The best movies of 1990: 
 by Roger Ebert

1. GoodFellas
        Martin Scorsese astounds me with the energy he brings to filmmaking.
There is a life in his films that makes other films seem sluggish and
slow-witted; a quick responsiveness of dialog and motive that matches our own
clock speed, so that we think with his characters, instead of about them. In
"GoodFellas," a story of a man growing up, growing old and growing sad in the
Mafia, he has made a study of a corner of American life so perceptive, so alert
to the nuances of character and dialect, that it is a sociological document.
        But it's more: A tragedy, about men and women trapped in a value system
that denies the basic impulse toward good in most of us. One of the most telling
lines in the film comes from Lorraine Bracco, as the wife of a Mafioso. As an
outsider, she comes to realize one day that her life is now contained entirely
within the Mafia community. Their values have become her values, and she has
started to think that men who work steady jobs for a living are suckers.
        "GoodFellas" is an epic on the scale of "The Godfather," and it uses its
expansive running time to develop a real feeling for the way a lifetime develops
almost by chance at first, and then sets its fateful course. Because we see
mostly through the eyes of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), characters swim in and out
of focus; the character of Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), for example, is
shadowy in the earlier passages of the film, and then takes on a central
importance. And then there's Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), always on the outside
looking in, glorying in his fleeting moments of power, laughing too loudly,
slapping backs with too much familiarity, pursued by the demon of a raging anger
that can flash out of control in a second. His final scene in this movie is one
of the greatest moments of sudden realization I have ever seen; the development,
the build-up and the payoff are handled by Scorsese with the skill of a great
tragedian.

2. Monsieur Hire
        Here is the portrait of a man living a precise and shy life in a tiny
corner of the world, while tides of passion break all around him. Monsieur Hire
is a small, neat, bald little man who works alone in an office and then comes
home to his rented room where all is order and precision. He boils an egg. He
listens to classical music. He looks out of his window--at the window across the
courtyard, where a young woman undresses, night after night, in full view.
        She knows he is looking. They do not acknowledge one another. He
worships her. She senses this. One day a murder is committed in the
neighborhood, and suspicion of course falls on this strange little man. But is
he capable of murder? Does the woman know someone who is? Will she save Monsieur
Hire from being charged withthe crime? Can he withstand this sudden glare of
attention into his dark little corner? "Monsieur Hire," directed by Patrice
Leconte and starring Michel Blanc and Sandrine Bonnaire, is based on one of the
greatest novels of Georges Simenon, that poet of the sins that take place in
secret. It is a mesmerizing experience.

3. Dances with Wolves
        In the aftermath of the Civil War, an infantry officer is posted all by
himself at a remote outpost in the Dakotas, where he is eventually driven by
loneliness and curiosity into responding when the local Sioux Indians make an
overture. Slowly, cautiously, tentatively, the man opens himself to Indian
culture, and the film follows him as he is adopted into the tribe. Then the
fragile structure is broken when more U.S. Cavalry arrive, and we are reminded
of the tragic and short-sighted racism that let to the genocidal destruction of
Native Americans.
        The movie stars Kevin Costner, and is his directing debut. He shows a
sure feeling for the land, for gesture, for language and silence. And the movie
expands in its epic form, freeing us from the notion that a plot must be hurried
along, freeing us to grow and explore as the protagonist does, as we gradually
learn about another culture. One of the key decisions is to allow the Sioux to
speak in their own language, instead of in the demeaning pidgin-English so
common in films about Indians. The film is filled with strong, effective
performances by actors by Mary McDonnell as the woman Costner falls in love
with, and Graham Greene and Rodney A. Grant as two of the Sioux leaders.

4. The Grifters
        What a clockwork mechanism of betrayal and greed this is! Based on a
hard-boiled novel by the legendary Jim Thompson and a screenplay by mystery
craftsman Donald Westlake, the movie weaves a tangled web of deceit involving
three con artists: A callow young man (John Cusack), his mother (Anjelica
Huston), and his girl friend (Annette Bening). He's into small-time cons, like
cheating bartenders out of $20. His mother works for a bigtime horse-betting
operation, traveling to major tracks to place money, and skimming off some of
the action for herself. The girlfriend is a freelance con artist whose true
motives are a deep secret. The director, Stephen Frears, begins with a character
who thinks he is cynical, and mercilessly shows him what true cynicism is. The
movie's ending is like a slap in the face,

5. Reversal of Fortune
        Based on the convoluted trials of Klaus von Bulow, the aristocrat
accused of attempting to murder his socialite wife, Sonny, this is a dark comedy
about twisted motives. Jeremy Irons stars, in one of the very best performances
of the year, as Klaus--mannered, affected, odd, with a teasing sense of humor
that seems to exploit the possibility that he might be wicked. Ron Silver is
Alan J. Dershowitz, the celebrated Harvard Law professor who won for Klaus on
appeal, and then wrote the book that inspired this movie. And Glenn Close is
Sonny, who is in a coma as the movie begins, but is glimpsed in flashbacks and
also narrates the action, observing at one point that a lot of people would love
to know what happened on that disputed night, but even she isn't sure: "You tell
me." With this film and "Barfly" (1987), director Barbet Schroeder is on a roll.

6. Santa Sangre
        This film is a throwback to the days when filmmakers had bold individual
visions and were not timidly trying to duplicate the latest mass-market
formulas. This is a movie like none I have seen before, a wild kaleidoscope of
images and outrages, a collision between Freud and Fellini. It contains blood
and glory, saints and circuses, and unspeakable secrets of the night. And it is
all wrapped up in a flamboyant parade of bold, odd, striking imagery, with
Alejandro Jodorowsky as the ringmaster. If you were going to the movies in the
early 1970s you will remember the name. Jodorowsky is the perennial artist in
exile who made "El Topo," that gory cult classic that has since disappeared from
view, trapped in a legal battle. Now he is back with a film that grabs you with
its opening frames and shakes you for two hours with the outrageous excesses of
his imagination. Strange images here: An elephant funeral, murder under the big
top, a hero whose hands and arms fall under the control of his mother.

7. Last Exit to Brooklyn
        Love stories are about people who find love in happy times. Tragedies
are about people who seek love in unhappy times. "Last Exit to Brooklyn" makes a
point of taking place in the early 1950s, when all of the escape routes had been
cut off for its major characters. The union official cannot admit to being left
wing. The strike leader cannot reveal he is homosexual. The father cannot
express his love for his child, the prostitute cannot accept her love for the
sailor, and the drag queen is not able to love himself. There isn't even any
music to release these characters--rock and roll is still in the future, and the
pop ballads of the era mock the passions of everyday life. The characters drink
and some of them do drugs, but they don't get high--they simply find the
occasional release of oblivion.
        The movie takes place in one of the gloomiest and most depressing urban
settings I've seen in a movie. These streets aren't mean, they're unforgiving.
Vast blank warehouse walls loom over the barren pavements, and vacant lots are
filled with abandoned cars where mockeries of love take place. The director, Uli
Edel, somehow finds humanity in this despair, especially in the story of the
prostitute (a brave performance by Jennifer Jason Leigh), somehow insisting on
her right to find love, no matter how many cards are stacked against her.

8. Awakenings
        In 1969 in a hospital in the Bronx, a group of patients sit and wait,
year after year. They are victims of the later stages of sleeping sickness, and
seem frozen inside their own bodies, unable to move, to speak, to will a single
one of their muscles.  Some of them have been frozen in this trance state for 30
years when a doctor decides to treat them with an experimental dose of a new
drug named L-dopa. Miraculously, they awaken. They look about with wonder and
joy at their freedom to choose what they will do and say. But the awakening is
not all that simple, and the movie is a reminder of how precious, and fragile,
life can be.
        The movie is based on a book by Oliver Sacks, M.D., who is portrayed in
the movie by Robin Williams as a quiet, sy, inward man who in certain ways is as
closed-off as his patients. Robert De Niro plays Leonard, one of the patients,
who awakens after three decades and insists on living as fully as he can. With
this film and "Big," onetime sitcom star Penny Marshall establishes herself as
an admirable director.

9. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
        One of the year's most audacious and controversial films, it was also
one of the most provoking--challenging audiences to see through the shocking
imagery to the parable beneath. Director Peter Greenaway set his story inside a
restaurant version of hell, where a piggish gangster terrorizes the cook,
browbeats his mistress, and lords over a motley collection of thugs and
hangers-on. The mistress and another customer in the restaurant--a mild man who
likes to read while he eats--commence a passionate love affair, only to suffer
the most disturbing consequences. But the revenge of the mistress on the thief
is even more shocking. What did the movie mean? Greenaway provided no clues, but
some critics read it as an attack on Thatcherism in Great Britain

10. Mountains of the Moon
        One of the most unjustly neglected films of the year, this told the
story of the great explorer of the Victorian era, Sir Richard Burton, and his
attempts to find the sources of the Nile. Explorers were the astronauts and
sports heroes of the 19th century, and the stakes were high. The first man back
to London with news of a sensational new discovery could reap fame and fortune,
and Burton's great rival was a man named John Hanning Speke, whose fatal flaws
of character were eventually his undoing. This is a grand, intelligent epic of
adventure, directed by Bob Rafelson, whose earlier credits include the
unforgettable "Five Easy Pieces." Why was the movie so widely overlooked? The
ads and some of the reviews made it seem the tale of dusty old historical
figures, and missed the vision, and the passion.
        *   *   *

Ten more good films of the year:

11. The Krays
        Set on the mean Cockney streets of London's East End, Peter Medak's
movie tells the story of the criminals who invented modern violent crime in
England--the Krays, Ronnie and Reggie, whose methods were so ruthless that rival
gangs caved in rather than face them. The Krays are played in the movie by
real-life brothers, Spandau Ballet rock stars Gary and Martin Kemp, and they
provide a case study in criminal pathology, but the key figure in the movie is
their mother Violet (Billie Whitelaw), who is proud of her lads no matter what.

12. The Godfather Part III
        Is this film as good as the first two Godfather sagas? No. It lacks the
storytelling sureness and the clarity of the minor characters. But is it better
than most other movies? Yes. Francis Ford Coppola has made us so familiar with
the Corleones and their family destiny that this third film reverberates with
the almost mythic echoes of the first two. All the Godfather films have made new
stars, and the new faces this time are Andy Garcia, as Sonny's son a the
cold-blooded, hot-headed killer; and Joe Mantegna, as Joey Zasa, a Mafioso who
thinks he has the Corleones figured out, and is wrong.

13. Dick Tracy
        Warren Beatty's movie is above all a triumph of vision, a masterpiece of
art direction and special effects that make it look unlike any other movie--that
make it, indeed, look amazingly like a real-life version of the classic Chester
Gould comic strip. The streets, the rooms, the clothes, the faces of the
characters, all conspire to create an eerie world of the good, the evil, and the
grotesque.

14. Mr. and Mrs. Bridge
        A subtle and delicately-shared examination of the emptiness, loneliness,
desperation and fear just beneath the surface of a well-to-do Kansas City family
in the 1940s. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward star as the central characters
from the Evan S. Connell novels, which show people whose respectable, conformist
behavior has cut them off from their feelings and made it all but impossible for
them to talk honestly with one another. From the team of producer Ismail
Merchant, James Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who made "A Room with a View"
and so many other intelligent studies of manners.

15. Mystery Train
        Jim Jarmusch's film traces three stories through the seamier streets of
Memphis. Two young Japanese tourists arrive by train to visit the shrines of
rock and roll, two women meet in a hotel lobby, some criminals get involved in a
stickup. The night clerk and his assistant have seen it all, but on this side of
the tracks everything is not modern and sanitized, and the old city of passenger
trains and saloons and fleabag hotels exerts a doomed romantic charm, even
before the ghost of Elvis makes its appearance.

16. Black Rain
        Two movies with the same title, both with Japanese themes, came out at
about the same time, but had nothing else in common. One was the big-budget
Michael Douglas thriller, which all but wiped consciousness of the other one out
of people's minds. But it is much the greater film, the story of the aftermath
of the bombing of Hiroshima, as people who were beneath the "black rain" of
nuclear fallout live with the threat of radiation sickness. Directed ly a
condemnation of the American bomb but also a commentary on the Japanese tendency
to apologize for things that are not their fault.

17. Camille Claudel
        The story of a woman who was Rodin's mistress, for which she is
remembered, and one of the great sculptors of 19th century France, for which she
has largely been forgotten. Isabelle Adjani stars as a woman determined to make
her own way as an independent artist, in a world which saw such desires as
peculiar, if not dangerous. Gerald Depardieu co-stars as Rodin, who uses her and
abandons her to her eventual destruction. One of the great film biographies of
an artist.

18. Jesus of Montreal
        The cast of a Montreal passion play becomes embroiled in an argument
about the rewriting of the play, and soon there is a controversy between those
who see the life of Jesus as a call to revolution, and those who prefer religion
to act like oil on troubled waters. Denys Arcand's movie is not "religious" in a
conventional sense, and spends much time on backstage theatrical details, but by
the end the story of Christ has once again served as a powerful metaphor, and a
rebuke to the weakness of man.

19. Joe vs. the Volcano
        This was one of the few comedies of the year to break the mold, to go
for an original visual style and an audacious comic payoff. Written and directed
by John Patrick Shanley (who wrote "Moonstruck"), it was a brave filmmaking
debut, showing an original vision. Tom Hanks starred, as a hapless bureaucrat
who strikes out boldly one day to live before he dies. Meg Ryan played all three
of the women in the movie--each one funny in a different way. A sleeper worth
looking for.

20. Pretty Woman
        One of the year's biggest hits was also an enormously entertaining
romance, a story that took seamy materials (cynical investor hires no-nonsense
hooker) and turned it into an improbably romantic story. Richard Gere played the
businessman as if born to the role, and Julia Roberts became Hollywood's
favorite new actress on the basis of her quality of--what would you call it?
Innocentcarnality?

        *   *   *
Other movies that made 1990 a year when it was often very good indeed to
be a movie critic:

        Woody Allen's "Alice" sent Mia Farrow through a magical tour of a rich
trophy wife's life and values; Barry Levinson's "Avalon"  found that the
Americandream does not always end in rainbows; Rob Lowe was a "Bad Influenc" on
James Spader; "Berkeley in the 1960s" was a documentary filled with echoes of a
special time and place; James Toback's "The Big Bang" asked people what they
thought about the really important things; "Cinema Paradiso" turned into a
long-running art house favorite; Alan Parker's "Come See the Paradise" set its
love story against the background of the internment of Japanese-Americans during
World War II; Gerard Depardieu was a magnificently brave and tender "Cyrano de
Bergerac."
        "Flashback" had Dennis Hopper as an old FBI agent with the soul of a
hippie; Depardieu was back again in "Green Card," a Meet Cute comedy with Andie
MacDowell; Mel Gibson was a powerful "Hamlet" for Franco Zeffirelli; Phil
Kaufman's "Henry & June" would have made old Henry Miller proud with the way it
overturned the MPAA's movie rating system; Dennis Hopper's "The Hot Spot" was a
steamy small-town crime melodrama where the hero drove a 1957 Studebaker Golden
Hawk, the most beautiful American production sports car of all time; "House
Party" was a light-spirited movie about rap music and some more important
things; "I Love You to Death" created a scene of exquisite embarrassment around
the problem of how to make small talk to a man who doesn't know you've just shot
him; Theresa Russell was a vice cop who got seduced by her job in "Impulse;"
Richard Gere was good again in "Internal Affairs," as a braggart cop whose
cockiness catches up with him; 'Jacob's Ladder" created a tragic puzzle out of a
man trying to make sense of a nightmare; Quincy Jones was unusually revealing
and honest in the biodoc "Listen Up!;" Bruce Davison gave a performance of Oscar
calibre in "Longtime Companion," about a group of friends in the age of AIDS.
        Whit Stillman's "Metropolitan" was a smart, pointed comedy about
preppies; "Miller's Crossing" had Albert Finney as a powerful, flawed rackets
boss; Spike Lee's "Mo' Better Blues" starred Denzel Washington as a jazz
musician who finally stops trying to self-destruct; "Presumed Innocent" was an
effective retelling of the Scott Turow best-seller; Sidney Lumet's "Q & A" used
the form of a cop movie to ask pointed questions about race relations; "The Hunt
for Red October" was a superior technothriller; American consumerism got
skewered in "Rosalie Goes Shopping;" Michael Caine was superb in "Shock to the
System," a sharp-edged satire about big business; Charles Lane's "Sidewalk
Stories" was a virtuoso silent comedy about life among the homeless; Martin
Ritt, who died in December, left "Stanley and Iris" as a last reminder of his
committed, humanist vision; Bette Midler won my heart with "'Stella," even if
most other critics scorned her; John Frankenheimer's "The Fourth War" was a ly
study of the last gasp of the cold war; "The Freshman" contained a magnificent
self-parody by Marlon Brando; Gerald Depardieu, who does not appear in every
movie but only seems to, was brilliant as a car salesman who drops his elegant
wife for his dumpy secretary in "Too Beautiful for You;" Schwarzenegger and
special effects triumphed in "Total Recall;" Jack Nicholson
 brooding, thoughtful "Two Jakes;" and Robert Altman's "Vincent and Theo" was a
fascinating study of the life of both Van Goghs.