The 100 best films of the 1990s: 75 – 51

After you’ve read through this part of our 100 best films of the 1990s rank­ing, check out num­bers 100 – 76, 50 – 26 and 25 – 1.

Not sat­is­fied with chang­ing the face of hor­ror just once, Wes Craven com­bined black com­e­dy and who­dunit? mys­tery with clas­sic slash­er in Scream, an imag­i­na­tive revi­tal­i­sa­tion of a genre that had been in steady decline for over a decade. The struc­ture and con­ven­tions that had become tir­ing to hor­ror-savvy mod­ern audi­ences are inge­nious­ly reworked to cre­ate new thrills. The bal­ance struck between fourth-wall-break­ing com­e­dy and a com­pelling nar­ra­tive still stands tall above its many imi­ta­tors. From the icon­ic stalk-and-slash open­ing sequence to the bloody con­clu­sion, this film paved the way for mod­ern hor­ror to not only sur­vive, but pros­per. Jack God­win

Fun­ny thing, fate. Had things gone Ed Cat­mull and John Lasseter’s way, for instance, Toy Sto­ry would not have been the first ful­ly com­put­er-ani­mat­ed fea­ture film. Back in 1989, Pixar began devel­op­ing a TV spe­cial based on their pop­u­lar short, Tin Toy, from the pre­vi­ous year. It wasn’t to be: the net­work pulled the plug and the project was shelved for two years. But out of despair came… even more despair. On 19 Novem­ber, 1993, Pixar screened a crude mock-up of the film that would even­tu­al­ly become Toy Sto­ry to a room­ful of Dis­ney exec­u­tives whose feed­back haunts Las­seter to this day. That the direc­tor was forced to lit­er­al­ly go back to the draw­ing board is an anec­do­tal but cru­cial foot­note in the sto­ry of a film that took audi­ences – and the cin­e­mat­ic medi­um – to infin­i­ty and beyond. Adam Wood­ward

Once you’ve entered adult­hood, chang­ing your innate per­son­al­i­ty flaws becomes increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult. Thank­ful­ly movies devise out-of-this-world cir­cum­stances that leave char­ac­ters no oth­er choice but to con­front how awful they are. In the case of Harold Ramis’ Ground­hog Day, mis­er­able weath­er­man Phil Con­nors (Bill Mur­ray) is forced to live the same odi­ous 24-hour peri­od over and over and over again. This inher­ent tedi­um could eas­i­ly become unbear­able to watch. But even when he’s act­ing like a com­plete ass­hat, Mur­ray still man­ages to be endear­ing­ly snarky, in that way only Bill can, which makes his grad­ual trans­for­ma­tion into a decent human all the more sat­is­fy­ing. And, though you won’t relive the exact same day of your life more than once, every­one has most def­i­nite­ly expe­ri­enced their own per­son­al ground­hog day. Gabriela Helfet

The infa­mous thief Irma Vep is skulk­ing on the rooftops of Paris, painstak­ing­ly yet gra­cious­ly fight­ing to keep her bal­ance. Olivi­er Assayas’ movie is itself all about the dif­fi­cul­ty of find­ing equi­lib­ri­um, espe­cial­ly when it comes to film­mak­ing, but also when sim­ply deal­ing with peo­ple. The ego-dri­ven direc­tor clash­es with his crew mem­bers, his remake of Louis Feuillade’s 1915 ser­i­al film Les Vam­pires must at once respect the orig­i­nal and offer some­thing new. The great Chi­nese actress Mag­gie Che­ung finds her­self both revered and clear­ly used only for her beau­ti­ful body (the remake, like the orig­i­nal, is silent, and puts Che­ung in a Cat­woman-inspired suit). But Assayas avoids arro­gance with humour, and in the end, it’s all a joke – an absurd, some­times dark but fun­ny one. Manuela Laz­ic

Long before Michel Haz­anavi­cius decid­ed to reclaim (and reframe) silent cinema’s glo­ry days in his sop­py award sea­son spritz, The Artist, Span­ish direc­tor José Luis Guerin was post­ing gor­geous love let­ters back to the medium’s for­ma­tive years. Gérard Fleury was a Parisian lawyer in the 1920s who died sud­den­ly and left behind him some reels of ama­teur footage of his fam­i­ly frol­ick­ing in a plush gar­den. Guerin then uses sug­ges­tion and recre­ation to try and dis­cov­er the true cause of his untime­ly demise. But the mys­tery ele­ment to the film is more a delight­ful excuse to riff on the pre­cious­ness of cel­lu­loid and the volatil­i­ty (and frag­ile beau­ty) of the images cap­tured with­in its frames. David Jenk­ins

For his sec­ond fea­ture, Paul Thomas Ander­son decid­ed to focus his atten­tions on the porn indus­try. But there was rea­son behind his mad­ness. In Boo­gie Nights, late ​’70s adult cin­e­ma is pre­sent­ed as Hollywood’s lit­tle sis­ter: more acces­si­ble, more fun and more irre­spon­si­ble. Through it, the direc­tor explores the fan­ta­sy of suc­cess and ful­fil­ment sold by the movies (of all types) and Amer­i­ca in gen­er­al. Dirk Dig­gler is deter­mined to pur­sue a dream, and with Mark Wahlberg’s cute face and his ​“one spe­cial thing,” he will have it all: sex, drugs, and a giant dis­co ball. But by 1980, actions begin to have con­se­quences, and this tru­ly allur­ing fan­ta­sy life evap­o­rates into ridicu­lous vio­lence and heart­break­ing mis­ery. ML

Robert Altman’s meta por­trait of the Hol­ly­wood film indus­try feels at once real­is­ti­cal­ly awful and awful­ly real­is­tic. He plunges us direct­ly into this ruth­less and fre­net­ic world – his roam­ing cam­era fine-tunes the focus, and the film ends up work­ing less a satire than a real­is­tic doc­u­ment of back-lot intrigues. Indeed, The Play­er always strives for harsh real­i­ty rather than clas­sic nar­ra­tive or moral sat­is­fac­tion. Stu­dio exec­u­tive Grif­fin Mill (Tim Rob­bins) has always got­ten away with being a prick thanks to his posi­tion as pro­fes­sion­al mon­ey­mak­er. But isn’t there a lim­it to what pow­er allows a per­son to avoid, and isn’t jus­tice bound to strike even­tu­al­ly? Play­ful and philo­soph­i­cal, fun­ny and dis­tress­ing, it’s a film that zeroes in on a small coterie of peo­ple to explore the human con­di­tion with unblink­ing exac­ti­tude. ML

Pulp Fic­tion should have faced a debil­i­tat­ing back­lash by now, sti­fled by the ten­sion between its immense pop­u­lar­i­ty and an air of cal­cu­lat­ed cult cool. When even Mar­vel movies start ref­er­enc­ing Jules Winnfield’s rag­ing bib­li­cal inven­tion, it sug­gests anoth­er cin­e­mat­ic tomb­stone is soon to be raised along­side Nick Fury’s. But every repeat view­ing of Tarantino’s mag­num opus is an act of invig­o­rat­ing resus­ci­ta­tion – an adren­a­line shot to the heart if you will. Whether you con­sid­er the time-hop­ping, over­lap­ping sto­ry­lines inge­nious or gim­micky, the tech­nique is unde­ni­ably effec­tive at bind­ing the film’s killer vignettes. There are plen­ty of neat details to dis­cov­er on repeat view­ings, too. To give a low-key exam­ple, note which crew member’s name is on screen when the radio sta­tion switch­es dur­ing the open­ing cred­its. John Wadsworth

At the request of her paral­ysed hus­band, Bess scours her small Scot­tish island for sex­u­al part­ners, act­ing in the name of love and God. Ostracised by her fel­low Chris­tians, she is left feel­ing more sin­ner than saint. Lars von Trier’s Break­ing the Waves is fraught with such polar­i­ties. Sweep­ing land­scape shots of Bess trav­el­ling alone con­trast with claus­tro­pho­bic scenes of inti­ma­cy. The glam rock sound­track, with its sug­ges­tions of sex­u­al lib­er­a­tion, sits uncom­fort­ably with the mut­ed rur­al set­ting. Emi­ly Wat­son deliv­ers a dev­as­tat­ing, career-best per­for­mance – she anchors and embod­ies the film’s slip­pery explo­ration of moral­i­ty, flit­ting between vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and mal­ice in the blink of an eye. JW

Is there any­one in the world who loves some­thing more than Guiller­mo del Toro loves clock­work? With his mirac­u­lous debut fea­ture, Cronos, he retooled the time­worn tropes of the vam­pire genre to tell a sto­ry of an elder­ly antique deal­er who has ever­last­ing life foist­ed on him when he acci­den­tal­ly dis­cov­ers a scarab-shaped device which, when wound up, injects him with a strange solu­tion. This is cin­e­ma made with an abun­dance of TLC, and every beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered frame feels like a direc­tor striv­ing towards a grand, over­ar­ch­ing vision. Every­thing that del Toro has made since – in some small way or anoth­er – harks back to this astound­ing first fea­ture. DJ

Proof of Pedro Almodóvar’s mas­tery exist­ed long before the end of the last cen­tu­ry. Yet it was with this AIDS-themed anti-melo­dra­ma – his fifth film of the decade – that the Span­ish writer/​director announced him­self on the world stage, some 20 years after the release of his ultra lo-fi debut fea­ture. It’s not hard to see why All About My My Moth­er proved so suc­cess­ful in its day – it is at once a sober­ing and sub­lime work that boasts one of the all-time great per­for­mances from Almod­ó­var reg­u­lar Cecil­ia Roth. Not his best film, but maybe his most reveal­ing and ten­der. AW

It’s hard to explain what Shane Mead­ows’ A Room for Romeo Brass is actu­al­ly about, as it’s one of those movies that creeps up on you from nowhere. The moral is, be care­ful who you make friends with, as Andrew Shim’s lov­ably mouthy school­boy Romeo pays heav­i­ly when allow­ing local weirdo Mor­rel (Pad­dy Con­si­dine) into his inner cir­cle. What begins as a whim­si­cal after­school rela­tion­ship takes a dark turn when Mor­rel reveals his true, qua­si-psy­chot­ic colours. Mead­ows’ knack for whip­ping up rich char­ac­ters, row­dy com­e­dy and nat­u­ral­is­tic dia­logue is con­firmed in the very first scene, but this bril­liant film also show­cas­es his predilec­tion for build­ing up a par­adise in the first half of a movie, and then knock­ing it all down in the sec­ond. DJ

Weird things tend to hap­pen in the films of Wern­er Her­zog, yet he is a direc­tor who is always in search of earth­bound exoti­cism. Lessons of Dark­ness is one of his great doc­u­men­tary fea­tures (and he is no slouch when it comes to that par­tic­u­lar form), a heady fusion of bom­bas­tic sound and reti­na-scorch­ing imagery which reframes our ver­dant plan­et as a fiery pas­sage­way to hell. Much like God­frey Reggio’s time-lapse study of human life as an ant colony, Koy­aanisqat­si, this film reframes real­i­ty to expound upon the dark void of our near future. Its images of burn­ing oil fields, many of them cap­tured from sin­is­ter heli­copter shots, are intend­ed to syn­the­sise the per­spec­tive of an alien vis­i­tor. Suf­fice to say, who­ev­er or what­ev­er is watch­ing would be suit­ably appalled by the apoc­a­lyp­tic sights down below. DJ

Jesus lives! And he’s wan­der­ing around the grim expans­es of the north­ern French coun­try­side pre­tend­ing to be a police detec­tive. He’s maybe the worst, most lack­adaisi­cal and dis­en­gaged police detec­tive in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma. Direc­tor Bruno Dumont made waves with his extra­or­di­nary 1997 debut, La vie de Jésus, a film which took the vio­lent teen ennui of Rebel With­out a Cause to a new lev­el of insou­ciant trans­gres­sion. L’Humantié is the director’s sim­i­lar­ly stark take on the clas­sic-era noir. It’s a pur­pose­ful­ly slow and stilt­ed tale which con­ceals its mor­dant sense of humour beneath thick lay­ers of faux-Euro art­house pre­ten­sion. And yet it remains one of the director’s most strange and beau­ti­ful works – each new scene brings with it immac­u­late visu­al com­po­si­tion which leaves a skewed brand upon the brain. DJ

The open­ing minute of speech in Hus­bands and Wives could slot into most oth­er Woody Allen scripts. Gabe (Allen) and Judy (Mia Far­row) pre­pare for a dou­ble date, exchang­ing the usu­al spousal chat­ter: a one-lin­er about God; ref­er­ences to Dos­to­evsky and decon­struc­tion­ism. Yet the hand­held cam­era is both unsteady and unset­tling. When the guests do arrive, in the form of mar­ried cou­ple Jack (Syd­ney Pol­lack) and Sal­ly (Judy Davis), they drop a bomb­shell that leaves the hosts equal­ly shak­en. What fol­lows is one of Allen’s best and most bru­tal films – an explo­ration of mat­ri­mo­ny that holds back on the punch­lines but pulls no punch­es. JW

At his most mis­an­throp­ic, Noah Baum­bach turns the inad­e­qua­cies of ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion into an art form. He is an expert at writ­ing dia­logue that mean­ders off on dis­tract­ed tan­gents, or col­laps­es due to the spite or self-cen­tred­ness of those involved. Though Kick­ing and Screaming’s title evokes a vocalised con­flict, its char­ac­ters (effete col­lege stu­dents in search of love and under­stand­ing) are more inter­est­ed in fend­ing off the arrival of adult­hood than fight­ing each oth­er. Here, con­ver­sa­tions descend into list­ing mon­key movies, wit­ty asides and pre­ma­ture nos­tal­gia. The cen­tral group of grad­u­ates may mim­ic quiz show cus­toms and reel off quotable quips on cue, but the game of life still leaves them lost. JW

When we talk about ​“the pow­er of cin­e­ma” what do we actu­al­ly mean? It’s the pow­er to redeem an out-and-out shit­bag. In the caus­ti­cal­ly fun­ny and gen­tly sad Buf­fa­lo ​’66, said shit­bag is played by direc­tor and writer Vin­cent Gal­lo. The film fol­lows the sniv­el­ling, obses­sive and quick-to-anger Bil­ly Brown as he attempts to recon­nect with his psy­chot­ic fam­i­ly fol­low­ing a stretch in jail. He is liv­ing a lie, hav­ing told his folks that he’s a cor­po­rate big-shot with a wife. And so to extend his ruse, he kid­naps Christi­na Ricci’s cutie-pie dance instruc­tor and forces her into the role of lov­ing spouse. The joke is, his par­ents don’t give two hoots what he’s been up to or where he’s head­ed. Even though it appears to encap­su­late many styl­is­tic and the­mat­ic themes of ​’90s indie cin­e­ma, this is a work that is real­ly like noth­ing else before or since. DJ

Hell hath no fury like Tra­cy Flick scorned. Reese Witherspoon’s aspir­ing politi­cian is the ruth­less yin to Legal­ly Blonde star Elle Woods’ sun­ny yang in Alexan­der Payne’s superla­tive high-school take on stu­dent gov­ern­ment. In her forth­right for­mi­da­bil­i­ty, Flick expos­es male anx­i­ety about dri­ven women – and she knows it. She strains to keep her boil­ing tem­per at bay, lest she be brand­ed with anoth­er B‑word. Wit­ness the glare from the school bus win­dow, the slam of the badge-mak­er and the grit­ted teeth. When her adver­sary Jim’s (Matthew Brod­er­ick) face swells after a run-in with a hive, it is a sign of fur­ther suf­fer­ing to come on elec­tion day. When you mess with the queen bee, you’re going to get stung. JW

Whis­per of the Heart is pen­sive even by Stu­dio Ghibli’s con­tem­pla­tive bench­mark. Most pro­mo­tion­al posters show Shizuku, its 14-year-old book­worm pro­tag­o­nist, soar­ing through the sky hand-in-hand with a feline baron, but don’t let that fan­ta­sy fool you. It is a brief day­dream placed with­in a work of remark­ably restrained nat­u­ral­ism. As we watch on, Shizuku strug­gles to bal­ance her cre­ative ambi­tions and the excite­ment of first love. Direc­tor Yoshi­fu­mi Kon­do – in his first and, sad­ly, only film – posi­tions view­ers as con­cerned par­ents, well-wish­ing from the side­lines. Beau­ty is here found in the small-scale: the stum­ble of shoes on the street; the joy of music shared; the sweet swell of silence. JW

A US Mar­shall falling for the bank rob­ber she caught may seem a slim and crude syn­op­sis for a film star­ring Jen­nifer Lopez and George Clooney. Yet in Elmore Leonard’s source nov­el, those assump­tions are how­ev­er tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion by the wit­ty char­ac­ters them­selves, and direc­tor Steven Soder­bergh ful­fils the story’s poten­tial with his dynam­ic and con­trolled film­mak­ing. What hap­pens between Jack Foley and Karen Sis­co is ludi­crous yet sim­ple: their paths cross – absurd­ly – and they feel a mutu­al attrac­tion, over­whelm­ing and total. Amus­ing­ly and trag­i­cal­ly, each is trapped in per­son­al cir­cum­stance, she a dis­il­lu­sioned (police)woman, and he a noto­ri­ous and intel­li­gent crim­i­nal sur­round­ed by idiots. Nev­er­the­less, the time out they man­age to share burns out with a gen­uine and sen­su­al aban­don to what could have been. ML

Leave it to David Cro­nen­berg to explore the intrin­sic link between human pathol­o­gy and the mechan­ics of pornog­ra­phy – and this at a time when the inter­net was still very much in its infan­cy. Crash wasn’t ahead of its time as such, but it is a film that feels eeri­ly per­ti­nent today, espe­cial­ly when viewed as a com­ment on our increas­ing­ly code­pen­dent rela­tion­ship with tech­nol­o­gy. The jury at the 1996 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val award­ed Cronenberg’s suit­ably provoca­tive adap­ta­tion of JG Ballard’s source nov­el the Spe­cial Jury Prize ​“for audac­i­ty”. They were not wrong to do so. AW

Set in 1920s Chi­na, Raise the Red Lantern fol­lows the life of 19-year-old Songlian (Gong Li) after she reluc­tant­ly agrees to become the fourth wife of a wealthy lord. None of his pre­vi­ous wives even like this man, who is bare­ly vis­i­ble on screen, yet gain­ing his favours is the only way for them to recov­er any respect as human beings. Soon, even the ini­tial­ly serene Songlian engages in the wives’ ruth­less com­pe­ti­tion to become, if only for a day, more than a mere pos­ses­sion. Yimou Zhang mas­ter­ful­ly fills the screen with detail relat­ing to the film’s his­tor­i­cal con­text, even as he touch­es on the uni­ver­sal theme of inter­nalised misog­y­ny. After a shock­ing descent into hor­ror and vio­lence, the beau­ti­ful and calm sur­face which con­ceals these mind games cracks under the unbear­able cru­el­ty of ingrained tra­di­tion. Ele­na Lazic

Isn’t it awful to be a per­fec­tion­ist? To val­ue qual­i­ty over quan­ti­ty? To plunge your time and resources in search of some­thing orig­i­nal and pro­found, to want an audi­ence to swoon over your cre­ations? Stan­ley Tucci’s Big Night fol­lows two Ital­ian broth­ers – Pri­mo (Tony Shal­houb) and Sec­on­do (Tuc­ci) – who run a mod­est trat­to­ria in the US. They are unable to drum up cus­tomers despite the fact that Pri­mo is some­thing of a whizz in the kitchen, but the ​“night” of the titles requires all the stops be pulled out as an oppor­tu­ni­ty aris­es to get their name on the restau­rant map. Though this is one of the great food­ie films, it’s also secret­ly about the pains of inde­pen­dent movie mak­ing, with skilled arti­sans pro­duc­ing high qual­i­ty goods that no-one can be both­ered to look at. DJ

The film that final­ly allowed Robert De Niro and Al Paci­no to share some screen-time, there’s more to Heat than the end­less­ly pas­tiched ​“din­er scene”. In fact, its real tri­umph is the way in which Michael Mann sep­a­rates the two leads, build­ing the antic­i­pa­tion of their con­fronta­tion, all the while draw­ing atten­tion to the over­rid­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties between these men who oper­ate on either side of the law. As for action, few films can rival the pul­sat­ing bank heist set piece or the drawn-out cat-and-mouse finale accom­pa­nied by the unmis­tak­ably ​’90s sound of Moby’s soar­ing ​‘God Over the Sur­face of Water’. Dan Einav

Christo­pher Walken is one com­plex cat. He’s at once dash­ing, with his beady blue eyes and slim fig­ure, and men­ac­ing thanks to his ten­den­cy to keep still before shift­ing sud­den­ly and awk­ward­ly, He’s a real movie star, and one per­fect­ly suit­ed to Abel Ferrara’s baroque vision of ​’90s NYC. Frank White (Walken) occu­pies a dual posi­tion. He’s fresh out of prison and stunned by his expe­ri­ence, so devotes him­self to ​“doing some­thing good.” Yet he doesn’t fol­low Carlito’s way: Ferrara’s real­ist ten­den­cies mean that Frank won’t try to escape the streets, but instead pre­side over them once more. The director’s taste for goth­ic imagery and atmos­phere shines stark­ly through when bad crim­i­nals and worst cops get in the King’s way. As a right­eous, dark-suit­ed crim­i­nal who doesn’t believe in the sys­tem or in the under­ground, Frank White just may be the best Dark Knight in cin­e­ma. ML