Hollywood may have embraced blockbusters in the ’90s, but it’s an underrated decade when it comes to movies.
Some of the films made during the 1990s can easily be counted among the best movies ever made.
However, the Watch With Us team feels that the Oscars only named the correct Best Picture winners three times in that decade.
That’s why we’re giving the decade a mulligan and sharing our own picks for the best movie of every year of the ’90s.
The Best Movie of 1990: ‘Goodfellas’
Nobody does crime epics quite like Martin Scorsese, but the director had the worst luck at the Oscars for decades. Goodfellas is Scorsese’s magnum opus, and it’s a mesmerizing account of the life of mobster Henry Hill that paved the way for The Sopranos nearly a decade later.
Ray Liotta plays Hill, a low-level criminal who works his way up through the Lucchese crime family alongside his best friends, James “Jimmy” Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). The camaraderie between that trio is so infectious that the audience roots for them even while they’re covering up a murder or performing other acts of violence. Pesci’s Tommy also had a memorably menacing persona, which made certain events in the film even more surprising. The sheer skill on display in this movie is staggering, and it remains a classic.
Goodfellas is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
The Best Movie of 1991: ‘Beauty and the Beast’
Beauty and the Beast made Oscar history by being the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture. It lost to The Silence of the Lambs, which is a terrific thriller, but Beauty and the Beast is a work of art that has rarely been matched by any animated movie that came after it. There is a small amount of CGI animation in the background, but the lush hand-drawn animation is timeless.
Perhaps the greatest improvement that this version makes over the fairy tale is that it gives Belle (Paige O’Hara) a distinct personality even before she meets the Beast (Robby Benson). The music and original songs also elevated this film, thanks to Disney legends Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. That duo even gave the film’s villain, Gaston (Richard White), his own hilarious show-stopping song. This film is about as close to perfection as any movie is ever going to achieve.
Beauty and the Beast is streaming on Disney+.
The Best Movie of 1992: ‘Unforgiven’
Clint Eastwood became a star by headlining Spaghetti Westerns in the ’60s, so it was only fitting that his greatest movie as an actor and a director was also a Western. Unforgiven plays like the spiritual successor to Eastwood’s earlier films as he portrays William Munny, a former outlaw turned widower and family man who can barely provide for his children.
Will’s friend, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), and a would-be bounty hunter, The Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett), nudge him out of retirement to claim the bounty on a cowboy who disfigured a prostitute. Their ambitions run afoul of Sheriff “Little Bill” Daggett (Gene Hackman), a man who is willing to murder them if they try to kill their target. This film was artfully made and would have been the perfect swansong for Eastwood if he had chosen to retire. Instead, he kept making great movies for the next three decades.
Unforgiven is streaming on MGM+.
The Best Movie of 1993: ‘Schindler’s List’
Before making Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg was primarily known for making sci-fi and fantasy movies. This was a marked departure for the director, who embraced the serious subject matter and filmed it almost entirely in black and white. It’s based on the true story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a war profiteer during World War II who employed Jewish workers during the Holocaust.
Schindler isn’t a righteous man, but he is so horrified by the atrocities that he witnesses that he dedicates himself to saving as many lives as possible. Ralph Fiennes also has a haunting turn as Amon Göth, a Nazi officer who delights in the cruelty he inflicts on his prisoners. John Williams‘ powerful score evoked empathy and sorrow, and that also went a long way towards cementing this film’s place in history.
Schindler’s List is available to buy and rent on Prime Video.
The Best Movie of 1994: ‘Pulp Fiction’
If Reservoir Dogs put Quentin Tarantino on the map, then Pulp Fiction was his coming-out party. How did Forrest Gump win Best Picture over this?! Pulp Fiction is a crime movie that’s overflowing with memorable characters, quotable lines and a non-linear narrative that actually makes it even more interesting to watch.
Multiple stories unfold during the film, most notably following the misadventures of hit men Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson). Their characters popped off the screen and gave Travolta his much-needed comeback while establishing Jackson as a star for years to come. One of the other great subplots followed boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) as he attempted to escape the wrath of crime lord Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), only to come face-to-face with the man himself. Tarantino capped it off with a soundtrack for the ages.
Pulp Fiction is streaming on Plex.
The Best Movie of 1995: ‘Braveheart’
Note that this film is the last Best Picture winner that we agree with for the ’90s. Mel Gibson was already a star when this project was made, but he established himself as a top-notch director as well and also won an Oscar in that category. This is a historical epic about the life of William Wallace (Gibson), a Scottish warrior who lived in the early 14th century.
As a boy, William witnessed the brutality of King Edward I (Patrick McGoohan) and his soldiers. As a man, Wallace dared to lead his people against the English king in a war for independence. This film isn’t strictly historical, and Gibson made some changes to the way things played out in reality. But as a rousing story about the battle for freedom, there are few better.
Braveheart is streaming on Prime Video.
The Best Movie of 1996: ‘Fargo’
When Fargo came along, there just weren’t a lot of idiosyncratic movies like this in the mainstream. Joel and Ethan Coen created a narrative for Fargo that stood apart from the pack. Even now, there aren’t many crime movies set in the Midwest that are as darkly hilarious as this one is.
Fargo walks a fine line between farce and comedy, and it does take some time to get used to the accents. Frances McDormand won Best Actress for her performance as Marge Gunderson, the police chief at the center of the film. A desperate man, Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), hires Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) and Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) to kidnap his wife, and the crime goes horribly wrong from there. This film was a game-changer, and it’s still one of the great movies of the ’90s.
Fargo is streaming on Kanopy.
The Best Movie of 1997: ‘L.A. Confidential’
From a technical standpoint and by virtue of its astounding success at the box office, Titanic was the movie of 1997. But for our money, L.A. Confidential was the film that should have won Best Picture. Director Curtis Hanson and his cowriter Brian Helgeland breathed new life into the neo-noir genre with this period film adaptation of James Ellroy‘s novel.
Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce had breakthrough performances as Officer Wendell “Bud” White and Detective Lieutenant Edmund Exley, a pair of LA cops in the 1950s who despise each other. Bud and Exley are separately drawn into seemingly unrelated cases that reveal a culture of corruption within the LAPD that neither man is prepared to confront. This movie slowly lulls its audience in before springing its biggest surprises. There are no real heroes in this Hollywood tale, and it’s a masterpiece that has never fully gotten its due.
L.A. Confidential is streaming on Plex.
The Best Movie of 1998: ‘Saving Private Ryan’
Shakespeare in Love is a very good movie, but that Best Picture winner was simply not better than Saving Private Ryan. Following his Oscar win for Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg elevated his game again with one of the most harrowing depictions of war ever put to film. This film’s opening scene is a jaw-dropping recreation of the Battle of Normandy that is shockingly brutal and bloody.
Tom Hanks leads the cast as John H. Miller, an army captain who has been tasked to find James Francis Ryan, the last surviving son of his family. It seems appropriate that James was played by Matt Damon, who was still very early in his career at the time. Miller and his men have to trudge across the European theater of war to locate James, and they soon discover that their ordeal is far from over.
Saving Private Ryan is streaming on Paramount+.
The Best Movie of 1999: ‘Fight Club’
Fight Club wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture, and contemporary critics were split over David Fincher‘s adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk‘s novel. The film took some flak for its on-screen violence and its depiction of toxic masculinity, but the satirical elements must have floated over the heads of film critics. This is one of the most bitingly funny movies of the last three decades, and it was never meant to be taken at face value.
Ed Norton stars as the unnamed narrator, an unassuming man who is befriended by Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), an extroverted Adonis who is everything that the narrator isn’t. Together, they form a fight club that attracts men with pent-up aggression and other emotional issues. However, Tyler isn’t satisfied with stopping there, and he has grander ambitions to transform society as we know it.
To say anything else would spoil some of the film’s best twists, so we’ll just leave you with this: There was no better way to close out the 20th century than the sight of the narrator and a woman named Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) watching something come crashing down.
Fight Club is available to buy and rent on Prime Video.
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