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I fully agree Michael, Maboroshi may well be THE "best" film of the decade, imho. The stillness and subtlety and the dark palette are perfectly matched. The funeral scene towards the end, with the ant-size long-shot procession against the sunset, the diagrammatic figurines crawling slowly from the right edge of the frame to the left followed by the single figure of the protagonist and culminating after several minutes of silence to one of the most pained exlamations of frustration and grief ever...everything together is cinematic perfection!

A few of my favorites that didn't make the cut:

The documentaries
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills
Heidi Fleiss: Portrait of a Hollywood Madame
and The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.

Paradise Lost is stunning expose of a small town's superstitious legal system that manages to put two seemingly innocent Metallica fans on death row. Heidi Fleiss is Nick Broomfield's doc on an LA prostitution ring and the ludicrous people involved with it. It's unabashedly sensational and surprisingly hilarious considering its subject matter. The Leni Riefenstahl doc is a portrait of a brilliant artist who also happened to use concentration camp prisoners as extras in her films. It's one of those movies you think about for days, weighing rights and wrongs.

Eastern European cinema in general didn't fare too well on the list. I voted for the Svankmeyer films Faust and Conspirators of Pleasure, two of my very favorites. The post-Soviet gangster/comedy Brother didn't make it, and neither did Black Cat, White Cat, the insanely bizarre gypsy movie by Kusturica.

Mostly I'm surprised that the existential horror film Dellamorte Dellamore [aka Cemetery Man] didn't appear on the list. It was my #1 and I highly recommend it.

Paradise Lost is stunning expose of a small town's superstitious legal system that manages to put two seemingly innocent Metallica fans on death row.

That film is so gripping. It gave me nightmares. Have you seen Brother's Keeper also by the same director? Easily one of the top 3 documentaries of all time. I wonder if Gray Matter is any good.

I don't know if I'm becoming increasingly contrarian in my selections (I don't think so; I picked quite a few films that I assumed would make the final list but didn't) or what, but it seems I have 36 darlings to defend this time around. I simply don't have time to write defenses (however brief) for all of them anytime soon (if ever; I'm getting increasingly behind in other, more high-priority projects). If there's interest I'd be glad to post the list in order without annotation, but for now I'll just single out my top darling:

My #5 choice was Djibril Diop Mambéty's outstanding 1992 film Hyenas. It's a transposition of Friedrich Dürenmatt's harrowingly satirical play "the Visit" onto a Senegalese village. Mambéty had great source material to work with, but not only did he "open up" the play by shooting in mostly outdoor locations impossible to see on a theatrical stage, he made it his own, bringing a distinctly African colonialism consciousness to the Dürenmatt's critique of avarice and individualism. Of the four Mambéty films I've seen thus far it's my favorite.

Like a couple of other posters, I feel like I'm slowly drifting out to sea like Gulley Jimson (or, to use a 90s reference, Avik in Map of the Human Heart): only eleven titles on my list made the final 100.

Contrary to some other comments, I think the 90s were a terrific time for cinema. My initial shortlist of films that had to be included in my top 50 had more than 100 titles on it, and this was the most difficult list for me to compose. (I'm still amazed that a shoo-in like Through the Olive Trees wound up in the lower sixties of my list.)

The fact is, the 90s were only a disappointment if you were looking exclusively at American commercial cinema, with its tedious studio productions and fatuous indies. Asian cinema was doing fabulous things (and not just Wong Kar-wai, though Ashes of Time made my top 30), there was a huge creative surge in Iran (and not just Kiarostami), an exciting wave of new female directors in France, and some neglected old masters (Erice, Pialat) making films as good as anything in their careers.

It's rather scary that so many films that are so recent and so good are not yet available on DVD.

So I've got darling overload and will need to do this in a couple of shifts. First, here's my top twenty:

1. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)

The greatest film by the greatest living filmmaker. A Brighter Summer Day is one of the few films I know that approaches the density and depth of a great novel, and my single viewing of the film (knowing I could only see it once, and knowing how much more Yang's films reveal on second and third viewings) remains the most exhilarating moviegoing experience of my life. Yang never needs to spell out relationships and dynamics, but the more effort you put into his films, the more you can get out of them. In this instance, even paying attention to subtle elements of sound design enhances your understanding of the narrative (as when a distinctive background noise implies a spatial relationship between two settings that is otherwise not spelt out). The storytelling in depth is a wonder to behold (an initial, throwaway encounter undergoes several different interpretations throughout the film as we gain more information, each reinterpretation impelling major developments and uncovering further levels of deception and delusion), but the film includes spectacular movie-movie moments as well, such as a battle with the lights out conveyed entirely by sound.

2. Life and Nothing More (Abbas Kiarostami, 1991)

This made the list, thank God. Kiarostami's best work to date: beautifully simple and irreducibly, self-reflexively, complex. The final shot of this film is one of the most transcendent moments in cinema.

3. The Power of Kangwon Province (Hong Sang-soo, 1998)

(I've just been trying to sell this film to a fellow forum member, so I'll recycle that sales pitch.) Hong's masterpiece and one of the greatest films of the last 30 years. In this film, we follow the tale of a group of friends who go on holiday in scenic Kangwon, have various dissatisfying experiences and then return home. The film is beautifully observed, delineates character with superb economy, and hints at all sorts of interesting back stories and implications. That's the first half of the film. At its halfway point, we return to the beginning of the film, as the girls are travelling on the train to Kangwon, but this time we follow a different set of characters over the same time frame. This second set of lives impinges significantly on the first set, and layering the two narratives fills in much of the missing background, creating a dense, satisfying world. The narratives are just brilliantly coordinated: there's even a murder mystery involving none of the central characters that we can nevertheless solve by paying close attention to background details throughout the film. The final non sequitur, involving a miraculous fish, adds an entirely new, mystical, layer to the film and its title. This is one of the best examples I know of a film that is immeasurably more than the sum of its (charming, rambling) parts: it's all in how the units of meaning interconnect.

4. Satantango (Bela Tarr, 1994)

Made the overall list on the strength of, what, three votes? The seven and a half hours don't exactly fly by: they seep into your bones, and your biorhythms slow down to match the pace. The story, which takes several hours to emerge, involves a rather cruel and joyless scam, but it's the storytelling that is the star here. The second, feature-length, episode is a five-minute short drawn out to epic length, as an old, majestically obese, doctor makes his arduous way across a forbidding nighttime landscape to replenish his depleted brandy stocks. When he arrives at the tavern, his fellow villagers are involved in a frenzied bacchanal (which he views from outside – much later we see the same scene from within), accompanied by a perky accordian tune that haunts me to this day. There's also a famous, mind-bogglingly extended sequence in which a retarded girl gradually plays a cat to death, and, towards the end, a fantastic ultra-slow zoom across the entire length of an empty church into the eyes of an impassive owl. The characters, plot and clever parallel structure keep your brain ticking along, but primarily this film is an overpowering, almost tactile, exercise in atmosphere.

5. Nenette et Boni (Claire Denis, 1996)

There are several Denis champions around here, and I was pleased to see Beau Travail act as a lightning rod – shamefully, one of only two films by women to figure on the list (what decade was this, again?). This is my personal favourite of her wonderful collection of films. The story is moving, but slight. This is a triumph of mood and technique, and includes two of the most exquisite music sequences in movies. ‘God Only Knows' accompanies a swooningly romantic extended embrace (the apotheosis of Vincent Gallo), while ‘Tiny Tears' matches its incredibly moving tune (in the sublime vibe-drenched arrangement that is surely its definitive version) to perfect visuals. Actually, the entire Tindersticks score is one of the best in recent memory.

6. The Quince Tree Sun (Victor Erice, 1992)

An unbelievable omission. An old master walks among us and we'd rather watch The Matrix?

7. In That Country (Lidia Bobrova, 1997)

Maybe even more depressing: a perfectly believable omission in this woman-free zone. Bobrova's greatest film to date: a wry, magical heartbreaker, stunningly shot. On a visit to Prague, years after seeing the film, just the sight of one of those handmade wooden birds on a market stand choked me up.

8. Sink or Swim (Su Friedrich, 1990)

A woman and an experimental filmmaker? Not a snowball's chance, even if she is American. This superb autobiographical film, which layers Su's whole messy relationship with her father into a brilliant reverse-alphabetical, forward-chronological structure (Z is for Zygote, as I recall) is a cinematic triumph and a tremendously moving confessional. Friedrich's previous companion piece about her mother, The Ties that Bind, is also well worth seeking out, though it's much more straightforwardly presented.

9. The Guard (Aleksandr Rogozhkin, 1990)

This film came out of nowhere and promptly returned there - am I the only person to have caught it? Rogozhkin has had a couple of subsequent films that have made a limited international impact (most recently The Cuckoo), but none of them have the balls of this audiacious feature, which takes fantastic liberties with conventional film grammar that pay off beautifully. For most of its length, the film relates, in black and white, the numbing drudgery of a young soldier's daily routine, and his alienation from his fellow guards. Rogozhkin's coup is to relate this tough, brutal material without any conventional cuts: every transition between shots is a dissolve, and this gives the film an incongruous, dream-like tone that perfectly reflects the main character's own dissociation from his environment. So far, an odd, interesting experiment. Then, at the climax of the film, the character flips out, and the film suddenly turns to colour, banishes the dissolves, and ends in an extended fantasy sequence that's rendered in terms of conventional cinematic realism: we, like the character, are plunged through the looking glass, and there's no return possible.

10. L'eau froid (Olivier Assayas, 1994)

Even better than Irma Vep (number 35 on my list). Assayas' contribution to the “Tous les garcons et les filles de leur ageâ€

Please keep adding to your list Zedz because I haven't heard or gotten around to seeing many of those films you are listing.

I will say however that Sink or Swim is an absolutely incredible film and very deserving of a high ranking in a 90s list. Sink or Swim is an experimental film that I often joke is an experiment that worked.

Buffalo 66 is absolutely wonderful and I will continue to praise it no matter what Gallo does to get attention nowadays.

That film is so gripping. It gave me nightmares. Have you seen Brother's Keeper also by the same director? Easily one of the top 3 documentaries of all time. I wonder if Gray Matter is any good.

Yeah, I liked Brother's Keeper a lot, but I think I prefer Grey Gardens when it comes to docs on eccentric families living in squalor.

Haven't seen Gray Matter.

But wait, there's more!

21. Screen Play (Barry Purves, 1992)

Hot on the heels of Wallace and Gromit at No. 20, this superb animated short begins gently, with an exquisite play of 2D elements (screens, dolls) evoking traditional Japanese narratives. Halfway through, there's a radical disjunction and we're plunged into the middle of the refined, drifting compositions, the remote Ozu-inflected camera suddenly becomes a headlong Tobe Hooper camera, and we're in the midst of a claymation bloodbath. This is like a puppet version of the Japanese New Wave at its most gloriously unhinged.

24. Sugar Water (Michel Gondry, 1996)

This amazing palindromic splitscreen video must have been as difficult to conceive as it was to execute. Every time I watch it, it's a small miracle. For the uninitiated, a single shot runs forward on one side of the screen and backwards on the other. At the same time, there's a general symmetry of composition and action (the girl on the left pours sugar on her head while the girl on the right pours water on hers – and, of course, ultimately, vice versa) and several (in-camera) effects that use the two screens simultaneously, such as a message that reads across both halves of the screen , or a cat that walks through a cat door on the left-hand screen and emerges on the other side on the right. In addition to this, there's even a vestigial narrative.

25. The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang, 1998)

Beckett meets Busby Berkeley. I don't know which I prefer more: the dry, absurdist (but ultimately moving) central story, or the high camp musical numbers, but they make for a curiously compelling combination.

26. Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy (Martin Arnold, 1998)

Arnold has made several films in a similar vein: taking fragments of ‘classic' cinema and obsessively ‘scratching' them to create eerie, creepy new rhythms, rendering simple, naturalistic human behaviour into uncanny, alien choreography. This is his tour de force. You'll never look at Mickey Rooney the same after this.

29. Van Gogh (Maurice Pialat, 1991)

After Andrey Rublyov and The Colour of Pomegranates (if they even count), probably the best artist biopic ever made. Actually, Pialat establishes his claim to that title in the first hour, and then the film simply becomes ever more extraordinary and sublime. The obligatory scenes are almost without exception elided, and Pialat's asceticism so completely refuses to romanticize the Artist Hero that we get right to the end of the story with dry eyes. Then there's that abrupt, curt coda. . .

30. Time Indefinite (Ross McElwee, 1994)

Less sprawling (and less funny) than the great Sherman's March, but this darker sequel digs deeper and hits harder, tackling the big themes of birth, love and death better than almost any film I know.

31. A Scene at the Sea (Kitano Takeshi, 1991)

All those Tarantinos on the list and not a single Kitano? Is this the 90s cinema list for people who hated cinema in the 90s, or what? Sonatine (which I'd honestly expected to see in the top 20 of the aggregate list) and Boiling Point were engaged in a life-and-death tussle for priority at numbers 70 and 71 on my list, but this was a no-brainer for inclusion in the top 50. Here, Kitano channels the spirit of Buster Keaton to tell a deaf surfer zen fable. It's marred only by a sappy coda of cheap memories, but the film is a masterpiece if you leave your seat just before the credits (that is, if you can see through your tears).

32. Rules of the Road (Su Friedrich, 1993)

A brilliant short composed entirely of shots-on-the-fly of similar looking (identical?) faux-wood-panelled station wagons (up close, in the distance, in unlikely places) as Su relates the sad story of her ex-girlfriend. And her car. Which seems to be following Su around. Very, very funny.

34. The Boys (Rowan Woods, 1998)

A very clever (archly achronological structure), very nasty debut feature, with a blinding central performance by David Wenham. The movie is a long, fractured descent into hell (all the more inexorable and terrifying because the hell into which we're descending lies in the past of the film), culminating in one of the most harrowing final scenes (and indelible final lines) of recent cinema. Of a handful of fine films of the late 90s clearly in the tradition of Alan Clarke (e.g. Nil by Mouth, The War Room), this was easily the best.

36. Rock Hudson's Home Movies (Mark Rappaport, 1992)

Some of the best film criticism I've ‘read.' Rappaport wittily and thoughtfully deconstructs the screen persona of a closeted gay icon, and allows Rock himself to comment on the deconstruction.

37. Mother and Son (Aleksandr Sokhurov, 1997)

Tough and intimate, with some of the most gorgeous visual effects of the decade. Sokhurov's eccentricities aren't always ideally suited to his subjects, but this is a perfect match of style and content. His best film to date.

38. Rainclouds Over Wushan (Zhang Ming, 1995)

The best Chinese film of the decade: a dark, multi-threaded story set in a valley about to be engulfed by the Yangtze River. Includes maybe the most brilliantly incongrous music cue of the decade as well (Prince's ‘Peach' – though the strategic deployment of the Beatles in The Day a Pig Fell into the Well must come close).

39. Maborosi (Hirokazu Koreeda, 1995)

Its beautiful, delicate, grief-streaked charms have been eloquently evoked by other posters. Still my favourite Kore-eda.

40. Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997)

Can't really claim to love it, but this is a hell of a film. Its sheer brilliance is indistinguishable from its sheer nastiness. My initial viewing of the film was so completely unnerving that I was very surprised to see just how inexplicit it was on recent reacquaintance. A superb deconstruction of the genre which the genre seems yet to have taken account of.

41. Three Stories (Kira Muratova, 1997)

Muratova soldiers on in her irascible, iconoclastic way. Here she relates the stories of three bad people in three very different styles. The highly stylised, almost Felliniesque, central section is the most immediately striking; and the final one the most subtle (as a cute grandchild placidly disposes of her grandfather); but the opening story has one of my favourite bits of editing in many a year when, inserted into the generally standard grammar, a single short sequence is repeated over and over again, freezing the action it captures (and its appalling implications) in amber and forcing the viewer to really see it, and really think about what they're seeing, and what it means.

42. Cremaster 2 (Matthew Barney, 1999)

Is it just a coincidence that the heterogenous elements that make up this tour de force of visual non sequiturs all seem to begin with M? Mormons, Mounties, Mediums, Magicians, Murderers, Mechanics. . . The less you think about Barney's films the better they work, and this for me was the best of the Cremaster cycle: there's plenty going on, it's consistently visually dazzling, and it lacks such bathetic elements as the lame slapstick that mars Cremaster 3.

43. The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies, 1992)

The great forgotten filmmaker of our day, it seems. A simply magical memory piece.

44. Ali Click (Jerome Lefdup / Lari Flash / Brian Eno, 1992)

(Cannabalised from my previous post in the List thread proper.) Kaleidoscopic and abstract, with unrecognisable moving image (is that the Sydney Opera House?) broken into pixillated fragments and reflected obsessively back upon themselves. A faxed and smeared Brian pops up from time to time to shout the minimal lyrics, but that's neither here nor there: what's most impressive about the video is how perfectly the pixellated abstraction is co-ordinated to match the music. To my mind, it's one of the best music / imagery blends since the heady prime of Fischinger, and that's why it made my list.

45. I Can't Sleep (Claire Denis, 1994)

The third Denis on my list. It's simply brilliant, and I think it's been eloquently and accurately defended in other threads on the forum.

46. Mana Waka (Merata Mita, 1990)

In the late 30s, in preparation for the centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, Te Puea Herangi commissioned film of the creation of several waka. This film remained unedited for fifty years, until Merata Mita transformed it into this superb, contemplative documentary in time for the 1990 celebrations. I was fortunate to attend the screening in which this taonga was returned to its tangata whenua: a wonderful experience and a wonderful film.

47. The Winslow Boy (David Mamet, 1999)

I think this is Mamet's best film: a flawless adaptation of Rattigan's play.

48. Sweetness (Rachel Davies, 1992)

A great short film in which a female actress lip syncs in close-up to a male voice relating his experiences of sexual abuse. A brilliantly simple idea that's devastatingly effective.

49. Rats in the Ranks (Robin Anderson / Bob Connolly, 1996)

A terrific verite documentary exposing the devious machinations behind a local body election in Sydney. Fantastic characters, an amazing labyrinthine plot with an unguessable denouement, and brilliantly funny.

50. Love's Debris (Werner Schroeter, 1996)

A wonderful documentary in which opera-loving Schroeter coaxes opera singers to sing their favourite love songs and speak about their own experiences of love. So far, so gorgeous. What really elevates this film into my best-of list is that is presents the incredible spectacle of (presumably) straight men conversing with one another about their own experience of and expectations about romantic love. There's a touching, exceedingly rare, vulnerability to these scenes that takes my breath away.

What the hell, here are fifty more films that deserved to be included:

Let Forever Be (Michel Gondry, 1999)
The Nasty Girl (Michael Verhoeven, 1990)
Hotel E (Priit Parn, 1992)
Suzaku (Naomi Kawase, 1996)
The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (Hong Sang-soo, 1996)
Outer Space (Peter Tscerkassky, 1999)
World of Glory (Roy Andersson, 1991)
The Tango Lesson (Sally Potter, 1997)
Calendar (Atom Egoyan, 1993)
Alone (Dmitry Kabakov, 1999)
Leche (Naomi Uman, 1999)
August in the Water (Sogo Ishii, 1995)
Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels (Chantal Akerman, 1993)
How to Survive a Broken Heart (Paul Ruven, 1990)
Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami, 1994)
Ladybird Ladybird (Ken Loach, 1994)
Tilai (Idrissa Ouedraogo, 1990)
The Match Factory Girl (Aki Kaurismaki, 1990)
Sonatine (Kitano Takeshi, 1993)
Boiling Point (Kitano Takeshi, 1990)
L'Age des Possibles (Pascale Ferran, 1995)
To the Starry Island (Park Kwang-su, 1993)
Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai, 1991)
35 Up (Michael Apted, 1991)
Vive l'Amour (Tsai Ming-liang, 1994)
Clouds of May (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 1999)
A Winter's Tale (Eric Rohmer, 1992)
A Summer's Tale (Eric Rohmer, 1996)
The Convent (Manoel de Oliveira, 1995)
Film ist (Gustav Deutsch, 1998)
One Day in September (Kevin Macdonald, 1999)
A Sense of History (Mike Leigh, 1992)
Cremaster 1 (Matthew Barney, 1996)
A Brief History of Time (Errol Morris, 1991)
The Sentimental Cop (Kira Muratova, 1992)
Drifting Clouds (Aki Kaurismaki, 1996)
Les Amants du Pont Neuf (Leos Carax, 1991)
The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993)
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (Michael Haneke, 1994)
Mr Death (Errol Morris, 1999)
Throne of Death (Murali Nair, 1999)
Diary of a Seducer (Daniele Dubroux, 1996)
The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (Djibril Diop Mambety, 1999)
Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, 1998)
The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf, 1999)
London (Patrick Keiller, 1994)
A Personal Journey through American Movies with Martin Scorsese (Martin Scorsese, 1995)
Careful (Guy Maddin, 1992)
Institute Benjamenta (Quay Brothers, 1995)
Mina Tannenbaum (Martine Dugowson, 1994)

Thanks for the suggestions zedz, there's a lot of films I havent even heard of on your list!

Great list zedz, but is this just your actual list of films you voted for or a list of films that didn't make the cut? I'm asking because Close Up (#12) and Satantango (#78) did make the final list.

I can't believe Sonatine and Audition didn't make the cut, since I thought both directors had established some mainstream credibility. I would have voted for A Brighter Summer Day, Goodbye, South, Goodbye, Funny Games, Mother and Son, and The Hole, but I figured everyone else was going to rank them fairly high and so they didn't need my help. I guess I shouldn't have assumed anything.

21. Screen Play (Barry Purves, 1992)

I actually met Barry Purves once (and used to e-mail him), and indeed this is a very impressive work (though he's one of the most impressive animators I know of in its history). I didn't vote for it since I tend to forget about most shorts while I'm making these lists (I did include the Brothers Quay "The Comb" though), but it's certainly a nice work (along with his Shakespeare films).

Over 20 films from my 50 didn't make it. My favorite film from the 90s is "Celebrity," which I understand is a fairly disliked film (though the reasons why elude me to no end). I also think "Stealing Beauty" is an excellent film, but I guess that has something to do with my love for Bertolucci (I personally think that, among other things, it's a terrific precursor to his wonderful "The Dreamers").

One question, why isn't Jeunet & Caro on this list? I thought most here liked their work. Another really great film from the 90s, Billy August's "The Best Intentions" (scripted by Ingmar Bergman) isn't on DVD yet, but that's also definitely missed.

Dylan

My numbers 1, 2, 3 & 5 didn't make it (among about 20 others).

Quickly:

1. Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (Brothers Quay)
The finest adaptation of a literary masterpiece I know of. Swiss modernist Robert Walser's fantastically strange novel Jakob von Gunten is translated onto film in the most fantastically strange way by the Brothers Quay. Incredible camera work, unforgettable score. One of my all-time favorite films.

2. The Suspended Step of the Stork (Angelopoulos)
My favorite Angelopoulos is about borders (in every conceivable way). It's a stunningly beautiful and sad film. Too bad it can't be found on video.

3. Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (aka Lumiere; Lynch)
Ok, so I ranked this really high to try and rig the list. I wanted this to make it. I think it's a marvelous piece of short film. So much in just a minute!

5. Careful (Guy Madden)
I don't even know how to describe this film. See it. A kind of homage to the Bergfilm genre of the late 20s/early 30s. Throw in the Madden touch and some more weirdness and out comes a masterpiece. Wow.

Ok, the next film on my list to not make the final cut:

10. The Spanish Prisoner (Mamet)
How didn't this make it? Such an great script, terrific acting. You can watch this over and over and put the pieces together in different ways. And that ending! It's a different film each time I see it.

I'm fairly distressed that Rushmore clocked in at #1 while Dazed and Confused didn't even make the list. Actually, I'm flabbergasted. At first I thought "generation gap," but the films were only made five years apart. For me, D&C was the most dead-on, honest, funny, and brutal portrayal of highschool years I've ever seen, while Rushmore was a fashion excercise in slick irony. I am sincerely curious why Rushmore spoke to so many while D&C obviously left no impression.

I love CAREFUL too. It's probably one of my all-time favorite movies. Only I re-wrote my list and somehow accidentally left it off!! It would have ranked in my top 10... ah well.

I don't think Tales from the Gimli Hospital surfaced on the 80s list either.

I have to admit I'm not a huge fan of Institute Benjamenta, even though it's remarkably similar to Careful. Actually I haven't finished it yet, though I intend to soon.

A few more of my favorites that didn't make it:

TAXI BLUES: Possibly the best Russian films of the 90s. A gruff taxi driver who eats fish which he stores in the sun visor meets a young, irresponsible saxophonist. They have a crazy love/hate relationship, basically symbolizing the conflict between Western ideals and those workers left in the cold with the communist regime ended. Weirdly humorous, but mostly just painful to watch. And if you like Taxi Blues, check out LUNA PARK. It's not quite as good, but the theme is similiar, and it's got punks living in an amusement park. (Is Pavel Lungin unpopular because none of his best stuff is out on DVD here?)

Also Velvet Goldmine and Doom Generation.

And also:

Young Thugs: Nostalgia: Has anyone seen this?! Audition is great but I think Young Thugs: Nostalgia is Miike's best. #2 on my list.

With Rushmore making the #1 spot, I wonder if any of you plan to check out the film for the first time or revisit it just to see what's the big fuss. I know that I'm going to watch it this weekend.

Well these were the films that didn't make it from my list:

4. Farewell My Concubine
5. Tetsuo II: Body Hammer
7. Braindead
10. Bullet In The Head
11. Dust Devil
12. Ring
13. Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky And The Media
17. The White Balloon
19. Pretty Woman
21. Indochine
23. Minbo No Onna (Anti-Extortion Woman)
25. The Last Seduction
26. Starship Troopers
27. Nikita
28. Delicatessen
29. The Blue Kite
33. Candyman
34. Urga (Close To Eden)
35. Serial Mom
36. One False Move
37. Insomnia
38. Speed
39. Titus
42. Hard-Boiled
45. La Chateu De Ma Mere
46. Le Gloire De Mon Pere
47. Scream
48. Once Upon A Time In China
49. Proof
50. Darkness In Tallinn


I tried to go for a wide range and choose representative films (so I chose only Delicatessen instead of both that and City of Lost Children so I could champion other areas, even though they both deserve to be on the list)

There were also a number of films that I voted for that I personally love but thought would not get many other votes such as Darkness In Tallinn, Dust Devil, Urga and Minbo No Onna, mainly because they might be difficult to find copies of.

I guess my taste is also pretty different from everyone elses! I thought Farewell My Concubine was a fantastic historical film - both epic and personal - I guess Indochine, La Gloire De Mon Pere/La Chateau De Ma Mere, Once Upon A Time In China, The Blue Kite, even Bullet In The Head fit into that category as well! (Surely someone else must have voted for Hard-Boiled at least???) Perhaps I overkilled on moving historical epics!

I chose The White Balloon because it is one of the few Iranian films I've seen so far, such a powerful small-scale film. The 90s list has a lot of Kiarostami of which I only have Taste Of Cherry, but haven't got to it in my pile of films yet!

I think I'm going to start a lobby for Tetsuo II as Shinya Tsukamoto's best film! I went for the original version of Ring because it seems a perfectly made horror film, tense even on repeat viewings and it trys to play fair with the audience. Even though it was good enough I don't think I'll be voting for The Ring on the 2000s list - it just came a little too late in the day for me to get excited over it. Speaking of remakes I think I'll probably be rather annoyed if the Insomnia remake even gets on the list after the original never got a placing on this one!

My taste in Hollywood films must be weird as well! The Last Sedcution and One False Move were fantastic thrillers, just as good as LA Confidential (which I also voted for). Scream was a brilliant film and I think like The Matrix its impact was lessened by the films that came later, but that shouldn't be held against the original.

I decided to vote for Pretty Woman as I am basically a big softy, and for Speed as that was another good example of how to do an action film well. I went for Candyman as the first half plays for me as a fantasy of university life and getting deeply involved in researching a topic that interests you.

Were there no votes from the John Waters fans on the forum for Serial Mom? It deserved a spot just for Kathleen Turner beating an old lady to the tune of 'Tomorrow'!

I fall on the side of Starship Troopers being one of the best satirical films I've seen with Marine Ken and Pilot Barbie and her spaceship play centre (breaks in half when the button is pressed!) fighting the giant bugs that would attack us if they had half the chance, so we might as well kill them first!

Manufacturing Consent is an interesting documentary film, and what is has to say is more important than any number of Michael Moore films and its content is so wide ranging that it is almost impossible to watch it and not have your view of the world opened up.

Proof was an absolutely fantastic film, and it was one that I was hoping Criterion would release when they were talking about adding more women directors. And what about Titus?

Finally Braindead (or Dead Alive in the US) - has no one else seen this film, which is the film by which every zombie film should be judged against! Full of moments that are funny (and sick) but which I'll always remember: drop kicking the zombie baby, the attack to the theme music of The Archers, and classic lines like "I kick arse for the Lord!", "Your mother ate my dog!", or the opening "Sengaya!", the zombie with the garden gnome head, and the ultra violence of almost the entire second half of the film building up to the lawnmower against room of zombies climax!

So many fantastic films are listed in the 90s list as it stands, but there are so many more that deserve a mention, as zedz has already shown!

I never vote strategically...that seems to mock the spirit of this endeavour!

I'm rather surprised Rushmore ranked so highly. I didn't know the love was shared. It is one of my favourites. He has a keen eye for editing and establishing characters with a few simple "brush strokes." For example, Margaret Yang has only about 30 s of screen time, and yet seems a fully developed character. A 2 s shot of her craning her neck at a science fair gives us information that would normally take 2 or 3 minutes in most movies.

Also, I wish I could have put A Brighter Summer Day on my list. I really really really want to see that movie. Damn lack of DVD.

My list had slightly more Hollywood than foreign films, but I think the 90s was a great decade for both home-grown and world cinema. I'm not sure if these really count as Hollywood movies anyway...For my missed movies:

4. Topsy-Turvy (Mike Leigh, 1999) UK
I'm rather surprised this one missed the list, although i'm glad to see other Mike Leigh on the list. This movie is so ambitious, but maybe it's too British for this board? A good look at imperialism, creative partnerships, critical evaluation of art, amongst other things.

6. Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995) UK/USA
It's so embarrassing that this is on my list so high. *sigh* but i'm not ashamed! I still cry at the end. The best Jane Austen adaptation with sublime acting from Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman and especially Hugh Grant.

9. The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1998) CAN
A great examination of grief and the responsibilities of parenthood. The accident is built up throughout the movie and when actually seen, it is more horrifying than i imagined. Amazing on the big screen.

13. Leolo (Jean-Claude Lauzon, 1992) CAN
Roger Ebert has a good discussion of this movie in his Great Films section. Amelie and Delicatessen with more edge and fury.

17. Hard Boiled (John Woo, 1992) HK
This is my favourite of John Woo's movies. Tony Leung, Chow Yun-Fat, machine guns in hospitals, what could be better?

22. Scent of Green Papaya (Tran Anh Hung, 1993) Vietnam
Still can't believe this was filmed on a soundstage in Paris.

34. The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) NZ/Aust
Damn her star has faded fast...

41. Bullets Over Broadway (Woody Allen, 1994) USA
What makes a great artist or an artist great? "Don't speak..."

Langlois68 wrote:I'm fairly distressed that Rushmore clocked in at #1 while Dazed and Confused didn't even make the list. Actually, I'm flabbergasted. At first I thought "generation gap," but the films were only made five years apart. For me, D&C was the most dead-on, honest, funny, and brutal portrayal of highschool years I've ever seen, while Rushmore was a fashion excercise in slick irony. I am sincerely curious why Rushmore spoke to so many while D&C obviously left no impression.

For me, it was because I thought others would vote for it at a rather high position, so D & C wouldn't need my help. Again, I misjudged voting patterns. It would have easily made my top 10-15 if I weren't voting strategically.

Having said that, Rushmore remains my favorite Wes Anderson film, and I'm a firm believer that Max's attempts at slick irony are the focus of Anderson/Wilson's scrutiny - it's what isolates him. In the end, Rushmore is a success because of its moments of sincerity. I'm still a bit dazed and confused about it position at #1 though.

Kambei wrote: 13. Leolo (Jean-Claude Lauzon, 1992) CAN
Roger Ebert has a good discussion of this movie in his Great Films section. Amelie and Delicatessen with more edge and fury.

...and better than both, if you ask me. It is one of the supreme masterpieces of the early 90s and I'm stunned that it did not make the list.

King of Kong wrote:

Kambei wrote: 13. Leolo (Jean-Claude Lauzon, 1992) CAN
Roger Ebert has a good discussion of this movie in his Great Films section. Amelie and Delicatessen with more edge and fury.

...and better than both, if you ask me. It is one of the supreme masterpieces of the early 90s and I'm stunned that it did not make the list.

I love the first sentence of Jonathan Rosenbaum's capsule review of Leolo:

A conclusive demonstration that it's possible to speak French, be obsessed with excretion, vomit, masturbation, obesity, and broken noses, treat the viewer to glimpses of a dead dog, dead flies, and an abused cat, and still not have an ounce of poetry in your soul.

I was "dazed and confused" about Rushmore's #1 position. You have no idea how many times I counted the votes just to make sure. None of the 30 lists that were submitted to me had Rushmore at the very top. I thought that either Goodfellas or Pulp Fiction - the most undeniably ultimate classics of the 90s - would reign the final list. And here we have - Rushmore toppling both films of monstrous caliber!

A request for the die-hard Rushmore fans, please elaborate on the greatness of the film.

Very discouraging list for me. Of mine, 36 of 50 did not make the top 100. For me, the list seems dominated by US films that are well made and enjoyable (in most cases) but are shallowly entertaining, not something that will mean a lot to me over my lifetime on a profound level.
Below is a partial list of my choices that did not make the list. It's difficult for me to try to do any justice to these and what they mean to me (and I'm not sure if anyone really cares what I voted for and why) so I'll simply list them without any defense.

Dreams (Kurosawa, 1990)
Men with Guns (John Sayles, 1997)
Lessons of Darkness (Herzog, 1992)
The Hole (Ming-liang Tsai, 1998)
Humanite (Bruno Dumont, 1999)
Maborosi (Koreeda, 1995)
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (Achbar & Wintonick, 1992)
The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997)
Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 1993)
Mahjong (Edward Yang, 1996)
Toto the Hero (Jaco van Dormael, 1991)
Flowers of Shanghai (Hsiao-hsien Hou, 1998)
Land and Freedom (Ken Loach, 1995)
Microcosmos (Claude Nurisdsany, Marie Perennou, 1996)
Henry and June (Philip Kaufman, 1990)
I Can't Sleep (Claire Denis, 1994)
Germinal (Claude Berri, 1993)
Spectres of the Spectrum (Craig Baldwin, 1999)
The Age of Innocence (Scorsese, 1993)
The Wings of the Dove (Iain Softeley, 1997)
Washington Square (Agnieszka Holland, 1997)
Foreign Land (Salles, 1996)
Central Station (Walter Salles, 1998)
The Flower of My Secret (Almodóvar, 1995)
Funny Games (Haneke, 1997)
American Dream (Barbara Kopple, 1991)
Children of Heaven (Majid Majidi, 1997)
Daytrippers (Greg Mottola, 1996)
The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)

P.S. I'm mortified that I forgot to vote for Dream of Light.

By the way, someone said in the other list project thread that this 1990s list looks just like the IMDB's rankings. That seemed true to me as well, but when I looked at the their top rated films of the 1990s here it made me feel a bit better because ours is at least a bit better than that. However, Vinterberg's outstanding The Celebration (Festen) is actually lower on our forum's poll than on the IMDB list. I recommend it highly to anyone who still has not seen it, especially because there is a R1 DVD with a pretty good transfer for less than $10 at DDD.

FilmFanSea wrote: I love the first sentence of Jonathan Rosenbaum's capsule review of Leolo

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I don't - his is a rather short-sighted assessment if you ask me... but then, each to his own, and all that sort of thing.