The Late 90s: My Movie Golden Age

by James Ellaby in Film Features

Cover of "Grosse Pointe Blank (Volume 2) ...

Cover via Amazon

For most of my teenage years, my ambition was to become a football journalist, having come to the sobering realisation that I was never going to be good enough to play for Man United. However, by the time I started my Journalism degree at uni, my focus had shifted slightly towards being a film critic, mainly because there were so many released at the time (the late 90s) that seemed to be getting made just for me.

Recently I’ve been watching some of those films again, mostly for the first time in quite a while, having screened them religiously back in the day. For me, that classic era began with the likes of Goodfellas and Reservoir Dogs in the early 90s (not that I saw them until later on, as I was only nine or 10 when they were released) and films by directors like the Coen Brothers, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Mann, David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson defined that era for me.

Looking back, it’s amazing how consistently impressive actors like John Cusack, Kevin Spacey, Ed Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, John C Reilly et al were in those days. How many of them have made a truly great film since? Anyway, here’s my list of films (in no particular order) from the 90s (some might be very early 00s, but I’m not checking) that made me fall in love with cinema, and collecting videos…

Goodfellas
Reservoir Dogs
True Romance
Fargo
The Big Lebowski
Heat
The Insider
Casino
Grosse Point Blank
Seven
Fight Club
American Beauty
Swimming With Sharks
Pulp Fiction
Wag The Dog
The Shawshank Redemption
Clerks
American History X
The Usual Suspects
The Truman Show
Ed Wood
Barton Fink
Being John Malkovich
Boogie Nights
Donnie Brasco
Magnolia
LA Confidential
Saving Private Ryan
The Thin Red Line

So what happened after that golden age? Well, after I started at university, my love of cinema subsided when people seemed to stop making films for me and started making films like the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, which left me completely cold. Around the same time, a new golden age began in television, with The Sopranos, The West Wing and Six Feet Under all capturing the magic that was present in those films and delivering it every single week. A decade on and I still love all of those (now) old films more than anything that has been released since, no matter how many decent films there have been (and there have been a few). And when I left uni? I became a football journalist.

Dustin Hoffman says film’s golden age is over (scotsman.com)
What is the most ’90s movie soundtrack of all time? (music-mix.ew.com)

Written By James Ellaby

Editor of New Adventures In Hi-Fi, writer of content, digital communication type person and lover of all kinds of music, films and TV both high-brow and trashy.