1994's Best Movies: 30 Years Later

In keeping with previous polls, I've gone with the contenders in the top 2,000 films, but they now offer the entire starting spreadsheet. Here are the titles that carry through through the top 5,000 films ever.

2021	1754	In the Heat of the Sun	Jiang Wen	1994	China	134
2065	2122	Clerks	Smith, Kevin	1994	USA	89
2097	2048	Postino, Il	Radford, Michael	1994	Italy	113
2203	2135	Legend of Drunken Master, The	Liu Chia-Liang	1994	Hong Kong	102
2299	3473	Crooklyn	Lee, Spike	1994	USA	115
2314	2727	Four Weddings and a Funeral	Newell, Mike	1994	UK	117
2451	2372	London	Keiller, Patrick	1994	UK	85
2485	3439	Dumb and Dumber	Farrelly, Peter	1994	USA	106
2513	2622	Cold Water	Assayas, Olivier	1994	France	95
2617	2575	JLG/JLG	Godard, Jean-Luc	1994	France	62
2686	2474	Chinese Odyssey: Part One - Pandora's Box, A	Lau, Jeffrey	1994	Hong Kong	87
2779	2730	Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The	Elliott, Stephan	1994	Australia	102
2808	2719	Lamerica	Amelio, Gianni	1994	France	111
2901	2815	Vanya on 42nd Street	Malle, Louis	1994	USA	120
3099	2935	Palms	Aristakisian, Artour	1994	Russia	140
3105	3065	Unforgettable Summer, An	Pintilie, Lucian	1994	France	82
3156	3125	Eat Drink Man Woman	Lee, Ang	1994	Taiwan	124
3187	3155	I Can't Sleep	Denis, Claire	1994	France	110
3257	3192	Ladybird, Ladybird	Loach, Ken	1994	UK	101
3361	3400	Crow, The	Proyas, Alex	1994	USA	100
3385	3330	Little Women	Armstrong, Gillian	1994	USA	118
3399	3278	Pom Poko	Takahata, Isao	1994	Japan	119
3478	3420	Muriel's Wedding	Hogan, P.J.	1994	Australia	105
3534	4075	Last Seduction, The	Dahl, John	1994	USA	110
3621	3639	Once Were Warriors	Tamahori, Lee	1994	New Zealand	103
3671	3546	Hudsucker Proxy, The	Coen, Joel & Ethan Coen	1994	USA	111
3757	3805	Speed	De Bont, Jan	1994	USA	116
3791	3378	Bullets Over Broadway	Allen, Woody	1994	USA	99
3860	3740	Why is Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow?	Tahimik, Kidlat	1994	Philippines	170
3863	4208	In the Mouth of Madness	Carpenter, John	1994	USA	95
3924	4185	Travolta et moi [TV]	Mazuy, Patricia	1994	France	52
3942	3896	True Lies	Cameron, James	1994	USA	141
3989	3876	Revolver	Bergqvist, Stig/Martti Ekstrand/Jonas Odell/Lars Ohlson	1994	Sweden	8
4086	4289	Go Fish	Troche, Rose	1994	USA	87
4175	3978	Nobody's Fool	Benton, Robert	1994	USA	110
4274	4149	Queen Margot	Chéreau, Patrice	1994	France	143
4379	5161	Wes Craven's New Nightmare	Craven, Wes	1994	USA	112
4451	4401	Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana	Kaurismäki, Aki	1994	Finland	65
4489	4353	Little Odessa	Gray, James	1994	USA	98
4581	4436	Hum Aapke Hain Koun...!	Barjatya, Sooraj R.	1994	India	206
4642	6146	Funny Bones	Chelsom, Peter	1994	USA	126
4663	4769	Buccaneer Soul	Reichenbach, Carlos	1994	Brazil	112
4733	4590	Bandit Queen	Kapur, Shekhar	1994	India	119
4866	5803	Cemetery Man	Soavi, Michele	1994	Italy	105
4999	8730	Serial Mom	Waters, John	1994	USA	93

Crumb
Exotica
Satantango
Three Colors: Red
Vive L'Amour

Still haven't watched Before the Rain.

oh, duh, Through the Olive Trees too.

dumb and dumber tbh

Would have said Crumb easily a few years ago, but a toss-up now between that and Hoop Dreams. Cold Water from the runners-up. Satantango for best music video that never was.

#444? How in god's name was Shawshank rated that high?

Guess: it does really well on things like IMDB and Letterboxd, and those count in the rankings. Never seen it.

#444? How in god's name was Shawshank rated that high?

― more difficult than I look (Aimless),

It had a formidable afterlife on cable TV in the mid/late '90s and beyond. Younger friends grew up watching it.

If that's the reason then I'm curious where Con Air was ranked.

And not to open up this topic again, but when the last S&S poll came out, a friend posted that people who resisted Jeanne Dielman were in fact upset that the vote had been opened up to hundreds of new voters. I asked him where he wanted to draw the line on that: would he be happy if thousands more were added from people who posted comments and lists on IMDB, and the winner ended up being Shawshank or Pulp Fiction?

Sounds like he was already happy with the results?

Looking back, this was a pretty weak year overall

Tarr wins, and these fill out my top 5:

What Happened Was… (Noonan)
Serial Mom (Waters)
Wild Reeds (Téchiné)
Bullets Over Broadway (Allen)

My top ten:

Three Colors: Red (Krystof Kieslowski)
Speed (Jan De Bont)
Sátántangó (Bela Tarr)
Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson)
Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)
Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai)
Vanya on 42nd Street (Louis Malle)
Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami)
Eat Drink Man Woman (Ang Lee)
Naked (Mike Leigh)

I remember being really irritated by Exotica at the time but can no longer remember why: something to do with the narrative withholding certain plot points/chronology games struck me as pointless at the time. Would probably like it now. Miramax really pushed the "erotic thriller" angle on it and apparently successfully, as it ran in my local arthouse for a year, as for that matter did Heavenly Creatures .

I liked Crumb but having been a fan and read the mammoth interview TCJ interview a few years earlier was prepared for a lot of the more "shocking", distressing stuff.

In The Heat of the Sun is really good, a worthy addition to the canon of East Asian youth films. At the time it wasn't easy to find so a pen pal in Hong Kong mailed me a VCD!

Travolta Et Moi is another one that was tough to find for a while. There's never been a box set of the "Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge" series, has there?

Will be boring and vote for the movie which Mike D'Angelo (I think) once wrote contains The Shot.

Great year. Sátántangó gets my vote, but what's probably my top ten:

Sátántangó [Béla Tarr]
Blue/White/Red [Krzysztof Kieslowski]
L'eau froide [Olivier Assayas]
Chungking Express [Wong Kar-wai]
Exotica [Atom Egoyan]
Crumb [Terry Zwigoff]
The Chartres Series [Stan Brakhage]
Through the Olive Trees [Abbas Kiarostami]
US Go Home [Claire Denis]
Hoop Dreams [Steve James]

(I thought Leigh's Naked was 1993?)

It didn't get a general U.S. release date until spring '94.

Voted Sátántangó, but lots of goodies here. Would rather watch Shawshank Redemption than Natural Born Killers again.

Same, just above Vive L'Amourand Ashes of Time.

THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES is the one that I haven't seen

What Happened Was…is probably the best American narrative film from said year. Saw Noonan present his print of it some years back. He discussed how the film basically lead to the dissolution of his marriage

I love in the heat of the sun

Either Siskel or Ebert also top tenned What Happened Was...

And not to open up this topic again, but when the last S&S poll came out, a friend posted that people who resisted _Jeanne Dielman_ were in fact upset that the vote had been opened up to hundreds of new voters. I asked him where he wanted to draw the line on that: would he be happy if thousands more were added from people who posted comments and lists on IMDB, and the winner ended up being _Shawshank_ or _Pulp Fiction_?

https://www.mistdriven.com/critics/ebert.html
https://www.mistdriven.com/critics/siskel.html

In the Heat of the Sun is dying for a restoration and re-release

(xpost) Where would that be?

My friend's original comment: "They aren't pushing back on the idea that it's the greatest film ever made. They are pushing back on the idea that the great unwashed are allowed to take part in the poll. The implication is that if those people weren't invited in, we could all rest assured that Vertigo and Kane are the greatest films ever." (And yes--xposts--he was very happy with the 2022 result.)

So my guess is you're going to say the line is at published critic/film writer, and that something like IMDB wouldn't count. But the way he framed it, it was more like the poll became less elitist and more democratic in 2022. So I'm saying "Okay, where do you draw that line?"

This should be moved to a different thread, I know. Sorry--to me it seems related to Aimless's Shawsank question.

So my guess is you're going to say the line is at published critic/film writer,

yes

and that something like IMDB wouldn't count.

yes

But the way he framed it, it was more like the poll became less elitist and more democratic in 2022.

yes

So I'm saying "Okay, where do you draw that line?"

See above?

We can collectively move past The Shawshank Redemption

So--and this is what I was implicitly suggesting to my friend--more democracy's a good thing, right up to the point where you like the result. Past that point, no.

Forrest Gump should be retroactively unmade

A local rep has Natural Born Killers scheduled soon. I might go--I soured on that second time I saw it--so ugly--and have never gone back.

still love Ed Wood. the scene with Martin Landau faking being drowned by an octopus because they didn't have the motor for it still kills me

Definitely go for NBK if it’s in 35. I agree with producer Jane Hamsher that the final minute should never have been a part of it, and that it dates the movie too much

Leon, I got put off by some of the creepy scenes w/ Natalie Portman and couldn't finish even though I had been enjoying it.

The non-North America cut of LEON goes too overboard with the Lolita aspect

lol

Widening the voter pool to be more democratic/inclusive WITHIN THE WELL ESTABLISHED, COMMONSENSE, IMMEDIATELY UNDERSTOOD BY ANYONE WHO ISNT A DUNCE, SCOPE OF A SIGHT AND SOUND CRITICS’ POLL

viz

published critic/film writer,

is different from changing the critics’ poll to a readers’ poll, for reasons that are immediately &c

If we are drawing a line it should be to strike out this dumb as shit slippery slope argument

Anyway dumb & dumber

Peter Farrelly was a great novelist who ran out of steam as a filmmaker fairly quickly

extremely tempted to vote for Riget

Riget is hysterical

Easily Satantango followed by Hoop Dreams

I overlooked Cemetery Man, Loved it at the time. Would like to see it again but the only Region 1 option is a $55 four-disc set that I really don't need. October Films was a great distributor but they kind of botched the marketing on it back then (in 1996). Can't say I blame them, it's hard to classify. In an alternate world Soavi would be the Johnnie To of Italian genre cinema -- the lone holdout keeping it alive and vital -- but it wasn't to be.

Cemetery Man just got a 4K restoration

(xposts) I'd press you on this point, but as soon as "dumb" and "dunce" make their first appearance, I lose interest.

Took me two or three screeings to really appreciate how great Hoop Dreams is--as a family film every bit as much as a basketball film.

The song sung at the funeral of the people killed in the bus accident still slays me

Remembering that 1994 was the year of the baseball strike reminds me that my real favourite film that year was Ken Burns' Baseball.

voted for Chungking Express

I won a VIP pass to TIFF in 1994, and saw a lot of these films there.

At the time, my favourite film of the year was Yang's Confucian Confusion, which barely missed these lists. Incidentally, my favourite Haneke 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance is on the list as a 1995 production, but I'm sure I saw it at TIFF this year.

Bad stuff: I can't bear Egoyan when he's frothing up mysteries based entirely on information that he's keeping from the audience, with a hefty load of mystification on top. The first half of Natural Born Killers is great, the second half is garbage. Before the Rain is watchable, but its ironies are heavily underlined, do you see?!?. Ashes of Time looks beautiful but it couldn't be more incoherent if every shot had been spliced to the next at random.

Only poll option I haven't seen that I would like to is the Claire Denis, part of the same French TV series “All the Boys and Girls of Their Time” mentioned above (along with Techine's Wild Reeds (which is on the list as 1993), and L'eau froide from the lower list). Never saw Hoop Dreams cos every clip I saw from it made it the video-to-film transfer appear unwatchable (and I didn't need a film to tell me that pinning one's hopes on becoming a basketball star is an impossible long shot).

Meanwhile, I'm watching Dekalog for the first time this week, and I'm still convinced that Blanc is not only better than Rouge (or Bleu), it may be the centre of his universe.

I feel like I can't not vote for Sátántangó, but I'll be hurt if The Kingdom gets no votes.

three colours RED was a great one (white suckkkkkked). also heavenly creatures. prob red for me.

Hoop Dreams is about surviving the projects, including the hypocrisy of schools and religious institutions that are ostensibly trying to "help" disadvantaged kids living in poverty. If it was just about basketball (which it was initially, when they thought they'd be shooting a short film for a few months to show on PBS) it could've followed anybody, but choosing those two changed things immensely.

FWIW Frederick Wiseman shot one of his greatest films a few years later in a different Chicago housing project. 30 minutes longer, the two would make an epic double-feature, one I wish every registered voter would watch with the hopes that most viewers wouldn't turn out to be callous sociopaths.

(not all schools and religious institutions mind you)

...and I'd also say that a disinterest in rich people problems is probably a good reason not to watch Kane!

― Halfway there but for you,

It's not.

That's there, of course, but you just can't reduce the film to that; it'd be easy to write one-sentence summaries of just about any great film that'll make them sound obvious or worse. ("Rich newspaper tycoon discovers that money can't buy happiness.")

Was quite surprised to see this sort of logic make a comeback in a lot of ppl's reactions to Zone Of Interest! Like films are delivery methods for helpful info and if you already know the info there's no point in watching.

As always, it's not the "what" but the "how," but Halfway's objections to Hoop Dreams seem to be addressing both, imo

(xpost) I was guilty of that myself with Zone of Interest; took a second viewing to look past that.

Like films are delivery methods for helpful info and if you already know the info there's no point in watching.

Well, I didn't watch Sátántangó because of a particular interest in miserable rural Hungarians and their animals, I did it because I'd heard that this director had an interesting point of view and grasp of structure. Maybe someone made a reference to Tarkovsky. With documentaries I'm a little more selective based on topic.

It's not.

I'm just averse to telling other people what they should watch. Like not everyone is going to overcome a natural resistance to miserable rural Hungarians and their animals.

It's possible miserable rural Hungarians don't want to watch films about miserable rural Hungarian either.

Less than anyone!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Chungking Express focuses on two cops, Takeshi Kaneshiro’s cop 223 and Tony Leung’s cop 663, and their romantic entanglements, and on ‘fateful encounters, missed connections, and of wishes that don’t come true’

That it all takes place in and right outside of the Chungking Mansions is a big part of what is fascinating about it to me

Voted Satantango though I think Chungking Express will probably win. Riget is great too, but I doubt that will get a lot of votes.

Felt so ripped off when I realised Chunking Express isn't about a train :(

Great movie tho!

My problem with Chungking Express is that I know Chungking Mansions and expected it to capture the bizzare, frantic, dangerous atmosphere the place has, but it doesn't feel anything like it.

Some goodies. Been a while since I saw Red, Exotica, Heavenly Creatures, Pulp Fiction ... peak Miramax.

exotica vs. red, an impossible choice

I still have very fond memories of first seeing Chungking Express, I think I was about 18 at the time I saw it, I had never seen anything like it. One of the very important movies for me because it led me to really start seeking out foreign language movies, whereas before that I was interested in movies and sought out older or lesser-known stuff but still mostly stuck to Hollywood movies.

I love Chungking Express and somehow did not know until a few days ago that Tony Leung's apartment in the movie was Christopher Doyle's actual apartment at the time.

Gonna speak up for Vanya on 42nd Street again, especially for Wallace Shawn and Brooke Smith.

I said fuck it and voted for Red.

Ashes Of Time and Chunking is a hell of a one two punch.

Ed Wood great, perhaps not Burton's only great one but I think the only one that doesn't make me think of his subsequent work and cringe

would be a good bit for someone to vote forrest gump

We're to the point where I have more respect for a Forrest Gump vote than a Shawshank one

Dave Kehr has championed Robert Zemeckis far more than any other critic I know and may be the only I take seriously who considers Zemeckis one of the great auteurs. He gave an impassioned defense for Forrest Gump in Film Comment - I didn't agree with it, but if you have JSTOR access, you can find it here, but I think Jonathan Rosenbaum was more on the mark.

Don’t get mad at me Eric H

so long as you didn't vote for it

Well, I’ve seen six and half of these movies.

Kael--retired before Forrest Gump (suspect she would have panned it)--liked Used Cars. Think I saw it ages ago.

gump does exactly what it wants to, which is one way to mark a movie

voted through the olive trees, i love a lot of the options but everything kiarostami made from 88 to 98 truly ranks among the best films ever made

Kael--retired before Forrest Gump (suspect she would have panned it)--liked Used Cars. Think I saw it ages ago.

Zemeckis had a pretty great run! I don't care for a lot of the big 80's ReadyPlayerOnecore movies but those bttf films are solid, I Want To Hold Your Hand one of the best films sbout fandom, Roger Rabbit of course a masterpiece.

I don't much like the third BTTF, but until Gump I wouldn't say there's a single film in his rep that isn't at least good or better

(Death Becomes Her is, of course, maybe the best studio film of the '90s after Showgirls)

I said that Kael never reviewed Forrest Gump--actually she did, except it was called Rain Man then (another director where she liked early work): "Forrest Gump is Tom Hanks humping one note on a piano for two hours and twenty-two minutes."

If we're talking about Kael again, I do remember her remarks to EW in 1994:

Even in retirement Kael can be counted on for an adversarial voice. What’d she think of Forrest Gump? ”I hated it thoroughly,” she says, citing its ”Reagan-era” view of the counterculture. As for The River Wild, she says only, ”I took my grandson. It’s great for kids.

”I didn’t go to The Lion King,” Kael says, then adds, ”I draw the line at Disney.” Pulp Fiction? ”I enjoyed it hugely … [but] it’s been taken a little too seriously.”

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Dear Sátántangó voters, how many times have you actually watched the whole thing? Honest answers only. My answer, as one of said voters: once.

Solid turnout. And White beats Red!

think i went for White

Oh, I wish I'd remembered to vote. I could have been a ballot for Ashes of Time.

A toast to all the Tarr and Kar-wai bros in the chat!

https://i.ibb.co/WtgjJRx/Ceih-GMGWAAA-Mv2.jpg

I like that Crumb + Hoop Dreams wins. It came down to those two for me, maybe I wasn't the only one.

If memory serves, White was the one I liked most of those three.

Great result - love you people.

I've seen Sátántangó start-to-finish three times, twice projected (35mm and DCP) and then again when I got the Blu-ray. (Beyond that, I've watched specific scenes on that Blu-ray release multiple times.) It was probably the perfect pandemic watch for ppl I know who were looking to fill the time.

I agree with Kael re: Gump. I mildly enjoyed Forrest Gump the first time I saw it, but I was also a kid whose idea of the '60s was a vague and distant concept shaped by very conservative surroundings. (Those from my immediate family back then were pretty much part of "the silent majority" Nixon was thinking about.) It wasn't until maybe 2009 or the 2010s that I tried watching it again but I couldn't finish it, I thought it was thoroughly repulsive.

Ashes of Time has such a nutty edit history - if you're a huge fan, seek out the French TF1 DVD which may have some rips floating out there. The late David Bordwell talks about it below (I'm pasting it in because the original post is no longer accessible):

Before Redux, there were at least two versions of Ashes of Time. One premiered at the Venice festival of 1994, the other became the international
standard version. The differences are striking.

The international version has several hyperactive swordfights quite early. In a prologue before the title credit, Ouyang Feng and Huang Yaoshi fight a
duel. After that, each is given a combat sequence in which he takes on hordes of assailants. These sequences are rapidly cut, with exaggerated angles,
accelerated or slowed motion, and pulsing freeze frames. At the end of the international version comes a brief, parallel epilogue showing the surviving
warriors (Ouyang, Huang, Hong Qi, and Murong) in the midst of combat. This epilogue includes a tableau of Yin, the female Murong, writhing ecstatically
on a bed of red blossoms.

It's widely believed among Hong Kong film people that this international version was initially created for the regional market and overseas Chinatowns.
Wong added swordplay sequences at the beginning and end in order to satisfy his Taiwanese producers, who wanted more action in this otherwise
talky and moody movie. How this version, running about ninety-five minutes without credits, became the standard one I don't know, but evidently Wong
did not control the international rights on the film. In any case, we have the evidence of Derek Elley's Variety review that these passages were not in the
Venice copy.

I've seen Ashes in 35mm in several countries, and it's always been the international version. That is the version available on Hong Kong laserdisc and
video, as well as on Japanese DVD (as near as I can tell from my imperfect disc). But the French DVD, released by TF1, is quite different. It runs 87:30
without credits (and assuming 24 fps). This version lacks several scenes, including the opening brawls, and ends with a close-up of the pale face of the
Woman looking out to sea. It may be that this French version, billed on the packaging as the "original" one, is close to the Venice print".

If it matters, when I say thoroughly repulsive, it's basically what Kael alludes to - everything it shows about the '60s is gutted of real meaning or context. I guess it's appropriate since it's seen through the eyes of a moron, but it's sickening how middle-of-the-road critics like Siskel and Ebert actually equate that with some kind of "healing" lullaby when it belittles or undermines what the counterculture was grappling with and trying to change while shying away from the monstrous shittiness of the people who didn't want anything to change. It really is the Reagan view of the counterculture and it's not really different from the nuttiness you see in Trump backers today.

In re Ashes of Time I've only seen the Redux edit — which maybe should count as a 2008 movie as much as a 1994 one. I think that's the only one available anywhere these days.

how many times have you actually watched the whole thing?

At least three:

- TIFF 1994 - almost nobody left in the theatre at the end.
- TIFF 1995 - all of Tarr's films were shown and he was present at the festival. The very sloppy projectionist had the film running for several minutes with the bottom half of the frame at the top of the screen and the top half of the next frame at the bottom. Also, I failed to urinate at the second intermission resulting in a very trying final three hours.
- DVD at least once

and maybe I saw it on VHS at some point? Will possibly watch on streaming at least once more. I also read the novel.

A very fitting tie, two diametric strains of world cinema that are both, in their own ways, still reverberating today

Great stuff I went for Vive L'Amour

Seen the Tarr only once on DVD. Pretty awesome. Love to see it on the big screen.