When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked at 1990, it gave its Best Picture award to a white-savior fantasy called Dances with Wolves—the movie that definitively established that a revisionist western could be boring. I prefer these:
1. Miller's Crossing
Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
A story about power, loyalty, and violence, and the ways the first item on that list depends on the other two.
2. Ju Dou
Directed by Zhang Yimou and Yang Fengliang
Written by Liu Heng
From the days when Zhang made movies that worried the Chinese authorities instead of celebrating them.
3. The Reflecting Skin
Written and directed by Philip Ridley
This would make an interesting double feature with Martin.
4. An Angel at My Table
Directed by Jane Campion
Written by Laura Jones, from the memoirs of Janet Frame
The life of Janet Frame, who endured psychiatric torture just for being a bit of a nonconformist, survived the experience, and became a successful writer.
5. The Ear
Directed by Karel Kachyňa
Written by Kachyňa and Jan Procházka, from a story by Procházka
A Czech tale of surveillance, suspicion, and domestic discord, made in 1970 but suppressed until the Velvet Revolution. It's been called a paranoid picture, but you know the saying: Even paranoids have real enemies.
6. Jacob's Ladder
Directed by Adrian Lyne
Written by Bruce Joel Rubin
Part Philip K. Dick, part Lucius Shepard, part Ambrose Bierce. Lyne's flicks are usually unwatchable, and Rubin is best known for writing the sappy Ghost; I wouldn't have expected those two to create such a riveting thriller, yet here we are.
7. Europa Europa
Directed by Agnieszka Holland
Written by Holland with Paul Hengge, from the memoirs of Solomon Perel
Schindler's List asks the audience: Would you give up your riches to save thousands of lives, or would you selfishly serve the Nazis? And us viewers allow ourselves to believe that we would be as noble as Oskar Schindler, and we pat ourselves on the back. Europa Europa, the tale of a Jewish boy passing as an Aryan in the Nazi era, asks a much trickier question: whether we'd be willing to suppress our own identity to survive, inflicting tremendous physical and emotional pain on ourselves in the process. The answer is not as easy, and the movie is much more interesting.
8. The Nasty Girl
Written and directed by Michael Verhoeven
This one is about the Germans who weren't as noble as Oskar Schindler, and how they dealt with their history after the war was over.
9. Sink or Swim
Written and directed by Su Friedrich
"She didn't know whether to feel pity or envy for the young girl who sat alone in the sunshine trying to invent a more interesting story."
10. Metropolitan
Written and directed by Whit Stillman
"I've always planned to be a failure anyway. That's why I plan to marry an extremely wealthy woman."
Honorable mentions:
11. Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston)
12. King of New York (Abel Ferrara)
13. To Sleep with Anger (Charles Burnett)
14. Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese)
15. Quick Change (Howard Franklin, Bill Murray)
16. Miami Blues (George Armitage)
17. No Fear, No Die (Claire Denis)
18. The Freshman (Andrew Bergman)
19. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami)
20. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Joe Dante)
Maybe I should create an extra ranking beyond #1—call it #0—for movies that defy ordinary aesthetic qualities, seeming somehow simultaneously to be both the best and the worst of the year. This year that slot would go to Troll 2, a Bulldada gem that feels like someone recorded a fever dream and then ran it through a buggy translation program.
Of the films of 1990 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Radio Fishtown.
