What to Watch
Underrated Movies from the 1990s: Thirteen You Missed
By Jordan A. · · Updated · 5 min read
The 1990s canon calcified fast. Pulp Fiction, Fargo, Goodfellas, The Matrix, Se7en. All great, all discussed to death, all on every list. The interesting part of the decade is what got squeezed out by them: films that opened badly, or opened in three cities, or came out of Hong Kong and Tokyo and did not get a proper American release until DVD.
Thirteen films below, all from 1990 to 1999, every year and director checked. No out-of-decade entries, which is a thing that happens to these lists more than it should.
American independents that got lost
Miller's Crossing (1990) is the Coen brothers' Prohibition gangster film, and it is the one of theirs people forget because it came out between Raising Arizona and Barton Fink. Gabriel Byrne plays both sides of a gang war with an unreadable face for two hours. Watch it if you like dialogue you have to lean into.
Safe (1995) is Todd Haynes directing Julianne Moore as a Los Angeles housewife who becomes allergic to the twentieth century. It is a horror film without a monster, and the framing keeps putting her in the corner of enormous rooms. Watch it if you want the most quietly unsettling film on this list. Skip it if you need a diagnosis by the end.
Hard Eight (1996) was Paul Thomas Anderson's feature debut, originally titled Sydney, with Philip Baker Hall as an old gambler who takes in a stranger in Reno. It is small, patient and completely assured for a first film. Watch it if you only know Anderson from the big ones.
Bottle Rocket (1996) is Wes Anderson's actual feature debut, with Owen and Luke Wilson, and it flopped. It is looser and sadder than the symmetrical films he became known for. Watch it to see the style before it hardened.
Rushmore (1998) is the follow-up, not the debut, and worth pairing with Bottle Rocket for exactly that reason. Bill Murray's performance here is the one that redirected the second half of his career.
Lone Star (1996) is John Sayles doing a border-town murder mystery that turns into a film about who gets to write local history. Chris Cooper investigates a body found in the desert and keeps finding out things about his own father. Watch it if you want the most novelistic film here.
The Last Days of Disco (1998) is Whit Stillman on Manhattan nightclubs and Ivy League graduates talking themselves in circles, with Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale. Watch it if you enjoy characters who are wrong about everything and articulate about it.
Films from further afield
Chungking Express (1994) is Wong Kar-wai's two-part film about lovesick Hong Kong policemen, shot fast and loose between larger projects. The second half, with Faye Wong breaking into an apartment to redecorate it, is the reason people love this film. Watch it if you want something that feels improvised and is not.
Cure (1997) is Kiyoshi Kurosawa, no relation to Akira, following a detective through a run of murders whose perpetrators all confess and none of whom can say why. It is the most genuinely frightening film on this list and almost nothing happens in it. Skip it if you want an explanation.
Genre films that deserved better
Dark City (1998) is Alex Proyas doing noir science fiction about a man who wakes with no memory in a city where the buildings rearrange themselves at midnight. It came out a year before The Matrix and got buried by it. Watch it for the production design alone.
Ravenous (1999) is Antonia Bird's cannibal western, set in the 1840s Sierra Nevada, with Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle and a score by Michael Nyman and Damon Albarn that should not work. Watch it if you like tonal chaos. Skip it if you want a film that picks a genre.
The Iron Giant (1999) is Brad Bird's first film, released with almost no marketing and now the animated film of the decade for a lot of people. Cold War paranoia, a boy, a robot who chooses what he is. Watch it with a child or without one.
Galaxy Quest (1999) is a science fiction parody that turns into a sincere science fiction film about halfway through, with Alan Rickman doing the best work of his comic career. Watch it if you want the most purely enjoyable two hours here.
Why these particular films disappeared
There is a pattern in the list. Half of these were released by studios that had no idea how to sell them. Ravenous was a cannibal western with a comedy score. Dark City was noir science fiction eighteen months before audiences had a reference point for it. The Iron Giant went out with almost no advertising and became beloved on video years later.
The other half never had a real American release at all. Chungking Express reached most US viewers through a small distributor and then through DVD. Cure took years to become findable outside Japan. That is the actual definition of underrated in this decade: not that critics disliked them, but that the distribution system had no slot for them.
Where these stream
Films this old move between services constantly, and several of these spend long stretches available only to rent. Where a film streams changes, and the title page on BingeNext shows current US options.
Where to start
If you want the one that will stay with you, watch Safe. If you want to be entertained, Galaxy Quest. If you want to feel like you have found something, Cure. If you want to understand a director you already like, Bottle Rocket.
If you would rather have the shortlist made for you, put three or four films you love into BingeNext's movie recommendations. You get picks, a reason for each, and where they stream. It takes about a minute.
Topics covered: underrated, 1990s, movies, hidden-gems, throwback
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.