Best Films of the Nineties, Part III

Here’s Part III of my review of ‘90s movies, back when a pandemic was something you’d only see in the movies, streaming could refer to Whitewater, and a certain New Yorker was occupied mostly with failing casinos. The Janovsky Report, now the name of this Substack, was an annotated list of the best films of each year I circulated to friends, family and writer Russell Baker. I’m counting down to Number One, five at a time. Here are Part I 26-30 and Part II (21-25).

Two of them are from one of my favorite French directors Patrice Leconte.

16.       LORENZO'S OIL: (1992):  A powerful film with several dimensions: Susan Sarandon's towering and complex portrayal of a mother whose devotion to her son and belief in the possibility of his recovery is overwhelming, a true medical detective story as undertaken by laypersons (Sarandon and Nick Nolte) who refuse to accept a fatal diagnosis, and the heroic struggle to survive of a stricken young boy who becomes almost a totemic symbol as his symptoms worsen.  The film far transcends its superficial resemblance to any "disease of the week" TV movie.

17.       THE HAIRDRESSER'S HUSBAND (1992):  This film by Patrice Leconte, the French director of Monsieur Hire, is a nearly perfect study of the attractions and insecurities of love.  A pre-teen boy has his hair cut by a voluptuous woman hairdresser and concludes simply that his ambition in life is to be a hairdresser's husband.  Many years later he achieves that goal, but requited love proves to be too much to bear.  The film is filled with beautiful symmetries, pastels and absurdities surrounding the boy's development and fulfillment of his goal as he and his hairdresser create a self-contained, but doomed world.

18.       STRICTLY BALLROOM (1992):  A delightful fantasy based upon ballroom dance competitions in Australia, where working people by day are transformed into Freds and Gingers at night in fierce, but rigidly controlled contests.  One night, a young man dares to break out of the strict conventions and shocks the local ballroom hierarchy.  There are several magical dance scenes, especially in unexpected and breathtaking settings.  Although the story is hardly novel, the film's humor and romance make it completely original and wonderful. Likely helped eventually create Dancing with the Stars.

19.       RIDICULE: (1996):  French director Patrice Leconte has made another wonderful film, quite different, but just as compelling as his previous successes, Monsieur Hire and The Hairdresser’s Husband,.  With Ridicule, Leconte opens things up historically and spatially with a romantic period drama set in the court of Louis XVI in 1783, complete with riders charging across the French countryside, gorgeous lawns and drawing rooms, and curious aquatic experimentation.  Although Ridicule lacks some of the passion and intensity of the earlier Leconte films, it makes up for it with its grand scope, a clever script and most of all, its scathing portrait of the twilight of the corrupt French aristocracy.

20.       QUIZ SHOW (1994):  That year's most entertaining and literate film, with wonderful performances, especially by John Turturro as Herb Stempel and Paul Scofield as Mark Van Doren.  It very faithfully recreates what I remember of the quiz show phenomenon, when it seemed as though everyone in the country was watching these shows -- as though the Super Bowl were on weekly.  Director Robert Redford has said that the film portrays the "end of innocence" in the '50s.  I think it's more nostalgia for some feeling of community that came with the shared experience of watching the shows.  Yes, people felt betrayed when the fix was revealed, but cynicism has been bred by any number of events before and after that time: the McCarthy Era, the Vietnam War and Watergate, for example.  The film did explore interesting examples of such cynicism, like Jewish executives (a mere 12 years after the Holocaust) having no trouble sacrificing a Jewish contestant (Stempel) to create a WASP superstar (Charles Van Doren) or the ease with which the patrician Van Doren could so easily compromise the morality he must have touched on in many of the works he taught at Columbia.  Yet the film also reveals some core of humanity in spite of all of the anger and cynicism, such as when the vengeful, half-crazed Stempel shows his compassion for Van Doren after his humiliation at the Congressional hearing.