1999 had:
The Insider
The Green Mile
Magnolia
Himalaya
1998 had:
The Thin Red Line
Truman Show
Life is Beautiful
1997 holds the distintion of having a lot of films that I have not seen yet, such as:
Ulees Gold, LA Confidential, Jackie Brown, and the Apostle. Of the films I have seen from 97, Amistad is clearly the best, but As Good as it Gets is a nice film to shore up what looks like a good line up of films, Good Will Hunting is just ok.
Princess Mononoke is probably the best film from 1997. Kundun was good, as well.
1996 had the English Patient and the chinese film The King of Masks
1995 had Heat, Nixon, Casino, Apollo 13, Sense and Sensability, Ghost in the Shell
1994 had Shawshank Redemption
1993 had Schindler’s List, Farewell My Concubine, Madadayo, Age of Innocence and the Piano.
1992 had Porco Rosso, Malcolm X and Unforgiven
1991 had “Life on a String”, “Raise the Red Lantern”, JFK, Barton Fink,Cape Fear, and Boyz in the Hood
1990 had Dances with Wolves, Miller’s Crossing, and Goodfellas; but not much else of note.
I will also second, Faust(Svanjkmeyer?)
Goodfellas
Howard’s End
All About My Mother
Fargo
Fearless (Weir)
Ed Wood
Longtime Companion
L.A. Confidential
Out of Sight
Red/White/Blue
Babe
The Remains of the Day
Other nineties notables;
Jacob’s Ladder (‘90)
King of New York (’90)
Edward Scissorhands (‘90)
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (’90)
Naked Lunch (‘91)
T2: Judgement Day (’91)
Silence of the Lambs (‘91)
Resevoir Dogs (’92)
Groundhog Day (‘93)
Jurassic Park (’93)
Lion King (‘94)
Toy Story (’95)
Se7en (‘95)
The Usual Suspects (’95)
Dead Man (‘95)
Funny Games (’97)
Saving Private Ryan (‘98)
Rushmore (’98)
The Blair Witch Project (‘99)
Fight Club (’99)
American Beauty (‘99)
The Matrix (’99)
The Sixth Sense (’99)
I doubt anybody else will mention it so I’ll have to pimp Jon Jost’s “The Bed You Sleep In”; a brutal, subtle portrait of the times. Too bad the existing DVD of it is such a shoddy job. It’s the kind of film that needs to be seen on 35mm to really appreciate. Amongst the more mainstream films; “Eyes Wide Shut”, “Heat” and “Dead Man” are tops for me.
Shall We Dansu (1996) by Masayuki Suo
Dreams (1990) by Akira Kurosawa
Wild Reeds, Les Roseaux Sauvages (1994) by Andre Téchiné
This Boy’s Life (1993) by Michael Caton-Jones
Blue (1993) by Krzysztof Kieslowski
White (1994) by Kieslowski
Red (1994) by Kieslowski
The Thin Red Line (1998) by Terrence Malick
Raise the Red Lantern (1991) by Zhang Yimou
La gloire de mon père (1990) and Le château de ma mère (1990) by Yves Robert
Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) by Ang Lee
Gummo
The Big Lebowski
Fargo
Metropolitan, Before Sunrise, and Rushmore.
Goodfellas (Scorsese)
Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater)
Dead Man (Jarmusch)
The River (Tsai Ming-liang)
The Thin Red Line (Malick)
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick)
Satantango (Tarr)
The Wind Will Carry Us (Kiarostami)
The Apostle (Robert Duvall)
Safe (Todd Haynes)
A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang)
The Funeral (Abel Ferrera)
Affliction (Paul Schrader)
Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)
Fargo (Coen Brothers)
Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
I hate this lists…. they remind me of my shitty memory….
I hate this lists…. they remind me of my shitty memory….
TOP OF MY HEAD:
The Ice Storm
Pulp Fiction
Natural Born Killers
Metropolitan
Affliction
Goodfellas
Before Sunrise
Slacker
Dazed and Confused
Fargo
Barton Fink
Thin Red Line
Eyes Wide Shut
My Own Private Idaho
Edward Scissorhands
Rushmore
Blair Witch Project
Matrix
T2
Jacob’s Ladder
Wild at Heart
American Beauty
Usual Suspects
Schindler’s List
Fearless
Shawshank Redemption
Sixth Sense
Glen Gary Glen Ross
The Player
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse
Light Sleeper
Welcome to the Dollhouse
Reservoir Dogs
Silence of the Lambs
LA Confidential
Toy Story
The worst decade for film
Buffalo ’66
Naked
Bad Lieutenant
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse
Breaking the Waves
Eyes Wide Shut
Fallen Angels
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
Dead Man
Leaving Las Vegas
The Thin Red Line
Hands on a Hard Body
La Belle Noiseuse
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
Eyes Wide Shut
Satantango
The Thin Red Line
And i agree it was a terrible decade for film, and this decade might be even worse.
Nobody’s mentioned Quiz Show or Nobody’s Fool, and only Lester has said Before Sunrise, The Silence of the Lambs and Metropolitan.
Those are all top-notch.
Ruby in Paradise
(in addition to many of the above)
La Cité des enfants perdus!( The City of Lost Children) a Caro and Jeunet film.
It certainly was a shitty decade for film. Especially the early nineties. Holy shit, they were sadly getting over the eighties in a bad way. But anyway, I’d have to count:
Underground – because even if it’s kind of like Forrest Gump alot it’s still a much more entertaining film than the supposedly entertaining film.
Naked – yay
I don’t know. Modern movies about kids just out of college saying things that are funny. The warehouse of those that were made.
Van Gogh – makes my day
Uhhhhh, someone come up with some better ones.
no love for Dark City?
I found Saving Private Ryan an entertaining film.
Not as strong a decade as i’d once thought; several of the films that most impressed me at the time haven’t worn as well as i’d hoped.(e.g Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas have been too often imitated, now too familiar, i have more misgivings about Schindler’s List, the impact of The English Patient has waned a little..).
4 in my overall top 30*
1.Maborosi*
2.Abraham Valley*
3.Eternity and a Day*
4.The Double Life of Veronique*
5.Ulysses’ Gaze
6.The Age of Innocence
7.Rosetta
8.Groundhog Day
9.The Sheltering Sky
+ battling it out for 10th spot
A Brighter Summer’s Day
Miller’s Crossing
Silences of the Palace
And Life Goes On
Close Up
I saw this post and thought, “Interesting. Whittling a decade of movies down to one…best film (singular) of the 90’s. What to pick?” and then I see that only two people have actually named only one film. Hooray for you who are courageous enough to pick just one. Laying it all on the line, an open invitation for mockery, debasing, and denial by the others.
I say Magnolia.
without really thinking about, off the top of my head i have (in no particular order):
Schindler’s List
Pulp Fiction
Goodfellas
Malcolm X
Clockers
Fresh
Fargo
Barton Fink
Groundhog Day
Silence of the Lambs
…i just realised i’m not watching enough foreign films from the past 20 years. hrm.
Clueless (1995)
La Haine (1995)
Insomnia (1997)
Satantango
Hamlet (1996)
L.A. Confidential
Michael Mann’s “HEAT”. Nuff Said, I’m out!
Croonie & others When I first posted this, I just copied the Best Film of the ’80’s thread, not realizing it was singular until later! Oh well, some of you have decided to narrow it down to one, but I had meant it to say ‘Films’ plural, so that you could expand. I forgot on my own list some of the foreign films mentioned here that I have seen, like Ulysses Gaze and Raise the Red Lantern, so I appreciate any feedback. Hamlet would be on my list, too, and others have been mentioned that were at least entertaining films. I have Magnolia on my soon to see list, and use these exercizes to get other possibilities. Use the thread to mean Film or Films – however you wish! Since I have just seen it, and it is fresh in my mind, Satantango would be my one film pick – it is what cinema as art is all about, but I think it really wasn’t all that bad a decade, after all, which is the point of doing these things. Thanks.
There are so many great films in 90’s I haven’t watched…This is my list so far:
Goodfellas (1990)
My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Farewell My Concubine (1993)
The Puppetmaster (1993)
Three Colors: Blue (1993)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Chungking Express (1994)
Underground (1995)
Fargo (1996)
Rosetta (1999)
Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train
Edward II
Tongues Untied
Paris is Burning
The Long Day Closes
My Own Private Idaho
Silverlake Life: The View From Here
Swoon
Poison
The Hours and Times
Queen Margot
La Belle Noiseuse
Jeanne La Pucelle: Les Batailles; Les Prisons
The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert
La Naissance de L’Amour
The Voice of the Moon
The Bed You Sleep In (Jost)
1999 alone seemed to be a good year:
Magnolia
Beau Travail
Girl on the Bridge
Virgin Suicides
The Matrix
Election
Eyes Wide Shut
Run Lola Run
Three Kings
The Limey
Rosetta
As for the rest of the decade:
Goodfellas
Dead Man
Clerks
Buffalo ‘66
Taste of Cherry
Bottle Rocket
Rushmore
Lovers on the Bridge
La Promesse
Fargo
Miller’s Crossing
(Pretty much all of the Coen Brothers’ films from the nineties are pretty awesome and original pieces of work.)
Seven(My personal favorite among the studio pictures.)
Reservoir Dogs(Still think it’s his best work.)
Man Bites Dog
Hands on a Hard Body
Naked
Life is Sweet(Why isn’t this on DVD in the States, Criterion?)
Laws of Gravity(Also out of print and unavailable on DVD.)
Clean, Shaven (and probably Claire Dolan, as well.)
Slacker/Dazed and Confused
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
Three Coleurs
Jacob’s Ladder
The Player
The Celebration
Breaking the Waves/Dancer in the Dark
La Haine
L.A. Confidential
The Usual Suspects
Fresh
Boyz n the Hood
Bad Lieutenant
The Funeral
SatanTango
… and probably quite a few more. The nineties were pretty good. Better than the eighties, except for comedy. (Eighties still rule in that regard.) It’s only downfall is that it came before this shitty decade for American film. So in essence one could say that it helped create it.
P.S.
Jay Rosenblatt’s Human Remains and The Smell of Burning Ants, on the experimental tip. I am grossly ignorant in this area so I am sure there are a ton more one could list. But these are a couple I saw that really made an impact.
Bob Stutsman
Since I couldn’t really find a thread for this when I was mentioning on the ’80’s thread if there was one for this decade, I am posting this. At first, I didn’t know if I could think of that many films from the decade that I had seen and admired. But, lo and behold, I was quickly able to put this list of contenders together – not going to limit it to ten or whatever. I’ll let someone else list some of the more obvious examples not here, like Pulp Fiction, as I am not a big fan of it. Someone else can even throw in Titantic, if they like. I know this is one of those list exercises, but sometimes it can spark discussion or, at least, help us put the decade into context. I didn’t like all these equally, of course, but each is worth at least a cursory look. I guess it was a better decade than I had thought it might be, in retrospect:
Satantango
Delicatessen
Double Life of Veronique
Thelma & Louise
Crying Game
Glengarry Glen Ross
The Player
Age of Innocence
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Naked
The Piano
Schindler’s List
Crumb
Natural Born Killers
Trois Couleurs
Exotica
Babe
Il Postino
Breaking the Waves
Crash (Cronenberg)
Fargo
Full Monty
Big Lewbowski
Pi
Being John Malkovich
Talented Mr. Ripley
Topsy-Turvey
Eyes Wide Shut
Faust