#1 — Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) For me, the moment that best demonstrates the brilliance of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas isn’t one of the most commonly cited. It’s not Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito asking “Funny how?” to Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number One
#2 — Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998) In Max Fischer’s dreams he can liberate his classmates from the tyranny of homework with some concerted strokes of a piece of a piece of chalk. In the waking world, triumph is a little more elusive. So begins Wes Anderson’s second feature, and, with a burst of ecstatically funny creativity, the life and aspirations of his main character are laid out. As played by Jason Schwartzman, Max believes in his own greatness with only the most simplistic idea as to what that means–the only occupations he considers viable aspirations are senator and diplomat–and he proceeds … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Two
#3 — Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) Before he was a brand, Quention Tarantino was just a filmmaker, and when Pulp Fiction arrived in 1994 he still had the capacity to surprise. It was only his second movie, after all. … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Three
#4 — Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993) In Empire magazine a couple of years ago, Francis Ford Coppola condescendingly asked Steven Spielberg (buffered by the safe distance afforded by an interlocutor) if he was going to ever make a “personal” … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Four
#5 — The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991) It didn’t occur to me at the time, but, looking back, Jonathan Demme wasn’t the most obvious choice to helm the film adaptation of Thomas Harris’s grim novel about an … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Five
#6 — Fargo (Joel Coen (and Ethan Coen) Fargo begins with a sly gag. Maybe it’s more appropriate to say it begins with a bit of a prank. A title card appears, asserting that the film that follows is based … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Six
#7 — Hoop Dreams (Steve James, 1994) There are an abundance of reasons why sports stories work so well in the movies. The nature of the games themselves offers up a nice clean narrative line, and the duel of opposing … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Seven
#8 — Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995) It can be taken as an indicator of the faultiness of my prognostication skills that I thought Toy Story would never work. I’d seen a couple of the Pixar studio shorts previously, and, while … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Eight
#9 — The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992) How long does a gag order on movie secrets last? Years before the term “spoiler alert” was coined and became part of the shared vernacular of moviegoing, Miramax was able to parlay the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Nine
#10 — Dead Man Walking (Tim Robbins, 1995) When a filmmaker is active politically outside of their chosen profession, it can disrupt the balance of their art. That’s especially true when the work in question is itself political in nature. … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Ten
Coffee for Two 