Top 5 Greatest Films of the 1990's
Published:Often considered a forgotten decade in the world of cinema, the 1990’s produced more classic films than people give it credit for. When you have a decade where movies like Dances With Wolves, Unforgiven, Braveheart, and Forrest Gump DON’T make our Top 5 list, you know the five that did make it must be really incredible!
1) Schindler’s List
- Recipient of seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score
- American Film Institute ranked the film 8th on its list of the 100 best American films of all-time
- The Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2004
- Based on the life of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories
- Often listed among the greatest films ever made, it was also a box office success, earning $321.2 million worldwide on a $22 million budget
2) The Silence of the Lambs
- Seven overall Oscar nominations (five wins)
- Considered "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant by the U.S. Library of Congress and was selected to be preserved in the National Film Registry in 2011
- One of only three films to sweep all five of the major Oscars (the other two films being It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)
- Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee, seeks the advice of the imprisoned cannibal psychiatrist Dr. Lecter to apprehend another serial killer, known only as "Buffalo Bill"
- #5 Best Thriller all-time according to the American Film Institute
3) Goodfellas
- Oscars Nominated: 5
- Oscars Won: 1 (Best Supporting Actor)
- Ray Liotta & Lorraine Bracco’s breakout roles
- American Film Institute’s #92 movie of all-time
- Narrates the rise and fall of Lucchese crime family associate Henry Hill (the first-person narrator in the film) and his mafia friends over a period from 1955 to 1980
4) Fargo
- Ranked #84 on the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Films of All-Time list
- Also won the BAFTA Award and the Award for Best Director for Joel Coen at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival
- Earned seven Oscar nominations, winning two for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress
- Stars Frances McDormand as a pregnant Minnesota police chief who investigates a series of local homicides, and William H. Macy as a struggling car salesman who hires two criminals to kidnap his wife
- Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert both named Fargo the best film of 1996. It was also Ebert's fourth favorite of the 1990s
5) Pulp Fiction
- Also awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival
- Nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, and it won for Best Original Screenplay
- Selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress
- Directed in a highly stylized manner, Pulp Fiction connects the intersecting storylines of Los Angeles mobsters, fringe players, small-time criminals, and a mysterious briefcase
- Currently holds a 93% ranking on Rotten Tomatoes
