1990's Top 20

The kind of film that is above any kind of personal opinion or 'taste'. Is and will ALWAYS be a masterpiece! Gibson's first proof that he's a natural-born filmmaker.

It just doesn't get any better than this! The perfect union between drama and comedy and a lesson of film-making and acting from Benigni! Has clearly his touch in it. Simple and pure comedy! Not any kind of "intelligent" humour, just goofy and innocent... Very much Chaplin's style, brilliantly mixed with a very emotional and intense story that makes you undecided between laughing or crying... The film is clearly divided in two parts. A more "enjoyable" first one, and than a little more difficult and sad second one. As for the "so called" critics (not even a masterpiece escapes!) who said this film was irrealistic, among other barbarities, yes it can be a little irrealistic. But that's not a bad thing! I don't think Benigni's ideia was to diminish or offend the Holocaust survivors in any way. On the contrary! This is simply a story of love and above all hope, that happens to take place during the war and in a concentration camp. It has also one of the most perfect, uplifting and brilliant endings I've seen... You know those films that make you stare at the credits for a couple of minutes when it ends? (Unlike the millions whose imediate effect on you is to get up instantly, get your jacket and leave...) This is one of them! Obviously a very restricted list...

The kind of film American cinema should make at least once a year, but only does once a decade. Total perfection in almost every level. A future classic.

"Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?"



Two young men are hurtling down a street as Iggy Pop's incantatory ode to survival, "Lust for Life," blasts through an old '90s-TV speakers. A little 11-year-old boy (yours truly) watches, sitting in his couch alone, speechless. Concurrently, a voice-over, with a thick Scottish accent, sardonically disembowels society's empty exhortation to "choose life." The little boy discovers, for the first time in his life, that he doesn't want to choose life either. And that he should stay the hell away from heroin.

Trainspotting is and will always be the film that kind of took my innocence away. Once I first saw it I wasn't a little boy anymore. It's a modern-day little story about the experiences of some unrepentant Scottish junkies, yet in its opening moments, it spiritually resembles nothing so much as the Beatles' careening burst of adrenaline-charged "devil-may-care" in their introductory films, A Hard Day's Night and Help!. Hardly cute and cuddly moptops, these Trainspotting rogues are, nevertheless, driven by similarly simplistic formulas. In those films, the Beatles race along trying to stay one step ahead of crazed fans and other pursuers; action for the Trainspotting crew is solely motivated by the need to fix and score.

Instead of the social-realism approach taken by most films dealing with drug sub-cultures, Trainspotting observes its subjects with a mordant eye - an inclusive perspective that permits humour ("It's SHITE being Scottish!"), exhilaration, wit, and hyperbole to mingle with stark realism and dingy morality. Some have (falsely) interpreted this stance as a dangerous glorification of heroin, but Trainspotting really remains neutral on the subject. Heroin, with its pitfalls and pleasures, is merely a fact of life, and so are the sub-cultures and lifestyles it generates. The film does not ignore the drug's harrows, but neither does it deny heroin's intractable lure and efficacy. In fact, the film's most pathologically violent and twisted character is an alcoholic who never touches heroin.

Trainspotting plainly includes various heroin-related tragedies such as AIDS, crib death, and personal betrayal, but it also resorts frequently to humour and exaggeration in order to drive home other points. The most obvious example of this is the by-now talked about to death scene in which Renton swims into the most disgusting toilet/cesspool of feces in order to retrieve a couple of heroin suppositories he unwittingly excreted, thereby showing in an astonishingly vivid, surreal, and unforgettable manner the literal depths to which one can sink in the quest to score.



The same Scottish team (Danny Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald, screenwriter John Hodge, and Ewan McGregor) responsible for 1994's surprise low-budget hit Shallow Grave reunited here for Trainspotting despite serious wooing and many lucrative proposals from Hollywood financiers. Besides pretty much making the careers of McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Kevin McKidd and Jonny Lee Miller, Trainspotting was also Kelly Macdonald's first role. It's arguably the most important film in which all these actors were in.

At times, the Scottish accents seem difficult for everyone to penetrate (I know for a fact that even English people have a hard time understanding them), and the characters' dexterous use of slang and sub-culture references do not make things any easier. Yet the ear, if permitted, adapts quickly to the Glasgow oratory, and though some of the specifics and nuances may pass unclarified, isn't that the way of all sub-culture lingo? The on-target performances, along with the unceasing barrage of popular music and daring narrative gambles, combine to make Trainspotting one of the grand film rushes of the '90s.

"We took morphine, diamorphine, cyclizine, codeine, temazepam, nitrazepam, phenobarbitone, sodium amytal, dextropropo xyphene, methadone, nalbuphine, pethidine, pentazocine, buprenorphine, dextromoramide, chlormethiazole. The streets are awash with drugs you can have."

To say that Run, Lola, Run is an original or unique film is almost like an euphemism... I mean, more original has to be close to impossible. But the truth is that this new age, modern masterpiece deserves so much more!



It's simply one of the greatest, craziest, fastest rides you'll ever have in front of a screen! You almost feel like you're inside of a videogame, of how brilliantly real it is. I feel tempted to say that perhaps perfection in the art of filmmaking was actually reached here by Tom Tykwer. Technically one of the most amazing films I've seen to date! If there's an ideal film to be shown in any film school this is the one. Everything there is to know about Filmmaking is here. Every single technique (speed-up, instant replay, black and white, animation...) all mixed with the perfect Soundtrack. All of this put together shows perfectly Tykwer's vision. What exacly in our lives is controled by us? Can one single decision change them forever? Is there something close to faith? It's not like it's the first these concepts are put on film. Memento andThe Butterfly Effect both did it as well, with the same brilliance, but both were slow paced, thoughtful films. Lola takes you out of your seat, grabs you by the neck and only puts you down when the credits roll! Those 80 minutes just fly! We feel like it could go on for the next couple of hours. I know I wished... How many films do that? A film that will serve as an inspiration for future generations of filmmakers. Visionary!

One of Burton's masterpieces!

Classic? A film that had to be done in BW because there wasn't enough money, and still won pretty much every award it could around the world. There's no need to talk about the story or the 'substance', 'cause it's pretty much unexistent. Just an ordinary day in the life of two clerks. And still, brilliant. I still say Chasing Amy is Smith's most accomplished work, but Clerks will always be Clerks...