FauxNixon

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….

10. Reservoir Dogs (1992) [imdb]

With a low budget, a gritty realism, and some very hard work by Quentin Tarantino in casting, writing, directing, and acting in Reservoir Dogs, he launched himself and his writing partner Roger Avary from absolute obscurity into world famous film-makers who had definitely created something genuinely new, interesting, risky, and best of all, very successful. Stars such as Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi, Tim Roth, Lawrence Tierney, Chris Penn, and Michael Madsen line up to work in this movie and do so to huge critical acclaim.

The film’s story represents the planning and aftermath of a jewelry store robbery that goes very badly for this cast of characters and can best be explained as: six experienced criminals known to each other only by pseudonyms like Mr. Pink or Mr. Orange, are hired to rob a jewelry store. The fake names are intended to keep the security of this operation very secret and all of the criminals are instructed to never reveal anything about their personal lives to maintain this security. But when the police show up at the robbery, criminals and cops start shooting and turn the scene into a bloodbath and the viewer is left following the six remaining characters as they panic, fight, argue, and brainstorm together at a prearranged rendezvous point until they start to wonder if one of their own is either working with the police or a police officer himself.

So tight was the budget of the film that many of the costumes worn by the characters were clothes that they owned personally. The warehouse set in which the bulk of the movie takes place is actually storing coffins and according to the IMDb Trivia Page, the car that Mr. Blonde sits on is actually a hearse. Reservoir Dogs was voted Best Independent Film Ever by Empire Magazine and fifteen years later it was voted Most Influential Movie of the Past 15 Years by the same magazine. Perhaps most famous from Reservoir Dogs is Mr. Pink explaining why he doesn’t tip in restaurants or Mr. Brown talking about the real meaning of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”.

9. Fargo (1996) [imdb]

Rumored to be based on true events that happened in the late 1980s in Minnesota, Fargo burst into the independent movie world from the minds of the already acclaimed director Joel Coen, who is always teamed up with brother Ethan Coen in the writing and directing of their movies.

The movie tells the story of Jerry Lundegaard (played by William H. Macy) who gets himself into a financial bind and devises a novel scheme to get the money he needs: he’ll hire some men to kidnap his wife, get his wife’s wealthy father to pay the ransom, and then see his wife safely returned. Things go downhill for Jerry, his wife, his father-in-law, and the kidnappers from the very beginning and a dark comedy develops that is both engaging and incredibly different from many other movies. Staple actress Frances McDormand makes another appearance in this the local police officer who is at the center of the investigation which ultimately undoes the criminal scheme, but all with a chipper, almost-too-polite, mid-Western accent and charm. Steve Buscemi plays Carl Showalter, the very talkative and emotional one of the pair of thugs Jerry hires, and Peter Stormare fills out the duet as Gaear Grimsrud, who is virtually mute through the entire film.

Through all of it’s “Yahs” and “You Betchas” and strong Minnesota/North Dakota accents the whole story of this criminal enterprise comes to light and it’s Frances McDormand’s character who at the end of the movie sums up rather eloquently how silly the whole scheme was when she says, “There’s more to life than a little money…Don’tcha know that? And here ya are…and it’s a beautiful day. Well, I just don’t understand it.” Something particularly remarkable about this movie is that despite the natural and realistic dialog style which is filled with “Ums” and “Uhs” and stuttering and stammering, William H. Macy maintains that he did very little ad-libbing during the production and that virtually all of those details were actually written into the script by the Coen brothers.

Macy was an especially interesting addition to the movie as he saw how great its potential was from the very early stages and begged and pleaded to be given the role of Jerry Lundegaard, including two readings for the part. According to information on the Internet Movie Database on the subject, after all of this pleading, when the Coen brothers didn’t get back to him about the part, Macy flew to New York where they were beginning production and told them: “I’m very, very worried that you are going to screw up this movie by giving his role to somebody else. It’s my role and I’ll shoot your dogs if you don’t give it to me.” While he was kidding, this was enough to get him the part which he subsequently played wonderfully.

8. Pulp Fiction (1994) [imdb]

Just two years after the release of Reservoir Dogs Quentin Tarantino released Pulp Fiction, a look at the interaction of the lives of Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta), enforcers for gangster Marcellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), Vincent and Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) and Marcellus Wallace, and several others in a short span of time. Tarantino again teams up with Roger Avary to write this movie which is really a lot like a bunch of pulp fiction novels crammed together, but the plot works marvelously and the novel techniques Tarantino uses with his fabulous cast allows Pulp Fiction to glide easily into history as one of the more important movies ever made.

Perhaps the most telling part about the influence Pulp Fiction has had on popular culture, particularly in the United States, it’s in the quotations that can be found from the characters in the movie, including such gems as: Jules exclaiming, “What ain’t no country I ever heard of. They speak English in What?”; “English, motherfucker, do you speak it?”; The Wolf (Harvey Keitel) saying, “That’s thirty minutes away. I’ll be there in ten.”; Vincent explaining to Jules what a quarter-pounder is called in France; and of course, Jules’ favored Biblical quotation which he recites to people he is about to kill:

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

7. Se7en (1995) [imdb]

In director David Fincher’s (of The Game and Fight Club fame) first really original movie* he, with the help of screen writer Andrew Kevin Walker, crafts an intensely grotesque horror-mystery-thriller hybrid about a serial killer who is killing his victims based upon the seven deadly sins. The coloring and filming techniques make it so that it is almost palpable to feel the texture in this sullen story.

The two detectives assigned to work on the case of this serial killer are the experienced, calm, wise, and careful Detective Lt. William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) contrasted with the brash, emotional, intense, but passionate younger Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt). Throughout the elaborate sets, scenes and overall feel of this movie when the killer, played by Kevin Spacey, is finally revealed he is almost disappointing in his ordinariness. Pitt, Freeman, and Spacey give some of the best performances of their careers. Even hardcore haters of Brad Pitt are usually forced to agree that in this movie at least, he is powerful, believable, and gives a masterful performance.

It is interesting to note that in Se7en all of the building numbers are seven and the climax’s delivery is set for 7:07pm. According to the IMDb all of the books attributed to John Doe are, in fact, real, and took $15,000 and two months to create. The movie was voted the eighth scariest movie of all time by Entertainment Weekly. Listen carefully and you’ll hear the word “fuck” uttered exactly 74 times, usually by Brad Pitt’s character. If there was no other reason for some of the critics of Brad Pitt to at least admit some value to him, bear in mind that the executives with the production company originally wanted to change the ending entirely and it was only through Brad Pitt’s threat to leave the production that they backed down; he essentially prevented this movie from becoming a cookie-cutter Hollywood horror plot by putting his own financial stake and professional reputation on the line to bring us what Se7en is.

* Yes, Alien 3 was technically the first feature-length movie directed by David Fincher, but he was bound to some degree by the various frameworks of the first two Alien movies.

6. American History X (1998) [imdb]

Moving on we find another example of ultra-violence and extremely grotesque violence and hatred, this time in Tony Kaye’s American History X. Here, modern-day racism is brought to the attention of Americans through the inspired performance by Edward Norton first as an almost prodigal racist rapidly moving up the leadership chain in the Los Angeles area skinhead scene to his epiphanic realization in prison through a black friend and his character’s complete turn-around to show the true lack of value to be found in racism, Nazism, and hate itself.

Norton plays Derek Vinyard, the eldest child of a firefighter who is killed on the job, and older brother to Danny Vinyard, played by Edward Furlong, is an outright racist of the skinhead variety, complete with the shaved head, and a large swastika tattooed on his chest. He and his brother are very active in the local skinhead scene and Vinyard emerges as a young leader, temporarily allowing some additional freedom to the impoverished white people in Los Angeles against some of the other racial gangs, but Derek learns a very hard life lesson when he dispatches a would-be black car thief in a terribly graphic and intense scene of what can only be described as a “curb stomping.”

Derek goes to prison and Danny tries to takeover his role by becoming a rebel skinhead in his high school until his black principal forces him to write a paper on his brother Derek’s life and what’s become of it because of his choices and because of his hate. When Derek is released he is a matured, muted young man whose hair has noticeably filled out and whose hatred is gone after befriending a black convict inside the prison and coming to the realization that hatred really only hurts the one who is doing the hating and that there is nothing good to be found in the skinhead ideology. It’s hard to say much more without giving away important twists and the surprising ending itself, but suffice it to say that American History X is filled with great performances, brutal scenes, and a terrifyingly realistic portrayal of where a real skinhead leader may come from.

5. The Big Lebowski (1998) [imdb]

Perhaps the most famous movie from the Coen Brothers is The Big Lebowski starring Jeff Bridges as The Dude, John Goodman as the Dude’s friend Walter Sobchak, and Steve Buscemi as Donny Kerabatsos, the final member of their bowling team and the main characters of the film. There is a very dedicated cult following that considers this movie to be the best that has ever been made. What begins as a reasonably simple plot where through a case of mistaken identity the Dude is mistaken for another man worth several million dollars with a trophy wife who shares the Dude’s name, two thugs urinate on the Dude’s rug, which is said, repeatedly, “to have really tied the room together.”

What follows gets the Dude and his friends involved in a high-stakes kidnapping scheme involving the trophy wife, the multimillionaire Jeffrey Lebowski, and the hope of a quick score of money that soon seems to involve almost everyone in Southern California. The Coen Brothers have said that they wrote the screenplay with Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi and Sam Elliott in mind for their respective parts. What makes The Big Lebowski truly exceptional is its ability to bridge huge gaps in popular culture and life in Southern California during the period roughly surrounding 1990-1992, everything from German nihilists, to porn stars, to porn directors, to crippled fake businessmen looking to make extra money through convoluted ransom fraud, to bowling, to the first Gulf War, is never afraid to laugh at itself and provides a very nice contrast to the more tightly-bundled and serious Fargo which the Coen Brothers had released two years earlier. While I do not agree it is the best movie ever, it is certainly one of the best movies of the 1990s and definitely deserving of its spot on the list as one of the ten best independently produced movies of that decade.

4. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) [imdb]

Guy Ritchie seems to have made two very, very good British crime dramas and then stopped producing movies of any value whatsoever since marrying Madonna. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels was his introduction to the world audience for most people and the movie was met with absolutely rave reviews despite what some considered to be thick English accents spoken by the characters.

The movie follows a group of four friends: Tom played by Jason Flemyng, Soap played by Dexter Fletcher, Eddie played by Nick Moran, and Bacon, played by Jason Statham. The four each gather the sum of 25,000 pounds to be entrusted to Eddie in a high-stakes poker game against the wealthy, but seedy, underground London poker scene, including the character to which the four find themselves indebted: ‘Hatchet’ Harry Lonsdale (P.H. Moriarty) and his henchmen Barry the Baptist (Lenny McLean) and Big Chris (Vinnie Jones). The four find themselves owing an enormous sum of money in a ridiculously short amount of time and so they turn to crime to try to get the money so that Lonsdale will not have them killed or tortured and it is here that the criminal enterprises of the rest of London begin to meet and through a series of comedic errors which can really only be described as typically British, there is a collection of hilarious mistakes and hilarious coincidences which bring most of London’s powerful criminal underworld into an ever-more-complex situation until that situation is finally solved by many, many murders and a good deal of robbery, as well.

You may notice that the movie is dedicated to Lenny McLean who died shortly before the filming was completed. McLean was an actual bare-knuckle boxer in underground boxing contests like the ones shown in Ritchie’s followup to Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels: Snatch. A very interesting, if somewhat difficult to find, autobiography of McLean named The Guv’nor makes for an exceptionally interesting read and shows the true depth of the great life of a person who would otherwise be cast aside as easily as a nameless thug in a James Bond film.

3. The Usual Suspects (1995) [imdb]

Director Bryan Singer’s 1995 crime drama features an all-star cast, clever writing, and a massive number of twists and intricate turns in the plot which are effective in making the movie better rather than confusing or difficult to follow. The usual suspects to which the title refers are: Michael McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), Fred Fenster (Benicio Del Toro), Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollak), and Roger ‘Verbal’ Kint (Kevin Spacey).

In the aftermath of an explosion on a ship in a city’s harbor, local police detectives and a US Customs agent interview Spacey’s character to try to get the story about what really happened on the ship. Verbal’s story goes back to the hijacking of a truck carrying gun-parts in New York, after which the above-named people are gathered together in a line-up in an attempt by the police to pressure one of them into confessing to the crime. None of the criminals are so naive as to do that, so instead, they use the opportunity to network and plan a big job out West which brings them into contact with a criminal figure of mythic proportions and it is there that the plot of The Usual Suspects begins its many twists and turns. It is really quite difficult to say much about this movie, details about its production, or trivia that may be of interest without giving away major plot points, so I think it’s best that I leave this description as it is and leave it to the reader who has not yet seen the movie to experience it’s coolness without anything spoiled for them.

2. Leon aka The Professional (1994) [imdb]

Luc Besson’s movie about an Italian immigrant to America who works as a mafia hit-man and features the first appearance of a very young Natalie Portman to the big screen has two names for a couple of reasons. Many people attribute the name Leon to be simply a more fanciful title to what is called in the United States The Professional. This is a misconception, however, as the two titles refer to the two different cuts of the film which had to be made to get the film a proper release in the United States. The Professional is cut for American sensitivities and downplays the pseudo-sexual relationship between Portman’s character Matilda and Jean Reno’s Leon, the professional assassin. The relationship in the full cut Leon is, no doubt, very uncomfortable, but it is also very important to the overall plot of the movie and if you are given the opportunity to see the full, uncut version, do so.

That said, this is the story of a professional assassin named Leon (played by Jean Reno) who has immigrated to the United States, but leads a solitary and actually quite dull life in New York City. In his most recent apartment, a neighboring family includes a young girl named Matilda who is abused by her father, her mother, and her older sister and whose only real familial relationship is with her younger brother. Gary Oldman, in another fantastic role, plays a corrupt DEA agent who kills Matilda’s family over drugs and upon whom Matilda desires to seek revenge. Saved from being killed herself, Leon shelters her and tries to help her as best he can with his limited social skills, but his expectation is that the shelter is a short-term help, while Matilda decides that she will dedicate her life to Leon’s profession of professional assassination so that one day she can kill the people who killed her beloved brother.

The relationship which develops between Portman’s character and Reno’s character is what is especially interesting about this movie. Despite the creepiness of the almost romantic relationship between Matilda and Leon, no real taboos are really broken during the film’s course, but the story of Matilda’s drive for vengeance and Leon’s final act of massive killing in the name of his love of Matilda makes this movie something quite unusual and something very special.

1. American Beauty (1999) [imdb]

The final movie in the list is obvious since it is not mentioned earlier: American Beauty as directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. It is the story of a depressed, repressed father in suburbia who is alienated from his wife and daughter and has been unable to form a proper father-daughter bond with his own daughter and instead begings to develop an infatuation with one of his daughter’s friends.

Kevin Spacey plays the lead role as Lester Burnham whose life changes when a new family moves in next door whose teenage son, Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), is somehow able to cultivate the simple pleasures in life and capture their beauty on his video camera. The true power of this story is in the development and change of Lester Burnham from his repressed, unhappy, dissatisfied self into a freer, rejuvenated man who blackmails his employers for a free year of his salary, gets a job at a fast-food restaurant to avoid responsibility, begins smoking marijuana with the next-door neighbor Ricky Fiits, and exercising to tone up his body in the hopes of realizing his goal of seducing one of his daughter Jane’s (Thora Birch) friends named Angela (Mena Suvari).

With a romance blooming fully between Jane and Ricky, Lester almost has sex with Angela, but in a moment of deep clarity, sees that she is only a child and he is finally able to take on, awkwardly, a more traditional relationship of father to daughter. In the final scenes when Lester Burnham’s prediction that he will be dead within a year of the beginning of his story comes true it is left somewhat to the viewer’s imagination whether it was his bitter wife, the dejected father of Ricky Fitts whose homosexual attempt at seduction with Lester had been rejected, or Ricky in order to free Jane from the family she is so disappointed with, who shoots Lester and kills him. The plot is dense, the story is rich, the acting is superb, the premise is original, and it can all really be summed up in the last lines spoken by Kevin Spacey as he narrates the of the movie and his life:

” I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time… For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars… And yellow leaves, from the maple trees that lined my street… Or my grandmother’s hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper… And the first time I saw my cousin Tony’s brand new Firebird… And Janie… And Janie… And… Carolyn. I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me… but it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst… And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold onto it and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life… You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure, but don’t worry… You will someday.”

Honorable mention: Trainspotting (1996) and Magnolia (1999). Thanks to the Internet Movie Database, Amazon.com and various other sources for their information and fact verification.