Decade Top 10: 1990s
One of the more difficult decades to limit to 10 choices, I was forced to kick off The Usual Suspects, Beauty and the Beast, Cinema Paradiso, and Ghost (just kidding).
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- DirectorFrank DarabontStarsTim RobbinsMorgan FreemanBob GuntonOver the course of several years, two convicts form a friendship, seeking consolation and, eventually, redemption through basic compassion.A regular at the top of movie lists, The Shawshank Redemption deserves to stay at the top because it is still one of the most hopefull and satisfying character arcs ever told. Seeing Andy through Red's eyes as he changes from the broken man to everyone's hero, seeing the bad guys get what they deserve, and seeing the 1940s and 50s in a bold new way are all worth seeing again and again.
- DirectorStanley KubrickStarsTom CruiseNicole KidmanTodd FieldA Manhattan doctor embarks on a bizarre, night-long odyssey after his wife's admission of unfulfilled longing.Kubrick's final - and least understood - film is a final mystery from the master filmmaker. Undeniably beautiful for its cinematography, editing, and acting, the film sucks you in with its odd vision of the New York upper class and its ambiguous relationship with reality.
- DirectorSteven SpielbergStarsSam NeillLaura DernJeff GoldblumA pragmatic paleontologist touring an almost complete theme park on an island in Central America is tasked with protecting a couple of kids after a power failure causes the park's cloned dinosaurs to run loose.One of the all-time classic blockbusters; Spielberg matched Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark for pure summer entertainment value. The ground-breaking special effects are still good, and the story is still Michael Crichton's best.
- DirectorLana WachowskiLilly WachowskiStarsKeanu ReevesLaurence FishburneCarrie-Anne MossWhen a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth--the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.This film is a good landmark for the dividing line between 20th and 21st Century filmmaking. As motion capture and 3D take over theaters, it is easy to see how the bullet time, and the film's alternate reality premise, was a prediction of things to come.
- DirectorQuentin TarantinoStarsJohn TravoltaUma ThurmanSamuel L. JacksonThe lives of two mob hitmen, a boxer, a gangster and his wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.Tarantino combined elements of classic French cinema, early Kubrick, and several lesser-known genres that had been forgotten by the general public to make a terrific new kind of film. The crackling dialogue that Tarantino wrote for this film wasn't topped until he cast a certain multi-lingual Austrian actor in Inglourious Basterds.
- DirectorDavid FincherStarsBrad PittEdward NortonMeat LoafAn insomniac office worker and a devil-may-care soap maker form an underground fight club that evolves into much more.David Finchers misunderstood rebel movie eventually gained success as a cult classic. Extremely edgy, this was (with the Matrix) the sign post of a new generation of filmmakers coming to power. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton also signalled a new generation of A-list performances.
- DirectorJonathan DemmeStarsJodie FosterAnthony HopkinsScott GlennA young F.B.I. cadet must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to help catch another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims.One of the more unique Best Picture winners, this is the film that launched a number of icons. The most memorable being Anthony Hopkins as a psycho. Despite being one of the nicest people to see in interviews, Hopkins found the secret to playing true evil: don't blink.
- DirectorJoel CoenEthan CoenStarsWilliam H. MacyFrances McDormandSteve BuscemiMinnesota car salesman Jerry Lundegaard's inept crime falls apart due to his and his henchmen's bungling and the persistent police work of the quite pregnant Marge Gunderson.The Coen brothers have had great success with adaptations of other people's stories (No Country for Old Men, True Grit), but this entirely original story is still their best work. Starting with the lie that it is all based on real events, the Coens pulled a giant carpet out from under film audiences.
- DirectorJames CameronStarsArnold SchwarzeneggerLinda HamiltonEdward FurlongA cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her ten year old son John from an even more advanced and powerful cyborg.Arnold Schwartzenegger joked after the release of Avatar that he had worked with James Cameron in his "low-budget art-house days" - meaning the action-classic Terminator 2. Transforming the rigid villain of the first film into a god-like hero and adding the father issues of a rebel kid, Cameron upped the stakes on the Terminator series with as much success as he had with the Alien series.
- DirectorLuc BessonStarsJean RenoGary OldmanNatalie Portman12-year-old Mathilda is reluctantly taken in by Léon, a professional assassin, after her family is murdered. An unusual relationship forms as she becomes his protégée and learns the assassin's trade.The international release "Leon" is far superior to the cut-down American release "The Professional," but that is true of most films. This was the early sign that Natalie Portman was going places, and it is still Jean Reno's greatest work. Gary Oldman also appears as one of his most frightening villains ever.