Top 100 Movies Of The 1990's: #1 Goodfellas
Box Office: $46.9 Million
Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Martin Scorsese), Best Supporting Actor (Joe Pesci), Best Supporting Actress (Lorraine Bracco), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing
Oscar Wins: Best Supporting Actor (Joe Pesci)
MovieRankings.Net: 100/100
Available To Stream: Max, AppleTV ($4)
Goodfellas does not define the 1990's like Pulp Fiction did. It only came out 261 days into the decade. Maybe that's because it spans such a long period of time in the movie itself, but I don't even think of it as a movie of the 90's, 80's or any such time. That doesn't matter though. Goodfellas is the greatest movie of the 1990's. I'll even go a step further.
Since Goodfellas came out, there hasn't been a better movie made.
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It's cruelly poetic that a movie about thieves was robbed at the Oscars. It famously lost out to Dances With Wolves and Kevin Costner for Best Picture and Director respectively that year. But, it even goes beyond that. Joe Pesci did win Best Supporting Actor but somehow Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta weren't even nominated. De Niro was instead nominated for Awakenings (which is good but not this). Liotta wasn't nominated at all. You could argue it's the greatest performance ever not be nominated.
When Goodfellas came out, it was deemed as too violent by some of the older Academy voters. 1990 is far enough back where you had people watching movies then that grew up with Fred Astaire and Clark Gable. While Goodfellas has aged like fine wine due to Scorsese's direction, for an older filmgoer then this might as well have thrown them into the deep end of the future. That's the only excuse I can come up with for why a movie this great didn't sweep the Oscars.
There is so much brilliance in Goodfellas. It's the finest editing job I've ever seen in a film. Thelma Schoonmaker was (and still is) a longtime collaborator with Scorsese and this is their masterpiece. Think of how different the movie feels and moves when it starts and feels almost glamorous to the frantic anxiety fueled ending. She did win 3 Oscars (Raging Bull, The Aviator and The Departed) but this is perfection.
So much of this is elite. The Copacabana long shot through the kitchen to their seat. Seeing Liotta, De Niro and Pesci digging up Billy Batts while being bathed in red brake lights reminding us that these people are truly in Hell. The panic that the helicopter overhead brings. When Jimmy sits at the bar and De Niro's eyes alone tell you that Morrie was a dead man.
I love that shot so much. How Jimmy's eyes dance with electric excitement at the prospect of killing Morrie to a squint of rage as that exhilaration turns to hate. That's just one shot. There is so much about Goodfellas that is so rich but also so exciting that it never gets old. It just stays great.
This is about truly evil people and like Raging Bull, it never shies away from that. Henry Hill is never sad at the lives he hurt. He's mad he's not important anymore. Same with everyone we spend time with in the movie. They never show remorse. They just hate they got caught. But that's true filmmaking. Scorsese never holds our hand. He simply shows these people as entertainingly as possible. That's all you can ask for from a great movie.
How the fuck can I do a Top 100 movies of the 1990's list and leave out The Matrix, The Big Lebowski, Dazed And Confused and Dances With Wolves? The answer is pretty simple. I don't like those movies as much as the other movies on this list.
Now, I completely understand that 99% of lists like this would have The Matrix on it. But when putting this list together, I decided it would be a personal list and not a populist one. Anyone can search online for a traditional list of 1990's movies but that seemed boring to me.
However, that also means more people will shit on a personal list. But you know what? They should! These lists exist so people will argue with them. No one would have the exact same list of 100 movies. These lists are created so people will react. I know I do whenever I see a top 100 list that Rolling Stone or someone puts out. You think I have Braveheart too low or Back To The Future 3 too high? That's perfectly fair. I disagree clearly but you're supposed to argue with lists like this.
Why did this list take so fucking long? It was supposed to! It gave me a blog topic each week about something I cared about. I will say I should have been done after 100 weeks and it took 128 weeks. I re-watched every movie before writing the blog and there were some weeks I wasn't able to. But I really enjoyed this process. I liked writing about movies (nearly) every Friday.
So much so, that I'm going to keep doing it. Starting next month, I'll be ranking every movie that comes out in wide release in 2025. So every Friday (and some other days during the week too), I'll do a review and keep a running list.
Thank you so much for reading and arguing these past couple of years with me. I know this is an old, niche topic but I had a good time doing it. The comments always made me laugh and it was cool for me to see people care at all about 30 year old movies.
See you guys in January with (checks notes): Den Of Thieves 2.
THE GREATEST MOVIES OF THE 1990'S:
1. Goodfellas
2. Pulp Fiction
3. The Shawshank Redemption
4. Good Will Hunting
5. Casino
6. Groundhog Day
7. The Silence Of The Lambs
8. Office Space
9. The Sixth Sense
10. Boogie Nights
11. Jurassic Park
12. Jackie Brown
13. A Few Good Men
14. The Fugitive
15. The Truman Show
16. Fargo
17. Swingers
18. Reservoir Dogs
19. There's Something About Mary
20. Sleepers
21. Schindler's List
22. Rushmore
23. Fight Club
24. Saving Private Ryan
25. True Romance
26. Dumb & Dumber
27. Kingpin
28. Donnie Brasco
29. Heat
30. Terminator 2: Judgement Day
31. Rounders
32. Unforgiven
33. Trainspotting
34. The Game
35. Out Of Sight
36. Carlito's Way
37. Seven
38. L.A. Confidential
39. Speed
40. Gattaca
41. Misery
42. Tombstone
43. Ransom
44. Wayne's World
45. The Insider
46. Back To The Future Part III
47. A Bronx Tale
48. The People Vs. Larry Flynt
49. Eyes Wide Shut
50. The Sandlot
51. Happy Gilmore
52. Contact
53. The Green Mile
54. Man On The Moon
55. Boyz N The Hood
56. Grosse Pointe Blank
57. Independence Day
58. The Rainmaker
59. Go
60. The Firm
61. Magnolia
62. The Talented Mr. Ripley
63. Tommy Boy
64. The Usual Suspects
65. In The Line Of Fire
66. My Cousin Vinny
67. Awakenings
68. JFK
69. Toy Story
70. Home Alone
71. Jerry Maguire
72. Titanic
73. Billy Madison
74. Apollo 13
75. Braveheart
76. Edward Scissorhands
77. Cape Fear
78. The River Wild
79. What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
80. 12 Monkeys
81. Stir Of Echoes
82. Mission: Impossible
83. Total Recall
84. Quiz Show
85. For Love Of The Game
86. Being John Malkovich
87. Men In Black
88. Scream
89. Alive
90. Three Kings
91. Glengarry Glen Ross
92. Die Hard With A Vengeance
93. The Blair Witch Project
94. Twister
95. Dirty Work
96. Election
97. Tremors
98. Any Given Sunday
99. The Wedding Singer
100. Clerks