Archive: Finest Films of the 90’s
Following up on my 80’s article comes a list of films from that other decade I grew up in. This list was harder to make because in the 90’s, regret for the 80’s started becoming contagious, and Matthew Broderick couldn’t just turn into a mystery-solving sasquatch and expect audiences to jump on the bandwagon. So whatever qualifications were being used in the last list had to be readjusted to fit this decade.
10. Clerks (1994)
Kevin Smith’s magnum opus about the worst day in a retail clerk’s life is not only the mother of all indie movies, but still sets the standard for it’s genre today. Since “Clerks,” just about every other R-rated comedy features several scenes where characters stand around discussing pop culture, dropping cuss-bombs, and confessing to humiliating sexual experiences with little to no plot tying it together. The whole movie touches down on an enlightening, but very self-mutilating note that addresses even it’s own critics. It’s cinematic chaos at it’s finest.
9. Speed (1994)
It’s about a bus that can’t slow down without exploding. That alone probably stands as one of the last best movie ideas ever had.
8. Groundhog Day (1993)
A film that pushes Bill Murray’s sanity to the limit, features a groundhog puppet driving a truck, and acknowledges that true happiness is not only found within having friends, but in not waking up to Sonny & Cher every morning.
7. Men in Black (1997)
The late 90’s fell victim to the “special effects first, everything else later” bug, so it was harder to dig out some of the finer classics from this era. Some of my favorites like “The Fifth Element” and “The Mummy” did a good job of mixing comedy with special effects, but “Men in Black,” however, seemed to be doing something a little more right. And it wasn’t just the inclusion of the Fresh Prince either. Maybe it was the talking dog, or the alien whose idea of blending into society was wearing a large trenchcoat and holding up a prosthetic head on a stick, but MIB had a creative streak that worked for it.
6. Forrest Gump (1994)
This is one of those rare/only cases where I can actually agree with the Academy’s Best Picture choice. All this movie is missing is a scene where Forrest spills hot coffee on Al Gore’s computer and accidentally invents the internet.
5. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995)
I could give this spot to “Ninja Turtles” or “Mortal Kombat,” but for some reason, the Power Rangers just need to be on here. Back then, everything from comic books to video games was getting mutilated into the weirdest unrecognizable crap, and yet somehow the Power Rangers – the one franchise that had no reason to ever escape that fate – landed a director who respected the source material, recognized how retarded it was, and made damn sure that fifteen years later, it would still be re-watchable enough to make fun of with our friends. That’s an art very few have ever mastered.
4. Aladdin (1993)
I was iffy about about putting any animated Disney film on here since those all seem to fit under the “timeless” category. But then again, thanks to the “Little Mermaid” formula, the 90’s marked a huge resurgence in Disney’s popularity. Their movies would always be balancing two extreme styles of film-making – powerful and breath-taking like the “The Lion King,” or crazy and out-of-control like “Hercules.” “Aladdin” marked the perfect balance between those styles where we were immersed into a epic Arabian fantasy, only to have Robin Williams and Gilbert Gottfried frequently explode in our faces. Everything you’d ever need to know about Disney films of the nineties was perfectly summed up in “Aladdin.”
3. True Lies (1994)
One could stick almost any Arnold Schwarzenegger movie in this spot, from “Terminator 2″ to “Kindergarten Cop,” but nah – it needs to be “True Lies.” Horses in elevators, Jamie Lee Curtis’ sexy dance, the battle on the Harrier Jet – heck, this movie even makes Tom Arnold look good. And for a guy who’s second-best performance was playing the father in “The Stupids,” that’s saying a lot.
2. Wayne’s World (1992)
With apologies to runner-ups “Dumb and Dumber” and “Night at the Roxbury,” there’s just no reason “Wayne’s World” shouldn’t be on here. Some movies are meant to blow minds. This one blew it’s own before it even started. Is it even possible to hear “Bohemian Rhapsody” in the car anymore without wanting to head-bang?
1. Jurassic Park (1993)
I don’t even know where to start on this one. This was as big to kids then as “Transformers” is to kids now. Only in this one, you can’t go one scene that doesn’t somehow implant itself in your mind afterward, whether it be through raptors in the kitchen, cartoon DNA, Dr. Grant pretending to disembowel a child, shaving cream on a pie, Pirates of the Caribbean references, or a lawyer on a raft. And all those burning questions we actually expected to have answers to like “how did the T-Rex get in the building” or “why doesn’t Timmy just pass them the gun?!” Everything worked, even when it didn’t make sense, and that’s the soul of the 90’s right there. Also, it had good special effects.
The 90’s ends there. Next month, we travel back in time… to the 70’s.
February 07 2010 08:32 pm | Movies