The Best Movies of the 1990s, Ranked
The 1990s are usually described as the decade independent cinema broke through, and that is accurate but incomplete. What actually happened is that the boundary between studio and independent film stopped meaning anything, and a generation of directors who had grown up on video stores and film schools made films that were formally ambitious and commercially viable at the same time. The result is a decade with unusual range: a mob film that refuses to moralise, a prison drama that flopped and became beloved, a non-linear crime film that changed how audiences read chronology, and a science fiction film that told the audience their reality might be a cage.
How we ranked these: Films are ranked by a combination of formal achievement, influence on subsequent filmmaking, and how well they hold up on rewatch. We have not weighted box office or awards, both of which are poor measures of quality. Only films with a full review in our collection are eligible.
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1. Goodfellas
The decade's definitive crime film and the one that made every subsequent mob picture look theatrical. Scorsese covers thirty years without a wasted scene and refuses to explain his own morality, which is why it has been imitated constantly and equalled never.
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2. The Shawshank Redemption
Two hours of patience followed by the most satisfying third act of the decade. It flopped on release and built its reputation entirely through home video, which is a rare trajectory and a reminder that initial reception is often wrong.
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3. Pulp Fiction
The film that made non-linear storytelling mainstream. Its chronology is load-bearing rather than decorative, and the final diner scene retroactively justifies everything before it.
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4. The Silence of the Lambs
One of only three films to win all five major Academy Awards, and the only horror-adjacent thriller to do so. Demme's direct-address camera makes the audience complicit in the scrutiny Clarice is under.
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5. The Matrix
A perfectly timed synthesis of Hong Kong action, cyberpunk aesthetics, and undergraduate philosophy. Its ideas are shallower than its reputation suggests and its action is better than almost anything that copied it.
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6. Se7en
A studio thriller that behaves like a horror film and refuses every genre comfort. Khondji's bleach-bypass photography remains one of the most imitated looks in cinema.
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7. Forrest Gump
Technically superb and emotionally effective, with a politics that has aged less gracefully than its craft. Its treatment of Jenny is the clearest evidence of its conservative instincts.
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8. Fight Club
Formally brilliant and thematically muddled. Fincher's control is total and the twist is properly constructed, but the ending resolves aesthetically without any moral reckoning.
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9. Toy Story
The first fully computer-animated feature and, more importantly, one of the best-constructed screenplays in the Pixar catalogue. Eighty-one minutes with no filler.
Frequently asked questions
What was the defining film of the 1990s?
Pulp Fiction for its influence on structure and dialogue, and Goodfellas for its influence on how crime is depicted. The two together reshaped mainstream American filmmaking for a decade.
Why is Forrest Gump included and not, say, Titanic?
Because we only rank films we have reviewed in full, and because Forrest Gump's craft and its politics are both worth examining. Titanic is a significant film but a less interesting one to argue about.
Which 1990s film has aged best?
Goodfellas and The Silence of the Lambs have both aged exceptionally well. Fight Club has aged in the most complicated way, because its satire was widely misread.
Where should someone start with 1990s cinema?
The Shawshank Redemption for accessibility, then Pulp Fiction for structure, then Goodfellas for craft. That sequence covers the decade's main registers.
Keep reading
Our ranked lists are deliberately opinionated. Each one places films against each other inside a defined frame and explains the ordering, which means they disagree with each other and with us on different days. That is the point.