Underrated 90s Movies You Probably Skipped

Steven Soderbergh's revenge movie is one of the strangest things he ever made, which is saying something. Terence Stamp plays a just-released British ex-con who flies to Los Angeles to figure out how his daughter died. What follows is less a thriller than a mood — fractured editing, time jumping, long silences. Peter Fonda plays the villain with exactly the right amount of California detachment.

It barely made $3 million at the box office. It deserved better.

Where to watch: Tubi (free), available to rent on Prime Video and Apple TV+.

If you watched The Matrix and thought "I want more of this but weirder and more noir," Dark City is what you were looking for. A man wakes up in a rain-soaked city with no memory and apparent telekinetic powers. The city itself is alive in a way that shouldn't be explained in a blurb.

Roger Ebert called it one of the best films of 1998. It grossed $14 million on a $27 million budget and was largely forgotten within months. The director's cut (available on disc and some streamers) is the version to watch.

Where to watch: Tubi (free), Shudder.

John Sayles wrote and directed this one, and it's the kind of film nobody makes anymore — a murder mystery that's also a portrait of a Texas border town across three generations. A sheriff (Chris Cooper, before he was famous) digs up old bones in the desert and discovers the past is messier than anyone wants to admit.

It runs 135 minutes and earns every one of them. It got an Oscar nomination for original screenplay and still somehow fell off the map.

Where to watch: Available to rent on Prime Video, Apple TV+, and Vudu.

Soderbergh again — this was the film he made right before he felt he'd lost it and went off to make Schizopolis to find himself again. Underrated in a different way: it's a flawed, formally ambitious noir remake that's more interesting for what it's trying to do than what it achieves. Peter Gallagher plays a compulsive gambler who comes home and immediately makes everything worse.

Worth it for the color-coded structure alone, which Soderbergh used as a trial run for what he'd eventually do in Traffic.

Where to watch: Available to rent on Prime Video.

David O. Russell's second film and still maybe his funniest. Ben Stiller plays a new father who can't name his baby until he tracks down his biological parents — which sends him, his wife (Patricia Arquette), and his adoption agency rep (Téa Leoni) on a road trip that goes catastrophically wrong at every stop.

It's a screwball comedy with a genuinely mean streak, and the supporting cast (Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin) is doing some of their best work. Came out the same year as The Cable Guy and got completely swallowed by the Ben Stiller discourse of that moment.

Where to watch: Available to rent on Prime Video and Apple TV+.

Nancy Savoca directed this one, and it's a quiet, strange little film about three generations of an Italian-American family in New York — a butcher who wins his wife in a pinochle game, their marriage, and the daughter (Lili Taylor) who becomes increasingly convinced she's meant to be a saint.

It's deadpan and warm and slightly surreal in a way that's hard to describe. It had zero theatrical presence and has never quite found its audience. It should have one.

Where to watch: Available to rent on Prime Video and Vudu.

Don Roos wrote and directed this, and it remains one of the funniest, most caustic comedies of the decade. Christina Ricci plays a 16-year-old who shows up at her gay half-brother's house, seduces his boyfriend, and proceeds to destroy everything around her. Lisa Kudrow plays the straight man (almost literally) and is extraordinary.

What makes it unusual is Ricci's character narrates the film and is explicitly unreliable — she tells you she's unreliable, then keeps lying anyway. It's a good joke that the film sustains for 105 minutes.

Where to watch: Available to rent on Prime Video and Apple TV+.

Sam Raimi — yes, the Evil Dead / Spider-Man Sam Raimi — made one of the best American crime films of the 90s and almost nobody remembers it. Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton find a bag of money in a crashed plane in the woods. Everything that follows is a slow, patient destruction of two people's lives.

Thornton got an Oscar nomination. The film grossed $16 million. It's been quietly buried under Raimi's blockbuster work, which is a shame.

Where to watch: Available to rent on Prime Video, Apple TV+, and Vudu.

Czech film, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and still managed to be underseen in the English-speaking world. A middle-aged bachelor musician in Prague unexpectedly ends up as the guardian of a five-year-old Russian boy he's never met. Neither speaks the other's language. The Berlin Wall just fell. It's funny and sad and not manipulative about either.

One of those films where the premise sounds saccharine and the execution is anything but.

Where to watch: Available to rent on Prime Video and Apple TV+.