Here is Part II of my countdown of the best films from the 1990’s, before kids and then COVID kept me out of theaters. Part I is here.
What strikes me is how many excellent films there were in that decade. All of the movies I posted so far are great — and they are not even in the top twenty. Let me know your thoughts on them if you’ve seen them. I’ve included links to streaming where possible.
21. HOOP DREAMS (1994): (Various streams) This documentary is more compelling than 99 percent of feature films: Its plot is unpredictable rather than formulaic, and its characters are more complex and interesting than the stereotypes in most fiction movies. Obviously, real life is more unpredictable and complex than fiction, but most documentaries are unable to take these elements and shape them into a compelling narrative the way the makers of Hoop Dreams have. Like real life, the film consistently defies expectations: Will Gates, the supposedly more talented player, ends up as the weaker competitor, while Arthur Agee keeps bouncing back, despite being cast off by a prep school and living through his father's lapse into addiction and prison.
22. THE MYSTERY OF RAMPO (1995): Colorful and thoughtful, a little-seen, but dazzling exploration of the power of imagination. Japanese writer Rampo finds his latest book banned as subversive by the Japanese authorities in the '20s. Yet his tale lives on through a young woman suspected of the exact same acts as Rampo's fictional heroine: suffocating her husband after she discovers him trapped in her hope chest. The fictional account is told at the beginning of the film in a delicately drawn cartoon based on Japanese print styles, the first in a series of sumptuous visual images accompanied by equally gorgeous swelling orchestral crescendos. As the line between Rampo's fictions and the woman's reality become increasingly blurred, the film adds elements of Hitchcock's Vertigo and Psycho, blending the suspense of those classics with an Asian sensibility. Rampo is not quite Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant, but he has a fictional alter ego detective who aspires to their style. His quest develops into an attempt to harmonize himself with his fictional hero and his fiction with the reality it appears to be creating.
23. BEFORE THE RAIN (1995): (Criterion) This should be required viewing for anyone trying to understand the elemental, brutal power of ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. The film is set in Macedonia, where ancient conflicts between Christians and Muslims echo those in Bosnia. Everyone is right and everyone is wrong, as passions of the moment based on primal fears and hatreds erupt into unintended, sudden tragedies. The story is told in a brilliantly creative way: A circular structure uniting three distinct segments keeps us thinking throughout the film long afterward as we remember echoes at the beginning that are only clear after the whole story has unfolded. The stories of a young monk who has taken a vow of silence, a Macedonian photo-journalist and a fugitive Muslim girl are the focal points of a complex, involving landscape of ideas and terrible events.
24. RUSHMORE (1998): (Various) Delightful and totally original. Max Fischer is a prep school geek hero who’s failing all subjects at the same time that he's leading virtually every extracurricular activity. Rich but jaded alumnus Bill Murray finds him to be a soul mate and both are perversely endearing throughout.
25. CHARACTER (1997) (Tubi): A Dutch film that won the 1997 best foreign film Oscar -- and richly deserved it. It was not released here until 1998, and without much promotion it hardly ran in theaters at all. The film is a Dickensian story of an ambitious young man's struggle to become a Rotterdam lawyer, driven by his complex relationship with his sinister, powerful father. Its icy characters are moving because their circumstances force them to surrender love to ambition or just survival.
Thank you for these gems.