AMERICAN FILMS OF THE 1990S I NEED TO SEE

When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are asked to take a substantial pay cut in a highly profitable year, the local labor union decides to go on strike and fight for a wage they believe is fair. But as the work stoppage drags on and the strikers face losing everything, friends become enemies, families are divided and the very future of this typical mid American town is threatened.

A Polish-Jewish family comes to the U.S. at the beginning of the twentieth century. There, the family and their children try to make themselves a better future in the so-called promised land.

1990 film by Penny Marshall

CENTRAL PARK is a film about the famous New York City landmark and the variety of ways in which people make use of it: running, boating, walking, skating, music, theatre, sports, picnics, parades and concerts. The film also illustrates the complex problems the New York City Parks Department deals with in order to maintain and preserve the park and keep it open and accessible to the public.

Eight-year-old Kevin McCallister makes the most of the situation after his family unwittingly leaves him behind when they go on Christmas vacation. But when a pair of bungling burglars set their sights on Kevin's house, the plucky kid stands ready to defend his territory. By planting booby traps galore, adorably mischievous Kevin stands his ground as his frantic mother attempts to race home before Christmas Day.

A new technologically-superior Soviet nuclear sub, the Red October, is heading for the U.S. coast under the command of Captain Marko Ramius. The American government thinks Ramius is planning to attack. Lone CIA analyst Jack Ryan has a different idea: he thinks Ramius is planning to defect, but he has only a few hours to find him and prove it - because the entire Russian naval and air commands are trying to find Ramius, too. The hunt is on!

A former drug lord returns from prison determined to wipe out all his competition and distribute the profits of his operations to New York's poor and lower classes in this stylish and ultra violent modern twist on Robin Hood.

Fifteen-year-old Charlotte Flax is tired of her wacky mom moving their family to a different town any time she feels it is necessary. When they move to a small Massachusetts town and Mrs. Flax begins dating a shopkeeper, Charlotte and her 9-year-old sister, Kate, hope that they can finally settle down. But when Charlotte's attraction to an older man gets in the way, the family must learn to accept each other for who they truly are.

A radical student is adopted by a group of young New Yorkers, serves as a catalyst to alter his and their lives. Gathering in a Manhattan apartment, the group of friends meet to discuss social mobility, Fourier's socialism and play bridge in their cocoon of upper-class society - until they are joined by a man with a critical view of their way of life.

After Junior is released from prison, he plans on starting a new life in Miami. But when he kills a man in the airport, he flees the scene and finds Susie, a mild-mannered prostitute searching for stability. The two opposites become romantically involved, and Junior steals a badge and gun from a veteran detective. Using the officer's identity, Junior embarks on a crime spree and convinces Susie that he is the perfect man.

After stalking and saving the life of her favorite fiction author in a car accident, his manic obsessor holds him captive in her remote Colorado home then forces him to write back to life the popular literary character he killed off.

1990 film by Jennie Livingston

Substance-addicted Hollywood actress, Suzanne Vale is on the skids. After a spell at a detox centre her film company insists as a condition of continuing to employ her that she live with her mother, herself once a star and now a champion drinker. Such a set-up is bad news for Suzanne who has struggled for years to get out of her mother's shadow, and who still treats her like a child. Despite these and other problems, Suzanne begins to see the funny side of her situation, and also realises that not only do daughters have mothers—mothers do too.

Rusty Sabich is a deputy prosecutor engaged in an obsessive affair with a coworker who is murdered. Soon after, he's accused of the crime. And his fight to clear his name becomes a whirlpool of lies and hidden passions.

Privilege is an intelligently conceived, boldly anarchic, and wickedly insightful exposition on the culturally ingrained and socially divisive malaise of isms that artificially define and characterize empowerment in contemporary society: ageism, sexism, economic elitism, and racism. Yvonne Rainer conveys texture through the intercutting of archival footage, video, and film - as well as compositional layering through the film-within-a-film structure, elliptical (and self-referential) fusion of past and present, and the filmmaker's idiosyncratic penchant for superimposed typed text.

1990 film by Tom Stoppard

Through a series of twenty six short stories, a girl describes the childhood events that shaped her ideas about fatherhood, family relations, work and play. As the stories unfold, a dual portrait emerges: that of a father who cared more for his career than for his family, and of a daughter who was deeply affected by his behavior. Working in counterpoint to the forceful text are sensual black and white images that depict both the extraordinary and ordinary events of daily life. Together, they create a formally complex and emotionally intense film.

Charles Burnett, one of America's most highly regarded independent filmmakers, wrote and directed this domestic drama about a black middle-class family living in South central Los Angeles. However, there are no gangs, no guns, no drugs but instead a lyrical story that draws on folklore and the supernatural.
family tensions are already simmering when Harry (Danny Glover) arrives to visit his old friends. He exudes an easy charm, knows secret past and present and is soon installed in the heart of the family. However, as his stay lengthens, so does he begin to cast an even more malevolent spell, provoking turmoil, setting son against son, reviving past hatreds, and inflicting a mysterious illness.
Glover delivers a career-topping performance as the garrulous family friend, full of hidden menace, effortlessly evoking nostalgia and horror in the same breath.
As ever, Burnett provides a wonderful music track featuring gospel, blues and jazz and a cameo from the legendary Jimmy Weatherspoon.
'A slow-burning, soul-insinuating, 12-bar blues of a movie.' Tom Charity, Time Out
'Danny Glover is marvellous, and terrifying, as a charismatic old-timer.' The Times
(from the description on the back cover of the DVD)

1990 film directed by Ron Underwood

A former mining town in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, Aspen is now better known as a winter playground for wealthy holidaymakers. Against the majestic landscape, visitors relax while locals toil around them.