Here are the best films of the 1990s according to yours truly:

     1.  Santa Sangre is a bewitching Mexican horror film concerning a circus performer and his strange relationship with his mother, who has no arms so he has to supply them for her.  The suspense is palpable and the final act is spellbinding and worthy of the best of that genre.  The last moments are cathartic and moving beyond words as it quotes the Holy Bible:  "My hands reach out to thee like a parched land."  Director Alejandro Jodorowsky is a master of the macabre.

     2.  Dark City is first-rate eye candy and superb fodder for science fiction fans and film buffs.  Writer-director Alex Proyas has conjured an intriguing concept.  The notion of "the strangers" studying humans and revising their experiment every night is haunting stuff.  This sci-fi phantasmagoria definitely has the art film chops. 

     3.  The Hairdresser's Husband is a masterwork of jolly abandon that charms with the first shot of a young boy putting on a record of Turkish music and dancing with a turban on.  The image of a smooth surface of sand being plowed through by some children is a textured composition that is a shot to look for when watching this absorbing story of a man who loves to have his hair cut by the same attractive lady hairdresser.  He marries her, plays the Turkish music he has always loved, and breaks out into joyous dance right there in the salon.  This French film is erotic and moving, especially when the man speaks of death as being lemon-scented.

     4.  Being John Malkovich, directed by Spike Jonze from a script by Charlie Kaufman, strikes a chord -- an emotional one.  The film is like a Babushka doll in the way it represents the paradox of a portal into the mind of the actor John Malkovich.  This portal is a way to live forever by jumping from him to his offspring to his offspring's offspring and so forth.  One can control the vessel body's movements like a puppet.  Some mischievous souls plot to make an enterprise out of the portal:  JM, inc.

     5.  Exotica is a glossy, spiraling narrative.  The truths and emotions in Atom Egoyan's film are so universal:  the loss of a loved one, haunting the same places (especially nightclubs), and the desire to be loved, noticed, and accepted.  The plot "unravels like an onion" (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) and serves to enrich character portraits of stunning clarity.  A man lost his wife in a car accident and his daughter was kidnapped.  All this sounds morbid, but with the use of Leonard Cohen's poetic song "Everybody Knows" twice in the film, the picture becomes a symmetrical evocation of psychology and the soul.  If this superb, twisty melodrama is to be remade (perhaps by Darren Aronofsky), I predict Matthew McConaughey as the DJ, Katie Holmes as the dancer, Sean Penn as the troubled man, and Rachel Griffiths as the nightclub owner.    

     6.  Fargo is a delicious slice of life set in Minnesota and North Dakota where some murders have taken place and a pregnant police chief uses her wits to find the culprits.  The music by Carter Burwell is trancelike and the snow photography by Roger Deakins is sheer poetry.

     7.  Pulp Fiction is the inimitable, classic masterpiece from Quentin Tarantino that uses precise dialogue to allow a window into the lives of a bunch of gangsters and a boxer who is to throw a fight and go down in the fifth round.  The briefcase with golden orange light emitting from it is a stroke of genius.

     8.  Princess Mononoke is the best animated film ever made.  The cozy ambience of Iron Town is palpable and enveloping.  "You cannot alter your fate.  You may rise to meet it if you choose," a village elder tells a prince who is afflicted by a demon's curse.  This impressive anime from Hayao Miyazaki is a meditation on the environment, pollution, and nature.  The god in the forest is a ravishing creation and the little white spirits called "sprites" are adorable.

     9.  Schindler's List is Steven Spielberg's meditation on the Holocaust and an exploration of the generosity of the businessman Oskar Schindler.  The final moments of the film are inexpressibly touching, with a silhouette at the grave of Schindler placing a rose next to all the stones placed on the grave by the survivors saved by Schindler.

     10.  A Simple Plan is an airtight thriller deep with foreboding and foreshadowing.  Sam Raimi's story about brothers who, along with a friend, find $4 million in the wreckage of a plane in the woods.  One of the brothers has a wife who has an idea to keep the money, and given the temptation who wouldn't?  (Spoiler warning) Greed and insecurity soon lead to carnage against the backdrop of snow and the bleak beauty of where the finely drawn characters live.

     Honorable Mention:  GoodFellas, The Three Colors Trilogy:  Blue, White, & Red, Hilary & Jackie, Leaving Las Vegas, Breaking the Waves, Bound, Saving Private Ryan, Pleasantville, The Sweet Hereafter, Magnolia, JFK, Three Kings, Malcolm X, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Hoop Dreams, The Piano, The Age of Innocence, Menace II Society, The Silence of the Lambs, One False Move, The Crying Game, The Joy Luck Club, Casino, Eve's Bayou, Jackie Brown, Boogie Nights, Happiness, Elizabeth, Out of Sight, Pi

Tags: Film Decade '90s

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