The purpose of this thread is to get nominations for a poll on the ten best movies of the 90’s, and to hopefully to get some new movie suggestions.
So list your top 10 of the 90’s and sooner or later I’ll make a poll with the movies that get mentioned the most in this thread.
You can list more than ten movies as honorable mentions, which won’t get counted for the poll.
My list:
Goodfellas
Pulp Fiction
Reservoir Dogs
Unforgiven
Leon
Nikita
Terminator 2
The Big Lebowski
Office Space
Clerks
Honorable Mentions:
Fight Club
Show Me Love
Groundhog Day
The Matrix
The Unsual Suspects
Silence of the Lambs
The Shawshank Redemption
Se7en
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler’s List
Fargo
Heat
Miller’s Crossing
OK, after giving it some thought, here’s my official top 10 (no particular order):
Fargo
Lone Star
Last of the Mohicans
The Sixth Sense
Shakespeare in Love (this one grows on me a bit every time I see it)
True Romance (my favorite Tarantino movie)
Unforgiven
The Remains of the Day
Rushmore
12 Monkeys
I can watch (and have watched) all of those over and over without getting tired of them, which is what defines film greatness to me.
I think The Talented Mr. Ripley should be on this list, having some of the best scenery and most evocative settings of any film, and featuring some of the best acting performances, especially Philip Seymour Hoffman (I think it’s the best role of his career, actually.)
Saving Private Ryan
L.A. Confidential
The Usual Suspects
Jackie Brown
Groundhog Day
The Sixth Sense
Terminator 2
The Professional
Office Space
The Matrix
Honorable mentions to Clear and Present Danger, Schindler’s List, American Beauty, and 12 Monkeys
Run Lola Run
Point Break
LA Confidential
Three Kings
Boogie Nights
The Sweet Hereafter
Goodfellas
Big Night
My Cousin Vinny
Apollo 13
Honorable Mention: Hoop Dreams, Dazed and Confused, Groundhog Day, Boyz in the Hood, Gods and Monsters, American History X.
So hard to pick “the best” – I was really torn between movies that I personally like (Thunderheart, anyone? I know there’s something wrong with me because I can watch that movie over and over with no irony at all), and movies that aren’t quite my taste but I can see objectively that they are fantastic film-making (Chungking Express, which only makes me dizzy, and not in a good way). Also, there are films that hold up so well as to be timeless – Boogie Nights, is as good now, if not better, as the day it was released, but then there are others, like Boyz in the Hood, that seem more dated, but part of the reason for that is that it had such an influence on media that it set the tone for so much of what came after and now it’s more like “eh, I’ve seen everything in it done better, elsewhere.”
Some of the films got stuck on my honorable mentions list (Gods and Monsters, American History X) because they are stellar performances, and it’s hard to compare to films that are more massive, I guess, in their “all around” quality (direction, writing, etc)
The Sweet Hereafter is the only film on my list that I have only seen once - it was so heartbreaking I’m never going to watch it again.
Here’s the IMDB top 50 for that decade. I was happy to see “The Straight Story” (David Lynch’s family film) wiggle onto the ballot results.
Some of my favorites: Miller’s Crossing
Fargo
Cold Comfort Farm
Hudsucker Proxy
Get Shorty
Toy Story 2
My Neighbor Totoro
Terminator 2
Straight Story
That Thing You Do
Last of the Mohicans
maybe… Braveheart
Fargo, Barton Fink, Big Lebowski
Eyes Wide Shut
Red, White, Blue Trilogy
Breaking the Waves
Bottle Rocket, Rushmore
The Thin Red Line
Pulp Fiction
Funny Games
L.A. Confidential
Heavenly Creatures
(More than ten, but only ten directors–not in any order)
