The Oscar Project Interlude #7: Best of the 1990s

by Chris Marshall:

Well, the 1990s are finished. This decade in The Oscar Project took place during a time of major change in my life. I watched the first movie of the decade in somebody else’s apartment in Columbus, Ohio, because my power was out, and I watched the last while lying in bed in Smithville, Mississippi. It’s kind of hard to imagine that I wrote the first post of this series two and a half months ago when I should have been paying attention in my hierarchical linear modeling class at Ohio State.

It’s been quite a ride. When I first started in late April, I’d seen 21/84 of the winners, or 25%. Now I’ve seen 80/84, or 95%. By Tuesday, I will have seen every single one of them, which I bet very few people are able to say. There have been some really bad movies, though not as many as I expected, and some extremely good ones, many of which completely took me off guard.

The 1990s, from top to bottom, was one of the finest decades yet. The two films I dreaded most, Dances with Wolves and The English Patient, were pretty good and not as bad as I expected, respectively. The rest were all high-quality as well; there was nothing at all that I hated, and I consider that a real victory.

As always, ranking them from favorite to least favorite was a difficult choice, mostly because I’m afraid a low ranking will be translated as me not liking the movie. That’s really not the case, however. It’s not that I love Caesar less but that I love Rome more.

That being said, here we go, my penultimate top 10 of the decade.

1. Unforgiven (1992)
2. Schindler's List (1993)
3. Forrest Gump (1994)
4. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
5. Dances with Wolves (1990)
6. American Beauty (1999)
7. Titanic (1997)
8. Braveheart (1995)
9. Shakespeare in Love (1998)
10. The English Patient (1996) 

I’m still not entirely convinced about some of these placements. Does Forrest Gump really belong ahead of Silence of the Lambs? Do I actually enjoy American Beauty more than Titanic? They’re virtual ties, but I went with my typical tiebreaking procedure. If I had to watch one of them again right now, which one would I pick?

I feel like a terrible person for not putting Schindler’s List in the top spot, but I was just so, so impressed by Unforgiven. It seemed very nearly perfect, and while I do love Schindler’s List, using my metric, Unforgiven comes out on top again. I’m really excited about doing my rankings for all 84 winners in a couple of weeks. It’s going to be a Herculean effort, but I think it’ll be a lot of fun.

Palance shows he's still got at the '92 ceremony

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I was going to discuss my post-Oscar Project plans in this interlude post. There are two major reasons for this. The first is that it’s getting harder and harder to come up with anything original to say in these, and the second is that I really do have a couple of new plans, not that anybody’s been waiting on them with bated breath. 

I’ve previously mentioned my intention to do a “director of the week” column, in which I’d dedicate each week to a single director, and I’d watch and write about five movies by that person that I hadn’t seen. As the weeks have gone by, I’ve decided that’s a little too limiting. I’ll still do that column, but I’ve also added a “genre of the week” and a “franchise of the week.” There are some genres, particularly Westerns, where I’ve hardly seen anything. I really want to clear out these blind spots. Similarly, with the franchises, I’m tired of telling people, for example, that I’ve only seen one James Bond movie or that I’ve never seen Nightmare on Elm Street. With these posts, I won’t have that problem anymore!

I know that seems like a major undertaking, but that’s the plan. The Oscar Project only had about a three month lifespan, but I want this blog to have a long lifespan. I may not be posting daily anymore, but this will give me incentive to keep writing on at least a weekly basis, as well as freeing up more time to write about non-movie topics.

The final Oscar Project review post will appear on Monday, July 23, and after a couple of days of retrospective posts, it’ll be time to retire it. But there’s a brave new world out there, folks. We’ll move on to bigger and better (maybe not better) things.