When the Motion Picture Academy looked at 1993, it gave its Best Picture award to Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg's attempt to find an uplifting story in a genocide. If you want a great film about life and death under Nazi rule, there are many excellent options, from The Sorrow and the Pity to Europa Europa; I don't think this one makes the cut. And if you want a great film from 1993, well...
1. Short Cuts
Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Altman and Frank Barhydt, from stories by Raymond Carver
Someday I should write a long essay on the links between highbrow hyperlink cinema and lowbrow disaster flicks. For now I'll just call this the best disaster movie ever made.
2. Groundhog Day
Directed by Harold Ramis
Written by Ramis and Danny Rubin
Buddha's favorite romantic comedy.
3. A Perfect World
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by John Lee Hancock
The joke goes that this is the picture that proved Eastwood's standing as a great director, because he managed to elicit a good performance from Kevin Costner.
4. The Nightmare Before Christmas
Directed by Henry Selick
Written by Caroline Thompson and Michael McDowell, from a story by Tim Burton
"Haven't you heard of peace on Earth and goodwill toward men?" "NO!"
5. Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
Directed by François Girard
Written by Girard, Don McKellar, and Nick McKinney
So much better than a conventional biopic.
6. Latcho Drom
Written and directed by Tony Gatlif
This celebration of Gypsy music is often described as a documentary. But the whole thing was scripted and staged, so it might make more sense to call it a hundred-minute music video.
7. Fearless
Directed by Peter Weir
Written by Rafael Yglesias, from his novel
Someone once told me he saw this on an airplane. Seems unlikely, but I was once on a plane where they showed us Apollo 13—this was back when the whole flight saw the same movie—and they somehow even timed it so that we were making our descent while we watched the spacecraft plunge to Earth, so who knows? Maybe it really happened.
8. Manhattan Murder Mystery
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Allen and Marshall Brickman
Proof that Allen could be laugh-out-loud funny as late as the 1990s.
9. Dottie Gets Spanked
Written and directed by Todd Haynes
The queer fantasies of the American family sitcom.
10. True Romance
Directed by Tony Scott
Written by Quentin Tarantino
Tony Scott does Tarantino. And a year later Tarantino got to give us his version of Top Gun, so it all evens out.
Honorable mentions:
11. The Bed You Sleep In (Jon Jost)
12. Red Rock West (John Dahl)
13. Mad Dog and Glory (John McNaughton)
14. The Scent of Green Papaya (Tran Anh Hung)
15. The Wrong Trousers (Nick Park)
16. The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (Ray Müller)
17. Body Snatchers (Abel Ferrara)
18. The Junky's Christmas (Nick Donkin, Melodie McDaniel)
19. The Hour of the Pig (Leslie Megahey)
20. Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
Of the films of 1993 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in Exterior Night.
