As far as the essential films go, a good blueprint would be the massive ’90s critics' poll I conducted during the pandemic — twin peaked with “Goodfellas” and “Pulp Fiction.” None of the films in the top 40 should really be counted as “underrated,” since they all clearly have massive support.
This was an incredible decade for film, one that saw an indie cinema boom as independent studios took off and flourished. The emergence of the Sundance Film Festival was a shock to the system, becoming a portal for the kind of risk-taking, character-driven films that echoed the spirit of the 1970s.
You also had Siskel and Ebert, as influential as ever, helping push many of these smaller movies into the mainstream. There were so many hidden gems in this decade that a good number of them have, sadly, been lost to time. This is where we come in.
As with the other “underrated” articles, I went through my archives, and found these 27 titles that deserved a better fate.
James Foley’s After Dark, My Sweet, Walter Hill’s Trespass, Greg Mottola’s The Daytrippers, Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam, Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan, Charles Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger, George Armitage’s Miami Blues, David Mamet’s Homicide, Carl Franklin’s One False Move, David Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner, 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, Doug Liman’s Go, Howard Franklin’s Quick Change,
Taken together, these selections map out a shadow canon of the 1990s—films that slipped through the cracks despite the decade’s creative indie explosion: lean neo-noirs, morally tangled crime stories, offbeat comedies, and intimate character studies that favor ambiguity over resolution. A dying breed of filmmaking when compared to today’s American cinema.
Directors like Foley, Mamet, Franklin, and Dahl were working with familiar genre frameworks but bending them into something stranger, more personal, and often more unsettling. Even the bigger names on this list—Eastwood, Raimi, Lee—were taking risks that don’t always get recognized when their careers are discussed.
I’m still struck by the raw volatility of “One False Move” to the aching humanity of “Ulee’s Gold,” bless Peter Fonda, and the chaotic (forgotten) energy of “Go.” The neo-noir of “After Dark, My Sweet,” “Miami Blues,” “The Grifters,” and John Dahl’s double bill: “Red Rock West,” and “The Last Seduction.” How about more formally adventurous or off-kilter work such as “Strange Days,” “Heavenly Creatures,” “Crumb,” and “Matinee.” the bench was very deep in the ’90s.
Time for our readers to chime in. What are your undervalued movies of 1990s?