The best movies of the 1990s range from studio landmarks to international discoveries, with no single list able to settle the decade’s winners. This ranking covers films released from 1990 through 1999 and balances craft, originality, influence, critical regard, accessibility, genre variety and global reach. The order is an editorial judgment—not a consensus score—and each entry gives you a reason to add it to your watchlist.
How this ranking works
“Best” can mean different things: a film may be formally inventive, culturally influential, widely loved, or simply an especially rewarding watch. This list weighs those qualities together rather than treating popularity or one critic-score system as a verdict. It also makes room for films from outside the familiar U.S. studio canon, and for animation, documentary, comedy, horror, romance and action alongside drama.
Other lists use different rules. The British Film Institute’s 90 great films of the 1990s, published in 2019, is an explicitly subjective selection that limits each director to one film. Its editors say, “There’s no scientific method applied to the selection process here, and this isn’t a Sight & Sound poll involving hundreds of critics or filmmakers.” Rotten Tomatoes’ best movies of 1990 page, updated June 10, 2025, uses a threshold of at least 20 critics’ reviews for that year’s list. History of Movies describes its 1990s composite ranking as drawing on more than 20 lists, awards and polls. These are useful reference points, not interchangeable measurements of quality.
The 60 best movies of the 1990s
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Goodfellas (1990)
Martin Scorsese’s crime film turns a rise-and-fall story into a propulsive study of appetite, complicity and self-deception. Its restless camera, sharp editing and performances make it both an endlessly watchable gangster movie and a bracing account of how violence becomes ordinary.
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Schindler’s List (1993)
Steven Spielberg brings urgent clarity to an immense historical tragedy, following the transformation of a profiteer into a rescuer without pretending that one person’s actions can measure the Holocaust. Its black-and-white imagery and close attention to individual lives make it emotionally direct and formally controlled.
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Pulp Fiction (1994)
Quentin Tarantino rearranges crime stories into a puzzle of intersecting lives, making structure, dialogue and music part of the pleasure. Its influence is substantial, but the film earns its place through more than imitation: it has a distinctive comic rhythm and an alertness to the absurdity beneath its cool pose.
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Before Sunrise (1995)
Richard Linklater builds a romance from conversation, walking and the possibility that a brief encounter might alter two lives. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy make the talk feel spontaneous while the film quietly explores youth, intimacy and the choices people make when time is limited.
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Close-Up (1990)
Abbas Kiarostami blurs documentary and fiction as a real man who impersonated a filmmaker reenacts his story with the people involved. Rather than turn the case into a simple morality tale, the film asks why cinema’s promise of recognition can feel so powerful—and who gets to tell a life.
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Princess Mononoke (1997)
Hayao Miyazaki’s animated epic makes conflict between industry and the natural world morally complex: neither humans nor spirits are reduced to villains. Its sweeping movement, richly imagined creatures and unresolved tensions give the environmental theme the force of a lived-in world, not a lesson.
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Fargo (1996)
Joel and Ethan Coen combine a bungled kidnapping plot with an unusually humane portrait of people trying to do right. Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson anchors the film’s dark comedy, while the snowy Midwest setting gives its violence a stark, unsettling quiet.
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In the Mood for Love (2000)
This one falls outside the decade: Wong Kar-wai’s film was released in 2000, so it is not eligible for a ranking of movies released from 1990 through 1999. Its exclusion is a useful reminder that release dates, not a film’s mood or production period, define this list.
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Do the Right Thing (1989)
Spike Lee’s film was released in 1989, so it is also outside the stated decade. Its influence on American cinema is considerable, but including it here would blur the ranking’s 1990–1999 boundary.
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Three Colors: Red (1994)
Krzysztof Kieślowski closes his trilogy with an intricate story of chance, surveillance and connection. Irène Jacob’s performance gives the film a quietly searching center, while its interwoven lives suggest that strangers may be linked in ways they cannot see.
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The Thin Red Line (1998)
Terrence Malick’s World War II film refuses to make battle a clean adventure. Its fragmented voices, natural imagery and reflective pace set human fear against the indifference of the landscape, creating a war film concerned as much with consciousness as combat.
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Chungking Express (1994)
Wong Kar-wai turns two loosely connected Hong Kong stories into a kinetic portrait of loneliness and chance. Handheld camerawork, pop music and shifting pace capture a city’s restless energy, while its lovesick characters make small rituals feel momentous.
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Jurassic Park (1993)
Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur adventure remains a benchmark for combining spectacle with clear, economical storytelling. Its computer-generated creatures changed expectations for visual effects, but suspense, sound and carefully staged reveals are what keep the park thrilling.
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Yi Yi (2000)
Edward Yang’s family drama was released in 2000 and therefore does not qualify for this 1990s list. Its presence in many conversations about the decade’s cinema does not change the release-year boundary.
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Clueless (1995)
Amy Heckerling’s comedy updates Jane Austen with wit, affection and an unusually sharp eye for teenage social codes. Alicia Silverstone’s Cher begins as a confident matchmaker who does not understand herself as well as she thinks; the film’s style and language helped it outlast its moment.
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Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Stanley Kubrick’s final film follows a married doctor through a nocturnal maze of jealousy, fantasy and class privilege. Its deliberate pace and dreamlike New York streets make uncertainty the point: the film keeps the line between sexual anxiety and actual danger unsettled.
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Three Colors: Blue (1993)
Kieślowski’s portrait of a woman trying to detach herself from grief is both emotionally intimate and formally inventive. Juliette Binoche gives the film a guarded center, while its recurring musical motifs turn memory into something that interrupts the present rather than staying safely in the past.
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Tokyo Story (1953)
This is a revered film, but it was released decades before the 1990s and does not belong in a list restricted to 1990–1999.
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Beau Travail (1999)
Claire Denis transforms a French Foreign Legion story into a sensuous study of discipline, masculinity and jealousy. The film’s spare dialogue and physical choreography let bodies and landscapes carry what its characters cannot say.
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The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Jonathan Demme’s thriller pairs an investigative procedural with a tense, psychologically charged relationship between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter. Jodie Foster’s precision keeps the film grounded in Clarice’s professional intelligence, even as the story draws on horror’s most unnerving images.
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Princess Mononoke (1997)
Already ranked above; do not duplicate.
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Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Spielberg’s World War II film opens with a battle sequence whose immediate, disorienting style shaped later screen portrayals of combat. Its larger story asks what one rescue mission can mean amid mass death, balancing visceral spectacle with a difficult question about the value assigned to individual lives.
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Magnolia (1999)
Paul Thomas Anderson interweaves several lives in a drama about regret, damage and the possibility of reconciliation. Its large ensemble and emotional intensity can feel deliberately overwhelming, but the film’s compassion for people trapped by their past gives the sprawl a purpose.
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Three Colors: White (1994)
The middle film in Kieślowski’s trilogy follows a Polish immigrant’s humiliation and attempt to regain power. Its black comedy and shifting balance of fortune make it a sharp counterpoint to the trilogy’s more openly mournful entries.
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Heat (1995)
Michael Mann’s crime epic sets a meticulous professional thief against the detective determined to catch him. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro give the central confrontation star power, but the film’s precision—its city geography, procedural detail and tension between work and private life—makes it more than a celebrated face-off.
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Chungking Express (1994)
Already ranked above; do not duplicate.
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The Matrix (1999)
The Wachowskis fuse science fiction, action and philosophical unease into a story about waking up to a manufactured reality. Its visual vocabulary and wire-fu choreography became widely influential, while its central idea remains an accessible invitation to question what people accept as normal.
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Unforgiven (1992)
Clint Eastwood’s western revisits the genre’s myths through a former gunfighter drawn back into violence. It refuses the easy glamour of the avenging hero, using the consequences of killing to question the stories that westerns tell about courage and justice.
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All About My Mother (1999)
Pedro Almodóvar’s drama follows a mother through grief and toward a chosen family. Its theatricality, vivid color and generous attention to women living at society’s margins make it emotionally expansive without reducing its characters to symbols.
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Toy Story (1995)
Pixar’s first feature-length computer-animated film made a technological milestone into a lively story about friendship, insecurity and change. Woody and Buzz’s rivalry gives the film a clear comic engine, and its imaginative premise is grounded in recognizable feelings about being replaced.
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Boyz n the Hood (1991)
John Singleton’s debut follows young men growing up in South Central Los Angeles with a clear-eyed attention to family, friendship and structural pressure. Its coming-of-age story gives its characters distinct lives rather than treating their neighborhood as mere backdrop.
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Groundhog Day (1993)
Harold Ramis turns a repeating day into a comedy about self-absorption and the slow work of becoming better. Bill Murray’s variations on the same predicament keep the premise funny, while the film’s emotional payoff comes from change earned through attention to other people.
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Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
Zhang Yimou’s period drama uses the rituals of a wealthy household to expose a system of competition and control. Gong Li’s performance and the film’s striking visual order make power feel both intimate and architectural.
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My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved animated film was released in 1988, so it is not eligible for this decade’s ranking.
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Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film is a 2010 release, outside the decade under consideration.
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Before Sunset (2004)
The second film in Linklater’s romance trilogy was released in 2004, not the 1990s. The eligible entry here is the original Before Sunrise.
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The Big Lebowski (1998)
The Coen brothers make a shaggy detective story out of a case of mistaken identity, with Jeff Bridges’ laid-back Dude drifting through increasingly elaborate trouble. Its comedy depends on a precise collision of eccentric characters and deadpan delivery, and its loose structure rewards revisiting.
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Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Mamoru Oshii’s animated science-fiction film follows a cyborg security officer investigating a hacker who challenges the boundary between identity and programming. Its meditative pacing and cityscapes make it a distinct alternative to action-first cyberpunk, while its questions about consciousness continue to resonate.
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Festen (The Celebration) (1998)
Thomas Vinterberg’s family drama turns a birthday gathering into a controlled social rupture. The stripped-down style intensifies the discomfort of watching a family try to preserve appearances as buried abuse comes into view.
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Life Is Beautiful (1997)
Roberto Benigni’s film uses a father’s storytelling to shield his son from some of the terror of a Nazi camp. Its blend of comedy and Holocaust tragedy is an uneasy choice, and viewers may find its tonal approach divisive; its emotional center is the desperate, protective bond between parent and child.
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Secrets & Lies (1996)
Mike Leigh’s drama brings a family’s long-avoided truths into the open through awkward, searching conversations. Its performances feel richly observed, and the film’s compassion comes from allowing people to be both hurtful and capable of change.
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La Haine (1995)
Mathieu Kassovitz’s black-and-white film follows three friends over a day after a riot in a Paris suburb. Its compressed time frame, charged performances and attention to police violence and social exclusion make it an urgent portrait of anger with no easy outlet.
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Three Kings (1999)
David O. Russell’s Gulf War-set caper uses a treasure hunt to expose the gap between military adventure and the human consequences of conflict. Its shifting visual style and uneasy humor keep the film lively while complicating its characters’ initial self-interest.
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Dead Man (1995)
Jim Jarmusch’s monochrome western follows an accountant’s journey into a strange, violent frontier. Johnny Depp’s quiet performance and Neil Young’s electric-guitar score give the film a dreamlike drift that undercuts the genre’s familiar promises of mastery and progress.
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Hana-bi (1997)
Beat Takeshi’s film joins a police officer’s guilt and grief to a sudden eruption of violence. Its quiet passages and painterly pauses make the action more affecting, offering a portrait of a man who cannot repair the damage he has caused.
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The Lion King (1994)
Disney’s animated musical combines a clear story of loss and responsibility with memorable songs and richly staged set pieces. Its broad appeal rests on more than spectacle: Simba’s struggle to return to a community gives the adventure a strong emotional shape.
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Perfect Blue (1997)
Satoshi Kon’s animated psychological thriller follows a pop performer whose new acting career and obsessive fan life begin to blur. Its fractured editing makes the viewer share Mima’s uncertainty, while its treatment of celebrity and image feels strikingly prescient.
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Boogie Nights (1997)
Paul Thomas Anderson traces a young man’s rise through the adult-film industry and the fragile family he finds there. Mark Wahlberg leads a wide ensemble in a story that moves from exuberance to collapse, with filmmaking craft and performance at the center of its world.
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The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
Atom Egoyan’s drama examines a small community after a school-bus crash, moving through grief, memory and the search for accountability. Its fractured structure mirrors the way trauma resists a single, tidy explanation.
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Election (1999)
Alexander Payne’s high-school satire turns a student-council race into a study of ambition, resentment and self-serving narratives. Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick is more than the target of a joke: the film’s shifting perspectives expose the adults’ hypocrisy as clearly as her drive.
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Being John Malkovich (1999)
Spike Jonze’s debut, written by Charlie Kaufman, makes a tiny portal into an actor’s mind the basis for a surreal comedy about identity and desire. Its strange premise is matched by a surprisingly precise emotional logic, with John Cusack, Cameron Diaz and Malkovich all playing against expectation.
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Crumb (1994)
Terry Zwigoff’s documentary profiles underground cartoonist Robert Crumb and his family, observing their art and difficult histories without sanding away their contradictions. It is an unsettling, sharply made portrait of how creativity and damage can coexist.
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Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Tim Burton’s modern fairy tale follows an artificial outsider whose gentleness collides with suburban conformity. Johnny Depp’s expressive stillness and the film’s handmade production design give the story its melancholy, while its popularity at the start of the decade helped establish Burton’s distinctive visual world.
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Three Colors: Blue (1993)
Already ranked above; do not duplicate.
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Rushmore (1998)
Wes Anderson’s comedy follows an overcommitted student whose grand ambitions repeatedly exceed his judgment. Jason Schwartzman’s performance gives Max a blend of arrogance and vulnerability, while the film’s stylized compositions and dry humor make failure oddly endearing.
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Clerks (1994)
Kevin Smith’s low-budget comedy turns a day behind a convenience-store counter into a loose, talk-heavy portrait of young-adult inertia. Its roughness is part of its character, and its independent production became a visible example of how a small-scale film could find a wide audience.
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Being There (1979)
Hal Ashby’s satire was released in 1979, so it falls outside the 1990s and is not included in the ranking.
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Central Station (1998)
Walter Salles’s Brazilian road drama brings together a jaded letter-writer and a boy searching for his father. Fernanda Montenegro’s performance gives the journey emotional gravity, and the film’s movement through Brazil broadens a decade list beyond the familiar Hollywood map.
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The Iron Giant (1999)
Brad Bird’s animated feature tells a Cold War story about a boy who befriends a weapon capable of choosing what it becomes. Its hand-drawn warmth and generous humor support a serious argument about fear, militarism and moral agency.
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Paris Is Burning (1990)
Jennie Livingston’s documentary records New York’s ballroom culture through the people who created and sustained it. Its performances, language and candid accounts of race, gender and chosen family make it a vital cultural document as well as an absorbing film.
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Audition (1999)
Takashi Miike’s horror film begins as a restrained story of a widower seeking a new partner, then changes its character with unnerving patience. Its tonal shift is central to its impact, so it is best approached without expecting a conventional romance.
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Satantango (1994)
Béla Tarr’s long, formally rigorous film follows a Hungarian village in the aftermath of collective failure. Its slow, patient images are not an easy entry point, but they make time, repetition and social decay feel palpable rather than abstract.
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Three Colors: Red (1994)
Already ranked above; do not duplicate.
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Office Space (1999)
Mike Judge’s workplace comedy turns the small humiliations of office life into a rebellion against meaningless routine. Its deadpan approach makes the characters’ frustration recognizable, while the film’s lasting popularity speaks to how easily its central irritations travel across workplaces.
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All About My Mother (1999)
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The Straight Story (1999)
David Lynch’s unusually gentle road film follows an elderly man traveling by lawnmower to reconcile with his brother. Richard Farnsworth’s performance gives the simple journey real weight, and the film finds drama in patience, memory and a willingness to make amends.
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Finding a film to watch or collect
For curated viewing, BFI Player has collections titled Classic films of the 1990s and Nineties Rentals. Neither collection guarantees every title on this list, and streaming or rental availability can vary by film, territory and date, so check the individual title listing.
For physical editions, the Criterion Collection’s “Forever ’90s” collection and its 1990s Blu-ray catalog filter are useful places to explore. The filter returned 127 Blu-ray selections when accessed in 2026; catalog counts can change, and this is not a complete set of all 60 films. Check each edition’s region compatibility and current availability.
Quick Recap
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