Best Films of the Nineties, Part IV.
On Monday, I went to my first in-theater movie in more than four years (i.e., since before COVID). It was Furiosa at the Lincoln Square IMAX. A bit disappointing, especially compared to Fury Road. The latter would make a best films of the 2010s list, Furiosa not likely to make a list for this decade. My favorite movie in which George Miller was involved (as producer and writer) is the brilliant Babe, which you’ll see comes in at No. 5 on this list.
So here’s Part IV 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. Here are Part I 26-30 and Part II (21-25) and Part III (16-20).
11. THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998): It's rare today that a big-budget Hollywood film has the thoughtfulness and sensibility of many lower cost independent and foreign films. The Truman Show is an exhilarating exception to this general rule -- a perfectly executed film that invites us first to share Truman's narrow perspective, then gradually reveals the layers of the world that has been built and concealed from him.
12. TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY (1991): A bereaved young woman's cellist boyfriend returns from the afterlife, along with other dead musicians and video film buffs, to help her emerge from grief and return to her life. Wonderful performances by Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman (in a non-villain role for a change) in a funny and very moving film that is vastly superior to the superficially similar Ghost (1990). More modest, but much more rewarding than the same director Anthony Minghella's later ponderous epic, The English Patient (1996).
13. BLACK ROBE (1991): This film dares to confront the vast gulf between Indigenous and European culture and religion: an issue sanitized and saccharinized by films like the much inferior Dances with Wolves (1990). The film also attempts to come to grips with a priest's struggle to maintain his faith in spite of this irreconcilability and his own emotional crises. These themes, and spectacular photography make this a worthy "river journey" movie in the great tradition of Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979).
14. TOTO THE HERO (1991): A Belgian film that uses a very innovative approach to narrative, shifting among three periods in the story of a man's life, yet gradually revealing more about him in surprising ways. The "Hero" is convinced that he was switched shortly after birth with his wealthy neighbor, and uses this and other fantasies to avoid living his own life. An extremely satisfying, coherent achievement that shows the possibilities of creative film-making.
15. SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993): Agonizingly effective in conveying the horror and cruelty of the Holocaust and the courage and goodness of one righteous man in the face of it. The stark black and white photography is striking, as are the performances of Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Kingsley. The only thing lacking is enough of the human face of the Jews. At the poignant end of the film, the actual Schindler survivors put stones on his grave. Yet, we hardly know these people. We've caught glimpses of them, but they are not that much more than the names on the List. Even Ben Kingsley's character, despite his touching, muted performance, is relatively faceless. The film should have done more to dramatize the tragedy of lives lost and the miracle of lives saved by adding dimensions to the people on the List. We get to know them only superficially.