The ’90s gave us plenty of movies everybody still talks about.
These aren’t those.
None of these are obscure exactly, but they’ve slipped far enough out of the conversation that a lot of people either haven’t seen them in years or never got around to them in the first place.
That should probably change.
1. Breakdown (1997)
Kurt Russell’s wife disappears after their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
That’s really all you need.
Breakdown is one of those movies that wastes almost no time getting to the problem and then spends the rest of the movie making that problem worse.
Russell plays an ordinary guy who suddenly has to figure out who took his wife, where she went, and why nobody seems particularly interested in helping him.
If you like tight thrillers that don’t need two and a half hours to make their point, this one is absolutely worth going back to.
2. The Negotiator (1998)
Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey spend much of The Negotiator trying to outthink each other.
That’s enough to make the movie work.
Jackson plays a police negotiator who is framed for a crime and takes hostages in an attempt to prove what really happened. Spacey plays the negotiator brought in to talk him out.
So now you have one professional negotiator trying to negotiate with another professional negotiator.
Good setup.
The movie gives both actors plenty of room to work, and the back-and-forth between them is much more interesting than another generic police standoff.
It’s smart, tense and very ’90s in the best way.
3. Executive Decision (1996)
There was a stretch in the ’90s when Hollywood was very good at making movies and Kurt Russell seemed to be in half of them.
He’s already shown up once on this list with Breakdown. Here he is again.
In Executive Decision, Russell leads a team trying to secretly board a hijacked passenger jet in midair before terrorists can use it as a weapon.
Yes, the premise is ridiculous.
And that’s part of the fun.
The movie takes itself seriously enough to create real tension without becoming so serious that you start asking too many questions about how any of this is actually possible.
And it has one of the better early surprises in a ’90s action movie.
If you’ve forgotten this one, it’s worth remembering.
4. October Sky (1999)
This is probably the quietest movie on the list and it may also be the easiest to recommend.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Homer Hickam, a kid growing up in a West Virginia coal town who becomes obsessed with rockets after seeing Sputnik cross the sky.
His father expects him to work in the mine. Homer has other ideas.
Homer wants to build rockets. He fails. A lot. Rockets explode. People doubt him. He keeps going.
That’s the movie.
Chris Cooper is excellent as his father, and the relationship between the two gives the movie most of its weight.
It’s sincere without becoming syrupy.
5. A River Runs Through It (1992)
A River Runs Through It is a movie about family, Montana, fly fishing and the fact that loving somebody doesn’t necessarily mean you can save them.
Brad Pitt and Craig Sheffer play brothers who grow up under a strict but loving father, played by Tom Skerritt.
One brother is steady.
The other is not.
You can probably guess which one Pitt plays.
This is a slower movie than the others on the list, but that’s exactly what it should be. The scenery is beautiful, the performances are strong, and the story has the kind of sadness that sneaks up on you instead of announcing itself.
It’s the sort of movie people remember liking but don’t necessarily think about watching again.
They should.
These five didn’t disappear.
They just got buried under thirty years of newer movies.
That’s fixable.
These 5 Movies from the ’90s Deserve Another Watch
The ’90s produced an absurd number of good movies that weren’t sequels, superheroes, or franchises. Here are 10 worth digging back up.
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