Best 20 Films of the 1990s: PART 2
Jun 15 '02 (Updated Oct 26 '03)
The Bottom Line The continuation of my list of the top 20 films of the 1990s as we count all the way down to #1.
10)Three Kings (1999)
Three Kings is slowly but surely moving up this list. Every time I see it, I become more and more convinced that it's one of the great and misunderstood films of the decade. Made with consumate technical skill and endless wit and resourcefulness, Three Kings offers surprises at every turn.
Three Kings is another of those films whose pedigree seems unexpected. I mean, sure, Spanking the Monkey and Flirting With Disaster are nifty little dark comedies, but who would trust the director of those films, David O. Russell, to make a demanding, high budget studio war movie? And who would trust anybody to essentially recast Kelly's Heroes in the Gulf War? But while the various comparisons to Kelly's Heroes are somewhat appropriate, they're also reductive and rather insulting to Three Kings. Kelly's Heroes is a well-cast lark, but beyond being fun, it's a totally empty movie. Three Kings, on the other hand stands as a strong piece of political and social commentary. Less facile than, say, Wall Street, it's the best cinematic critique of Reagan/Bush era capitalism going. And while people who at least got some of the meaning of the film have criticized it as liberal anti-war propoganda, that's a pathetic misreading as well. Three Kings believes firmly in the potential heroism of American combat and intervention, but questions merely the ways in which our country traditionally wages war. There are many good reasons to go to battle, the film seems to suggest, but the gain of capital just isn't one. Three Kings isn't an anti-war film. It's an anti-war-for-war's-sake film. It's an anti-American Imperialism film. It's a films that calls into question American's Cultural Manifest Destiny of the world.
Oh yeah. And it's also a pretty kick-butt action-comedy. Flawlessly cast with George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, and Spike Jonze going AWOL into the desert to steal millions of dollars of Kuwaiti gold bullion (no, not the stuff you use to make soup), only to discover the human side of war. The script by Russell (from a story by John Ridley) crackles. From the opening scene, which has always reminded me of Waiting For Godot ("Are We Shooting People?") to the ironic closing titles, Three Kings is ten steps faster than your typical action movie. And then you factor in Russell's insane live-wire direction. No action film has ever made such flawless use of visual irony as Russell presents the American soldiers as aliens in this landscape. He also shows an internal shot of the effects of a bullet on the human body. And that's pretty neat. The super-saturated cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel, the amazing early 1990s (and before) soundtrack, and the editing by Robert K. Lambert are all worthy of praise. Give me enough time and Three Kings may continue to move up this list.
9)Pulp Fiction (1994)
And give me enough time and Pulp Fiction may continue to slide down this list. Because certainly had I sketched this thing out three years ago, this movie probably would have been #1. And had I sketched it out two months ago, it may have fallen out entirely. But I watched Pulp Fiction on STARZ a couple weeks back and lemme tell you a couple things: Firstly, if Quentin Tarantino has directed three full films, Pulp Fiction is the worst. It lacks the visceral thrill of discovery that propelled Reservoir Dogs and it lacks the maturity and intelligent direction of Jackie Brown (a film that I love and that other people find slow as molasses). However, Pulp Fiction is still so much fun it shouldn't be legal. This is a movie where nothing happens, but it's so well disguised by the slightly tricky non-linear structure that it's easy to forget. And it's a movie with the characters are largely cardboard cut-outs. But they are cardboard cut-outs in the service of hilarious amounts of coolness. While when I first saw it, I loved the various storylines without reservation, the Bruce Willis story works less and less for me each time I view it again. There's no denying, though, the charisma of Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, and Uma Thurman.
Much of my recent critical downturn on Pulp Fiction has been based on the string of pale copies that followed. Some (Doug Liman's Go for example) can stand on their own, but most of them just served to dillute the impact of the original. These copies all lacked any meaning. But you realize, then, that Pulp Fiction wasn't exactly rich in meaning. But it's a total hoot to watch.
8)Hoop Dreams (1994)
How real is a documentary when it gets an Oscar Nomination for editing? How much mediation does that means occured to transfer the complicated truths of real-life into the provocative narrative of Hoop Dreams? At what point does the line between "true" reality and the reality imposed by the filmmakers become so blurred that it ceases to be relevant to discuss it? Is Hoop Dreams a clear view of a real situation? Of course not. Steve James and Fredrick Marx spent years trailing Arthur Agee and William Gates, two promising basketball players from a low income neighborhood in Chicago. They charted both athletes and their rise and fall and it makes for an amazing story. But at all points, you're aware of the inclusion/exclusion factor around which documentaries are centered. Several of the principal characters in the documentary have complained about the way the film portrayed them. But is that because the film portray reality, or because Hoop Dreams is just a marvelously constructed piece of cinema? I'd vote for the latter. The fact that what's on screen is essentially true only makes it more fascinated in retrospect. As you watch Hoop Dreams, you're so sucked into the people and the places and the games and the story that it's tough to care whether or not reality is at work.
As with all works of visual anthropology, Hoop Dreams is a little bit problematic. You wonder how the presence of the filmmakers changed the people they were filming. You wonder about the racial dimension of a couple white filmmakers going into the ghetto to study a racial subculture. But mostly, you watch the story of these two basketball players and you admire the fact that they got lucky and that both men have, perhaps even by accident, taken something positive away from their basketball experiences. Neither man makes the NBA. That's not a surprise. What's surprising is the amount of humanity Agee and Gates are willing to expose to the camera and how much truth the camera is able to reveal (even if, as Godard wrote, ever edit is a lie)
7)Miller's Crossing (1990)
There are other great Coen Brothers movies from this period. No question. And actually, I've seen The Big Lebowski several more times and it may be the film I enjoy the most. But you've gotta make choices and in this case, I'm choosing flawlessly rendered ambitious art over flawless rendered stoner fun. Believe me, I won't judge anyone who chooses to go another way.
Miller's Crossing is yet another film from my list that I would best describe as a loving period evocation. A story of Prohibition-era Irish, Italian, and Jewish gangers, Miller's Crossing is less necessarily an evocation of its period as it is an evocation of the films that lovingly recreated the period years earlier. It's a film that's in love with cinematic visual tradition. And some of the images are the most poetic and mysterious the Coen Brothers have yet to craft — the shootout set to a record of "Danny Boy," the inside of the swinging speak-easy, the hat floating through Gabriel Byrne's dream. And then there's the dialogue, which would be Runyon-esque if not for the New York geographical specificity of Runyon's patois. Whatever it is, it's as hardboiled as it gets and the actors deliver it with perfectly clipped tones. Byrne's line, "Nobody knows anybody. Not that well," is one of my personal favorites. It feels like classic Hemingway.
Beyond Gabriel Byrne as Tom Reagan, advisor to Albert Finney's mob big man, and Marcia Gay Harden as the woman they both love, Miller's Crossing features a variety of Coen regulars in smaller roles including Steve Buscemi and Joe Polito in his finest performance. Two other frequent Coen collaborators, in their third picture with the brothers, are also in top form. Barry Sonnefeld was on the verge moving to directing, so this was his last film as their DP, and he gives the film a color palate seemingly dominated by Autumn tones and he gives even the interiors an epic scale. And Carter Burnwell's score is super. The Coen brothers are mostly at their best when they make you remember other films. From the Preston Sturgess homage of The Hudsucker Proxy to the Chandler/Hammett twist of Lebowski to the Chuck Jones antics of Raising Arizona, they give original spins on old formulas. I don't think I could have gone wrong choosing any of their 90s films for this slots. Miller's Crossing is just my personal favorite.
6)Silence of the Lambs (1991)
This is the film that made Jonathan Demme's career and it's also the film that killed Jonathan Demme's career. For years, Demme was content as the director of quirky and excellent films like Something Wild (which is a lock to make my list of the best films of the 80s, if I ever make it) and Married to the Mob coming out of his Roger Corman roots. He was like a slightly quirkier, slightly less steadfastly independent John Sayles. Everything he made had the joy of life. Then he made Silence of the Lambs and won an Oscar for it and he decided he was too important a director to make the little movies that made him so great in the first place. He decided that he needed to channel Stanley Kramer and he directed lumpy half-realized "issue" films like Philadelphia and Beloved. But I'm here to praise Jonathan Demme, not to bury him. I'll let his upcoming remake of Charade do that for me.
What's amazing about The Silence of the Lambs is its total mastery of tone and style. The film mixes the operatic with the intimate in the strangest of ways. Nowhere is that better seen that in Anthony Hopkins's iconic performance as Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter. Even with a near absence of movement and physical acting, Hopkins manages to so work that is both subtle and hilariously campy. He's the serial killer who takes time after terrifying a Senator to compliment her on her suit. He can eat a census taker's liver, but he can also identify Agent Starling's (Jodie Foster) perfume. He is the ultimate elitist snob and the fact that he likes to munch on his former patients seems almost incidental at times. Hopkins is in one movie all by himself, with occasional visits from Anthony Heald's Dr. Chilton, the strange bug scientists, and Ted Levine's instantly parody-worthy Buffalo Bill. In another movie, a moodier, more somber movie, Jodie Foster attempts to become an FBI agent to erase memories of her father's death and to finally stop the crying of the lambs. Foster's performance has no trace of the camp that characterizes the other side of the movie and she's joined by Scott Glenn's terminally glum performance as Starling's mentor, Jack Crawford.
Demme's ability to work between these extremes is why The Silence of the Lambs is more than just a thriller. He alternates visually as well between operatic images punctuated by stylized lighting choices and a certain gritty realism. And the suspense alternates as well between classic "gotcha" moments and general insidious creepiness. Tak Fujimoto's cinematography is Demme's greatest ally, though he's also working from a very fine adaptation of Thomas Harris's book by Ted Talley. Like the LA Confidential adaptation, this isn't a flawless reproduction of the book, but it's probably the best that could be done under the complicated circumstances. And The Silence of the Lambs, like some many films on this list, features an excellent score by Howard Shore.
5)Underground (1995)
Don't worry. I'm massively chagrined that this is the only non-English language film on my list. And somewhere down the road, I'll probably correct that flaw (I have a number of candidates already in mind). But I don't want my recommendation of Underground to seem to be a token nod, because Emir Kusturica's film is just marvelous. And if you think Silence of the Lambs masters the tone shift, take a look at this movie.
"Once upon a time," it begins, "There was a country." Or at least it was for a small group of Communist sympathizers thieves led by Marko and Blackie. But when war reaches their hometown of Belgrade, their lives, seemingly always accompanied by a boisterous brass band, go from comic to, well, comically tragic. Underground works as history, as a fairy tale, as a national lament, or simply as a fun film. The first third of Underground is wildly funny, the kind of World War 2 humor that Life Is Beautiful aimed for, but just couldn't master. Kusturica knows how to produce images that are surreal, runny, and horrifying at the exact time. The Axis attack on the Belgrade zoo which occurs at the beginning of the film is all of these things. As the film progresses, it becomes less funny and more yearning. It would spoil the wonder to discuss any more of the film's wonderous set pieces, which illustrate and expand on the comedy, the beauty, and finally the tragedy of a nation that once existed and now? Well, the final image of the film, which provides a striking construction of national and personal identity, is one of the great endings in cinema history.
Kusturica's fairy tale hits some slightly clunky notes in its second act and its that that keeps Underground out of the Top 3. Still, I'm a big fan of filmmakers who aim high and mostly succeed. The films that aim to the middle and succeed totally were up at #s 11-20.
4)Babe (1995)
Babe is the greatest children's movie ever made. Period. I'd take it over The Wizard of Oz, over anything by Disney, and even over The Parent Trap starring Hailey Mills (little joke there, though I love The Parent Trap. Some of those films may have aspects that are superior to things within Babe, but the story of the sheep pig is downright magical on every single level. And I assure you that I have moments of whimsy in which Babe gets the top spot on this list. This movie gives me the warm-fuzzies on levels I didn't previously know existed.
And yet, people who haven't seen the movie, just mock it as the movie about the talking pig. And compare it to Gordy which was another movie about a talking pig that came out that same year. And people without a heart, who have seen the movie, say that it's just a cute movie for kids. I'm glad that my spirit hasn't been so deadened. The moment that Babe doesn't make me tear up is the moment I'm just gonna stop watching movies forever. Like all good fairy tale, Babe takes place in a world that is both mystical and familiar. Director Chris Noonan and cinematographer Andrew Lesnie use Australian setting to creat what is ultimately an über-farm, a melting pot where the farmer (James Cromwell) is sortta American, his wife (Magna Szubanski) is Australian, and not only do the animals speak, but they converse in a variety of accents.
Babe (voiced by Christine Cavanaugh) is a pig who wants nothing more than to be a sheep-dog. The message of the film is not only that you can be whatever you want to be, but that no matter who or what you are, if you let your best shine through, people and animals will love you and accept you. This is the ultimate cinematic outsider tale. Babe could be James Dean or a young Marlon Brando because surely those two icons were no more rebelious than this plucky little piglet. Featuring wonderful special effects when make the animals appear to actually speak, Noonan and co-writer George Miller make fully developed characters out of these animals — characters that range from endearingly zany (like Ferdinand the Duck who wants to be a rooser) and endearingly grumpy (Rex the Dog who wants to retain the natural order and is voiced by The Matrix's Agent Smith, Hugo Weaving). But the human characters aren't neglected because the human actors are flawless. Szubanski is fun here, though her moment to shine would come in Babe 2: Pig In The City. The original is James Cromwell's film. As Farmer Hoggett, Cromwell is the father to his animals. He's the way Dr. Doolitte would be if instead of being able to talk to the animals, he had a true emotional connection to them. The triumphant moment in which Hoggett sings to Babe (in a tune borrowed from Camille Saint-Saëns), is sublime. Sublime, I tell you.
3)Exotica (1994)
First of all, I'd like to emphasize that Elias Koteas is clearly the strangest actor to star in more than one of the films on my list. Then I'd like to discuss my process watching Exotica. Firstly, I'd heard good things about it, so I rented it when it came out on video, knowing nothing about the film's director, Atom Egoyan. I was perplexed by the video cover, making the movie look like an erotic thriller, which it sortta is (Exotica won the Adult Video News award for Best Alternative Adult Film if you can believe it), but mostly isn't. I threw it in the VCR and spent the first hour being turned on by Mia Kirshner and perplexed by what the blazes was going on. I got increasingly perplexed. Then I spent the last half hour suddenly putting the pieces together and getting more and more hypnotized. The second the credits ended, I rewound the movie and immediately watched it again. I don't do that very often. But my point is that Exotica requires patience because it brings you in on the answers at a snail's pace. Unlike Egoyan's excellent, but slightly simplistic, The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica never clues you in on what's happening explicitly. There's no character like Ian Holm's in Hereafter to explain all of the meaning and underlying themes at work. You have to do a lot of it yourself.
The payoff is that Exotica is the most profound meditation on grief that I've ever seen. It's about loss and the failure of people to connect with other humans with honest emotion. It's about obsession and sexuality, and any number of other secrets that people hide, sometimes even from themselves. It's a puzzle, a maze, and a mystery. A game for the audience to either solve, or to simply get lost in. Everybody in Exotica has needs and not a single one of the needs is as simple as you think it is at first. Exotica is yet another film on my list that defies any kind of traditional linear logic, but where everything pays off in the end. And throughout, the performances are top notch despite the fact that Egoyan's cast is composed of actors who have been serious misused in Hollywood films. It's sad that most American viewers only know Bruce Greenwood from Double Jeopardy or maybe Rules of Engagement. With the exception of his interesting interpretation of JFK in Thirteen Days, Greenwood has never had a mainstream part as good as what he has here, but to say much about his character's secrets would cheat your viewing experience. The same is true of Mia Kirshner on both counts — I can't reveal anything beyond that her character is an exotic dancer who dresses as a school girl and Kirshner is remarkable and yet American audiences know her from 24, Wolf Lake, Not Another Teen Movie, and maybe Mad City. Her work in Exotica or even Love and Other Human Remains suggest that Kirshner is a major talent who just needs the right material. And finally Elias Koteas got his chance as a mainstream star with a starring role in all three Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies but only Egoyan (here and in The Adjuster) and Cronenberg seem to have the right sensibility to use him properly. Alas. Like so many of the movies on my list, Exotica isn't for everybody, but to me, it's a special film.
2)JFK (1991)
I say without any reservation that Oliver Stone's JFK is certainly the most flawed movie on my list. It has acting problems, ideological problems, factual problems, and writing problems. It's also so wildly ambition and succeeds so often that I have no choice but to give it its due. How it ended up at #2, however, is something of a vast conspiracy involving Cubans, the mob, and, well, Kevin Costner's strange strange Southern accent.
I should begin by emphasizing that while JFK may not be the best edited film ever (because very frequently less is more and the editing jobs we don't see are better than the ones we do see), but it's certainly the most expertly complicated editing job ever. All hail, then, Pietro Scalia and John Hutshing. The dazzling combinations of reenactments, stock footage, altered stock footage, regular fictional footage, etc, etc, etc, must have been daunting and yet the film's central purpose is as an argument and the editing is what structures the entire endeavor. Because for Oliver Stone, JFK isn't about the conspiracy to kill one man — it's about the loss of innocence of a generation, the Vietnam war, and nothing short of America itself. It's not as overtly personal as Platoon, but I think it's every bit as autobiographical.
JFK also features the cast that destroys the Kevin Bacon game. You've got Costner, Bacon, Joe Pesci, Tommy Lee Jones, Jack Lemmon, Donald Sutherland, John Candy, Gary Oldman, Sissy Spacek, Vincent D'Onofrio, Laurie Metcalf, Sally Kirkland, and Pruitt Taylor Vince (among many others). Some of their performances are excellent (Oldman, Jones, and Sutherland are particularly fine), while many of the others suffer from a few too many Berlitz Southern Accent tapes. The interesting thing is that the stunt casting doesn't actually improve the film as a stand-alone text, but it reenforces Stone's argument. He keeps everything within the frame looking familiar to lure the audience into a fall sense of security before dropping one historically ambiguous bombshell after another. And by the end of the movie, you're either enraged at the things Stone has the temerity to say, or else your eyes have been opened and you believe every word he has to say. The published script of the film is especially remarkable because in it, Stone and co-writer Zachary Sklar provide citations for every single tenuous fact in the movie. The expanded edition of the script also features nearly every bitter angry article that was written about Stone and his film. Unlike Stone's Natural Born Killers which some truly stupid people took at face value (and which I actually can't stand), JFK demands further exploration and examination. The film prompted NOVA specials, the opening of select files on the Kennedy assassination, and endless debate in various public forums. And it is for that galvanic response that this film ranks so high on my list.
1)Quiz Show (1994)
Surprised? Annoyed? Elated? We've reached #1. And believe me when I say that I've spent so much time getting here and I can no long really distinguish between the relative merits of most of these very fine films. I just know that no film in the 1990s so totally reveled in being intelligent. From the sharp script by Paul Attanasio to the sharp direction by Robert Redford to the sharp performances by everybody in the cast (watch me virtually ignore Rob Morrow's hilariously misguided attempt at a Boston accent) everything in Quiz Show is whip-smart.
Like JFK, Quiz Show focuses on an American loss of innocence. The movie opens with Rob Morrow walking in a car showroom, witness to the peak of American technological mastery. He sits down in the car with the dealer, flips on the radio, and hears the beeping of Sputnik. Everything that follows suggests a nation where the perception of superiority was increasingly revealed to be skin-deep. The superficiality of America in the 1950s, when everybody put on a happy face even as the core of American values rotted is wonderfully portrayed through the symbol of television. Television presented the illusion of being entertainment for the masses, but as Quiz Show explores, "the masses" were just a duped consumer construct. The quiz shows themselves appeared to appeal to an American quest to display knowledge, but it was all just gloss. The period is recreated by DP Michael Ballhaus and Art Director Tim Galvin, and they enjoy showing the contrasts between the lives of the rich and poor and the way that the American Dream wasn't working out for all people. The film explores classism, racism, and anti-Semitism while telling a darned compelling story.
The acting is all great, most particularly Ralph Fiennes and Paul Schofield as two members of the elite, the academics Van Doren. I've always believed Fiennes deserved an Oscar for this role and he's never had a part as good again. As Herb Stemple, John Turturro gives one of his patented "pan-ethnic" performances, but this time, he gets to the core of his character. And while Morrow's accent is laughable, he's never a liability. Hank Azaria and David Paymer also deserve notice as two sleezy TV executives. Anyway, though, some days I like other films from the 1990s more than Quiz Show, but I view Redford's film as the decade's ultimate nourishing meal.
So there you are. Lots of words. Lots of thoughts. 20 films.
I hope you enjoyed. And lemme know your thoughts.
***
CHECK OUT PART ONE OF THIS REVIEW, FEATURING FILMS #11-20 ON MY LIST OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE 1990S
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