Best Films of the Nineties, Part V.
Here’s Part V of my review of ‘90s movies, based on the OG Janovsky Report — annual reviews I did back then, circulating it to friends, family and Russell Baker. There are so many great films on this list, I think of it as golden age of movies. Here are Part I 26-30 and Part II (21-25) and Part III (16-20), and Part IV (11-15).
6.FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (1993): An epic about two renowned Peking Opera singers set against the background of Chinese history from the 1920's to the 1970's. The opening training scenes at a sadistic boarding school for future opera stars are a wrenching prologue to the alliances, loves and betrayals that haunt the film's characters (as they haunted Chinese history) for most of the twentieth century. The film is superficially similar to The Last Emperor because it tells the story of China in the twentieth century by focusing on one or a few characters. However, though Emperor was merely visually splendid, Farewell is much more emotionally involving because of the depth and complexity of the characters and their relationships.
7. UNDERGROUND: (1996) The release of this film was delayed here primarily because it advocates a united Yugoslavia -- not a popular position after the horrors of the '90s in that region. But neither the film nor director Kustirca supports the nationalistic and racist atrocities committed in the name of Yugoslavia or any of its former component ethnic groups. Kustirca’s epic Time of the Gypsies (1990) was a visionary story of a gypsy boy's surreal comic and tragic journeys. His Underground is also a surreal black comedy, but with a very real political and historical context: the death of Yugoslavia, beginning with the German invasion during World War II. Its larger-than-life characters drink, fight, scheme, sing, deceive and generally barrel their way through fifty years of Nazi occupation and resistance, communism under Tito, and the recent terrible civil war. Underground is a wild, savage ride through fifty years of tumultuous history in a country that is still spinning, perhaps out of control, into the next century.
8. THE BOXER: (1997): A rare film that shows the power of redemption, courage and integrity in the midst of ancient hatreds. Emily Watson, so shattering in Breaking the Waves, is wonderful here in a supporting role with Daniel Day Lewis, who once again shows his range as a boxer released from prison after serving 14 years for IRA activities. As a most effective, moving treatment of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, its message of possible reconciliation was prescient in light of recent hopeful events there.
9. TIME OF THE GYPSIES: (1990): Director Emir Kustirca's epic story of a gypsy boy's seduction into thievery and revenge is a beautiful combination of fantasy, romance, adventure and gritty realism.
10. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH: (1999): In one of the most innovative films of the nineties, director Spike Jonze constantly defies expectations and delights us with surprises and absurdities. The journeys into Malkovich's mind are only a part of the charm and wonder of a truly new and different film. The plot goes off the deep end a bit in the denouement, but that can be forgiven in light of the striking creativity of the events on and off the 7 & 1/2th floor offices where the channel into the actor's brain begins.