Considering that I was a child of the 90s who is inching ever so closer to the age of 40, it does still baffle me to think that 1990 was 35 years ago as of this writing.
As I have been doing over the last couple of years, I do want to tackle my favorite films from years that are celebrating a milestone anniversary...whether that be a number ending in a 0 or 5.
What can I really say about 1990 as a year for cinema?
It is certainly not bad, but I am not going to make the claim that is some kind of masterful year. I do have some sentimental favorites on this list, and while not all the films come close to be considered a masterpiece, we do have some strong gems here.
However...as most film buffs will likely attest...1990 did give us one all-timer classic and I am definitely going to be on that hype train with no surprise whatsoever. With that in mind, hopefully the rest of the list will be able to intrigue you.
Starting off, I will single out a film that was very dear to me in my childhood. Critics didn't embrace it then, but audiences have always adored it.
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#15 - HOME ALONE
Directed by Chris Columbus
Written by John Hughes
Home Alone is a film that was not meant to be a true success. Its original production company, Warner Brothers, had no faith in it and it just seemed destined to be a small blip in the John Hughes universe.
Upon its release, Home Alone became the second highest grossing film of 1990 behind Ghost and defied a relatively mixed-to-mediocre critical response to become an instant holiday classic.
As I mentioned above, I was obsessed with Home Alone (and its 1992 sequel) as a kid, and I do think it is a major reason why I still hold a very strong fondness for the holiday season to this day.
The film does have a lot of heart amongst its wacky violence and loony plotting, but somehow it all just works for me. In a lot of ways, the plotting works as a snapshot of its time as certain elements would be easily fixable nowadays...but also...the film does stretch plausibility. Even as a young kid, I remember the police officer showing up at the house after Catherine O'Hara calls upon arriving in Paris and he doesn't even bother to stay long enough to make sure Kevin is there...but alas, the police are going to be the police...
At any rate, this film is a sentimental favorite and it would've been strange for me to not include it here.
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#14 - REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
Directed by Barbet Schroeder
Written by Nicholas Kazan
This is a film that took a rather steep drop compared to how I would've ranked it when I first saw it over 20 years ago...or even how I might've ranked it 10 years ago.
I think perhaps, unfairly or not, it is hard to get over the fact that this a film that has Alan Dershowitz as a protagonist in the true story that more or less put him on the map.
Still though, the Sunny & Claus von Bulow story is very intriguing and the film is solidly made...but I think what truly makes the film is its lead performance from Jeremy Irons as Claus, the performance that won him a richly deserved Oscar two years after giving one of my favorite performances ever as twin brothers Beverly & Elliott in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers.
The true story revolves around the attempted murder of socialite Sunny von Bulow (Glenn Close), who would remain in a vegetative state for nearly 28 years until her death in a NYC nursing home in 2008. It was suspected that Claus had injected her with too much insulin, although he was later acquitted of the crime when many still expected that he did...similar to Dershowitz's eventual involvement with another trial where a certain former football player committed murder.
The film has its dry moments and doesn't hold up as well over time, but it is very fascinating story with a performance by Jeremy Irons that is more than worth your time.
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#13 - LIFE IS SWEET
Written & Directed by Mike Leigh
Even if I may not passionately love some of his films, I do tend to admire what Mike Leigh brings to the table. His quieter domestic stories feel like they could be comparable to that of a more modern day Yosujiro Ozu, which if you follow this blog, you know that is a pretty high compliment for me to give him.
Mike Leigh had mostly been making TV movies for the BBC up to that point, but Life is Sweet is where he seemed to make his move towards being known more as a filmmaker. Not surprisingly, his styles and aesthetics are already on full display here.
The film doesn't really have much of a plot other than it mostly acts as a character-beat driven story about us witnessing the lives of a family living north of London over the span of a few weeks in the summer. As is typical with Leigh, the script was born out of extensive rehearsals where the actors would improvise scenes based on Leigh's outline.
The ensemble is also first rate, as is usually the case with Leigh's works: Timothy Spall, Jane Horrocks, Allison Steadman, Jim Broadbent, and Claire Skinner all give exceptional performances (with Steadman and Horrocks being the key standouts).
The British working class always make for a fascinating focal point considering how much we typically think of Britain comes from the pomp and circumstance of the Royal Family or that being British means you are automatically posh.
Mike Leigh's works were actually very crucial in showing me different sides of that culture that weren't drenched in those "glamorous" stereotypes. He tapped into a grittier (but still somehow hopeful at times) British social realism that felt a bit stifled for the working class coming off the premiership of Margaret Thatcher and the relative continuation through that of John Major.
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#12 - MISERY
Directed by Rob Reiner
Written by William Goldman
Quite possibly one of the greatest adaptations of a Stephen King text, Misery was such a well-made thriller that manages to balance such sinister subject matter with a rather frothy sense of humor.
Rob Reiner, at the time, did seem to show a lot of promise bouncing between genres with his films and he does a very solid job here. What truly makes this film overall is the star-making Oscar winning turn of Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes.
As a villain, Annie Wilkes walks that line of being ridiculously silly and a truly psychotic. It is a performance that flirts with being campy but in a way that is brilliant a la Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? while keeping you on your toes with her mood swings. It is one of those roles that could've easily been a disaster but it has since become one of the rare instances of the Academy honoring a performance from a horror film. Nowadays, it is practically like pulling teeth to even get most of the stellar horror performances to be in contention for a nomination.
I would also be remiss if didn't mention Bates' co-star James Caan, who spends the majority of the film stuck in bed and provides a lot of great reaction shots to the lunacy and horror that Bates provides.
A truly entertaining horror film that is far more effective than some may give it credit for.
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#11 - AWAKENINGS
Directed by Penny Marshall
Written by Steven Zaillian
I often think of this film when I think of how versatile Robin Williams was as an actor. The warmth he exuded in a lot of his work still sticks with me all these years later and makes me wish he were still among us.
Williams plays a Bronx doctor named Malcolm Sayer, a fictional counterpart of Dr. Oliver Sacks who had written the 1973 nonfiction book Awakenings, about how used the drug L-DOPA as means to awaken patients suffering from encephalitis lethargica who managed to survive that pandemic from 1919-1930.
He spends time with a patient named Leonard (Robert DeNiro), who seems very unmoved by Sayer's methods leading up to the drug trial although they are first able to communicate, interestingly enough, with a Ouija board.
I will admit that Awakenings is by no means a truly great film. It is a very good film that does flirt at times with not truly landing its more tragic elements but does nail the lighter ones.
Both Williams and DeNiro are wonderful and make the film very worthwhile to see.
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#10 - THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL
Written & Directed by Aki Kaurismäki
I had seen three of Kaurismäki's films but hadn't really thought much about him until he resurfaced in 2023 with Fallen Leaves and managed to get a bit of a spotlight on him again.
It made me rethink back to what I had seen of his work because you don't often hear a lot about Finnish on an international scale as opposed to other Scandanavian countries like Norway, Sweden, or Denmark.
Kaurismaki can fall under the mantle of "auteur", but he truly embraces the idea of smal indie filmmaking in that he writes, directs, produces, and edits his films...sort of just like Sean Baker is known for over here as of late (hence winning 4 Oscars for Anora).
The camera is usually still, the mood is often droll or drab, and the characters often face struggles and hardships galore, and it isn't common for him to try to give you a glimpse of hope either.
I can't say The Match Factory Girl does that though.
We follow Iris (Kati Outinen), a young woman who works at a match factory but has to give all of her earnings and do all the housework for her mother and stepfather, whom she still lives with. Her life is lonely and she doesn't seem to have any source of joy...and the sense of dread is palpable because we are watching a woman who might be on the brink of doing drastic to herself and someone else.
You could argue that Kaurismäki has topped into a sort of Chantal Akerman/Jeanne Dielman aesthetic here, and while it may not be for everyone, I find what he achieved here to be nothing short of a brutal but insanely mesmerizing watch thanks to the combo of how delicate his hand is with the subject matter and the performance he gets out of Outinen.
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#9 - THE GRIFTERS
Directed by Stephen Frears
Written by Donald E. Westlake
There is something truly fascinating about The Grifters to me. I sort of innately knew what I was thinking of, but it took reading a quote from director Stephen Frears to figure it out. He said that the film was "tough and very stylistic; as if pulp fiction meets Greek tragedy".
That's exactly it. The film does have a trashy and pulpy vibe to it that flirts with almost being cartoony and yet...it is so well-written and well-acted.
John Cusack does a strong job here, but my god, Anjelica Huston and Annette Bening are simply fantastic in this...and Bening stands out as she takes her voice up a breathy register which is far different from her usual resonate deeper tone.
I am getting ahead of myself though...
Cusack is Roy, a small-time conman who has been estranged from his own con artist of a mother Lily (Huston) for 8 years, but when she plans to visit him in Los Angeles, she finds him suffering from internal bleeding after he was attacked with a baseball bat. She also takes an instant dislike to his girlfriend Myra (Bening), who is older than him and also a grifter in her own right.
From there, the film descends into pulpy chaos.
I still find it crazy that despite getting into many top categories, The Grifters still missed out on a Best Picture nomination when it was far more captivating than other nominees like Ghost, The Godfather Part II, and even the winner Dances with Wolves.
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#8 - JU DOU
Directed by Zhang Yimou
Written by Zhang Wenze, Yasuyoshi Tokuma, & Hu Jian
A couple of crazy facts about Ju Dou:
1) It was the first Chinese film to be nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar...which seems a bit crazy to me.
2) It lost the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival to David Lynch's Wild at Heart; a film that's selection had many booing the announcement.
I say this as someone who loves David Lynch typically but...no.
While the 1990 Palme d'Or lineup isn't exactly the strongest, Ju Dou stands out like a beacon from the list and is truly a great achievement from Zhang Yimou, who would end up releasing his magnum opus just the following year: Raise the Red Lantern.
Our titular character, played by the luminous Gong Li, is a woman sold into marriage to a man named Jinshan who soon after begins to torture her by relentlessly beating her. Tianqing, Jinshan's nephew, becomes infatuated with Ju Dou and one night decides to take on a voyeur role as she begins to disrobe. Ju Dou actually knows he is there, and plays up her misery as she mourns her bruised body. Tianqing makes himself known and the two begin a passionate affair which leads to Ju Dou getting pregnant.
When Jinshan finds out, he refuses to let Ju Dou to leave and insists the child be raised as his heir.
An absolutely devastating piece of work from Zhang, and a truly heartbreaking performance from Gong Li.
Oh - and the use of old fashioned Technicolor in this was a choice that works surprisingly well for it!
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#7 - METROPOLITAN
Written & Directed by Whit Stillman
I've always considered Whit Stillman to be a fascinating filmmaker in that he seems to appear every few years with a new indie film and then proceeds to disappear into the ether as if he were some human version of Brigadoon. I also feel like I never hear anyone really taking about him either, but as of this writing, he hasn't made a new film since 2016's very little seen Love & Friendship which I did like very much.
However, it was Metropolitan, his feature debut, that got him the most attention as it just so happened to net him a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. This was an award he wasn't expected to win but frankly he should've won it (although the real winner should've been a film that wasn't nominated but will feature on this list later). That was the year many predicted Avalon would win but they instead opted for Ghost which...umm...don't get me wrong. Ghost is entertaining enough, but it was clear that the immense popularity of that film drove it to the Oscars rather than true artistic merit.
Metropolitan is comedy-of-manners about a group of younger socialites and their lifestyles during something all of us can relate to -- debutante season. We've all been there, right?! ....
When they aren't being all hoity-toity these very debutante balls, they are hanging out at a friend's apartment on the Upper East Side where they gather to discuss everything from art to life and have philosophical debates about their futures...all while realizing perhaps the fact they may have money doesn't exactly make them interesting or fulfilled people.
Stillman does have a gift at mining characters like these. The results of the film come off as if it is fitting of a modern retelling of a Jane Austen novel, but with dialogue that is reminiscent of Woody Allen in his prime or Noah Baumbach.
Strangely enough, the infamous conservative publication The National Review considered Metropolitan to be the third best conservative film ever made. For reference, supposedly William F. Buckley Jr. once called The Lives of Others the best example of this which...I can't even begin to unpack that tidbit right now...
However, just because this film tries to give humanist elements to the wealthy doesn't make it a conservative film. If anything, the film still wants us to pity or even laugh at them. So no, it isn't conservative. It's just an interesting character study about shallow people who realize they are shallow and aren't sure how to adapt to that.
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#6 - DREAMS
Written & Directed by Akira Kurosawa
While not on the same level as many of his earlier works or even Ran which had come out 5 years prior, I would say that Dreams was the last great opus from the legendary Akira Kurosawa.
What can I even say about this man that hasn't already been said? Some of those things also having been said by me with glorious repetition at that!
With a man who had as a rich and vibrant a mind as Kurosawa, it is now wonder that the man probably has some of the most vivid and intriguing dreams...and that is exactly what we tackle with Dreams.
Dreams is an anthology film based around of series of dreams that Kurosawa himself claimed to have had...and considering how often anthology films can end up being a lesser outing for some filmmakers (i.e. Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch) or a quirky gem (i.e. Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train), it comes as no surprise that Kurosawa came up with a definitive example of the subgenre.
How can you not get swept up in a film the begins with a terrifying wedding but ends with a joyful funeral march? The man made him literal dreams come true and brought them to life with some of the most glorious and eye-popping color to ever be committed to celluloid.
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#5 - DAYS OF BEING WILD
Written & Directed by Wong Kar-wai
Ah yes, the legend of Wong Kar-wai begins here.
As one of my favorite filmmakers to emerge on the scene from the past 40 years, Wong Kar-wai's works are always screaming with such a dreamy allure and it comes as no surprise that this was his first of 6 films that he made with Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who helped define that rich palate of saturated colors that would become a staple look for his films.
Days of Being Wild revolves around a young playboy named Yuddy (the stunning Leslie Cheung) who seems intent on going through women like they are candy but has a bit of a crisis when he realizes that woman who raised him isn't his mother.
This was considered the first entry of a trilogy, mostly connected by themes, that contained 2046 and perhaps the crown jewel of his career: In the Mood for Love.
There is something truly haunting about this outing that makes it abundantly clear that Wong Kar-wai has found his voice and the right partner in Christopher Doyle. The way that they film rain and truly utilize it for the mood of the scene is so effective and then you pair it with some of the beautiful actors reciting dialogue that hits you like a slap in the face:
"At one minute before 3pm on the 16th of April 1960, you're together with me. Because of you, I'll remember that one minute. From now on, we're friends for one minute. This is fact, you can't deny. It's done. I used to think a minute could pass so quickly, but actually, it can take forever.
He manages to take lonliness and longing and turn it into something incredibly compelling to watch. I can't think of many filmmakers who can be as effective with these themes as him.
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#4 - MILLER'S CROSSING
Written & Directed by The Coen Brothers
I have started to see more people talking about Miller's Crossing in recent years which makes me happy as I always felt this was an unsung gem in the Coen Brothers catalog. I consider Miller's Crossing to be part of their top trifecta along with Fargo and Barton Fink, and it is a fantastic entry into the neo-noir subgenre that was one of the best new additions to film throughout the otherwise paltry 1980s.
Set in 1929, Miller's Crossing revolves around Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne), the right-hand man for mobster Leo O'Bannon (Albert Finney) who are both involved with a woman named Verna (Marcia Gay Harden).
Considering this was only their 3rd feature film, it is remarkable at how assured the Coen Brothers were as filmmakers by this point. All of their trademarks they had built from Blood Simple to Raising Arizona to this film are defined so beautifully, particularly how they can blend a strange sense of humanity and dark humor amidst cold-hearted grit. You would eventually see that played to even higher heights later that decade with Fargo.
This script just crackles with such incredible dialogue but honestly saying that a Coen Brothers film is about as cliche as one can get. Maybe it's just me, but this is one of those films where I can't help but comment on the aesthetics. This might be one of their most beautiful films to look at, which is even a crazy thing to say about not just a Coen Brothers film but a gangster film in general.
It is dripping with charisma and great style from the art decoration to the costumes...then you add this ensemble of actors reciting that dialogue and you can't help but be swept up in the darkened bliss.
So, as I alluded to before, THIS was the film I wish had been nominated for and won Best Original Screenplay. It should've received multiple major nominations, but that was the award it should've won in a cakewalk.
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#3 - PARIS IS BURNING
Conceived & Directed by Jennie Livingston
A documentary like Paris is Burning feels like a turning point at a time when America was coming out of a truly turbulent decade marred by conservative values and also many of those conservative figures sticking their heads in the sand while many gay men were dying of AIDS.
In what is such a fascinating snapshot from the waning Koch led 80s of NYC, Paris is Burning taps into the drag Ballroom scene and the black, Latino, and trans communities involved within it.
I would actually argue that Paris is Burning was pivotal to me growing up if only for me, a boy raised in an evangelical household, to see the humanity and the hardship that these communities went through but also how proud and strong and creative they were.
Jennie Livingston's goal with the film was to dive into these cultures and to really show how much these people struggle amidst their pride and humor as they live in a "rich, white world". It also taps strongly into how media effects all of us in how we should look and go about our personal lives.
It may be a film about "drag" or "dance", even down to seeing the early days of "Voguing" before Madonna truly made it famous...but it is so much more than that. It has so much to say about race, gender, fame, and our culture in a way that doesn't feel demeaning to them or preachy to us.
Like I said, the film doesn't shy away from the hardships or the tragedies. One such interviewee is Venus Xtravaganza, a Puerto Rican trans woman who had turned to sex work to supplement her income...only for us to find out she was strangled to death in a midtown hotel room. Her house mother, Angie, suspects she was simply killed by a "john" of hers.
It is one of the most captivating, prideful, and heartbreaking documentaries to have ever been made.
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#2 - CLOSEUP
Written & Directed by Abbas Kiarostami
This was a time period where it seems like any year Kiarostami made a film, it would easily make my top 10 list...and frankly, it is always a treat to discuss this gem of a filmmaker.
I have always appreciated how much he loves utilizing non-actors for his work to aim for authenticity or utilizing real-life artists or situations to blend into docufiction. Closeup may represent the best form of this kind of docufiction, and it was an artform that Kiarostami perfected down to a science.
The film was based on real-life events that occurred in 1989 Tehran where a cinephile named Hassain Sabzian is put on trial for posing as Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf and conning a family into believing they would star in his next film.
Once Sabzian was on trial, Kiarostami was allowed to attend the trial and film the proceedings while also including scripted dialogue reenacting moments that happened not immediately within the confines of the courtroom.
When it was first released in Iran, Closeup was pretty much raked over the coals, but it just so happened to be the film that got Kiarostami his first significant international attention. The film became a truly remarkable character study into the psyche of a troubled man and a fascinating look into the social culture of Iran at the time.
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#1 - GOODFELLAS
Written & Directed by Martin Scorsese
Co-written by Nicholas Pleggi
Yeah, no surprise here. Sorry, not sorry...
I don't think many of you could argue against this selection. Goodfellas is one of those films that is nothing less than definitive; it truly helped cultivate the legend of Martin Scorsese as a filmmaker and has since become a very key response when people talk about how terrible it was that THIS film lost to THAT film (which in this case would be Dances with Wolves, a film that rather handily missed this list).
Goodfellas might be Scorsese's greatest film (though I think Taxi Driver battles it for the title), and through it all, we just keep watching these despicable people and thoroughly enjoy ourselves.
Based on the memoirs of mobster turned informant Henry Hill, we follow Hill from his gradual ascent from a teenager helping the local mob to being a prominent member of the mob family.
As if often the case with Scorsese movies, Hill (Ray Liotta) narrates the film and pin points various key moments but the film does take an interesting detour at times as we also get narration from the woman who would become Hill's wife, Karen (Lorraine Bracco).
Some have criticized Scorsese movies for glamorizing rather immoral lifestyles, particularly in this film, Casino, and especially in The Wolf of Wall Street.
I guess it all comes down to how impressionable you are, because I was certainly entertained by the movie but didn't long to have Paul Sorvino teach me how to properly cut onions or turn into a psychotic maniac like Joe Pesci's Tommy DeVito.
Also - what a year for Joe Pesci. He managed to win the Oscar for this performance while also playing a comedic goon of a villain in Home Alone, which you gotta love how in that film he had to essentially create his own swear words since he couldn't say "fuck" dozens of times over in a PG film.
GoodFellas clearly created a strong formula for Scorsese as the previously mentioned Casino and The Wolf of Wall Street play out very similarly in the style and approach. I do think in the case of Casino, it was a little to its detriment whereas I was more enthralled with The Wolf of Wall Street.
In the end, this film is a classic, plain and simple. It is vibrant and kinetic and enticing and brutal...and even in its worst moments, can still show a certain sumptuous appeal.
It is a legendary work of art that I will always enjoy revisiting.
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FINAL THOUGHTS:
1990 may not have been as an epic a year for film as 1989, but much like 1989, you can still see the tides turning from the 1980s where it seemed like smaller films were getting shafted at the expense of bigger glossier productions.
Something, I would argue, we are still seeing issues with in the present day at a greater scale even if the surefire box office smashes that Marvel often provides aren’t as massive as they used to be.
I do see signs we could be approaching a new resurgence of indie films, and I’d like to think Anora winning Best Picture could aid in that charge.
1990’s biggest box office hits were Home Alone (as I gushed above), Pretty Woman, and Ghost…and I’d argue that the latter two, while not great films, have stood the test of time of a pop culture footprint and are rather entertaining in their own rights.
While not a year I would consider masterful as a whole, I do think it is a key example of a strong transitional year to show the greatness to come.
