The story begins as simply as the title, A Simple Plan, would imply: two brothers, Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton) and Jacob Mitchell (Billy Bob Thornton), along with Jacob’s best friend Lou Chambers (Brent Briscoe) find a crashed plane in the woods and inside a large sum of money in cash.  Lou and Jacob are both of less-than-stellar intelligence and Hank is trapped in what he perceives as a boring life, working a blue collar job at a rural feed store as a clerk, hoping one day that the owner will die and give it to him.

It seems kind of funny to me to think that having written quite a few reviews many of my favorite movies aren’t yet among them. Such is the case with Alex Proyas’ 1998 neo-noir Dark City starring Rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connelly, Kiefer Sutherland, and William Hurt in a world of perpetual darkness in an unnamed city. The city is timeless in setting and design; it features things that could make it contemporary or of pretty much any time period since the 1900s.

Let me begin by saying that yes, there are many additional indie movies which were great in the 1990s. This is a list of what I consider to be the best ten of the decade, ranked according to their greatness. You’re welcome to disagree with titles on this list, omissions, rankings, or anything else, but choices and rankings had to be made and I made them. That said, here they are….

In many ways this was the true mainstream break-through for Wes Anderson as a director, though the film maintained that independent spirit that his earlier movie Bottle Rocket made such great usage of. Jason Schwartzman stars as Max Fischer, a character of enormous depth and knowledge, perpetually a creator of clubs and a masterer of hobbies, but also a terrible student at his private school, where he is content to remain for as long as possible.