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
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1990
Showing 115 works across all media from 1990
Fear of a Black Planet
1990
Their production team piled so many samples into each track that the record could not legally be made today. Nothing since sounds this crowded.
★ 8.3
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
Violator
1990
The band announced a signing at a Los Angeles record shop and around seventeen thousand people came, which ended with riot police.
★ 7.9
Nothing Compares 2 USinead O'Connor
Nothing Compares 2 U
1990
Prince wrote it for a side project that went nowhere; O'Connor's tears in the video were real, and unplanned.
★ 7.9
The Things They Carried
1990 · 256 pages
O'Brien lists what a platoon in Vietnam hauled around, down to the ounce, then tells war stories and takes them back. The invented ones carry the war more exactly than facts could.
★ 7.8
Mama Said Knock You Out
1990 · From Mama Said Knock You Out
His grandmother told him to knock them out; Marley Marl looped Funky Drummer, and the Grammy followed.
★ 7.7
Enjoy the SilenceDepeche Mode
Enjoy the Silence
1990 · From Violator
Gore wrote it as a harmonium ballad; Wilder and Flood put a dance beat under it over his objections.
★ 7.6
Check the Rhime
1990 · From The Low End Theory
An Average White Band loop, Q-Tip and Phife trading lines, and a Queens rooftop that Linden Boulevard still remembers.
★ 7.6
Freedom! '90
1990
Michael refused to appear, so Fincher had five supermodels lip-sync while his Faith leather jacket burned onscreen.
★ 7.4
Vision of Love
1990
Written with Ben Margulies in a studio behind his father's cabinet factory, and the whistle-register note that reset pop singing.
★ 7.3
Friends in Low Places
1990
Bud Lee forgot his wallet, joked that he knew the cook, and Brooks took it to number one.
★ 7.3
Bonita Applebum
1990 · From People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
Q-Tip read Miles Davis on space, then rapped conversationally over a Rotary Connection loop and made desire sound utterly relaxed.
★ 7.3
Thunderstruck
1990 · From The Razors Edge
Angus called it a little guitar trick; Malcolm added the rhythm underneath, and it lands before Johnson sings a word.
★ 7.1
Miller's Crossing
Directed by Coen Brothers
1990
The Coens wrote it in the voice of a 1930s crime novel and never break character once: a hat blowing through woods is the famous image, and nobody explains it.
★ 6.9
There She GoesThe La's
There She Goes
1990
Bob Andrews cut it in 1988 to no interest; Lillywhite's remix made it Britpop's founding jangle.
★ 6.8
Man in the Box
1990 · From Facelift
Jerden heard Livin' on a Prayer driving to the studio and suggested the talk box that defines it.
★ 6.8
Friday Night Lights
A Town, A Team, And A Dream
1990 · 367 pages
Bissinger spent the 1988 season in Odessa, Texas, where a whole town's self-worth rode on schoolboy football and one black star's ruined knee took his only way out. Odessa answered with death threats.
★ 6.4