in a superb turn.
The film is one of not only courage, but also spite and revenge. Dreverhaven strikes out against Katadreuffe (Fedja van Huet) as a result of unrequited love. I don't think I'd be giving anything away to tell you that Katadreuffe is the result of a one-time liaison between Dreverhaven and Katadreuffe's mother. Her refusal to marry Dreverhaven is the purpose for all the suffering, and the film opens with Katadreuffe being questioned by the police as a result of Dreverhaven's suspicious death.
Despite seeing the ingenious Katadreuffe pulling himself up by his bootstraps to success, it's all simply to spite his mean spirited father.
Once again, I give you a runner's up list of top films of the 1990's. Remember, I do this because all were fine films; and for that matter I don't even mention a great deal more films that were also great pieces of work. But the movies I do mention have touched me in a certain way. A subjective way to judge, yes. But in this case it's the only way to judge.
Again, I list these movies in the order that I liked them:
- The Thin Red Line
- The Crying Game
- Malcolm X
- Contact
- Hamlet (1996)
- Silence of the Lambs
- Unforgiven
- Ma Vie en Rose (My life in Pink)
- The War Zone
- The Piano