1991 in film.

Top ten box-office films of 1991:

1. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
2. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
3. Beauty and the Beast
4. Hook
5. The Silence of the Lambs
6. JFK
7. The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear
8. The Addams Family
9. Cape Fear
10. Hot Shots!

What are your top three films for 1991? We will keep a running tally and eventually have some sort of bracket. For me it would be:

1. Barton Fink
2. A Brighter Summer Day
3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

What are some of the forgotten gems from the year? What is overrated? What did you discover at a young age and what did you discover later?

YEARS IN FILM • forum.chorus.fm

 

I have a lot of blind spots from this year. Thelma and Louise, My Own Private Idaho, Point Break, The Addams Family, Boys in the Hood, Hook, and JFK from the big ones.

I have always preferred the first Terminator to the second, but it still a better action film than most of what comes out these days.

 

I’m going to try to watch Lovers sometime this week.
For now:
1. My Own Private Idaho
2. Queen of Diamonds
3. Scary Movie


ton of good ones cut

 

Others:
A Brighter Summer Day
Addams Family
Ernest Scared Stupid
Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College
T2
Child’s Play 3
Point Break
Boyz N The Hood
Problem Child 2
The Hitman
Out for Justice
New Jack City
Silence of the Lambs
Nothing But Trouble

 

1. The Lovers on the Bridge
2. The Silence of the Lambs
3. Delicatessen

Also love Thelma & Louise, The Fisher King, The Commitments, Boyz n the Hood, Barton Fink, A Brighter Summer Day, Beauty and the Beast, Raise the Red Lantern, Terminator 2, Naked Lunch, stacked year.

Few films have blown me away in the last few years as much as The Lovers on the Bridge did on first watch. I love everything about that film.

 

1. A Brighter Summer Day
2. The Silence of the Lambs
3. T2

Ang Lee’s Pushing Hands is a 1991 film I saw recently and thought a lot of. Boyz n the Hood was a consideration for top 3, as was Barton Fink. Cape Fear might have made it in a weaker year, but my top 3 are all pretty close to perfect in my eyes

 

1. Barton Fink
2. Terminator 2
3. Boyz n the Hood

Another really solid year. Honorable mentions:

My Own Private Idaho
Silence of the Lambs
Point Break
Cape Fear
What About Bob?
Thelma and Louise

 

1. Delicatessen
2. Fried Green Tomatoes
3. The Silence of the Lambs


Honorable mentions:

Barton Fink
Beauty and the Beast
Slacker
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Thelma & Louise
What About Bob?

 

I only watched A Brighter Summer Day recently, and it sort of became an accidental double-feature with Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness: two films, made two years apart, covering the same moment in history, through different directorial lenses. The Yang film is less overtly involved in the politics, but in many ways it disproves the idea that politics is downstream from culture, as we see how the unrest from the civil war and the Nationalist takeover upsets the natural order of things. I am a history teacher but Chinese history has always been a weak spot, so it is interesting to compare the two works.

 

Getting harder to narrow these down, so I think I'm just going to drop top 10s now

1. A Scene at the Sea (Kitano)
2. I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar (Garrel)
3. La Belle Noiseuse (Rivette)
-
4. Van Gogh (Pialat)
5. Centre Stage (Kwan)
6. Jacquot de Nantes (Varda)
7. Until the End of the World (Wenders)
8. The Lovers on the Bridge (Carax)
9. A Brighter Summer Day (Yang)
10. Only Yesterday (Takahata)

Looking at this list, I would not hesitate to call this one of the all-time best years for cinema. 10 films I would readily call masterpieces and still omitting major works by Cronenberg, Zhang Yimou, Akerman, Oliveira, the Coen brothers, Satyajit Ray, Kieslowski, and Jarmusch.

 

A really strong year, as others have said.

1. A Brighter Summer Day
2. The Double Life of Veronique
3. Raise the Red Lantern

I only saw A Brighter Summer Day about a year ago, as the four hour run-time was a big turn-off, but it really is one of the few films that justifies that length. Yang has a fantastic talent of making you feel like you're not watching characters, you're just eavesdropping on real lives that will continue after the film is done. There must be hundreds of speaking roles here, and none of them feel like archetypes or plot points or metaphors, they feel like real people in a real place in a real time. Overwhelmingly good, the sort of film that you let wash over you.

The Double Life of Veronique is Kieślowski's mysterious and poignant film about Veronique from France and Weronika from Poland, intrinsically linked. It's a film that doesn't explain or justify what happens here, it's an entirely subjective reality here. There's a fantastic double lead performance from Irene Jacob, and the cinematography is beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful cinematography, we have Zhang Yimou's Raise The Red Lantern, a story about a young woman becoming another wife to a rich lord. The film is utterly beautiful - without doubt one of the most visually stunning films I can recall, with wonderful framing, and composition. It's a tragic story about gilded cages and oppression, and real treat for the eyes.

Some honourable mentions;

Centre Stage is Stanley Kwan's biopic of Chinese silent cinema icon, Ruan Lingyu, that merges traditional biopic, re-enactment, documentary footage, and most intriguingly interviews with Maggie Cheung, discussing playing Ruan Lingyu, and about acting in general.

Ricki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, which is an outrageously silly and cartoonishly violent Hong Kong film. One of the bloodiest films ever, but done with such a charm and absurdity that it's just an absolute breeze to watch.

Riff-Raff, which is Ken Loach's film about construction site workers in London. Full of the usual impassioned Loachian stuff about capitalism and unions, but also has a tragic romance running through it, that gives it a little bit more than some Loach films.

Lovers on the Bridge, a charming contemporary romantic fable of sorts, with gorgeous cinematography. The fireworks scene is worth the price of admission alone.

There's some mad Hong Kong trashy cinema this year, including The Blue Jean Monster, about a man who has electric powers, and full of ludicrous scenes. There's the brilliantly titled The Holy Virgin vs The Evil Dead, a Donnie Yen vehicle about some South East Asian cult, that makes very little sense. There's the (fairly influential) Sex & Zen, a film that merges childish scatological humour with copious amounts of nudity, that spawned a bunch of sequels and films doing the same thing. Finally Robotrix, a film about some sort of Terminator / Robocop woman meets sex-bot.

Finally, there's a short film I adore from Ngozi Onwurah, The Body Beautiful. A highly intimate and personal look at race, family, gender, age and bodies, starring the director's own mother. Manages to pack a lot in, in just 25 minutes, looking at how bodies are viewed by ourselves, our closest companies, and a patriarchal society as a whole.

If you're from the UK (or maybe elsewhere?) you can watch it for free on the BFI site, and I can highly recommend it;
Watch The Body Beautiful - BFI Player

 

1. Silence of the Lambs
2. Boyz in the Hood
3. T2

got some catching up to do

 

This is a solid year overall but it is far from a favorite, that said there are plenty to choose from -

1. The Silence of the Lambs
2. The People Under the Stairs
3. Thelma & Louise

Closely followed by those in bold with the rest being notable efforts for the year; Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Boyz n the Hood, The Hard Way, The Fisher King, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Cape Fear, Shattered, The Rocketeer, Bugsy, What About Bob?, Toy Soldiers, The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, The Addams Family, Backdraft, and The Unborn.

 

Scary Movie is free on Tubi. Super smart no-budget horror flick starring John Hawkes. A ton of fun!

Queen of Diamonds is on Criterion. Newly remastered. A beautiful and ugly film. Hypnotizing. Reminds me of Lynch

 

1. A Brighter Summer Day
2. Terminator 2
3. Point Break

To me, ABSD is the greatest movie of all time. It felt singular right from my first viewing and only feels more so after two rewatches and reading about the cultural context and how it applies to the characters. It’s also ridiculously beautiful and picturesque for almost every second of its 4 hours

 

1. The Lovers on the Bridge
2. Barton Fink
3. The Silence of the Lambs

The Lovers on the Bridge is a stand out for me this year, one I consider to be top tier from any time period. Carax showed his talent here with the brutal story in a backdrop of beautiful imagery. The performances from Binoche and Lavant are equally impressive making the film virtually flawless.

I haven’t seen a Brighter Summer Day and I need to correct that. Definitely some other favorites growing up in this year, such as Point Break, T2, Beauty and the Beast, and the first film I ever saw in theaters Ernest Scared Stupid. I was genuinely scared. I think the first film I can remember crying at was My Girl, fuck bees.

 

1. Silence of the Lambs
2. A Brighter Summer Day
3. Double Life of Veronique

 

what about these movies. havent seen most of them.

cape fear
boyz n the hood
point break
jfk
what about bob
city slickers

edit: some of these have been mentioned

 

Watched this a couple nights ago because I saw you posting about it in some thread. Loved it. “Hypnotizing” is a good word for it.

Heads up, if anyone’s planning on watching it on Criterion Channel, I believe it’s leaving at the end of the month.

 

1. point break
2. silence of the lambs
3. barton fink

 

sir this is a thread about movies

 

1. Silence of the Lambs
2. Boyz N The Hood
3. The People Under the Stairs

 

Hell yeah! Definitely glad I watched. I think Nick Zanca of Mister Lies was the one who tweeted about it

 

Ghoulies III Ghoulies Go to College is a pitch perfect subversive take on post Reagan toxic masculinity in America. A harbinger of things to come and truly ahead of its time. Allowing the Ghoulies the ability to speak in this sequel was an inspired choice. Do Ghoulies have dicks? Watch the film to find out

 

i read that as goonies 3 for a minute. i wanted to see josh brolins dick. think hes got a big one?