Inspired by the 2000s thread. I even kept the little ►.
Now that we have about 14ish years between us and the 90s, it would be totally cool if we did a top 25.
25 is a nice big, appropriate number for a decade's worth of films.
Curious if we'll mostly see a bunch of popular classics and old favourite, or some real different and obscure titles. Either way it's all good. It was a great decade for cinema anyway.
I'll post mine in a bit.
Glad you started this thread.
26. American Movie
25. The Sweet Hereafter
24. The Scent of Green Papaya
23. Heavenly Creatures
22. Underground
21. Taste of Cherry
20. Trainspotting
19. Groundhog Day
18. Drifting Clouds
17. Rosetta
16. Short Cuts
15. Welcome to the Dollhouse
14. Secrets & Lies
13. Sweet and Lowdown
12. Toy Story 2
11. Dead Man Walking
10. Red
09. Fargo
08. Crumb
07. Safe
06. Pulp Fiction
05. Eyes Wide Shut
04. Leaving Las Vegas
03. Breaking the Waves
02. Magnolia
01. Naked
In a somewhat close to particular order:
- Magnolia
- Eyes Wide Shut
- Naked
- Groundhog Day
- Boogie Nights
- Before Sunrise
- American Beauty
- Fight Club
- The Pillow Book
- Pulp Fiction
- The Big Lebowski
- Show Me Love
- The Ice Storm
- Buffalo '66
- Jackie Brown
- Rushmore
- Swingers
- Barton Fink
- Short Cuts
- Leaving Las Vegas
- White Men Can't Jump
- Dazed and Confused
- Slacker
- Exotica
- Reservoir Dogs
I love Red, Crumb, and Safe, but couldn't quite fit them on the list. Also considered these honorable mentions, but they couldn't fit: The Sandlot, Dumb and Dumber, Clerks., My Girl, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Chasing Amy, Dick Tracy, Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy, Mighty Aphrodite, Contact, Good Will Hunting. Though they aren't as great (likely have one or two egregious problems but are still worth watching), but they're worth mentioning either for nostalgic reasons or they each do one thing really well. Moreso than most movies, anyway.
EDIT: I forgot Lost Highway, a movie for which my appreciation grows with every viewing. Seems as if everyone else did, too. Oops.
rebels of the neon god
goodbye south, goodbye
fallen angels
hackers
friday
satantango
eyes wide shut
double life of véronique
the flower of my secret
hard boiled
johnny mnemonic
point break
crash
buffalo '66
devil's island
zusje
slacker
naked
the long day closes
edward scissorhands
trainspotting
thin red line
lovers on the bridge
casino
thelma & louise
25. +1990's wild at heart. i had fun.
[edit] for example, i'm bummed i forgot rosetta (which i remember remembering while making the list, but then i forgot to include it), and when i saw safe i thought "i'll include safe" but i didn't do that. for examples
Quote from: classical gas on May 15, 2014, 01:38:18 AM
...
13. Hannah and Her Sisters
...
That's 1986, dude.
I'll do mine one of these days. I'll have to really think about it.
I suck at lists so I made this Frankenlist
Quote from: jenkins<3 on May 15, 2014, 03:57:16 AM
fallen angels + Chungking
satantango + Werckmeister Harmonies
eyes wide shut
crash + Naked Lunch
buffalo '66
slacker + Dazed and Confused
the long day closes
edward scissorhandsEd Wood
wild at heart + FWWM
casinoGoodfellas
Quote from: ono on May 15, 2014, 03:01:53 AM
Magnolia
Boogie Nights
Jackie Brown
The Big Lebowski
Barton Fink
Dazed and Confused
Quote from: classical gas on May 15, 2014, 01:38:18 AM
American Movie
Fargo
Breaking the Waves
Groundhog Day
Something like:
Chungking Express
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Matrix
L.A Confidential
Toy Story
Toy Story 2
Pulp Fiction
Boogie Nights
Princess Mononoke
The Big Lebowski
Goodfellas
Porco Rosso
Fight Club
Perfect Blue
My Neighbors the Yamadas
Fallen Angels
After Life
The Shawshank Redemption
Eyes Wide Shut
Only Yesterday
Magnolia
The Mummy
Casino
Maborosi
Jurassic Park
Hon mentions:
Independence Day, The Thin Red Line, Men in Black, Home Alone, Se7en, The Double Life of Veronique, Leon the Professional, Matilda, The Silence of the Lambs, The Iron Giant, Ringu etc etc
First of all, fuck the number 25. Fuck it in the ass. Not 100% happy with the order, but this is my list:
1. Magnolia
2. American Beauty
3. Jurassic Park
4. Cruel Intentions
5. Boogie Nights
6. Fight Club
7. Rushmore
8. The Big Lebowski
9. The Thin Red Line
10. Jackie Brown
11. Beauty and the Beast
12. American Movie
13. The Straight Story
14. Eyes Wide Shut
15. Fargo
16. Goodfellas
17. The Talented Mr. Ripley
18. Miller's Crossing
19. Pulp Fiction
20. Wild at Heart
21. Human Traffic
22. Con Air
23. Dumb and Dumber
24. El Mariachi
25. Life Is Beautiful
Quote from: ElPandaRoyal on May 15, 2014, 03:59:46 AM
Quote from: classical gas on May 15, 2014, 01:38:18 AM
...
13. Hannah and Her Sisters
...
That's 1986, dude.
I'll do mine one of these days. I'll have to really think about it.
Oh shit...what the hell was I thinking? Thanks for pointing that out. I changed it to include a different Woody Allen film.
Being an asshole again
Blue
Boogie Nights
Breaking the Waves
Buffalo '66
Casino
Crash
Edward Scissorhands
Election
Eyes Wide Shut
Gattaca
Goodfellas
Happiness
Heat
Husbands and Wives
The Insider
Jackie Brown
Magnolia
Naked Lunch
Pilotinnen
Rebels of the Neon God
Safe
Short Cuts
The Silence of the Lambs
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Thin Red Line
and
Bad Lieutenant
Baraka
Barton Fink
Being John Malkovich
The Big Lebowski
Bitter Moon
Bleeder
La Ceremonie
Cuba Libre
Ed Wood
The Game
Glengarry Glen Ross
Hard Eight
The House
Jamon, Jamon
Jurassic Park
Life Is Sweet
Live Flesh
Naked
The Player
Pulp Fiction
Pusher
Quiz Show
The Red Squirrel
The Remains of the Day
Secrets & Lies
The Sex Thief (Die Beischlafdiebin)
Show Me Love
Terminator 2
Van Gogh
The Virgin Suicides
Welcome to the Dollhouse
What Happened Was
White
Wild at Heart
magnolia
boogie nights
pulp fiction
the idiots
breaking the waves
chungking express
glengarry glen ross
life is beautiful
se7en
short cuts
the silence of the lambs
buffalo 66
kikujiro
hoop dreams
heat
deconstructing harry
kicking & screaming
fargo
julien donkey-boy
the thin red line
good will hunting
les amants du pont-neuf
fucking åmål (show me love)
eyes wide shut
jurassic park
So Buffalo 66 has become some kind of classic?
Seems like I have seen it mentioned a lot lately. Not sure if just here, or other places, too.
I saw it once, but don't remember much about it.
It's the cinematic equivalent of an open heart surgery.
Buffalo 66 gets better every time you watch it, I think. I couldn't appreciate its dry sense of humor as a kid, but seeing it again recently I found it to be a pitch perfect black comedy, really an awesome achievement by Gallo. It definitely has an atmosphere and tone you have to be in a certain mood to get into, though.
Damn, you guys already mentioned the best ones! Not interested in repeating them. This is my honest to goodness list without the obvious classics, couldn't put it in proper order:
SLING BLADE
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcontent7.flixster.com%2Fphoto%2F86%2F53%2F24%2F8653241_gal.jpg&hash=5fe5dafeaeba4f9de5b8914a095419a01b8d93af)
A SIMPLE PLAN
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcontent8.flixster.com%2Fphoto%2F13%2F58%2F25%2F13582558_gal.jpg&hash=9cc89318d49248e5173717a2f510ec274823d668)
...love me some Billy Bob
Scream
The Blair Witch Project
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills
Waco: The Rules Of Engagement
Your Friends & Neighbors
Schindler's List
The Fugitive
The Good Son
From Dusk Til Dawn
As Good As It Gets
The Edge
Office Space
Total Recall
Bringing Out The Dead
Clerks
Nightwatch
Candyman
Smoke
8MM
Felicia's Journey
There's Something About Mary
The Virgin Suicides
Quote from: Reelist on May 17, 2014, 06:36:12 PM
Scream
Candyman
wanted to be brave enough to list scream myself. think the horror genre is basically still trying to outrun scream, and that's been a tough race for them
and, candyman
not one mention of kiarostami so far?! close-up makes my top 5, and if i weren't inclined to implement a 1 film per director limit, almost every other film he made in the 90s would be included. (i haven't seen through the olive trees.)
order is somewhat arbitrary... more accurate to think of the list in terms of general proximity relative to preference.
1. the thin red line
2. underground
3. close-up
4. a brighter summer day
5. beau travail
6. eyes wide shut
7. satantango
8. barton fink
9. lessons of darkness
10. dead man
11. the age of innocence
12. crumb
13. blue
14. nixon
15. secrets & lies
16. happy together
17. the long day closes
18. the idiots
19. terminator 2
20. bottle rocket
21. lovers on the bridge
22. sweet & lowdown
23. office space
24. boogie nights
25. face/off
i'm sure i'll remember something or want to change everything minutes after i post but i'll just stick with this. my memory of short cuts and the player are hazy. i saw them when my appreciation of altman wasn't what it is today.
samsong i'm taking to you. careful. jk. not jk
jk. some recent time i also did a the player/short cuts reviewing, and short cuts was miles higher in terms of characters and emotional details imo. the player has cinematic juices, but so many fewer emotional entry points. that's what i thought. i'd like to hear back how you hear their tunes
a lot i need to see, somehow haven't seen close-up, and generally ignorant of foreign film in the 90s i guess?
old stand-bys -
a brighter summer day
jackie brown
american movie
barton fink
naked
the ice storm
crumb
boogie nights
dead man
kingpin
eyes wide shut
rushmore
chungking express
goodfellas
this year i've revisited the 90s more than usual. 20 year culture cycles, that's what i hear. 30s to 50s to 70s to 90s to 10s, maybe
a fresh 90s list of mine:
last of the mohicans --
an ending scene in last of the mohicans made me cry. fact. i'm an adult. rumor. listen, you gotta know exactly when that happened if you've seen the movie. you can be feeling that scene right now for sure. i was like "no way" in a fashion that was tears on my face and two-three people have called me an adult in my life, i hope crying becomes fashionable soon, fine with me, have you seen this movie recently? fwew, i tell ya
wonderland --
the essential mechanics of contemporary city emotions fused into cinema that i'd guess i'll spend my entire life fascinated by
my own private idaho --
he's so good at making people, and this is when everything was young and beautiful
he got game --
i imagine my life kinda like taking a vacation from prison to a rundown coney island hotel while trying to convince my son to like me again but it's tricky and i'm always in danger of appearing horrible, i just get it, and it buzzes with grammatically emotional cinema
jackie brown --
if the creator feels comfortable, genre movies can feel like they're being lead by their characters, which seems in direct opposition to how genres start to form, and i think it's badass when someone cares and feels enough to do that
se7en --
an emotional movie that says emotions are scary and mean people can prove it, dang. so good. and los angeles crime movies for life
the matrix --
things such bullshit, we could actually be in hovercrafts. and multiple people (lottery e.g.) have convinced me to nbd the rage against the machine situation. i just don't see the problem with this movie
jurassic park --
fact is, they cooked up a way to put people and dinosaurs together, in modern times, and everyone acts pretty natural about it
scream --
do you think this was a pivotal movie that made a lot of us think about our fantasies from the inside? happy halloween
belly --
this was my first year seeing belly because i'd been afraid of it. i thought it was gonna be brutal shit. but it's not, and it's so visually lush, i could feel it. i think this movie has emotions beyond and/or inside what i see
slacker --
a city is full of interesting people of different types and this is such a good movie about that, it's almost a bummer this was already made
la vie de bohème --
strikes me as both totally realistic and artistic and totally what i wish my life was like, actually
rebels of the neon god
goodbye south, goodbye
johnny mnemonic (blu-ray)
the long day closes
^movies on my last list that i've recently double-checked
I'll just comment on yours before getting to mine:
Did I ever tell my Last Of The Mohicans story? I had free tickets to a screening at our best theater in town, the kind that's 100 years old and looks like a palace inside. There were a couple extras, so I offered them to this woman I knew. She had a Native American boyfriend, so I thought they'd be interested. She suggested that we all go together and they came by and picked me up. The film was part of a festival so we had to sit through about a half hour of people at a podium telling us how important this event was. Then they played this corny animation that looked like a super low grade version of 'Ice Age', even though it sucked I was happy they were at least getting the show on the road. Then the time comes to start 'Last Of The Mohicans' and the lights go down, credits come up, they're in black and white! This isn't the movie I'd grown up hearing about, always wanted to see but never had. This wasn't even the 1936 version by the same name, it was the 1920 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0011387/) version. So, suddenly our entire mood has shifted from going out for a night of entertainment to feeling forced to revere this piece of classic cinema, which is tough because all of the actors portraying Indians are white guys in 'red face', I guess you'd call it. After 20 minutes in and several uncomfortable stares between us to gage how fucking bored we were, we decide to leave. Most awkward car ride home of my life and biggest movie fail EVER.Still haven't seen the 90's one to this day.
I've owned My Private Idaho on DVD, but I still haven't gotten around to revisiting it. Caught it on IFC once, but after reading 'Last Night At The Viper Room' I think it's going to be a whole different experience knowing how much it seems to mirror River's own life. Also bought 'Dogfight' recently and I'm looking forward to that, one of the last performances he was lauded for and still on top of his game, it seems.
I watched Scream the other day on a terrible looking DVD transfer, really regretted not buying the bluray (Drenk's fault). As much as the movie practically has no register on my 'fear meter' after seeing it so many times, I really admire the structure of it more and more as the years go by and we're exposed to less truly original horror like this. The final scene in the kitchen was what struck me as truly horrific this time around when the killers are finally unmasked and doing this morbid comedy routine, it made me think of how much of Wes Craven's horror takes place in kitchens, it's a lot if you look at his Nightmare on Elm Streets, The People Under The Stairs, etc ( get back to you on that.) Then in Scream he uses them as bookends in the beginning and the end, both great. What is it that makes his kitchen scenes so scary? Maybe the appearance of a calm suburban lifestyle, which most of his movies seem to be about the terrorizing of, going back to Last House On The Left.
The last time I watched Scream, seeing all the pratfalls of the killer I was like "Come on, she definitely wouldn't have gotten away", but I never really took into account that these are just stoner guys running around that probably need to get insanely fucked up to even work up the nerve to do this. That's why it was so funny in the party sequence how completely hammered Stu is and the way he's sloppily chasing Sydney when he gets in the costume, noting this little tidbit made the characters seem more relatable and mortal. They're not just Faceless invincible killers, they're misguided kids who need a good dose of psychotropic meds. Something about that made it scarier, keeping in mind that people with these ideas and the potential to commit violence actually exist in society.
I've been watching a TON of 90's shit. 'Smoke' with Harvey Keitel and 'Popcorn' are two from 1990 that I saw this week. I don't know how detailed I want to get in my reviews of those, let's just say I really like 'Smoke' and a lot of it serves as inspiration for my own screenplay, which was just by happenstance when I checked it out a year ago and saw how many elements of it I wanted to take a little further in my script, let's say.
Popcorn, oof. Cool idea, bad execution. A lot of people say that this was a precursor to Scream with it's characters aware of, referencing, and watching movies throughout. It's just a lazily written, overall unsatisfactory horror experience that leaves you feeling a little too creeped out and disgusted by how much we have to wallow in the killer's twisted vision, who puts on one of the most annoyingly over the top performances in cinema.
I watched 'The Bone Collector' to confirm my suspicions as a youth that it's a stupid movie, and it was. Some cool set design, but really just another pathetic 'Silence Of The Lambs' ripoff at the end of the day. It borrows too many elements of other successful police procedurals, thrillers, and serial killer movies and tries to cram them all into this one story, that shows promise in the beginning but quickly unravels into nonsense. They're basically taking that last ridiculously suspenseful act of 'Rear Window' and milking it for the whole movie, with the one guy immobile and the hot chick out doing his detective work. Possibly one of the laziest reveals ever when Angelina's characters discovers *gasp* "he's copying all of his crimes from this book! look, there's illustrations to prove it!"
There were others, can't list them all now and a lot were disappointments so I'm not too keen to talk about them. I haven't been overjoyed with any of my 90's movie experiences lately, but I keep going back to check up on things and see how I feel about them.
I tend to enjoy the nostalgia of watching them more than the actual films.
anyway, to be continued..
Just to throw a Soderbergh out there and perhaps the most personal and/or obtuse film ever made: Schizopolis.
Thread compiled here:
Xixax - 1990s (https://letterboxd.com/xixax/list/xixax-1990s/)
Xixax - 1990s - World Cinema (https://letterboxd.com/xixax/list/xixax-1990s-world-cinema/)