Six Under-the-Radar 90s Films

Most of us are familiar with 1990s classic films like Speed, Goodfellas, and Home Alone.  But what of the decade’s movies hovering below the radar?  Here are six 90s films we’ve uncovered for your consideration.

Crooked Hearts (1991)

Crooked Hearts is the poster child for a bad movie with the best of intentions.  The story comes off simply too stagy and melodramatic for its own good.

Too bad, as this cast is roundly stellar.  Among the impressive ensemble: Peter Berg and Peter Coyote, Juliette Lewis, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.  Even so, the featured family they each, in part, comprise here is more of a suffocating cult.  And when at last we learn all of its mega mixed-up members’ deeply dark secrets, this clan is collectively revealed to be just downright creepy.

Strange Days (1995)

With the possible exception of Angela Bassett’s hard-as-nails heroine with a heart, “Mace” Mason, there is not a single character with whom to sympathize in Strange Days.  Yet, Oscar-winning Director Kathryn Bigelow (whose then ex-hubby James Cameron created the story and co-wrote the screenplay) fashions a largely entertaining tale with her film.  Focused (literally and figuratively) upon a black market of virtual reality video clips, the plot was well ahead of its time.

Bigelow establishes an ominously threatening futuristic vision of Los Angeles. It’s disturbingly depicted as a terrifying hellhole on the eve of Y2K.  We’re shocked to learn that “La La Land” has descended into an anarchistic police state of relentless malice and mayhem.

Several recognizable faces help to make Days a worthwhile watch.  Ralph Fiennes is Lenny Nero, a sleazy smut tape peddler, with Tom Sizemore as his fellow ex-LAPD Vice Squad buddy (or is he?).  Juliette Lewis plays Nero’s one-time flame, Faith Justin, is a former hooker turned rock band sex bomb.  Lewis sings in this movie (quite well, actually).  And a really young Vincent D’Onofrio delivers a chilling turn as a super-duper bad cop.

The Spanish Prisoner (1997)

It seems that a David Mamet film, while by and large well written, is consistently stiff, as if intended for the stage.  That’s not difficult to understand, given Mamet’s pedigree as a world-class playwright.  This confounding exasperation is the core detraction with Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner.

Campbell Scott performs yeoman duty here, investing his best to jumpstart some spark into his role of “Joe Ross.” Ross is a stool pigeon corporate inventor getting royally hosed as part of a complex con job.  The momentum does manage to pick up about halfway into these proceedings.  But Mamet never allows the narrative, nor his actors, to fully cut loose, thereby preventing Prisoner from becoming the kind of compelling suspense thriller it should be.  Instead, we get what amounts to Mamet’s diluted version of a Hitchcockian classic.

In the Company of Men (1997)

Aaron Eckhart’s character of “Chad “embodies everything a man aspires to have: looks, charm, the gift of gab, and career success.  Only Chad is not content to stop there.

His sense of “fun” through heartless malice chills to the bone.  It infests all those around him throughout the unnerving corporate drama In The Company of Men.

A calculating and ruthless murderer, Chad’s pleasure does not lie in the butchering of the body.  Rather, his deeply demented delight is derived from the slaughter of the soul.

It’s puzzling that In The Company of Men is widely billed as a “dark comedy.” Yes, there are funny moments, however, the end game is anything but laughable.

Cube (1997)

What is the message of Cube?  The meek shall inherit the Earth?  The downtrodden shall ascend to Heaven above all others?  Don’t make things harder than they have to be?  Or none of the above?

This enigmatic Canadian thriller delivers a more than reputable job of building suspense.  All the while, it’s generating a sinister sense of near-relentless dread.  It overtakes a group of total strangers, who discover themselves fighting and figuring out how to escape a diabolical, jumbo-size labyrinth.  That said, Cube does take its inordinately sweet time to get virtually, and literally, nowhere in the end.

However, kudos must go to this super scary score composed by Mark Korven.  And to the constant and absolutely harrowing sounds created by the film’s editing and production crew.  Combined, their arresting efforts help to make Cube a more compelling watch than it otherwise may have been.

Best Laid Plans (1999)

As threadbare thrillers go, Best Laid Plans furnishes a serviceable degree of entertainment.  If nothing else, it’s fun to see superstars-to-be Reese Witherspoon and Josh Brolin in the embryonic stages of their now-formidable acting careers.

Oh, and let this be noted: Rocky Carroll (TV’s NCIS) is an absolute hoot as a guy billed simply here as “Bad Ass Dude.”  Carroll’s portrayal of a drug kingpin with an especially keen awareness of his craft’s economics is inspired hilarity.  His deliciously eclectic performance is far and away the “best” reason to “plan” to “lay into” this flick.

-John Smistad

Photo: The GAUMONT room with Italian place and wide screen in Paris, France on June 12, 1992. (Photo by Alain BENAINOUS/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)