Surprise! Our next instalment in our decades project will be out on Monday, June 1st. The Best 100 Films of the 1990’s will include exactly what the title suggests: what we deemed to be the best of those ten years. This is our third list in the entry, having already made top one hundred lists for the 2000’s and the 2010’s. As stated before, we will release a new list in reverse chronological order every two months (so our 1980’s list will arrive sometime in August, per this promise). We will stop once we reach the 1920’s, then make one final list of important films in the early years of cinema (up until 1919). As you can see, we’ve been keeping busy.

Since our last list dropped, we have been asked: how do we come up with these lists? What’s the process for whittling insane amounts of films down to just one hundred? Well, today, we will walk you through the process, as a means of getting excited for our 1990’s list as well. Here is how Films Fatale makes a “Best 100” list (and the insane amount of work that goes into it).

1. Start off with one hundred films.

Naturally, we slop together our own current one hundred favourite films of the decade. To make sure we haven’t forgotten any films (when you’re working with thousands of films over all of these lists, it can be easy to let one or two good films slip your mind), we go through our own collections, lists, writings, and do general searches. The goal is just to get to one hundred; if we exceed this number, so be it. We will do so anyway. We aim for one hundred, but we usually get closer to two hundred. That’s before we start remembering the films we forgot. Lord help us.

2. Concoct our “To-Watch” List.

If there are glaring voids in our list (say someone here hasn’t watched Saving Private Ryan, which continues to be a well-discussed film even to this day), then that’s their homework. We figure out what films we still need to see. However, we make sure to make this homework count. We’re trying to find the best of the best, not just the genres we feel usually comfortable with. So, that means doing research on many different types of films:

•Genres: we want to embody every genre that did well in a decade. For instance, horror didn’t leave much of a mark in the 1990’s as we figured out, but already we are seeing a gigantic increase in great horror films with our 1980’s work thus far.

•Filmmakers: We want to cover all voices from all places. Gone are the days where a single type of filmmaker dominated a list. Sure, we have our tastes, but that can easily include many types of filmmakers. This is especially important in 2020, considering many filmmakers were silenced or scrubbed from archives upon release (due to bigotry, unfortunately), and these works are slowly being revived over time (thanks to the internet). Some films simply weren’t accessible until much later, hence their exclusion on previous lists. We want to exercise the amazing access we all have now, especially with the promotion of amazing films silenced (either out of inaccessibility, or the stupidity of the intolerant).

3. Get Watching

Now comes the difficult part: watching the countless films we have now compiled together. Even if we have seen many beforehand, consider the amount of films being put together with all of the research we’ve done. It gets wild, let us tell you. This is why we use two months as a buffer in between lists. We could technically get lists out every week, but let’s be honest; they would likely be rather week and sloppily assembled. The idea is to actually put forth the best of the best, as much as possible. It’s presumptuous to assume we’ve already seen all of the best films. If it’s any indication, our number one film dropped a few spaces after we began our viewing portion. Part of this is because one may view a film differently when they’re at a different stage of life. We also backtrack with some films we may have seen but need to be reacquainted with for that reason. We can’t rely solely on memory all of the time.

4. The Main Endgame

We use a five star rating system here, in case this is your first time on our site (welcome, by the way!). Here is the legend for reference.

If you’ve seen a few of our older reviews in the past (maybe an On-This-Day Thursday review, or one of our Best Picture winner write ups), you can pretty much guarantee yourself that anything that is a 3.5 or lower won’t make the cut. The idea is to not have anything in a top one hundred that’s, at best, pretty good (as per our opinion). It would look bad, we think. The goal is to aim for only 4.5’s and above, if possible. On Films Fatale, we have an “exceptional” section reserved for films that are rated 4.5 to 5 out of 5. To us, these are the very best of the week, month, year, decade, and all time. We will obviously have a number of 4’s on our initial lists, considering we still deem those “great” films. Our goal is to find as many new films that can make the cut (considering they are agreed upon as 4.5 or 5), and push out anything lower (as much as we like these films). If we simply cannot do it despite all of our research, then we accept the list as is, since it is still a true indication of what the decade’s best had to offer. We luckily have not run into this dilemma yet.

5. Cutting by Ranking

Once we have reached the point where enough films have been cut, we still will have well over one hundred films to slice away (for the 1990’s, we had over 150 still). We can’t cut any more. It doesn’t feel right. So, we do the absolutely difficult task of cutting by ranking. We take our time ranking all of these films, slowly and painfully. That’s the only way to move forward. If the list — as unsympathetic as it is — doesn’t hold certain films that we adore, we just have to accept that and move on. Then, the list is finished. We rarely reshuffle the list in any way once it has been ranked, considering this has already taken around two months to get to. A good portion of the newly discovered films make the list, along with our already determined favourites. Many researched films don’t, just like many of our personal favourites get lopped off as well. It’s a brutal process, but it’s in the name of promoting the actual best films that we can.

6. The Writing

After watching hours and hours of newly discovered films, old favourites, and everything in between, we then get to the other tedious part that seems minuscule in comparison: writing about every entry. As long as this takes (the 1990’s list amassed over fourteen thousand words altogether), it is fun to reminisce and gush about films we adore, whether we have just watched them finally, or have not shut up about them for many years. We clean everything up, and make sure it is ready to be delivered to you kind readers.

7. Doing this All Over Again

While we write, we’re already repeating this whole process with the next decade (we can’t stop now). As this article is being written, we are already well into the 1980’s list, and are currently in the viewing phase. Wish us luck!

We hope you enjoy our decades lists. The Best 100 Films of the 1990’s arrives June 1st, 2020.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.

The Best 100 Films of the Decade: How We Make These Lists