Everybody has that movie that they love or greatly admire, but no one ever seems to talk about.
But as any cinephile or VHS warrior knows, there’s greatness to be found in the cracks.
Its a blast, and a great reminder that movies mean more than box office and franchising.
But with the 90s being the decade that birthed IMDb that criteria wasn’t used to update this list.
Most everything here has under 20,000 votes on IMDb but more than half do fall under 10,000.
So, let us go on; 25 of our favorite forgotten 90s movies are below.
Image via Sony Pictures Releasing
From writer-directorAllan Moyle,Pump up the Volumeis the unsung sibling film to his revered cult classicEmpire Records.
For a 27-year-old teen movie,Pump up the Volumeholds up incredibly well.
Not that I want to see that happen; its just probably going to.
Image via Sony Pictures Releasing
Youve been put on notice.
Haleigh Foutch
To Sleep with Anger (1990)
“You got to work at evil.”
You’ve probably heard the advice “don’t go to sleep with anger.”
Image via Fine Line Features
That friend is Harry and he’s played with charm byDanny Gloverbecause Danny Glover is a charming actor.
At the height ofLethal Weaponfame this is Glover at his most likable.
Who wouldn’t let him in if he came knocking at your door?
Image via Universal
And drifters know how to ride hospitality to the end of the line.
Harry is a drifter.
He knocks on the door of Gideon’s home and he looms over the child who answers it.
Image via Northern Arts Entertainment
There’s something surreal to a child about a stranger at the door that’s invited in.
And Glover is simply magnificent.
Brian Formo
Trust (1990)
“I had a bad day at work.
Image via MGM
I had to subvert my principles and kow-tow to an idiot.
Television makes these daily sacrifices possible.
Deadens the inner core of my being.”
Outside ofRichard Linklater’sSlacker,Trustis the most Gen-X movie imaginable.
Hartley takes the consumer aspects of our society and treats them as serious asJane Austendid with feelings.
Did I mention that it’s bitingly funny?
Maria (Adrianne Shelly) is in high school and she’s pregnant.
She tells her boyfriend her plan and he tells her he has football practice.
Matthew has a terrible manual labor job and his father makes him clean the bathroom for hours.
These are the things that could lead him to mass murder.
Scenes inTrustmove with great precision where language escalates quickly and absurdly but action doesn’t.
It essentially operates as a preposterous soap opera without the action.
Image via Miramax
Mo' Better Bluesis full of charisma, and jazzy peaks and valleys.
(Did I mention it’s funny?)
But Harris beat them to the punch and suffered for it.
This is a distinctly 1990 Sundance Film in all of the absolute best ways.
True indie movie heaven.~ Brian Formo
Blue Steel (1990)
Police!
Put the gun down!
Oh, get out of my face, lady!
Right from the get go, Bigelow stages an opening gut punch.
Bigelow amplifies a domestic argument that sounds very, very close to boiling over into physical abuse or worse.
We hear it dialed up while Curtis walks down an apartment hallway, gun drawn.
She enters the apartment and the man has a gun to a woman’s head.
She’s out to get bad guys.
But only once she’s a simulated victim does she start to see victimized women everywhere.
Bigelow stages many different invasions of Curtis personal space in which she is told simply nothing can be done.
The system allows for worse things to happen to her.
His attraction goes from red hot to downward.
“I’m a film director.”
“Oh, so you make rom-coms?”
Bigelow: “I bang men’s heads against the walls.”
Do you loveHarold and Maude?
Thandiwe is drawn to Danny because he has a rebellious spirit.
Not just kissing, foreplay or sex, but entirely new ideas of democracy, globalization, and revolution.
Brian Formo
The Man in the Moon (1991)
“I wanna know you more…
I wanna know you all I can.”
A 14-year-oldReese Witherspoonfalls in love with a neighbor boy (Jason London) in this note-perfect coming-of-age drama.
Shes taking her first steps toward womanhood and becoming a woman also means dealing with jealousy.
The romance here is in the teenaged practice to receive it.
And practice makes perfect.
Brian Formo
Jamon, Jamon (1992)
“You won’t be famous.
Unless your balls make you famous.”
Sound like a set-up to a joke?
The sun rises and sets, casting shadows from two big balls.
Conchita (Stefania Sandrelli) has some pretty big balls, too.
For no underwear magnate son of hers will marry the daughter of a prostitute.
But then thats complicated when Conchita decides that she wants Raul, too.
Those are the basic ingredients for a hammy (guilty pleasure) melodrama.
The characters are hungry for sex and powerand all of the town’s industries partake in animal flesh.
A delicious taste is damn near impossible to capture on screen.
But an orgasm isnt.
DirectorBigas Lunacombines those two often: taste and sex.
When the men visit the brothel they explain that theyre hungry.
Brian Formo
Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
Yo, when Im with my friends, I act like it dont matter, cuz it dont!
But between you and me, that shit pisses me off.
When they think they can just judge you by the way you dress, uh-uh!
I always get As and Bs in all my classes.
Im the best student in my calc class!
People be trippin when they find out how smart I really am.
Chantel (Ariyan A. Johnson) is a hip, outspoken, and immensely intelligent Brooklyn teenager.
I wish this were the 90s teen hit it deserves to be.~ Brian Formo
