Lists of Best Films--Home page
Top 20 Films from the 1990s: Robert's Picks, Ebert's, and Scorsese's

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NR. 10: Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky, USA. Requiem for a Dream is an astounding vision of the hell of drug abuse. We understand the terms of the mother's addiction, based upon her emotional state of mind before she became addicted. There are two films embedded in the one film. I think the story of the mother's addiction was superior, because it had a beginning, middle, and end. Because we had the mother's context before she became addicted, we had a better grasp of the reasons for her behavior. We saw the way the drugs reinforced her needs and then slowly began to take command of her will. The mother's precipitous drop off of the face of the earth was as tragic as King Lear's wailing on the heath in the Shakespeare play. It was tragic, because we followed the choices this woman made and realized that all of her choices led to her downfall. Her interactions with her son only furthered her downfall. The film of the mother alone made this a five-star film and one of the best films of the year. NR. 9: Alone (2000) and The Little Thief (1998), dir. Erick Zonca (France). Both films begin with a young working-class person losing his or her job. Those plot points set in motion contrary sets of actions, partly dependent upon the gender differences of the main characters. The heroine of Alone (34 minutes) descends to the streets, but does not turn to prostitution. She picks up a gun in an alley one day, tries to pawn it, and eventually is picked up by the police who find her at an outdoor café. The static shot holds on the action. After she is removed from the café, the camera remains in the same locale, and we watch a server remove the coffee cup and then wipe the counter clean--leaving no trace of this young woman. The Little Thief (1998) is an even more powerful film (running time 65 minutes) about a young man from Orleans (Zonca's home town) who is fired from his bakery job and then spurns the affections of his girlfriend and joins a smalltime gang of crooks who also hang out and work at a boxing gym. very scene affirms a gradual downward spiral of emotions and morals for this young man. Most of his non-burglary jobs consist of standing watch while prostitutes entertain customers. Eventually, circumstances catch up with him--in one of the most horrifying scenes I have ever seen. The film suggests that men have numerous options available to them--compared to women--when they are choose to step aside from mainstream society. Both films humanize disenfranchised and lost youth and make us consider how we are to blame for their plight.

NR 8: Finding Forrester, dir. Gus Van Sant. Connery is a joy to watch. In the scene when he learns that Jamal Wallace, the 16-year-old, has cracked his identity, his disquiet and anxiety are made palpable by subtle movements and expressions. He never overdoes it. Every look is understated; every line is quiet but intense. Connery is the master of all he surveys in this film. In Finding Forrester the streets of the Bronx come to life. Everywhere there are African Americans, some standing at bus shelters or street corners. The street is alive, and the emphasis is on the richness and the drama of life for the African Americans who inhabit this neighborhood. I appreciated how Van Sant decided to focus visually on African American life. Unlike so many other films about race relations, this film did more than pay lip service to the life of its African American protagonist. On the whole, I think the screenplay respected the sense of place and community that was the basis of this young man's world--a rare achievement in American film. NR. 7: Croupier, dir. Mike Hedges (UK, 1997). This film drew me in within 10 minutes with its hypnotic voice-over by the main character, Jack Manfred, the superb screenplay by Paul Mayersberg, and the seamless direction by Hodges. In short, this film was a visual and an intellectual treat for audiences. The main character is addicted to casino life, and he lives out a fantasy of control by being the croupier, the dealer of blackjack or the spinner of roulette wheels. A film like Croupier reminds us that we love to root for the hero, even if he is a flawed one. We believe in him; we believe he can change and grow. The surprise climax of the film, to me, was well-motivated and a logical expression of all aspects of the plot. The last shot of the film, when the camera follows the chips as they are swept away into the hole in the croupier's table was a perfect metaphor representing Jack's fate. This film shook me, made me think hard about male vulnerability, and left me dazzled by the virtuosity of Hodges' technique.

Nr. 6: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, dir. Ang Lee (Taiwan). The place to start is to comment on the "fight sequences." After watching the intricately staged hand-to-hand combats, I realized that they were not really physical at all. Each "fight" was a metaphor for the individual's struggle to align himself/herself with greater forces in the universe. In this film we are transported to another world, we meet a character that feels unfulfilled (despite his numerous heroic deeds), he revisits an old friend--a woman who loves him, and he meets a talented young person who could become his perfect disciple. Add to this mix another perfect fighter--but one who has gone "bad"--embraced the dark side. Then add to the mix that the potential disciple has aligned herself with the dark force, too, and you have the ingredients for a marvelous adventure. The main characters are middle-aged, and the primary love story is the one between those two characters, Li Mu Bai (played by Yun-Fat Chow) and Yu Shu Lien (played by Michelle Yeoh). When they were on the screen, I was content. The chemistry between them was obvious. NR. 5: You Can Count on Me, dir. Kenneth Lonergan. This director understands his subject matter, knows how to write dialogue for a film, and understands the complex inner life of children. In the first 20 minutes of the film I felt I knew these characters and began to care about their fate. Laura Linney's performance as Sammy (for Samantha) was right on the mark as the control-freak sister whose life is out of control. And when she felt a loss of control, she always sought instant gratification--an excellent example of how character determines plot. She was an opposite of her brother, a wanderer, pilgrim, ne'er-do-well, and lonely man who had lost his way in the world. The development of their characters stems from one plot point: the accidental death of their parents in a car crash when they were children. Neither the sister nor brother really had recovered from this loss. One became busy and got on with it; the other became a drifter and put everything off. Now the brother returns home after a failed relationship with a young woman, and the longer he stays in town, the more both characters come to grips with the awful emptiness at the center of their beings.

NR 4: Best in Show, dir. Christopher Guest. After seeing Guest's Waiting for Guffman (1997), another mock-documentary, I was primed to see this one. Within the first few scenes of the film, that audience was in the palm of the filmmaker's hand. Why? He brought five sets of characters to life. We believed in every aspect of their characters-the vehicles they drove, the dogs they associated themselves with, the intricacies of their relationships, the abnormalities of their psyches. The humor in this film was satiric, but not sharp-edged and hurtful. The foibles of humanity were front and center-as every dog or cat owner knows from experience! The mock-documentary format combined direct interview scenes (with the interviewer off camera), direct cinema scenes (following the characters around with no interruption or staging of scenes), and other direct cinema scenes of the characters actually showing their dogs at the big show. NR. 3: Not of this World, dir. Giuseppi Piccione (Italy). One day a novice, Sister Caterina (played by Marghareta Buy), is walking in a park. A man comes up to her and hands her a baby wrapped in a sweater. Then he walks away. She brings the child to a hospital, and she is told the baby eventually will be placed in adoption. But Sister Catarina keeps coming back to visit the child. Her path then crosses with Ernesto (owner of a dry cleaning firm), is magnificent as a somber, introverted man whose life is passing him by. Will they fall in love? Will she leave the sisterhood? There is a strong spiritual component that undergirds the interactions of the characters. They are searching for something, are capable of experiencing transformations, and seek to attach themselves to something greater than themselves.

NR. 2: O Brother, Where Art Thou? dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. Here is the reason I go to movies--not to be entertained, by any means, but to be stimulated, awakened, transported, transfixed, overwhelmed, and made new. All of these occurred while watching this film. In this film I was transported to a Depression-era Mississippi, a special repository of neglect, meanness, and evil in American history and culture. The Coens understand how to utilize metaphor to tell their stories. They have moved from the bleak midwinter of the northern prairies (in Fargo) to the slick skyscrapers of Manhattan, and now to the venality of the Old South. This film's first metaphor is the journey theme, as it is reflected in Homer's Odyssey (credited at the beginning of the film). In the world of this film the ancient world is compressed to a slice of the Old South--the state of Mississippi during the Great Depression--and the characters travel through its backwaters as if they were making a journey through a kind of hell on earth.

George Clooney, who has the looks of Clark Gable and the comedic talent of Gable, was magnificent in the film. His two sidekicks, played by John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson, also were perfect foils for his plotting. Turturro is a master at the supporting role; Nelson's slack-jawed expressions were timeless in this film. Add to them Ethan Coen's screenplay with well designed sequences that flow together seamlessly. The dialogue is original and convincing. These three characters emerge from the scenes as idiosyncratic, fully developed characters. All of the other characters are one-dimensional. But who cares? They play their parts and in each confrontation: a down-and-out brother who betrays them, a brassy kid who wants to join them on the road for adventure, a greedy radio station owner who presses their recording of a Depression-era classic, the hapless Governor trying to be reelected, a reform candidate with his catchy motto, the eye-patched huckster who robs our trio, George "Baby Face" Nelson on the rampage, three sirens who seduce the men, a lonely young African American they befriend, an awful encounter with the loathsome KKK, and a poignant interlude with a former wife--each step along the journey advances the story and adds layer after layer of meaning and comedy.

NR. 1: Traffic, dir. Stephen Soderbergh. Soderbergh weaves together three disparate stories--but all relating to the drug traffic from Mexico to the United States--and does so seamlessly and perfectly. I was intrigued with almost everything about this film. The three stories are separated via cinematography. The first plot strand is the story of two Mexican Federales--narcotics agents from Tijuana--and their bust of a shipment of cocaine that arrives via a small two-engine plane in the Mexican desert. All of the colors in the scenes related to these two characters are dramatically over-exposed--so much so that one almost has to wear sunglasses to watch these scenes. The visuals in another storyline (focusing on the experiences of two American narcotics agents) were similar overexposed; sometimes I had difficulty telling these two visual styles apart. But the third visual style was easy to pick up. In the scenes focusing on the experiences of a new American drug czar, all of the visuals were tinted an overexposed and unpleasant light blue or blue-gray.

The second story line focused on two American narcotics agents working out of Southern California. Don Cheadle played an African American cop, and Luis Guzman played a Latino cop. Guzman had a wonderful part in last year's Limey (also directed by Soderbergh), and he delivers the goods again. This is probably the best part Cheadle has landed as an actor--perhaps his best work since Devil in a Blue Dress (1995). As good as these two guys were, I have to highlight the work of Benicio del Toro as the Mexican drug agent (one of the Federales above). That actor has an incredibly cinematic face--eyes like two slits, lines across his forehead that suggest melancholy and world-weariness. And his role was as compelling as the one Cheadle played. The two actors (and their characters) play off of each other. The biggest lesson (theme) in the film is that people have to "think out of the box" in order to make any changes in this war against drugs. The third storyline concerns the appointment--by the President of the United States--of a new American drug czar, who is played by Michael Douglas. When I think of the 1989 mini-series Traffik, I remember the scenes of the drug czar in that film who was shocked to discover that his own daughter was a user. The outcome of these three storylines is about what one would expect it to be--bittersweet, tentative, frustrating, worrisome, and yet hopeful. Put the emphasis on the bittersweet. The best films are ones about transformation of character. And we have it here in spades. The best films are ones where big questions are posed, and there are no easy solutions provided.