When the Motion Picture Academy looked back at 1992, it gave its Best Picture award to Unforgiven. And you know what? I think I agree.
1. Unforgiven
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by David Webb Peoples
Fun fact: We are now more distant from this picture's release date than it was from the release of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
2. Glengarry Glen Ross
Directed by James Foley
Written by David Mamet, from his play
It's a filmed play, and it shows. But it's also the best Mamet adaptation ever to grace the screen.
3. Brother's Keeper
Directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
How is it that two moviemakers could go to a small town, start filming the real events transpiring there, and somehow capture a story more engaging, compelling, and mysterious than almost everything produced by people who get to make shit up?
4. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Directed by David Lynch
Written by Lynch and Robert Engels
The Cannes crowd praised Lynch's Wild at Heart, and then they lacerated this nightmarish prequel to his TV series. They got it exactly backwards.
5. Reservoir Dogs
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Written by Tarantino and Roger Avary
I think I might actually be sold on Mr. Brown's Madonna theory.
6. Porco Rosso
Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, from his manga
"I'd much rather be a pig than a fascist."
7. Candyman
Directed by Bernard Rose
Written by Rose, from a story by Clive Barker
Many horror movies are based on urban legends. This one is about urban legends, and the process of cultural transmission that they represent.
8. Food
Written and directed by Jan Švankmajer
Not very appetizing.
9. The Player
Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Michael Tolkin, from his novel
"I was just thinking what an interesting concept it is to eliminate the writer from the artistic process. If we could just get rid of these actors and directors, maybe we've got something here."
10. Swoon
Written and directed by Tom Kalin
No Hitchcock remake is better than the movie that preceded it. But only because this isn't, strictly speaking, a remake of Rope.
Honorable mentions:
11. Careful (Guy Maddin)
12. Wayne's World (Penelope Spheeris)
13. My New Gun (Stacy Cochran)
14. Prime Suspect 2 (John Strickland)
15. A Brief History of Time (Errol Morris)
16. The Crying Game (Neil Jordan)
17. L.627 (Bertrand Tavernier)
18. Barjo (Jerome Boivin)
19. Léolo (Jean-Claude Lauzon)
20. Rock Hudson's Home Movies (Mark Rappaport)
Of the films of 1992 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Long Day Closes.
