The 90s in film are less complicated for me than the 2000+s. For me it's mainly Hollywood. And for Hollywood it was mainly Hollywood too.
I know it's a generalisation and one can always choose specifics, but when I think of 80s films, I think of New York - Trading Places, Wall Street, Ghostbusters, Big, Cocktail, Working Girl, Tootsie, The Secret of My Success, even the likes of Raging Bull and After Hours.
The 90s was when I learnt what California, and more, specifically LA, looked like - from Pretty Woman to Terminator 2, Short Cuts, Speed, Swingers, Heat, Boyz n the Hood, Face/Off, Usual Suspects, LA Confidential, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, The Player, The Big Lebowski.
What are 90s films like? In the most general terms. They're slick, they're thrilling. They're non-franchise. Action films, thrillers, mainstream cult films, rapidly advancing technology.
As the decade moved on, I got more and more into films and had more and more access to films. To remember that time when a film's certificate really mattered! We didn't get a video player until 1992 or 93, so that opened up the world. I'd sometimes get my sisters to get things out for me, but mostly I played it safe and got 15s. There were brilliant films on TV all the time too - a recently released film having its first TV showing was a real event. There was Moviedrome and such like. I got into De Niro from a De Niro season on, I guess, Channel 4. I remember watching British films like Hear My Song, Truly Madly Deeply, Close My Eyes, Jack and Sarah in a TV film season.
I didn't go to the cinema much in the first half of the decade - Robin Hood, Batman Forever, a few things but not loads til I had the money and time and could watch what I wanted. The first 18 I saw in the cinema was, I think, Trainspotting, a few months before my 18th.
St Andrews only had one cinema, usually with only one screen in use, but it got good films and we went all the time - will never forget the group trip to Boogie Nights when half the group thought it was going to be a fun disco-themed fiesta. In 1st year, there was a film night in my hall of residence, and I remember watching loads of decent films then too.
Even though I wasn't watching loads of films in the first half of the decade, I was paying attention - I'd read the reviews in Time Out, often of foreign films, and I paid attention to the Oscars from around 1990 - I think the British press took a real interest in them at that point because DDL, Jeremy Irons and Hopkins won Best Actor in successive years.
Who were the most 90s stars? Michael Douglas? Bruce Willis? Julia Roberts and Sharon Stone?
And what's the defining film? I reckon it's Pulp Fiction, which really felt like the start of things. It was a film I knew inside out before I'd even seen it.
If I was to pick 10 defining American films of the decade, I'd go with ...
Pretty Woman
Sleepless in Seattle
The Silence of the Lambs
Terminator 2
Jurassic Park
Basic Instinct
Pulp Fiction
Toy Story
Titanic
The Blair Witch Project
... something like that, though there are plenty of other options.
And five British? Maybe
Four Weddings
The Full Monty
Trainspotting
Howards End
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
The Coen Brothers' decade is basically faultless - Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou in 2000. Many of the main acclaimed 2000s directors are just get started - Tarantino, Wes and PT Anderson, Nolan, Linklater, Fincher, Todd Haynes and Alexander Payne.
I don't know if it goes down as one of the great decades of film, but it has a lot going for it - there are many many very enjoyable films with their own character, rather than tied to an IP. Many of the most massive films don't have a sequel - that would be unthinkable now.
Going back to De Niro, who I first paid attention to in around 94 - I was led to believe throughout the 90s that he was broadly past his prime, and not making the classics he had back in the day. But, though there are more mediocre films, more films full stop, you've still got GoodFellas, Awakenings, Backdraft, Cape Fear, This Boy's Life, A Bronx Tale, Casino, Heat, Cop Land, Jackie Brown, Wag the Dog, Ronin, Analyze This, Meet the Parents in 2000. Here are several very enjoyable films and a fair few classics. Once you get past 2000, there's barely anything that wasn 't panned or ignored for over a decade. It's pretty extraordinary.
And my favourites ... The Big Lebowki, The Commitments, Grosse Pointe Blank, Short Cuts, Dazed and Confused ... maybe? Something like that ....
But I guess the main point is that "90s film" feels like an actual thing, a somewhat coherent cultural thing in the same way as 70s film but probably not 21st century film.
It is perhaps a noteworthy thing that 13 of the Top 30 in imdb's 250 Top Films of all Time are from the 90s. The most beloved decade of a certain kind of film lover.
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