Out of the thousands and thousands of movies made in the 1990's, both independent and high-budget, how many of them can you really get excited about re-visiting today? Seriously,
think about it.
How many? Would it be so many that you would need to count them on your toes as well as your fingers? Would you have enough to fill a month's viewing (watching one per day), six weeks, more? Obviously not six months. After all, the 90's weren't the 70's! I've mentioned this before but my theory is that pop culture from the 90's is in a tough place right now among the collective film conscience. Few movies made in that decade are now relevant enough for us to care about them in retrospect and yet the decade is still within viewing distance... just over the horizon, the actors/actresses/directors still around, still making movies and telling the same old stories. They aren't nostalgic enough like the films of the 80's (Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, etc) and they won't be for another 15 years - so we don't have that much affinity towards them right now. An example I always use is the
Star Trek franchise... If you watch Kirk and Spock era Trek - the bright colours, the hammy special effects, the cheesy weaponry, the men in suits over CGI - it's actually kinda cool, in an odd, comfy worn out jumper kinda way. The show is certainly way more cooler than it was when I was 7 years old and re-runs of the 60's Trek just felt old and silly. Now-a-days, watching them on DVD, they feel more modern than The Next Generation... which in comparison feels very, very worn out - dated effects, dated storylines, dated costumes, hairstyles, even dated ideas (a psychologist has a chair right next to the Captain... what?), etc. I can't watch The Next Generation Star Trek anymore, the early seasons especially. But I can watch the Kirk era, no problem. Ok... so the stories were better, the shows were better written and directed but there's more to it than that.
Having said that we have moved away from the the 1990's now and even the decade after it, and though nostalgia is still over the horizon, we can certainly get a sense of what movies are beginning to stand the test of time and which one's were just pretenders. Which movies can we look forward to showcasing to those just being born today when they are going through their movie-loving mid-teen phase in 2025. Can we come up with 12? The first movie that came to my mind was Pixar's
Toy Story. Of course more in our thoughts this year because of the revival of the franchise but the first movie still holds strong, the thematics still genuine, the animation still awe-inspiring and the emotionality in the characters still effective. It's a pinnacle movie in the history of cinema of course but as a stand alone movie, it still holds up like a Da Vinci or Carravaggio. Your turn. Can we get to 12? What other 90's movies have aged like fine wine?