iCM Forum's Favorite Movies of the 1990s, 2nd Edition; Nominations

[Lonewolf2003]

iCM Forum's Favorite Movies of the 1990s
2nd Edition
Nominations

The 1990s was the last decade of the previous millennium. Some people thought it was the end of history. But of course history didn't end. Neither did film history. People continued making films. In this poll we are going to see again which our favorite movies made in this decade are.

DEADLINE = 31 May 2022

• Nominees must be from 1990 - 1999 according to imdb. Which means the year in brackets next to the title, not the release-date in your country. IIMBb will be leading in this, but with good argumentation exceptions can be made
• IMDb- or iCM-lists are accepted. (If you can't make one of those, ask another user to help you out.)
• Lists can be any length.
• Shorts, mini-series and TV-episodes from anthology series where the episodes are unrelated, are allowed. Tv-series aren't allowed.*
  *A mini-series is 16 episodes or less, not multiple seasons, and not planned to be longer but canceled, and is intended as a single unified work and not episodic.
• Each nominee can only be named once (of course)
• Lists can be ranked or unranked or partially-ranked. In a partially-ranked list, the top X films are ranked and everything after that point is unranked. When not specified I will consider a list as ranked.

List length last time was 250 and half-life 50, which it will be again unless there is good reason to deviate from it.

Some help:
1990s movies you rated on imdb
1990s movies on a imdb list (replace X with the list id)

Last edition:

Top 250 Top 250

Complete List Complete List

Results thread

Participants (41)

Teproc
Mysterious Dude
Onderhond
TraverseTown
jeff_v
Perception de Ambiguity
hurluberlu
zzzorf
gunnar (unranked96)
murnaunosferatu
matthewscott8
mightysparks
beavis
cinewest
RolandKirkSunglasses
Lakigigar
3eyes (unranked25)
Silga
Y U M E
Caracortada
beasterne
peeptoad
AB537 (unranked50)
blocho (unranked19)
joachimt (unranked58)
filmbantha
Smoover
Lonewolf2003 (unranked112)
gromit82
lineuphere
zomgmouse
Gorro
Rufus-T
Opio
sol
Melvelet (unranked50)
OldAle1 (unranked75)
Gordon_Gekko
pitn
Fergenaprido
1SO

Please check if your list is stated, ordered and linked correctly. And is set to public. For iCM lists you can also set it to "Friends" and befriend me. Don't edit your post, but make a new post or notify me when you changed your ranking method or the link.

[Teproc]

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/icm+ ... 0s/teproc/

[Mysterious Dude]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls560472617/

All ranked.

[Onderhond]

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/best ... onderhond/ (ranked for sure)
https://www.onderhond.com/toplist/1990s (the image-heavy version)

[TraverseTown]

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/trav ... versetown/ ranked

[jeff_v]

My list: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls066514314/

[zomgmouse]

Some help:
1990s movies you rated on imdb

I think this link is mistyped, should be 1999 rather than 1989

[Perception de Ambiguity]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls063964832/

[Lonewolf2003]

Some help:
1990s movies you rated on imdb

I think this link is mistyped, should be 1999 rather than 1989

Thanks. Corrected it.

[hurluberlu]

My list
Ranked

[zzzorf]

Here is my list, ranked as per my Flickchart
https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/my+t ... 0s/zzzorf/

[gunnar]

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/kcs+ ... /kaculler/

Ranked through #96, unranked after that.

[murnaunosferatu]

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/best ... nosferatu/

[matthewscott8]

ranked top 50:

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls560923449/

[mightysparks]

Ranked: https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/migh ... htysparks/

[beavis]

a ranked top 100
https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/beav ... ll/beavis/

[cinewest]

Ranked at the moment.

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls500153015/

[RolandKirkSunglasses]

Ranked

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/icm+ ... unglasses/

[Lakigigar]

Ranked, a top 26

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/laki ... ties/laki/

[3eyes]

ranked top 25

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls560948107/

[cinewest]

Nice list, 3eyes. I wonder if anyone else chose Beautiful People. Quite of few of yours just missed making my top 90, but were still very good honorable mentions for me.

[Silga]

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls560442373/

Ranked

[Y U M E]

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/my+p ... ki+rokuro/

Ranked

[Caracortada]

ICM Poll: The Nutty Nineties

[beasterne]

Ranked: https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/favo ... beasterne/

[peeptoad]

ranked

[AB537]

1-50 ranked, rest unranked

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/ab53 ... ist/ab537/

[cinewest]

Have to say that I am mostly disappointed by most of the lists I have looked at for this poll. Are the 90's really all about American Indies, Goodfellas, Spielberg, and Lord of the Rings?

[Onderhond]

Have to say that I am mostly disappointed by most of the lists I have looked at for this poll. Are the 90's really all about American Indies, Goodfellas and Lord of the Rings?

Sure hope it's not about Lord of the Rings, those are 00 films, no?

[cinewest]

Have to say that I am mostly disappointed by most of the lists I have looked at for this poll. Are the 90's really all about American Indies, Goodfellas and Lord of the Rings?

Sure hope it's not about Lord of the Rings, those are 00 films, no?

Of course they are. Do you get my point?

[Onderhond]

Of course they are. Do you get my point?

Not really, no

[matthewscott8]

Have to say that I am mostly disappointed by most of the lists I have looked at for this poll. Are the 90's really all about American Indies, Goodfellas and Lord of the Rings?

Sure hope it's not about Lord of the Rings, those are 00 films, no?

Of course they are. Do you get my point?

I am not sure what the LoTR reference was referring to either, I can't think of any other fantasy trilogies from the 90s. Were you a cinephile in the 90s? I got into movies watching La Reine Margot as a teenager in 1996, but never really went to an arthouse cinema until 2005. So my list is pretty back constructed, I would say I only saw 3 out of the 50 films I mentioned from the 90s in the 90s.

At the time my mum let us get videos from the video store, there were three choices, American, American or American. I'm interested to hear views about what being a cinephile was like at the time.

[cinewest]

Sure hope it's not about Lord of the Rings, those are 00 films, no?

Of course they are. Do you get my point?

I am not sure what the LoTR reference was referring to either, I can't think of any other fantasy trilogies from the 90s. Were you a cinephile in the 90s? I got into movies watching La Reine Margot as a teenager in 1996, but never really went to an arthouse cinema until 2005. So my list is pretty back constructed, I would say I only saw 3 out of the 50 films I mentioned from the 90s in the 90s.

At the time my mum let us get videos from the video store, there were three choices, American, American or American. I'm interested to hear views about what being a cinephile was like at the time.

I got pretty heavily into cinema in my late teens, which was the late 70's, so I have seen much of what's come since in real time, though of course there have also been films to discover after the fact because they simply weren't available in their release year.

As for the 90's, I would say that was kind of a second renaissance for me as a cinephile. Not only did other things / places take me away for the cinema for about 3 years in the early 90's, but my taste in cinema seemed to shift some when I came back to it in the mid 90's, with a great passion for what I began seeing then from a great variety of filmmakers and film regions that were new to me. I wouldn't say that the list I submitted is full of films that are that obscure, but in scanning the lists most others have submitted, I found myself wondering if I had the release dates wrong for a great many of my favorites (hence the LOTR joke).

I'm not going to say that Pulp Fiction doesn't belong in the top 50 (I actually have it quite a bit higher than that, but it doesn't come close to a film like Double Life of Veronique which is absent on most of the lists presented here. The most interesting filmmakers of the decade are just too undervalued, whether we are talking about the lesser known ones, like those by Angelopoulos, Ruiz, or Sokurov, or better known ones like those by Von Trier, Wong Kar Wai, Kiarostami, or the aforementioned Kieslowski.

[matthewscott8]

I've not seen Veronique yet. Certainly did my bit for Wong. Got to be the 80s and this century before you see LvT votes from me.

[cinewest]

I've not seen Veronique yet. Certainly did my bit for Wong. Got to be the 80s and this century before you see LvT votes from me.

Yes, some of the most distinctive films on my list (roughly the top 40) are not for everyone, but they are being ignored by far too many, here, and that just makes me want to recuse myself once again from participating in the polls here. It's great to see that a lesser known film in my top ten, like Moment of Innocence, has struck a chord with a handful of voters, but it's not very interesting to celebrate the popularity of Pulp fiction and others that claim most of the attention whenever the 90's are mentioned.

It's not just the decade where American indie cinema began to take off, it's a decade that marks an explosion in world cinema that deserves some attention as well. A film like Before the Rain uses the same circular narrative as Pulp Fiction to much more meaningful effect in describing the way tribal / religious / nationalistic hatreds can be stoked and lead to war (The Perfect Circle is a film about such a war that has pretty much served as a precedent for all those that have come in the 21st century). It is great to see Underground (a very different film with similar themes) has gained some support, but what will it take for people to discover Cabeza de Vaca (a film I have been pumping since my arrival on this board), which deserves to be a companion piece to Aguirre Wrath of God as highly artistic summations on Spanish Colonialism in the Americas.

Assuming most people here love their mothers, or some elder in their family that they have witnessed on their deathbed... well there is no finer cinematic meditation on the love for one's mother than Sokurov's Mother and Son, which at least one person loves as much as I do. Another brilliant meditation about the end of life is Angelopoulos' Eternity and a Day, though I can see why that may not appeal to the under 40 crowd, despite being such poetic cinema.

Though perhaps the filmmaker of the decade was Kiarostami (from Closeup to The Wind will Carry Us- Taste of Cherry is the one that resonated the most for me ), The Crown Jewels for me are still the two Kieslowski's (Double Life, and Blue), so I'll leave you with my short review of Blue:

The Beauty of Blue
18 November 2007

The "beauty" of Kieslowski's later films, and his cinematic imagination is particularly special in the way that it taps into and enriches the emotional, spiritual, and aesthetic content of his work.

The opening sequence to "Blue," involving the car passing through a tunnel, as we are immersed in the ambient sounds: Hearing bits of familial conversation, viewing the swish of vehicles and splash of lights through the window, followed by the passage into late afternoon light (and the silvery blue balloon being sucked out the side window, flapping in the breeze) just before the accident, is as astounding in its beauty as it is penetrating in its content....

This film is resplendent with cinematic sequences as unique and touching as its opening, and, throughout," Kieslowski's use of sound as a way to access Binoche's interior process is absolutely brilliant. Witness the sequence, when she finally feels able to step out into the world again and move into the city after the accident. She rents an apartment on an upper floor of a large, strange vacuous building, and there, that first night, through her window, witnesses the beating of a man on the street, who escapes and runs into her building, the fear on her face, as she listens to him climb the long metal escape stairway, floor by floor, still followed by his assailants, as he comes closer to her could be something out of Hitchcock, but it goes much deeper than primal fear because of everything she has gone through and is trying to recover from.

Still, it is not only the imagery (Binoche blurry through window, staring vacantly somewhere as she experiences intimate relations for the first time since the accident), or ambient sound (the sudden clamor and echo of the indoor swimming pool as she comes up for air from under water) that reflects the nature of her psyche, but Preisner's haunting music that simultaneously takes us back to her husband and her tragedy, as much as towards her recovery of self as she engages her creative process. She is a woman who has lived in the shadow of her husband, while yet participating in the creation of the very music he is famous for, and as the music enters the film, each time, it is her reflecting on and coming to terms with all that it represents to her, including, finally, the bridge to her salvation....

This is not a typical Hollywood redemption tale handing us the standard prescription for such a tale of woe, no "how to reclaim your power as a woman course 101." This is a tale of truth, and we believe Binoche every time she makes a decision because we are not only privy to her experience, but fully involved in the process of transformation that becomes her liberation.

PS. You might actually like Von Trier's Europa Zentropa, Mathew.

[blocho]

Since the last poll, I've seen 144 movies from the 1990s for an overall total of 799 movies. Here's my list:

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls066107256/
Unranked Top 19 ranked, everything else unranked

[jeff_v]

For Kieslowski, Red and Blue are faves and my made list. Double Life of Veronique was a near miss, and is due for a re-watch. I liked White too, just not enough to make the cut-off.

Nice review, @cinewest... have you read Geoff Andrews' BFI Modern Classics tome on the colours trilogy? One of my favorite volumes in the series.

[cinewest]

For Kieslowski, Red and Blue are faves and my made list. Double Life of Veronique was a near miss, and is due for a re-watch. I liked White too, just not enough to make the cut-off.

Nice review, @cinewest... have you read Geoff Andrews' BFI Modern Classics tome on the colours trilogy? One of my favorite volumes in the series.

I haven't, but thanks for the recommendation, Jeff.

[AB537]

I'm also a big fan of Kieslowski, and included all of his 1990s content on my list, with Three Colours: Red ranked particularly highly. Otherwise, my coverage of 1990s arthouse is very much a work in progress, although this seems to be a strength of my (somewhat) local DVD rental place, so it's slowly coming along.

Another director cinewest mentioned is Angelopoulos. His only film I've seen so far is Eternity and a Day, which I thought was excellent (despite being under 40!) and plan to prioritize checking out more of his films before this year is over.

[joachimt]

My list. First 58 ranked. Rest unranked.
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls565581661/