The Most Underrated Movies of the 1990s

We already tackled the most underrated films of the 2000s and 2010s. Now it’s time for the 1990s, and what a decade it was for U.S. filmmaking.

As far as the essential films go, a good blueprint would be the massive ‘90s critics poll I conducted during the pandemic. None of the films in the top 40 should really be counted as “underrated,” since all clearly have massive support.

This was an incredible decade for film that saw an indie cinema boom, as independent film studios took off and flourished. The emergence of the Sundance Film Festival was a shock to the system and turned out to be the portal that would parallel the risk-taking character-driven films of the 1970s.

You also had Siskel and Ebert, as influential as they ever were, pushing all of these smaller movies into the mainstream. There were so many hidden gems this decade that a good amount of them have been, sadly, lost in time. This is where I come in.

The term “underrated,” for me at least, means a film that slipped under the radar and wasn’t talked about much at the time of its release, or even now. I went through my archives and found these 23 titles that deserved a better fate.

Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam, Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan, George Sluizer’s The Vanishing, Charles Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger, George Armitage’s Miami Blues, David Mamet’s Homicide, Carl Franklin’s One False Move, Clint Eastwood’s A Perfect World, Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, Lee Tamahori’s Once We Were Warriors, John Dahl’s Red Rock West and The Last Seduction, Stephen Frears’ The Grifters, Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb, Abel Ferrera’s King of New York, John Sayles’ Lone Star, Alexander Payne’s Citizen Ruth, Vondi Curtis Hall’s Gridlock’d, John McNaughtin’s Mad Dog and Glory, Jan Egleson’s A Shock to the System, Joe Dante’s Matinee, Victor Nunez’s Ulee’s Gold

Time for our readers to chime in. What are your undervalued movies of 1990s?