The 100 best films of the 1990s: 100 – 76

After you’ve read through this part of our 100 best films of the 1990s rank­ing, check out num­bers 75 – 51, 50 – 26 and 25 – 1.

Nos­tal­gia is a bitch. Bare­ly a day goes by with­out some smack­down or oth­er being issued across social media for the crime of look­ing back fond­ly at the 1990s. Yet from where we cur­rent­ly stand, 17 and a bit years in the clear, you real­ly get a sense of an era of boun­ti­ful cul­tur­al riches.

The decade gave birth to some supreme tal­ents, from Paul Thomas Ander­son to Quentin Taran­ti­no and Wes Ander­son. Yet in com­pil­ing this sur­vey we’ve cho­sen to pay trib­ute to both canon­i­cal clas­sics and lost gems – the films we love, and the films we should maybe love a lit­tle bit more. And some, hope­ful­ly, are mas­ter­works from the out­er fringes of cin­e­ma that some may have yet to dis­cov­er at all.

The run­ning order of this list was for­mu­lat­ed by com­mit­tee rather than a drawn-out bal­lot process, and the choic­es rep­re­sent a tiny clutch of the films adored by the LWLies team. For the most part we’ve lim­it­ed it to one great film per direc­tor, so if a per­son­al favourite of yours is miss­ing, that’s prob­a­bly the rea­son why. From a bomb-strapped LA com­muter bus through to a ten­der gay romance set in the African desert, here are the 100 best films of the ​’90s.

Along­side the crim­i­nal­ly under­rat­ed bio­fu­el-based thriller, Chain Reac­tion, and Kathryn Bigelow’s sky­div­ing crime caper, Point Break, Jan De Bont’s Speed stands out in Keanu Reeves’ rich fil­mog­ra­phy as being among the most straight­for­ward­ly ​’90s of action capers. A paper-thin premise – a bomb aboard an LA city bus will explode if the vehi­cle trav­els under 50 mph – and scant char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion ally with spec­tac­u­lar stunts to deliv­er some of the most enter­tain­ing, brain­less fun the aes­thet­i­cal­ly overblown decade ever had to offer. In the role of the young cop charged to save the day, the slen­der and androg­y­nous Reeves intro­duced a new kind of action hero to a genre dom­i­nat­ed by per­ma-jacked macho men like Schwarzeneg­ger and Stal­lone. Ele­na Lazic

Maybe not quite a doc­u­men­tary, maybe not quite a fic­tion­al tableaux fea­ture and maybe not quite an essay film, Patrick Keiller’s stel­lar what­ev­er-it-is probes into England’s cap­i­tal city with numer­ous eccen­tric modes of inquiry. Paul Schofield’s dry­ly intoned nar­ra­tion arrives over sta­t­ic land­scape scenes which seek to exhume the ghosts of a city in flux, offer­ing an arcane cul­tur­al his­to­ry of a land­scape that man­ages to be both vivid­ly colour­ful and depress­ing­ly quaint. This was the first in a tril­o­gy of films (along­side the sim­i­lar­ly great Robin­son in Space and Robin­son in Ruins) which real­ly put the psy­cho­geo­graph­ic form on the map – that is, the study of spe­cif­ic loca­tions as viewed through the opaque prism of time and space. It’s a breath­tak­ing work, both in orig­i­nal­i­ty and insight, and deserves its place at the table of great British films. David Jenk­ins

Emir Kus­turi­ca was once thought of as the Ser­bian sor­cer­er. His name con­jured thoughts of pow­er and cre­ative emi­nence when spo­ken dur­ing the ​’90s. But the hits and the mojo seem to have dried up this mil­len­ni­um. Still, we have his bom­bas­tic (and then some) 1995 take on the vio­lence that nat­u­ral­ly comes from enforced geopo­lit­i­cal divi­sion, all deliv­ered under a blan­ket of cra­ni­um-pound­ing Klezmer sounds. The film opens on the bomb­ing of a zoo, and only gets more nut­zoid from there. The idea of a nation crum­bling to dust and being hasti­ly reformed is pre­sent­ed through the com­bustible com­pan­ion­ship of Blacky (Lazar Ris­tovs­ki) and Mar­co (Miki Mano­jlović), and the film’s only moment of rel­a­tive respite comes with its breath­tak­ing final shot. DJ

If you ever read cri­tiques of films by the South Kore­an auteur Hong Sang-soo, chances are there will be ref­er­ences to young peo­ple get­ting blind drunk and engag­ing in awk­ward, fleet­ing love affairs. It’s quite remark­able that by the time of his bril­liant sec­ond fea­ture, all of the traits he would go on to devel­op as a film­mak­er are present and cor­rect. You might even see this movie as the director’s cin­e­mat­ic cor­ner­stone, with all sub­se­quent work a sub­tle, humor­ous or provoca­tive vari­a­tion of this decep­tive­ly sim­ple roman­tic dip­tych. DJ

Not just the ​’90s, Amy Heckerling’s satir­i­cal and enlight­ened rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the teen movie genre is a joy for all times. Six­teen-year-old Cher (Ali­cia Sil­ver­stone) may at first come off as your typ­i­cal WASP teenag­er – blonde, priv­i­leged and lazy. But Heck­er­ling, with curios­i­ty and com­pas­sion, looks past the clichés to reveal a sen­si­tive and good-heart­ed girl. Though Cher’s attempts to use her advan­tages to help oth­ers can be cal­lous, they nonethe­less remain the gen­uine efforts of a young woman clue­less about both her posi­tion and her own poten­tial, which Josh (Paul Rudd) can clear­ly per­ceive. As she realis­es her mis­takes and adapts to shifts in cir­cum­stance, Cher doesn’t so much change as she ful­ly becomes her­self. She still loves clothes and pop­u­lar­i­ty, just more so. Manuela Laz­ic

Fred Madi­son likes to remem­ber things his own way, ​“not nec­es­sar­i­ly the way they hap­pened”. As if grant­i­ng his wish, David Lynch holds the real­i­ty of his character’s world at arm’s length. Painful truths are heard through inter­coms and trau­mat­ic events are allud­ed to or glimpsed through a tele­vi­sion screen. Piec­ing togeth­er the nar­ra­tive hid­den beneath may be a stren­u­ous task, but it’s clear that this mas­ter direc­tor is more inter­est­ed in exam­in­ing the para­noia and inse­cu­ri­ty that twists Fred’s mind down a path of vio­lence, and the denial nec­es­sary to live with it. Lost High­way is one of the most unset­tling, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly com­plex films ever made, a riv­et­ing jour­ney into the dark recess­es of mas­culin­i­ty. Jack God­win

The Iron Giant stands as an inven­tive hybrid of gor­geous hand-drawn and CG ani­ma­tion, just as the lat­ter was begin­ning to rule the cre­ative roost. Its wide­spread acclaim from crit­ics didn’t save it from under­per­form­ing at the box office, yet while count­less efforts from this era are now for­got­ten, The Iron Giant is remem­bered for its Cold War set­ting and emo­tion­al poten­cy. Sim­ple themes of peace and friend­ship are expand­ed into a reflec­tion of humanity’s self-destruc­tive cycle of vio­lence, as an inno­cent refus­es to be the weapon that oth­ers insist he is, warm­ing and break­ing our hearts in the process. JG

Fol­low­ing his biggest, fun­ni­est film – 1989’s loopy rock ​‘n’ roll satire, Leningrad Cow­boys Go Amer­i­ca – Finland’s Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki went very dark in this trag­ic fable of a hum­ble female fac­to­ry hand who is tipped over the edge by the twin evils of cap­i­tal­ism and the male species. The director’s reg­u­lar lead­ing lady, Kati Out­i­nen, is the sad-eyed nucle­us of this shock­ing film, and her deposits of howl­ing rage are masked behind a pok­er face that just makes you want to burst into tears. It’s per­haps some­thing of an out­lier in the director’s off­beat back cat­a­logue, almost Bib­li­cal in its moral sim­plic­i­ty and also a film which dares to depict crush­ing depres­sion as no laugh­ing mat­ter. DJ

With the rise of VHS and tele­vi­sion, the ​’90s saw the begin­ning of a real exchange between old­er high art and brand-new pop cul­ture. The Mask may tech­ni­cal­ly be a com­ic book film, but teenage spec­ta­tors might not get all its jokey ref­er­ences to clas­sic cin­e­ma. But there’s some­thing for every­one, though: when Stan­ley (played with con­trolled insan­i­ty by Jim Car­rey) wears that mask, he lit­er­al­ly becomes a car­toon char­ac­ter, dis­tract­ing his oppo­nents with gags enhanced by ear­ly CG mor­ph­ing. There’s even a sexy lady (Cameron Diaz in her first role) and a clever dog. The moral tale behind The Mask may not be very pro­found – Stan­ley is great au naturel – but its ener­gy and dement­ed after­taste make it just so irre­sistibly ​’90s. ML

No one has ever said that being in a band was easy, but this 1991 film by Alan Park­er cap­tures both the euphor­ic highs and blood-and-vom­it-laced lows that come from col­lab­o­rat­ing in the name of mak­ing sweet music. Fed up with his low­ly eco­nom­ic lot, feisty Dublin­er Jim­my Rab­bitte (Robert Arkins) decides to assem­ble a gigan­tic soul review group and trans­port them to unlike­ly star­dom. Based on a nov­el by Rod­dy Doyle, it focus­es on the tragedy of indi­vid­u­al­ism when it comes to the search for more pro­found col­lec­tive truth. When these tal­ent­ed play­ers are con­sumed in song, they’re absolute­ly unstop­pable. The prob­lems start when the music stops. DJ

It only seems fair that Wes­ley Snipes crops up at least once in this list. We could have opt­ed for his stel­lar turn in Spike Lee’s Jun­gle Fever, or when he played the smartest of smart-mouths in Ron Shelton’s White Men Can’t Jump. But we retain a lot of resid­ual love for Nino Brown, the neat­ly turned-out crack deal­er he essayed in Mario Van Pee­bles grim por­trait of drug cul­ture in New York City. It’s a film about the fall-out of the coke-fuelled ​’80s, chart­ing a nou­veau riche upris­ing with­in the nar­cotics trade in which hous­ing ten­e­ments become urban fortress­es in which eco­nom­ic sup­ply and demand is car­ried out with bru­tal effi­cien­cy. As dour as the sub­ject mat­ter seems, the film is live­ly and dra­mat­ic, attuned to the nuances of street cul­ture and the idea that, just maybe, these evil men pray­ing on the lives of addicts are mere­ly in a fight for their own sur­vival. DJ

12 Octo­ber, 1993. Sev­en­ty-two days from now, a teenage stu­dent will kill three peo­ple then com­mit sui­cide. Detached frag­ments doc­u­ment the lead-up to the crime, and we watch as if flick­ing through facts in a case file. A young Roman­ian migrant and thief sleeps on the streets of Vien­na. A shy fos­ter child fails to warm to her prospec­tive par­ents. A bank employ­ee is vis­it­ed on the job by her father. Some of the clips last five sec­onds, oth­ers five min­utes. All share a sense of under­ly­ing ten­sion. As the char­ac­ters head for dis­as­ter, excerpt­ed news­casts remind us that the impend­ing tragedy is just one in a world of many. John Wadsworth

Grow­ing up can be a par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­heart­en­ing expe­ri­ence for those who refuse to com­pro­mise. Hal Hartley’s lit­tle gem from 1990 fol­lows two such peo­ple as they strug­gle to get free, sur­round­ed by oth­ers whose ​‘respon­si­bil­i­ties’ have made them neu­rot­ic, self­ish, jeal­ous and cru­el. Yet for a film pop­u­lat­ed with such sad char­ac­ters, Trust remains incred­i­bly excit­ing and fun­ny. The sheer ener­gy of the two leads (Adri­enne Shelly and Mar­tin Dono­van) is echoed in the unwa­ver­ing inven­tion and beau­ty of the direc­tion, which recalls Steven Soderbergh’s mas­ter­piece Sex, Lies, and Video­tape in its exper­i­men­ta­tion and focus. The film’s dis­tinc­tive quirk­i­ness and zip­py dia­logue make it a true clas­sic of ​’90s indie cin­e­ma. EL

This delight­ful moral fable about a tena­cious sev­en-year-old girl try­ing to con­vince her moth­er to buy her a gold­fish mix­es the harsh real­i­ties of mod­ern Tehran with a mul­ti-tiered adven­ture yarn that harks back to clas­si­cal fairy tales. In ama­teur actress Aida Moham­mad­khani, direc­tor Jafar Panahi dis­cov­ered the per­fect knee-high lead, as she dis­cov­ers just how hard it is to be able to spend your hard-earned mon­ey with­out being side­tracked or scup­pered at every cir­cuitous turn. The film’s unadorned sim­plic­i­ty when it comes to the char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions allows it to work on a deeply sym­bol­ic lev­el, the bal­loon of the title even­tu­al­ly being revealed as an emblem of plea­sure, peace and polit­i­cal accord. DJ

Near­ly 50 years into his career, nou­velle vague titan Claude Chabrol was still prov­ing that he could knock a film togeth­er. Sophie (San­drine Bon­naire) is a maid for a wealthy house­hold in Brit­tany who finds an unruly com­pan­ion in Jeanne (Isabelle Hup­pert), the vil­lage post­mas­ter. The two bond over mis­chief, implied vio­lent pasts and haughty bour­geois types, yet the exact nature of their rela­tion­ship is with­held. Chabrol rev­els in the ambi­gu­i­ty, deny­ing us the for­mal­i­ty and order sug­gest­ed by the film’s title. Sophie and Jeanne are not card­board cut-outs spurred on by class con­flict alone, though. While they share a refusal to sub­mit to sub­servience, their pre­cise thoughts, feel­ings and motives remain tan­ta­lis­ing­ly uncer­tain. JW

The res­i­dents of the post-apoc­a­lyp­tic apart­ment block in Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s grotesque com­e­dy, Del­i­catessen, start their ten­an­cy in hope and con­clude it as the key ingre­di­ent of a bour­guignon. The lat­est vic­tim-to-be, a for­mer clown called Loui­son (Dominique Piñón), enter­tains two of the flats’ inhab­i­tants with cel­lo-and-saw duets and bed­spring-led chore­og­ra­phy, absur­dist excur­sions that dis­tract them from the hor­rors at hand. View­ers take refuge, mean­while, in neat tech­ni­cal tricks and pitch-black humour. The open­ing scene sets the prece­dent for both, with the cam­era lens glid­ing into the dark­ness of a dank drain­pipe, which car­ries the sound of knives being sharp­ened from preda­tor towards the quak­ing prey. JW

Any con­ver­sa­tions address­ing the notion of the noble fol­ly in cin­e­ma absolute­ly, pos­i­tive­ly must pay lip ser­vice to Les Amants du Pont Neuf by Leos Carax. Wild­ly ambi­tious, end­less­ly dynam­ic and with stores of pas­sion to burn up like so much cheap booze, the film capped the swift ascent of its deca­dent cre­ator by becom­ing a logis­ti­cal night­mare to shoot and an even­tu­al bomb at the box office. And yet, its sto­ry of wild love between a tran­sient cir­cus per­former (Denis Lavant) and a painter who is grad­u­al­ly going blind (Juli­ette Binoche) is exhil­a­rat­ing­ly roman­tic, even if it does occa­sion­al­ly push things deep into the realms of visu­al and emo­tion­al histri­on­ics. Once seen, how­ev­er, it’s nev­er for­got­ten. EL

Soul­ful ani­ma­tion is what Hayao Miyaza­ki does best, and Por­co Rosso fol­lows a sto­ried World War One fight­er pilot who, cour­tesy of a spell, gets trans­formed into a pig. Not ide­al. While the film may seem like a famil­iar sto­ry­book tale of a char­ac­ter forced to come to terms with his new, un-human appear­ance, its beau­ti­ful, water­colour ani­ma­tions are so immer­sive that the mag­i­cal Stu­dio Ghi­b­li world you’re expe­ri­enc­ing feels as real as any earth­ly 3D coun­ter­part. This is large­ly thanks to Por­co Rosso’s breath­tak­ing flight scenes, which lift the movie from pret­ty illus­tra­tions into a true, undis­put­ed work of art. Gabriela Helfet

Cathy Burke picked up the best actress prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val for her superla­tive turn as a domes­tic abuse vic­tim in Gary Oldman’s sole direc­to­r­i­al effort, Nil By Mouth. It’s sad to think that nei­ther Burke nor Old­man ran with their suc­cess­es, she sel­dom star­ring in ​“seri­ous” cin­e­ma again, and he nev­er head­ing back behind the cam­era. Yet the film remains one of the decade’s high water­marks of British-made cin­e­ma, an unflinch­ing por­trait of how sub­stance abuse tears fam­i­lies apart that nev­er resorts to cheap moral­is­ing or sen­ti­ment. Wide­boy Ray Win­stone is a force of nature as the vod­ka-swill­ing patri­arch with a wicked tem­per, but it’s Burke as his doe-eyed punch­ing bag wife who steals the show. Also one of the great Lon­don movies. DJ

This death­song fan­ta­sia in which a son cra­dles his moth­er as she slow­ly pass­es from one life to the next is the film that announced the illus­tri­ous tal­ents of Russ­ian direc­tor Alek­san­dr Sokurov to the world. It’s a gleam­ing cine-fugue which encas­es poet­ic rumi­na­tion and ide­alised, puri­fied romance into a decep­tive real­ist shell. Maybe not a movie for cyn­ics who envi­sion death as just anoth­er tick on an infi­nite­ly-sprawl­ing spread­sheet, this instead taps into and visu­alis­es inte­ri­or desires and dreams of how we would per­haps like to go. The son treats his moth­er to a slow-motion whirl­wind tour of the sur­round­ing land­scape, allow­ing her to phys­i­cal­ly expe­ri­ence the nat­ur­al ele­ments as a sub­lime part­ing gift. To quote Nick Cave: ​“I wept and wept, from start to fin­ish.” DJ

In The Ter­mi­na­tor, the relent­less stalk­er of night­mares was brought to life in an age of bur­geon­ing tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment. Sev­en years lat­er, direc­tor James Cameron returned to the scene of the crime to cre­ate a fol­low up that is not only an inven­tive fusion of sci­ence fic­tion, hor­ror and action, but a piv­otal film in the evo­lu­tion of the block­buster form. Sarah Con­nor strug­gles to bring up her son, griev­ing over the death of his father and the inevitable extinc­tion ahead. With this at its core, Ter­mi­na­tor 2 has the basis to sup­port its exhil­a­rat­ing esca­la­tion of intense con­fronta­tions between Arnie’s reformed cyborg and the icon­ic liq­uid met­al feroc­i­ty of the T‑1000. JG

Tim Burton’s macabre fan­ta­sy worlds have always cel­e­brat­ed those who main­stream soci­ety might call freaks because of their out­ward appear­ance. Edward Scis­sorhands takes this idea to an extreme, telling the sto­ry of a man-made, human-like crea­ture who has scis­sor blades in place of hands. Instead of let­ting Edward turn into an on-screen car­i­ca­ture of an out­cast, John­ny Depp brings to him a remark­ably del­i­cate oth­er­world­li­ness. As this ​‘don’t judge a book by its cov­er’ fable soon blos­soms into an unlike­ly love sto­ry, it remains enchant­i­ng­ly strange until the very close. GH

Pri­or to Cather­ine Breillat’s Romance, sex movies were intend­ed as either light, soft-focus tit­il­la­tion for cou­ples or ago­nis­ing philo­soph­i­cal trea­tis­es which did every­thing in their pow­er to dull any glim­mer of eroti­cism. Here, we get the best (and worst!) of both worlds, as the direc­tor fol­lows Car­o­line Ducey’s Marie on a pri­vate sex­u­al odyssey spurred on by the fact that her boyfriend can’t and won’t make love to her. The learn­ing curve is steep, and with each new night­time sor­tie she breaks through a new plea­sure thresh­old, but always remains mind­ful of the pow­er rela­tion­ship involved in each causal tryst. What makes the film spe­cial is that Marie is dri­ven by cred­i­ble human impuls­es and is not just a sym­bol­ic excuse for hard­core imagery to be reg­u­lar­ly cat­a­pult­ed towards the lens. DJ

It’s won­der­ful to think that Canuck con­jur­er Guy Maddin has tend­ed his lone field of rare herbs and flow­ers right from day one, and 1992’s bat­shit chimera Care­ful remains the apoth­e­o­sis of his sin­gu­lar craft. It’s essen­tial­ly a dead­pan com­e­dy but with over­tures of high seri­ous­ness, draw­ing on the clas­sic, mid­dle-Euro­pean ​“moun­tain” film but going hog­wild with this aus­tere tem­plate. The film is set in the fic­tion­al snowy berg of Tolzbad, a place which is con­stant­ly under threat of destruc­tion by avalanch­es. As a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure, loud nois­es and emo­tions are for­bid­den lest they get every­one killed. That the result is even more pre­pos­ter­ous and pre­car­i­ous than the log­line would sug­gest stands as tes­ta­ment to this bril­liant direc­tor and his extra­or­di­nary vision of cin­e­ma. DJ

Trainspot­ting is a vision of Scots get­ting ​“mad wae it” that’s pur­er than a fresh kilo of Colom­bian chang. It’s aggres­sive­ly dis­gust­ing, aggres­sive­ly sur­re­al, aggres­sive­ly mes­meris­ing, aggres­sive­ly fun­ny, aggres­sive­ly son­ic and aggres­sive­ly one-of-a-kind. Dan­ny Boyle’s finest also holds the title of most per­fect music use in a film, pos­si­bly ever. It fol­lows a crew of hip­ster drug addicts, and and even in their most revolt­ing, tru­ly vile moments (see Renton’s fae­ces plunge or Spud’s kitchen sheet hor­ror show for a primer) we end up feel­ing deeply for these wreck heads. On the out­side they’re drug­gies, but what lies inside their skag-tinged hearts? They’re the same – albeit far more enter­tain­ing – as a group of IT geek pals whose idea of hav­ing it large is win­ning their local pub quiz. GH