The MoFos Top 100 of the 90s Countdown - Redux

Catching up on the weekend reveals:

Dances with Wolves: Excellent film, and just missed my ballot. Oddly, I have only seen this once, and am due for a re0watch. maybe it would have made my ballot if I had seen it more recently, but I had a different historical epic on my ballot, one that looks to not make the list, which to me is just a travesty. Not sure what the argument would be for it not to even be top 100, and I will complain very loudly once this thing is all said and done, if even just to save face for now in case it sneaks in. Alas, Holden doesn't even mention it in his alternates, so I don't think it has a chance in hell at this point. No vote.

Leon: The Professional: This film has fallen off big time for me. Really stylish and well made, but some aspects of it just don't work for me these days. No vote.

The Sixth Sense: This made my ballot at #14. I have seen it many times, and it stay effective and interesting to me to this day. I really enjoy Toni Collette's performance here, and this film is much more than just the twist at the end, IMO. Sadly, that is what many people focus on exclusively.

The Lion King: This is on our screen at home fairly frequently, what with a 6 year-old in the house. I like it just fine, but never considered it for my ballot.

Scream: Big fan of this one. Briefly considered it for my ballot, but ultimately didn't include it.

Casino: Excellent film, but I had a different Scorsese on my ballot. You know, the boring obvious pick!

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Both Scream and Casino are great, but they didn't make my ballot.

Scream...not my type of movie, not at all.

Casino...I did see this back in the day because it was a period piece film. I thought it was good but I was much younger then and these days I don't do realistic & graphic violence movies, they don't set well with me.

I haven't seen the film, but Hana-bi and maybe Miller's Crossing are the ones that stuck out to me as ones with lesser chances. For what it's worth, Hana-bi was #51 in the previous 90s Countdown and #77 in the Foreign Countdown. Again, I haven't seen it so I'm not sure how appreciated or not it is here, especially in recent years. Miller's Crossing, on the other hand, did stuck out to me but it did really well in both the previous 90s Countdown (#37) and the Neo-noir Countdown (#15) so it might come up in the next 10-20.

Other than that, I really like Holden's list. I did think that Contact might also have a chance. It does seem less likely now, especially since it didn't even make the previous 90s Countdown, but who knows.

As for American History X, I think I said it on a previous countdown, but I just fail to see its relevance; not necessarily because of the film but because I really don't see its "footprint" so to speak in the overall film conversations around here or elsewhere.

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Many of these titles are on my ballot. More precisely six of them. I still keep hope for one of them. As far as I remember, it was on the upper half of the first 90s countdown.

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"Population don't imitate art, population imitate bad television." W.A.
"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." M.T.

Contact did make the MoFo Sci-Fi list, at #49. Though there were eight other '90s flicks that placed higher: Dark City, Independence Day, The Fifth Element, Total Recall, 12 Monkeys, Jurassic Park, The Matrix, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Total Recall, The Fifth Element, and 12 Monkeys have already shown, Jurassic Park, The Matrix, and T2 must be there. ID4 seems very unlikely at this point, and Dark City is seriously on the bubble. Do not suspect there is any kind of room left for Contact.

Yes, American History X's memory is fading, other than the image of the graphic curb-stomping, and in cinephile circles the fact that the authorship is somewhat disputed doesn't help. First time director Tony Kaye was forced to recut the film he had turned in, and forced to work with Edward Norton in the process, leading to Kaye trying to pull it from festivals and some referring to the released print as the "Norton Cut". Kaye petitioned the DGA to have his name removed from the credits and replaced with a pseudonym, which he was denied, and he eventually sued both the studio and the DGA. Unsuccessfully. The whole infamous episode kept him from making a second film for seven years.

All of that puts a bit of a stink on American History X, too. I don't think it has dated all that well anyway, so time plus controversy may have bumped it from the list. We will know, shortly.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Scream is a great one. Such a fun spin on the genre and it still works surprisingly well today with its meta layer and playfulness throughout. I didn’t vote for it though.

Casino is good but it doesn’t hold a candle to Scorsese’s other mob movie… although it has to be said I think I’ve only seen Casino once. So maybe a revisit is due.

It took me a while to warm up to Scorsese, I didn't care for him in my teenage years, but even now, my favorites list is a bit a** backwards from the norm. And the only 2 I really liked from him in the 90s was The Age of Innocence and Casino - which I remember not rushing out to see after some reviewers criticized Scorsese for retreading familiar territory and calling it a lesser Goodfellas. I received another lesson about thinking for myself after eventually renting the DVD and, well, call me a clown if you must, but I actually prefer this over Goodfellas. Martin might be treading on familiar territory, but the story and it's telling was far more engaging and complex, and I found it an overall steadier film, 'Fellas starts off fantastic, before sinking in the middle and falling apart at the end. (I know -gasp- "but the end has the famous dialogue about the sauce and the helicopter and all the paranoia..."). I gave it a 3 out of 5, so a passing grade, but yeah, no great love for it. But much love for Casino.

Scream didn't pass muster with me... that might be due to what you are talking about with the satire - Galaxy Quest I get, but the slasher genre, eh, I'll watch it if it's highly praised, but honestly aside from the grandpappy, Psycho, I have no love for them and no real connection, to where the satire would mean a thing to me.

BTW - thanks for the well wishes, apparently, I have a magical mystery ailment that's baffling all of the medical sciences. Might be a thing where it has to progress further before they can see what it is. We all go through something, some type of garbage, that's life, and I wouldn't be sharing my garbage save for the fact that I'm committed to this list. There is a chance I might have to break my usual early morning schedule and just post in those periods when I'm awake and lucid (like now). We'll see how it goes, but if it's ever late, fear not, it'll come.

Hopefully it isn’t anything serious. I think I can speak on behalf on the forum and say that if you have a day where you feel too unwell to post, we would understand. You’re doing a great job, regardless of

Yes, I was just about to post something similar. Your health comes first @Captain Quint!

In previous countdowns, hosts have posted four entries on days when they aren't available, so keep that in mind. Either way, wish you a speedy recovery and all the best, Quint.

I didn't rewatch Casino because I rewatched the other Scorsese and afterwards removed both of them from my preliminary list. For some reason, his films rarely resonate with me (Taxi Driver being the big exception).

Scream would be high on my list if we'd vote for the most overrated movies of all time, but we're not. I'm a horror fan, I've watched horror films for 40+ years, but Scream's meta approach does nothing for me (well, it bores me, I guess). It took me multiple attempts to finish the film in one go (things we do to pretend to be a "true" movie enthusiast). I suppose many people like it, so good for them, but for me, it's garbage.

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I just watched 5 minutes of Casino, and it's that excruciatingly annoying narration again
*removes from watchlist*

#31. Casino (1995)

I remember how I visited the theatre back then, hungry for one more great flick featuring De Niro in the lead, after the long row of highly satisfying films which I started as a schoolboy in the mid eighties: Once Upon a Time in America (1984), The Mission (1986), Angel Heart (1987), Midnight Run (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991).
Alas, I was very annoyed, finding this movie banal repetition, full of overacting. Banal gang stories, banal characters, banal situations... Yes, the cinematography was nice and only De Niro was on high level. Then, I put this title together with the names Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone on my Black List of crappy events in the cinema, ignoring everything about it for almost 30 years.
Well, about a year ago, I came across it on the cable and pushed myself to watch the entire movie again. This time, as if I liked it. Still finding Pesci and Stone not good at all but I re-evaluated the film as a whole and now I even think it would make my top 100 of the 90's (range #80-90).

I preferred Casino to Goodfellas, when I saw each in the theater on initial release. After re-watches I still did and I'm sure I still do.

I never saw Casino, because it seemed like conventional wisdom, as even voiced on SNL, I believe, that it was just him re-doing Goodfellas. I was never taken with Goodfellas, so it's never crossed my mind to watch it. What I'm reading in the last few posts is... maybe I should consider it?


Scream was a fun horror/comedy. I'm... surprised to see it this high. To some degree I wonder if the fact the franchise is still going has a halo effect on the original. Just by it putting it back in the forefront of people's minds, it increases the odds they'll include it on their ballots. (tbh, I think directors continuing to work and put out good work has such an effect on me when thinking about their earlier films, compared to other films of that era that I also might have really liked at the time, but haven't given much thought to since).

It's very Goodfellasish. I liked it better but I don't love Goodfellas and would watch Casino if someone wanted to but don't feel super-compelled to do so. It is probably Sharon Stone's best work but it's DeNiro just playing DeNiro yet again and Pesci pretty much playing that same character as well. I actually think I liked him a little better in Casino than Goodfellas too but I'm not sure they're enough alike that it's hard to say.

I love Casino, and to me, while it's not as uniquely original and frantic and insane as Goodfellas, it's more operatic in tone and larger in scope and I just like the setting, the tone, and the characters and their dynamics and relationships in Casino far, far more.

Is Casino as good of a film as Goodfellas... maybe not from a cinematic standpoint in what each achieved in relationship to what had been done before. Goodfellas was more groundbreaking and the break-neck pace is absurd, but Casino always felt more wholistic and intimate to me, where Goodfellas seemed like a series of vignettes and episodes that race and spiral out of control to the inevitable conclusion. There's a lot of that in Casino, sure, but Casino touches me emotionally and I had genuine feelings toward some of those characters and situations and it didn't leave me quite as cold as Goodfellas.

Let's be real, both Casino and Goodfellas are A or A+ films, but Casino just always meant more to me and that use of Godard's score from Contempt after watching the tragedy unfold for three hours... wow. That hit harder for me than anything in Goodfellas by the time the credits rolled.

I did not however vote for Casino, though I was a millimeter away from doing so. Instead I opted for a different Scorsese 90's film.

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Member since Fall 2002
Top 100 Films, clicky below

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Now that we've hit the seventh pit stop (30) you can either pick some Trident, play an arcade, or have a shootout with a rival hitman as we check out these stats. Just don't use the microwave oven:

Decade Breakdown

• 1990 = 5
• 1991 = 6
• 1992 = 5
• 1993 = 12
• 1994 = 8
• 1995 = 10
• 1996 = 3
• 1997 = 10
• 1998 = 4
• 1999 = 7

1993 keeps rolling with twelve (12). However, some strong showing in this batch from 1994 (3 entries), 1995 and 1999 (2 entries each). Not enough to put them at the top, but close anyway.

Repeating Directors

• Krzystof Kieslowski = 3
• Luc Besson = 2
• Richard Linklater = 2
• Wong Kar-wai = 2
• Tim Burton = 2
• Paul Verhoeven = 2
• Robert Altman = 2
• Hayao Miyazaki = 2
• Kathryn Bigelow = 2

Three new members in the group. Wong Kar-wai, Richard Linklater, and Luc Besson all with two (2) entries each while Kieslowski remains at the top; the sole director with three (3) entries so far.

Only one (1) foreign film in this batch, so we sit at fifteen (15) total, and no animated films so we remain with five (5).

Honestly, I'm kind of shocked that Scream not only made the top 100 list for the 1990's, but also that it made the list this high.

I have seen Scream precisely 1.5 times. I watched it... half of it around the time it came out when I was in high school. Yeah it was popular and as someone had mentioned "meme-able" before there were even memes. It was a pop-culture mainstay even being parodied to death in music videos around that time and also with it's own parody film, Scary Movie. Also, how many of those ridiculous vertical mouth gaping open narrow headed ghost mask things it sold, I'm sure I have no clue.

But it's not a great movie or even a good movie, and I found it to be just trying too hard with the whole breaking the fourth wall, and self-referential of the genre (meta) deconstruction of horror troupes thing going on. Whether it was satirizing the horror/slasher genre, or trying to embrace the genre, I'll leave open for debate, but considering its director Wes Craven, I'd imagine it was doing both simultaneously.

Now horror is my least favorite genre, not because I don't like the genre, but because it's so difficult to get right and so easy to get wrong and what people generally perceive as frightening typically isn't. However when horror gets it right, boy does it work marvelously... The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Eyes Without a Face, Rosemary's Baby, Suspiria, Angel Heart, The Audition, The Ring, The Witch, Midsommar, and so on. And also where is that line between a thriller and horror.

Scream does nothing to really further the genre and even as an exercise in genre-referential homage and an ode to horror, to me it fails miserably. It's too self referential and by having your characters sit around and talk about horror movies the whole time, while being in a horror film with slasher stuff going on... that doesn't make it work. How do I know this? Because 10 years or so after I had shut Scream off just because it didn't work for me, I tried, successfully, to watch the whole thing again. I understand why people like it because the sort of meta thing it had going on was fairly new and couple that with popular young stars of the day and you have a recipe for a hit. Of course Wes Craven had dabbled into this type of thing just a bit with his own New Nightmare film, but all this stuff doesn't work for me because it's still working within the confine and boundaries that the genre sets for itself. It violates the timeless "show, don't tell rule."

Scream is beyond overrated and really doesn't belong on a list like this, but that's OK.

What this also likely means is that another meta horror film, released around the same time as Scream and one that DID make my list, will likely have no shot at showing up here, which is shocking to me, because it is a well known film and was even remade 10 years or so after the original and by the same director too.

Unlike Scream which really doesn't have a single thing to say about the horror genre and thinks it can elevate it by talking it to death, the subversive and deconstruction horror film that made my top 25 list shows and shows... and shows until the audience feels emotionally drained, discomforted, and miserably sick with anguish. If Scream tries to break the fourth wall with vocal intensity and talk, talk, talk... then the meta-horror film that has a 5-percent chance of still making this list, takes a frippin' bulldozer to the fourth wall and follows that up by a sledgehammer to make sure any fragmented pieces left over are completely demolished.

Yeah, I'm sure you know which film I'm talking about. It's popular enough and it's a shame it won't show up on this list (likely) while Scream makes the cut somehow.