50 Best Movies of the 1990s

Hope as an active choice, not a passive feeling, patiently built over two and a half hours.

Essential and difficult, and still one of the most important films ever made.

A one-man tour through three decades of American history.

A satire so stylish that a lot of viewers missed it was a satire at all.

Redefined action choreography and mainstream sci-fi in the same two hours.

The rise-and-fall structure that every crime drama since has been measured against.

The rare sequel that's more ambitious and more emotional than the original.

Slow, heavy, and one of the more quietly devastating dramas of its era.

One of the most atmospheric detective films ever made, still unnerving.

Still the gold standard for a genuinely terrifying, Oscar-winning thriller.

A cops-and-robbers epic anchored by one legendary diner scene.

A midlife crisis that somehow made suburban dissatisfaction feel cinematic.

A genius-in-hiding story that never feels as manipulative as the premise sounds.

The first fully computer-animated feature film, and it still holds together emotionally better than most Pixar films that followed.

A premise that got more relevant with every passing year of reality TV.

A twist ending so famous it's hard to remember how shocking it was on release.

The dinosaurs still hold up better than half of what came after them. I rewatch this every couple of years just for the practical effects.

The Dude abides, and somehow the plot stopped mattering decades ago.

Two strangers, one night in Vienna, and almost nothing but conversation.

A time-loop premise that still gets remade in spirit every few years.

Sprawling, strange, and one of the most ambitious ensemble dramas of the decade.

A widow tries to disappear from her own life after losing her husband and child.

An ensemble rise-and-fall story that made a porn-industry setting feel almost tender.

Say what you want, but this was the cultural event of the decade, and it earns the three hours.

Kathy Bates as the most terrifying "number one fan" ever put on screen.

The single best "kids on bikes in summer" movie of the decade.

A portal into an actor's own mind turns into the strangest premise of the decade, played completely straight.

A prep-school overachiever's rivalry with a middle-aged industrialist, Wes Anderson's breakout.

A Christmas staple that holds up purely on slapstick craft.

You can't handle the truth, still one of the great courtroom monologues.

John McClane back in New York for the loudest entry in the trilogy.

A Hollywood screenwriter's block spirals into something much stranger inside a decaying hotel.

A courtroom comedy that's also just a genuinely good courtroom drama.

Gothic, mournful, and more interested in tragedy than shocks.

Technically about the 70s, made in the 90s, and somehow nostalgic for both eras at once.

Paul Verhoeven's gleefully violent, genuinely strange sci-fi actioner.

A mute woman communicates only through the instrument she refuses to leave behind.

Alcatraz, nerve gas, and two mismatched leads carrying the whole thing.

A sprawling ensemble of Los Angeles lives, loosely adapted from Raymond Carver's short stories.

A bus that can't slow down, and ninety minutes of real, sustained tension.

Completely unhinged premise, played with total sincerity by both leads.

Surfing bank robbers, somehow one of the most purely fun action films made.

Two suburban families unravel over one disastrous Thanksgiving weekend.

An uncomfortable, darkly comic look at a handful of deeply unhappy suburban lives.

Peak Jim Carrey physical comedy, dumb by design and better for it.

Show me the money, and somehow it still lands every single time.

Reinvented the slasher genre by having its characters know the rules of one.

Will Smith again, this time with a neuralyzer. I still can't hear the theme song without grinning.

A 90s teen classic that somehow never stops working.

James Cameron's spy-comedy hybrid, bigger and funnier than it needed to be.