The 90s were truly a time of abundance at the cinema, with so many awesome movies released. From David Fincher to the Wachowskis and from Michael Bay to the Coen Brothers, the 90s saw the rise of some of the greatest directors of our time and some of the best works of their entire careers. To celebrate this beautiful time long past, let’s dive into 7 Classic 90's Movies That Never Get Old that seem never to get old.
7. Fargo
The Coen Brothers classic, Fargo, is a darkly funny crime caper that remains poignant to this day. William H. Macy plays Jerry, a sales manager who must repay a loan. Employing two henchmen to kidnap his wife so that he can demand a ransom from his rich father-in-law, Jerry finds his plan falling apart with disastrous consequences. The Coens manage to juggle a multitude of characters without fail, with a few pivotal twists and turns that transform the story inside out. Fargo is not only endlessly rewatchable but a cultural milestone in its own right. One of the most surprisingly enduring things about the film is that people continue to search for that pile of money buried in snow in real life.
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6. The Rock
The film that put action director Michael Bay on the map, 1996’s The Rock, stars Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage. When a group of rogue soldiers seize chemical weapons and take over Alcatraz Island, it is up to incarcerated special operative Mason (Connery) and Dr Goodspeed (Cage) to find a way into the island and disable the warheads. The Rock is everything modern action movies are missing nowadays: practical effects, sympathetic villains, and one-liners that remain in the zeitgeist even after four decades. Bay, with his distinct visual style, is in top form, and his adrenaline-fueled gunfights are marvelous to look at. What makes The Rock even better is Ed Harris’s restrained villain, who manages to command both respect and sympathy from us by the very end.
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5. Con Air
7 Classic 90's Movies That Never Get Old
Another Cage classic, Simon West’s Con Air is a bare bones action film that sees a group of convicts take over a prisoner transport, flying it across the continental US with authorities in hot pursuit. Lock a bunch of crazies in a metal can 30,000 ft in the air, and what you get is a claustrophobic survival thriller that occasionally bursts into blockbuster action. With the likes of John Malkovich, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, and Dani Trejo amongst this crazed group of killers, it is up to Nicholas Cage’s meek but humble incarcerated soldier Cameron Poe to take them down. Everyone is in top form here, and it remains incredibly hard for Cage to take the spotlight away from Malkovich and Buscemi when things get tough. Con Air is blockbuster filmmaking at its finest.
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4. The Silence of the Lambs
Harboring what is perhaps the most disturbing serial killer performance of all time, The Silence of the Lambs takes you by your throat and never lets go. Jodie Foster plays novice FBI agent Clarice Starling, who is tasked with picking the mind of incarcerated serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to solve a new serial killing spree. It goes without saying that The Silence of the Lambs is a fantastic crime drama, but what remains most incredible about the film is Hopkins’s subtle yet unhinged performance as Lector. Hopkins owns every single scene he is in, conveying a sense of evil and malice that has been impossible to replicate since then. Three more sequels would follow, but would fail to capture the magic of this film but a TV series starring Mads Mikkelsen as the titular character would come quite close.
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3. Face/Off
7 Classic 90's Movies That Never Get Old
It seems the '90s were really a Nicolas Cage decade, as we have another Cage classic here in the shape of the 1996 John Woo classic Face/Off. Nicholas Cage plays terrorist Castor Troy, while John Travolta is FBI agent Sean Archer, who both undergo experimental surgeries to swap their faces to infiltrate their respective organizations. Face/Off is an unhinged, off-the-rails action bonanza that takes an outlandish idea and runs with it, never pumping its brakes in the process. Cage is subliminally crazy here, infusing his character with a believable mental disintegration the further he goes in impersonating his greatest rival. When Troy and Archer get down to brass tacks, you can cut the palpable tension in the room with a knife.
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2. Fight Club
Hot off the heels of Se7en and The Game, David Fincher scored a hat-trick when he successfully adapted the Chuck Palahniuk novel Fight Club, turning it into a masterpiece of violence and self-reflection. A critique of both hyperconsumerism and the emptiness of our collective lives brought about by capitalism, Fight Club instantly teleported to being one of the greatest cult films of all time. Starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, Fight Club excels in both the narrative and the visuals, blowing the lid off our modern societies through the eyes of the disenfranchised and the anarchists. The film remains a rite of passage for young viewers to this day and has been hailed as one of the greatest films of all time.
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1. The Matrix
7 Classic 90's Movies That Never Get Old
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Perhaps the most influential film of the last century, the Wachowski Brothers’ 1999 magnum opus, ‘The Matrix,’ is the pinnacle of action cinema and remains unbeaten to this day. Imagining a time where AI won and enslaved all of humanity into the world we see and feel today, The Matrix metastasized our collective fears about technology, control, and government before all of it happened in real life. With pitch-perfect predictions about surveillance and intelligence apparatuses, the film is undoubtedly one of the greatest films to come out of the 90s, and not only does it remain endlessly rewatchable, but also quite relevant to this day.
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Let us know in the comments what you guys think are the 7 Classic 90s movies that hold up to this day.
