In many ways, the movie landscape has yet to move on from the 1990s, as this decade’s influence looms large on modern pop culture at large. An era responsible for some of the most cherished and re-watched films in history that continue to dominate basic cable, streaming, and physical media releases, this era is viewed as the apex of American life before the Internet and distrust in American institutions infected our collective thought. While American cinema in the ’90s was headlined by the rise of the independent film boom, it was also a time of Hollywood exceptionalism, with each major studio striking the perfect balance between popcorn entertainment and arthouse experimentation, something that’s been totally compromised today. Mainstream audiences were also exposed to the wonder of foreign cinema during this time. Here are just 10 masterpieces from the ’90s that all feature incredible feats of screen acting with an impressive cast.
10
‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ (1992)
Always. Be. Closing. This advice was certainly given to the casting directors of Glengarry Glen Ross, one of the most impressive ensemble casts and expertly acted films in recent history. After killing on Broadway, David Mamet adapted his iconic play about cutthroat real estate agents fighting for their jobs on the big screen in a 1992 film directed by James Foley. Rounded out by an impeccable cast that includes Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, and Alec Baldwin, Glengarry Glen Ross turned business jargon into art.
While Pacino was the lone nominee in the cast (nominated the same year in which he won his first Oscar for an inferior performance in Scent of a Woman), each star could make a case for Glengarry Glen Ross being their finest work on the screen. It takes a special breed of actors to deliver Mamet’s rhythmic dialogue and master it with conviction, but each cast member is sheer dynamite, conveying the desperation of weary and jaded sales executives dishing out overpriced properties to unsuspecting clients. Lemmon soulfully captures mournful aging, Harris is a combustible bomb of rage and repressed sadness, Arkin conveys the harsh realities of making a living in the ruthless corporate America, and Baldwin delivers perhaps the most famous monologue in film history.
9
‘Magnolia’ (1999)
You would never think that Paul Thomas Anderson made another film after 1999, based on the fact that Magnolia is about as go-for-broke as anything released before or since its release. Following the equally great Boogie Nights, Anderson poured his heart and soul, ruminating on death, regret, and the eternal longing of love in this operatic drama, converging the kaleidoscopic ensembles of Robert Altman with the frantic energy of Martin Scorsese. You also won’t find a more powerful acting clinic in any other movie of its decade.
The characters of Magnolia, played by Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Jason Robards, and more, are not all related, but each person shares the melancholy and manic uncertainty America felt heading into the 21st century. The new millennium may have signaled a foray into the future, but the past isn’t through with these characters, who deal with a lifetime’s worth of mistakes and haunted memories through isolation, hostility, and performance art. Anderson actively grieves the death of his father and ascension to stardom in Magnolia, a film so personal that it’s hard to look at sometimes. However, with these actors holding the screen through their intensity and austerity, those three hours will zip past you.
8
‘Secrets & Lies’ (1996)
One of the signature international breakthroughs of the ’90s, Secrets & Lies carried its momentum from winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival to earning a nomination for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Mike Leigh‘s brand of Kitchen Sink Realism was cemented in his 1996 dramedy about, as the title suggests, the secrets held between parents and children and the lies we tell others around us. Despite its loose narrative structure and minimal formalist scope, the film will grab you by the heart, making you laugh and cry simultaneously.
Coming from the world of TV movies and dialogue-focused dramas, Leigh is a quintessential actor’s director, letting phenomenal actors like Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Phyllis Logan, and Timothy Spall do the heavy lifting in this intimate drama set in East London. The performances are unbridled displays of jubilation, heartbreak, and bewilderment to the highest degree, but Secrets & Lies never loses sight of its documentary-like portrait of Great Britain’s working class. Without patronizing this group, Leigh gives these ordinary people, who suffer from the same range of conflicts as us, a sense of Shakespearean weight. Leigh, who frequently returns to his go-to stock company in all his films, such as Life is Sweet and Hard Truths, is inseparable from his actors, crafting his view of the world through the eyes of its most honest people.
7
‘Malcolm X’ (1992)
There was only one actor who could embody the towering legacy of Malcolm X on the big screen: Denzel Washington. The civil rights leader’s entire life, from his early days as a low-level crook to his rise as a voice of Black empowerment in the 1960s, is captured by Washington in arguably the finest performance in modern cinematic history in Spike Lee‘s monumental biopic, Malcolm X. The 1992 film makes every other biographical drama look frivolous, as Lee’s bold and emotionally triumphant dissection and spotlight of a turning point in America extends beyond the limitations of the medium.
Rudely snubbed of an Academy Award (the honor going to the aforementioned Al Pacino), Washington is the ultimate five-tool player in Malcolm X, showcasing this prodigious figure as an aimless petty thief by stripping down his aura. When Malcolm Little adopts the identity of Malcolm X, the controversial minister of the Nation of Islam who rebelled against the country’s past and present misgivings against African-Americans, the actor doesn’t just transform into the man; he becomes a symbol of a movement. Malcolm X, also featuring stand-out performances by Angela Bassett, Albert Hall, and Delroy Lindo, is a compulsory watch for Americans that is nonetheless a lively viewing experience filled with unexpected humor, triumph, and tragedy.
6
‘Schindler’s List’ (1993)
In 1993, Steven Spielberg proved that he wasn’t just the shark, alien, and dinosaur blockbuster director. In his crowning achievement as a dramatist and storyteller, Spielberg dealt with the Holocaust unflinchingly and humanely in Schindler’s List, which earned the legendary director the prize of Best Director and Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Told with epic grandeur, emotionally stirring, and sheer visual beauty, the historical drama about one man’s fight against the gravest atrocity of the 20th century is carried by its awe-inspiring performances.
Schindler’s List manages to convey heightened, explosive drama without glorifying or sanitizing historical events.
It’s easy to forget about his dramatic chops now that he’s transitioned to revenge thrillers, but Liam Neeson is pure magic in Schindler’s List as the titular German industrialist who conceives of a plan to transport Jewish people held captive by Nazis to his factory as employees. Ralph Fiennes, in another breakout role, is terrifying as Amon Goeth, the despicable SS officer embodying the monstrosity of the Holocaust. Along with earth-shattering performances by Ben Kingsley and Embeth Davidtz, Schindler’s List manages to convey heightened, explosive drama without glorifying or sanitizing historical events. Spielberg ditches his whiz-kid charm behind the camera for a colder, documentary-like approach that makes its most rousing moments pay off without seeming tasteless. The film doesn’t rewrite history to satisfy a happy ending, but it argues that benevolence can come from the least expected sources.
5
‘Chungking Express’ (1994)
With his breakthrough film, Chungking Express, with American audiences, Wong Kar-wai‘s idiosyncratic voice became a household name for cinephiles. The legendary Hong Kong filmmaker, known for his dazzling, kinetic camera movements, stories about lonely characters yearning for love, and luminous photography, quickly became an obsession for budding moviegoers looking to expand their palette, and his 1994 bifurcated dramedy about transient romance and philosophical ruminations on time proved to be the ideal gateway movie for East Asian cinema.
Chungking Express is divided into two separate chapters, but each half belongs to a singular voice. The similarities are evident between the sections, with both involving police officers striking unlikely relationships with mysterious women, but Wong’s sense of tone profoundly captures the distinct feelings of melancholy and idyllic exuberance. Loose on plot and structure, the film is also a love letter to Hong Kong, as Wong’s camera flies around and shines a light on the area’s oddities and beauties. Each actor, including Brigitte Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Faye Wong, is marvelous, but the standout is Tony Leung, who was soon adopted as the face of Wong’s emotional language.
4
‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991)
The Academy Awards routinely ignore the horror genre, but The Silence of the Lambs was just too expertly crafted to pass up for them. Everything about the 1991 Best Picture winner’s universal acclaim and success is baffling, from comedy director Jonathan Demme adapting a lurid bestseller into an intimate character drama to this genre movie sweeping all major award bodies and the box office. The third and last film to take home the big five Oscar categories can credit its shrewd casting and iconic performances for its enduring cultural impact.
When you watch The Silence of the Lambs, you start to wonder why Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins don’t just star together in every movie. The chemistry between these two Oscar-winning titans is almost too big for the screen to handle, as Demme fixates on these powerhouses and their intense convictions through tight close-ups that set the standard for the shot. Rounded out by a sturdy supporting cast that includes Ted Levine, Scott Glenn, and Kasi Lemmons, the movie is the ultimate cinematic package that satisfies horror fans and film scholars at the highest level. Demme’s expressive camera and unexpected sympathy for some of the most horrifying characters ever put to film bring a layer of soul to a story with such a grisly premise. Whether you are Clarice Starling (Foster) or Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins), we’re all imperfect beings trapped in an unfair world.
3
‘Unforgiven’ (1992)
After a long and storied career making Westerns in America and abroad, Clint Eastwood‘s love letter to the genre was anything but romantic. Unforgiven, which went on to win Best Director and Best Picture, is a genre-defining masterpiece that became the foundational revisionist Western, where noble outlaws are revealed as ruthless savages who kill to live and upright law officers as selfish tyrants. The 1992 film wasn’t entirely a swan song for Eastwood, as he is miraculously still directing feature films 30 years later, but the genre’s dormancy on the big screen is evident in the finality of this text.
William Munny (Eastwood) has finally settled down, until he is offered an opportunity for one last bounty. He’s convinced himself that he’s reformed, but the remaining runtime of this masterful portrait of aging and internalized guilt indicates that he’s still the most fearsome gun in the West. Unforgiven is classical in its visual beauty and rich tapestry of characters and world-building, and when combined with the postmodern reflection of Western ideology, you get something truly profound. Eastwood gives his most austere and layered performance as a character exhibiting the ugly side of The Man With No Name and Harry Callahan, while Gene Hackman, in an Oscar-winning performance, embodies pure evil as Little Bill Daggett, a sheriff who exposes the rotten core of mythmaking and justice.
2
‘Goodfellas’ (1990)
Perhaps the most re-watched movie of the last 40 years, Goodfellas is a crowning achievement for not just Martin Scorsese, but also for the power of the cinematic medium. Never has action portrayed on screen felt more electric, captivating, and alluring. In typical Scorsese fashion, however, this sensory overload of wealth and excess leads to a punishing and downright bleak climax. The 1990 crime classic is a magnetic cautionary tale about a story of ambition, a conflict that only Scorsese could turn into a coexistence.
No movie is easier to get lulled into and turn on for a few minutes than Goodfellas, the true story of Henry Hill’s (Ray Liotta) rise and fall as a soldier in a New York mafia family. Filmmakers love to mimic Scorsese’s identifiable traits, from a narrator serving as a character to the juxtaposition between warm pop songs and brutal violence, but only the master can make this formula groundbreaking. Scorsese’s expert control of uproarious humor, sincere romance, gritty realism, and pitch-black commentary on violence and crime broke all the rules of filmmaking and entertained audiences in a way that seemed unfathomable. If not for its iconic performances by Liotta as the aspirational wiseguy, Robert De Niro as the consummate professional, and Joe Pesci as the hot-tempered loose canon, Goodfellas would feel far less lived in.
1
‘Fargo’ (1996)
Perfection is objective with a creative medium like film. However, if there was one movie that deserved the honor of being immaculate, down to every frame, line of dialogue, story beat, and performance, it would be Fargo. Joel and Ethan Coen have made countless 10/10s, but their 1996 black comedy/crime drama has defined their entire body of work. Never has one director conveyed as much control and precision as the brothers do in Fargo, a testament to the power of the director, or, in the case of this film, a two-headed brain.
At every level, Fargo leaves you in awe over how transcendent and revolutionary each aspect of the film really is. The cinematography by longtime Coens collaborator Roger Deakins places you in both a wintry wonderland and a hellscape, where, at any moment, you can enjoy a friendly conversation with an affable neighbor or find yourself gunned down by low-rate criminals. In an extraordinary feat of screenwriting, the characters in this tragic crime saga discuss issues germane to a hard-boiled scheme in a noir but carry them with a chipper affectation. Despite the Coens’ effortless artistry behind the camera, it’s the towering performances by Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, and Steve Buscemi that calcified this niche subgenre of thrillers about crimes gone wrong. Equally soulful as it is nihilistic, Fargo is a closely observed portrait of society being undone by the stupidity of crime.
- Release Date
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March 8, 1996
- Runtime
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98 minutes
- Director
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Joel Coen
- Writers
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Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
- Producers
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Ethan Coen
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