Schindler's List
Directed by Steven Spielberg
1993
More people have understood the Holocaust through this film than through any other: Spielberg took no fee, shot it in black and white, and gave the last word to the survivors.
★ 9.7
Browse by time · decade
1990s
1990 – 1999
Showing 107 films from the 1990s
Goodfellas
Directed by Martin Scorsese
1990
Every gangster film of the last thirty years is arguing with this one: Scorsese made the life so intoxicating for an hour that the comedown lands like a physical event.
★ 9.6
Pulp Fiction
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
1994
Young filmmakers were allowed to sound different after this one: Tarantino let two hitmen argue about hamburgers for ten minutes, and an entire decade of American cinema followed.
★ 9.5
The Silence of the Lambs
Directed by Jonathan Demme
1991
Hopkins is on screen for a fraction of the film and won an Oscar anyway: Demme shot the interviews straight down the lens so Lecter looks directly at you.
★ 8.9
The Shawshank Redemption
Directed by Frank Darabont
1994
It lost money in cinemas and has sat at the top of IMDb's ranking since 2008: a prison friendship, told patiently, that pays off better than almost anything.
★ 8.9
The Matrix
Directed by The Wachowskis
1999
Action filmmaking divides neatly into before and after this one: the Wachowskis fused Hong Kong wire work with a philosophy seminar's premise and everyone spent five years copying it.
★ 8.9
Saving Private Ryan
Directed by Steven Spielberg
1998
War films look different since the first twenty minutes of this one: Spielberg put the camera in the surf at Omaha Beach and veterans left cinemas unable to speak.
★ 8.8
Fargo
Directed by Coen Brothers
1996
Marge Gunderson is the warmest character the Coens ever wrote, and the reason this one lasts: a kidnapping goes wrong in the snow and she is the only calm person in it.
★ 8.8
Toy Story
Directed by John Lasseter
1995
First feature film animated entirely on computers, and the start of Pixar's extraordinary run: it holds up because underneath the toys it is a sharp story about jealousy.
★ 8.7
Unforgiven
Directed by Clint Eastwood
1992
Eastwood spent thirty years building the myth this film takes apart: no western has been harder on the pleasure of violence, or on the men who deal it out.
★ 8.7
Fight Club
Directed by David Fincher
1999
Twenty-five years of argument have still not settled what it is actually saying: Fincher made consumer despair look genuinely thrilling, which is either the joke or the problem.
★ 8.6
LA Confidential
Directed by Curtis Hanson
1997
Modern film noir does not get better than this: three Los Angeles cops with nothing in common, and a plot so tightly wired people rewatch it to follow the connections.
★ 8.5
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Directed by James Cameron
1991
Computer effects became believable overnight: Cameron spent more money than anyone ever had, put a liquid metal killer on screen, and every studio in town immediately started writing checks.
★ 8.2
Beau Travail
Directed by Claire Denis
1999
Denis turned Melville's Billy Budd into something closer to dance than to drama: Foreign Legionnaires drilling in the Djibouti heat, all bodies and sun and things nobody will say.
★ 8.2
Groundhog Day
Directed by Harold Ramis
1993
The title became a phrase people use without knowing the film: a comedy about repeating one day turned into the most quietly serious argument about how to live.
★ 8.2
Jurassic Park
Directed by Steven Spielberg
1993
The moment the first dinosaur appears is the moment audiences stopped trusting their own eyes: Spielberg mixed puppets and computers so well that the seams still do not show.
★ 8.2
Heat
Directed by Michael Mann
1995
Police forces train on the shootout and every heist film since has copied it: Mann also got De Niro and Pacino into one diner booth for the first time.
★ 8.1
The Big Lebowski
Directed by Coen Brothers
1998
It underwhelmed in cinemas and then grew a festival, a religion and a vocabulary: the Coens built a Chandler plot around a man whose only ambition is getting his rug replaced.
★ 8.1
Close-Up
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami
1990
Kiarostami blurred documentary and fiction so completely that nobody has quite untangled it since: a man caught impersonating a director, with everyone involved playing themselves on camera.
★ 8.1
Seven
Directed by David Fincher
1995
The studio wanted the ending changed and Fincher refused, and studios then spent a decade trying to reproduce the atmosphere: a procedural so bleak the rain never stops.
★ 8.1