The Jim Crow era of racial discrimination and segregation dealt a heavy blow to the African-American film industry, which was already a fragile ecosystem developing in an adversarial world that considered its purveyors inferior solely because of the colour of their skin.

An era of silence stifled the ‘50s and the ‘60s, in particular, but it did not prevail. Martin Luther King Jr. rose up along with other brave and bold speakers, musicians, poets, and activists, having had more than enough. Their speeches and dreams of a better world shone a powerful light on American society. Tragedy did follow, as expected from a society embroiled in its fantasies of white supremacy, but better days came, as well.

Finally, the ‘70s saw a slow but steady rebirth of Black American cinema. This new generation of black filmmakers brought the truth of their experiences centre stage. From cinematic gems of the Blaxploitation era to Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ (1984), the bountiful growth of Black Americans in cinema is worthy of notice and praise. Iconic movies came forth and extraordinary storytellers pushed boundaries. Most recently, we’ve seen a splendid expansion into genres otherwise monopolised by white filmmakers—see Ryan Coogler’s ‘Black Panther’ (2018) and Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ (2017) as just two examples. But it’s important to observe the greats that came before them. The pioneers of the ‘80s, the ‘90s, and the ‘00s that reshaped the Black American narrative on the silver screen into something honest, breath-taking, heart-breaking, and undeniably unique.

DANIEL KALUUYA AND JORDAN PEELE ON THE SET OF ‘GET OUT’ (2017), ©JUSTIN LUBIN/UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Forty Years of Black Masterpieces

There are plenty of illustrious titles to work with but, as usual, a selection must be made for the sake of brevity. One film that has withstood the test of time, over and over again, is Spike Lee’s ‘Do the Right Thing’ (1989). Its success is mainly owed to its sincerity and Mr Lee’s uncanny ability to deliver a wide range of characters without swerving into dangerous stereotype territory. With the United States always described as a melting pot of sorts—albeit idealistically, it’s no surprise that the eminent Black director chose New York as the ‘melting pot’ for his colourful and beautifully diverse characters before he brings it all to a boiling point.

The story is brilliant in its navigation of inner-city life and the struggles brought forth by racism—the latter a defining trait of Black American existence. ‘Do the Right Thing’ examines the very ethics of violence and prejudice before it offers a startling truth: good and bad are abstract moral constructs, at best. Few people are truly evil, yet so many have the potential for kindness. Mr Lee tells us that racism can be overcome, that there is beauty in diversity, and that Black Americans have been looked down upon for far too long. It was as relevant in 1989 as it is today.

‘DO THE RIGHT THING’ (1989), ©40 ACRES & A MULE FILMWORKS

‘Inside Man’ (2006) is yet another seminal work by Spike Lee—one of many, I might add. Packed with ridiculous amounts of tension and thrills, the film offers a glimpse into one of the greatest heists ever imagined by a screenwriter’s mind. With a stellar cast and exceptional performances under Mr Lee’s equally proficient direction, ‘Inside Man’ made history for Black Cinema, garnering plenty of awards along the way, including Movie of the Year at the AFI Awards and nods from both the AAFCA (African-American Film Critics Association) and BET Awards.

Antoine Fuqua’s ‘Training Day’ (2001) is such a rich work of cinema that it is rightfully referenced in film school studies today. It got Denzel Washington an Academy Award for his portrayal of a streetwise but crooked cop charged with training Ethan Hawke’s wet-behind-the-ears rookie. While the majority of Mr Washington’s thespian performances brought him forth as a model for righteousness and decency, his Alonzo offers a different take—a man who has tasted the dark side of power, who has forced fragile partnerships and alliances with the underbelly of city crime, and who cannot be ousted without losing everything, including his life.

Mr Fuqua’s directorial talent transforms the screenplay penned by David Ayers into an extraordinarily chilling drama about corruption within the ranks of those who are supposed to serve and protect.

‘TRAINING DAY’ (2001), ©WARNER BROS.

Before he dazzled Hollywood with ‘Black Panther’, Ryan Coogler wrote and directed ‘Fruitvale Station’ (2013), which tells the story of Oscar Grant’s last day before he was shot in the back and killed by a police officer. This Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award winner delivers a punch in the gut with its opening—security footage of the real Oscar Grant, and with its ending—a clip of his daughter, now left without her father. It was a complicated project to undertake, given that there were living relatives that Mr Coogler and his lead, Michael B. Jordan, had to consider.

Oscar Grant is portrayed in a realistic manner. He is a flawed man trying to make better choices and aware of his responsibilities toward his family, which is why he decides to take the BART train on the last night of 2008 and of his life. ‘Fruitvale Station’ does not intend to offer any kind of remedy for the social issues of police brutality aimed particularly at Black Americans. It only recreates the final hours of a man who did not deserve to die the way he did.

‘FRUITVALE STATION’ (2013), ©FOREST WHITAKER’S SIGNIFICANT PRODUCTIONS

Based on Sapphire’s novel ‘Push’ and directed by Lee Daniels, ‘Precious’ (2009) is a tour de force. Rarely do we see comedians sliding into dramatic roles with an ease that delivers staggering performances. Among them, I can think of Jim Carrey and Robin Williams. Yet there is also Mo’Nique, who is simply outstanding as the Harlem mother from hell who sexually abuses her illiterate teenage daughter, exquisitely portrayed by a young Gabourey Sidibe.

Sidibe’s Precious is a girl who has known nothing but trauma and misery, yet she finds kindness and freedom in others who help elevate her until she severs ties with her mother and becomes a better version of herself. Beyond Mo’Nique’s Oscar-worthy performance, however, what I also find memorable about this film is that it got Geoffrey Fletcher an Academy Award for the screenplay, making him the very first Black American to win a Best Screenplay Oscar (Original or Adapted).

‘PRECIOUS’ (2009), ©LIONSGATE

‘Barbershop’ (2002) by Tim Story offers a softer take on black culture. It’s a light-hearted comedy drama that features Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer, Eve, and Michael Ealy—an easy-to-digest movie offering realistic conversations to which viewers have been glad to relate. Before there were talk-shows like ‘Meet the Press’, barbershops used to be great meeting spots for people to go and chat about pretty much everything while getting a haircut. Mr Story’s film follows a family-owned barbershop and those who are sewn into its very fabric, employees and customers alike. It registered impressive box office figures, enough to later release two sequels and a spinoff for Queen Latifah.

Few movies have rattled their audiences like Steve McQueen’s ‘Twelve Years a Slave’ (2014), based on the eponymous book written by Solomon Northup. The film, equal parts powerful and excruciating through its depiction of 19^th century America and the superb performances of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita N’yongo, and Michael Fassbender, tells the story of Solomon Northup. His abduction and bondage into slavery despite having been a legally free black man forms the core of this devastating account and it brings forth a troubling question for its Black American viewers. What would they do if they were forced into Mr Northup’s circumstances? Would they fight back with everything they’ve got, or would they become pliable as a means of self-preservation in a society designed to keep them down, like he did?

STEVE MCQUEEN AND CHIWETEL EJIOFOR ON THE SET OF ’12 YEARS A SLAVE’ (2013), ©JAAP BUITENDIJK/FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

‘Moonlight’ by Barry Jenkins took the festival circuit by storm and won Best Motion Picture of the Year at the Oscars. For good reason, too. A character like Chiron had never been portrayed in Black American cinema before, thus proving that the range devised for black men in movies could spread wider and could offer new, enthralling dimensions. With only a couple of exceptions, few black characters had struggled with masculinity up to that point. Adding Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali’s resplendent renditions (let us not forget that Mr Ali won an Academy Award for this role) only served to turn ‘Moonlight’ into a cinematic phenomenon and proof that black films have a lot more to give, still.

Prior to ‘Selma’ (2014), Ava Duvernay was already enjoying a rapid ascension among the filmmaking ranks of Hollywood. It was this biopic oeuvre that brought forth the massive reaches of her talent and vision. It is imperative to observe the sheer force of will that she exudes as a Black American woman in an otherwise mostly white industry.

‘Selma’ does more than just recount that epic march for voting rights that carried Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, however. It gives us the man behind the legend, a being of titanic dreams and complexities, whose faults and qualities are presented from multiple angles—a feat genially accomplished through David Oyelowo’s interpretation and Ms Duvernay’s directorial guidance.

‘SELMA’ (2014), ©PATHÉ

F. Gary Gray had already done music video work with Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and other rap artists of the era that saw the rise of N.W.A. before he took on the gargantuan challenge of telling their story in ‘Straight Outta Compton’ (2015).

Naturally, the end result had everything that the iconic rap group’s fans could wish for: N.W.A.’s permission to use their original music; fantastic performances from the three leads, one of them being none other than O’Shea Jackson Jr., who played the role of his father, Ice Cube; and the kind of energy that is not easily found nor easily forgotten. It was the U.S.’s number one film for three weeks in a row and held a stupefying box office figure of $200M, but it will be remembered not only as a commercial success, but also as the now-second highest-grossing music biopic—after ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (2019).

‘STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON’ (2015), ©UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Forty Years of Black Directorial Brilliance

Many have garnered praise and attention for their works in Black American cinema, though few have become powerhouse names with multiple titles under their belts.

Naturally, we have Spike Lee at the forefront. We’ve already touched on ‘Inside Man’ and ‘Do the Right Thing’, but those are only two of his most popular movies. Once he made his debut with ‘She’s Gotta Have It’ (1986), his first feature-length film, Mr Lee did not stop creating and telling cinematic stories with roots deeply sunk into African American culture in one form or another.

Through ‘Malcolm X’ (1992), he built a biographical profile of the authoritative and controversial Black Nationalist leader, following Malcom X’s rise from his early days as a small-time gangster to his ministry, his advocacy for the Nation of Islam and discourse for civil rights—though his approach was always more aggressive than Dr King’s. The esteemed director’s more recent foray into racial issues gives us ‘BlacKkKlansman’ (2018), which tells the true story of Ron Stallworth, a black police officer played by John David Washington who managed to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan branch in Colorado.

Known best for his studies of race relations, urban crime and poverty, and colourism issues within the black community, Spike Lee has earned his Academy Awards and Golden Globes nods for some of his works—mostly for ‘Do the Right Thing’. Finally, his Oscar win came in 2019 for Best Adapted Screenplay, which he shared with Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, and Kevin Willmott for ‘BlacKkKlansman’.

‘BLACKKKLANSMAN’ (2018), ©FOCUS FEATURES

John Singleton became a household name of prolific Black American cinema with Oscar-nominated ‘Boyz n the Hood’ (1991), leaving an indelible mark on the industry with other works of true depth such as ‘Poetic Justice’ (1993), starring Janet Jackson, Tupac Shakur, and Regina King, and ‘Shaft’ (2000), which gave us Samuel L. Jackson like nobody had ever seen him before. The film world lost him in 2019, but his legacy remains.

I, for one, remember his critique of American studios, in particular, regarding their refusal ‘to let African Americans direct black-themed films’ during an event at Loyola Marymount University, a speech which later became viral. ‘They ain’t letting the black people tell the stories’, he added, and for good reason. Great films have come out of Hollywood with Black Americans as the heroes and heroines, in projects helmed by white directors. The nuance and authenticity are lost, however, regardless of artistic quality. There is something that only those who live through a specific experience can add to make a story feel undeniably real.

‘BOYZ N THE HOOD’ (1991), ©COLUMBIA PICTURES

Allen and Albert Hughes, better known as the Hughes Brothers, have become more popular recently across television and streaming audiences thanks to ‘The Defiant Ones’ (2017), a biographical documentary series that studies the business relationship between Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, both heavy influences on contemporary culture. But before this Emmy-nominated project, the Hughes Brothers first garnered acclaim for ‘Menace II Society’ (1993) which despite having been frequently compared to ‘Boyz n the Hood’, it offers nothing downright pleasurable in its viewing experience. Unlike John Singleton’s signature piece, this Hughes Brothers’ showpiece is ugly and violent, painfully realistic and lacking in uplifting specks of hope. It pushes the viewers into wishing more from the world, since the characters clearly couldn’t.

They followed up with a slightly less bleak but just as troubling tale of black men who survived the Vietnam War, though not without emotional and psychological scars. ‘Dead Presidents’ (1995) approaches a rather difficult but necessary subject—the way in which the US government uses and abuses young men (in this case, especially black men) before it abandons them upon their return home. Pushed by PTSD, substance abuse, and the difficulties of providing for their families, these men who once fought for their country in the mosquito-infested jungles of Vietnam become criminals and spiral downwards until they land in prison. Few films have managed to incapsulate life after the war better than ‘Dead Presidents’.

‘DEAD PRESIDENTS’ (1995), ©CARAVAN PICTURES

There are plenty more Black American filmmakers who have left their own impressions onto the silver screen. F. Gary Gray made waves beyond ‘Straight Outta Compton’ with ‘Set It Off’ (1996) and ‘Friday’ (1995), the former a black-female-driven action piece featuring Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A. Fox, and Queen Latifah, and the latter a chilled comedy starring Ice Cube and Chris Tucker—both films illustrating the director’s versatility and ability to tackle a complex range of themes and genres whilst keeping his cast and screenplays black.

Gina Prince’s ‘Love & Basketball’ (2000) also deserves an honourable mention, splendidly split into quarters and unravelling like a basketball game that tells a story of… well, love and basketball at the centre of a complicated relationship between Omar Epps’s Quincy McCall and Sanaa Lathan’s Monica Wright. Allow me to applaud George Tillman Jr.’s ‘Soul Food’ (1997), too, as one of the first Black-American-led movies I remember watching, a tale of love and family and all the complications that come attached, set around the dinner table.

‘SOUL FOOD’ (1997), ©FOX 2000 PICTURES

And last, though certainly not least, a tip of the hat should go to Robert Townsend’s ‘The Five Heartbeats’ (1991), which earned a nomination for Outstanding Motion Picture from the Image Awards (NAACP). While its story is fictional, ‘The Five Heartbeats’ tells the familiar tale of Black American artists’ struggle during the ‘60s, at the climax of racial tensions in America. It carries twists of its own, however, with the singers’ personal demons threatening to shatter the troupe’s integrity in front of their growing audiences.

While hoping that the film industry will continue to grow, evolve, and embrace racial diversity and its potential, one can only look forward to what the future might hold for Black American cinema. There are some hard truths waiting to be told along with great stories.

Going into the modern chapters of film history, we will observe a rapid development of special effects and editing technologies, along with a continued evolution of the blockbuster and the merchandising empires that come with it. At this point, stories and characters continue to grow, and racial and political issues begin to take centre stage, giving us a plethora of seminal moments to pick from for a more in-depth study.

To sum things up, however, the Eighties were not just about bad hair and trashy cult flicks, and the early Nineties represent a threshold into adulthood for modern cinema, with an increasing diversity in storytelling. From 1983 until 1993, the film industry continues with its steady course upwards, further claiming its strength as an essential source of entertainment and as a soft power.

1983: The Year of Satire and Cocaine

One of the most memorable films to come out of the Eighties was Martin Scorsese’s ‘The King of Comedy’ (1983), a dark satire that culminates with a truly epic moment between Martin Scorsese’s fame-hungry Rupert Pupkin and Jerry Lewis’s comic legend Jerry Langford, as the ardent desire for celebrity becomes a blatant invasion of privacy. This scene features Rupert uninvited in Jerry’s home and accompanied by Diahnne Abbott’s Rita, with an awkward conversation that escalates into something… extraordinary.

The modern sculptures it takes place around sort of lend it an air of Greek drama and grandiosity, with Jerry in his shorts and sneakers looking stoic and regal going against Rupert, with his little moustache and two-toned shoes—a jester prancing and foretelling a dawn of shamelessness as a personality cult soon to engulf the world. ‘I’m gonna be 50 times more famous than you!’ Rupert ends up yelling at Jerry, ultimately confusing talent with fame.

‘THE KING OF COMEDY’ (1983), ©TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

With ‘Scarface’ (1983), Brian De Palma offers a melodramatic, if not even opera-like extreme approach to the classic theme of the gangster. It centres on Tony Montana’s (Al Pacino) obsession with territorial control, mercilessly followed by the loss of this power. He’s a Cuban refugee who is intent on living his version of the American Dream by gaining absolute control over everyone and everything.

However, at the end of this extravagant rise and fall, shortly after snorting a literal mountain of cocaine, Tony Montana gives us an outrageously hyperbolic finale that ends in blood and bullets. It was considered vulgar and politically insensitive shortly after its release, yet it has withstood the test of time as a masterpiece of modern cinema that gives us the subversive thrill of watching a social microcosm explode.

‘SCARFACE’ (1983), ©UNIVERSAL PICTURES

1985: A Dystopian Dream

Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’ (1985) gave a whole new meaning to the term ‘dark comedy’. A burning science-fiction fantasy about a future gone many kinds of wrong, the film got off on a tremorous start when Universal Pictures, its American distributor, declared it a failure and refused to release it. Mr Gilliam, ever the stubborn and enterprising spirit, arranged press screenings anyway. Once the Los Angeles film critics declared it the best movie of the year, Universal relented.

In hindsight, it’s not difficult to understand why the studio had trouble seeing its potential. ‘Brazil’ steers clear of the regular commercial categories. The hero of this story, Sam, exquisitely portrayed by Jonathan Pryce, is a bureaucrat in a future society that might be considered totalitarian, if not for its endless stream of blunders and almost-cartoonish errors. He’s branded a terrorist, eventually, and goes through a series of harrowing experiences before he is saved—only to find out that his breathless escape was nothing more than a hallucination. Sam has surrendered unto the worst torture of all—the foolishness of hope.

‘BRAZIL’ (1985), ©UNIVERSAL PICTURES

1986: The Cinema of Strange

‘Blue Velvet’ (1986) is one of David Lynch’s best films, its ‘In Dreams’ scene best representing the director’s mastery of bizarre juxtaposition. Dean Stockwell’s Ben, hailed by Dennis Hopper’s Frank as ‘one suave f***er’, takes down a mobile mechanic’s light and uses it as a lounge singer’s microphone, lip-syncing to Roy Orbison’s classic ‘In Dreams’. It’s a signature of Lynch’s—taking easy listening melodies and presenting them in a manner that unmasks the fetishism, the obsession, and the dreamlike delirium that lingers behind their charming golden-oldie familiarity.

Ben is effeminate but lethal, his face covered in white kabuki makeup as he assaults Orbison’s song, projecting the entirety of his putrid soul into its soft, elusive, and twisted lyrics. The song is later replayed when Kyle MacLachlan’s Jeffrey is savagely beaten by Frank’s goons.

‘BLUE VELVET’ (1986), ©DE LAURENTIIS ENTERTAINMENT GROUP (DEG)

It was also the year of John Woo. ‘A Better Tomorrow’ (1986) is the legendary director’s breakthrough film, in which he coins an elegant cinematic language that redesigns the Hong Kong gangster genre, propelling Chow Yun-Fat to international fame. In its most famous scene, Chow’s dashing gangster Mark lights his cigarette with a fake hundred-dollar bill before he enters a restaurant and delivers an almost musical performance in fighting the traitorous gangsters, his figure as feathery as Fred Astaire’s.

1987: Of Chinese Superstars and American Soldiers

Zhang Yimou’s first film, ‘Red Sorghum’ (1987) recorded an incredible international success and created one of the most well-regarded professional couplings in cinema altogether—for there are few as wonderful as Zhang Yimou and the arresting Gong Li. Of course, there was also a personal layer to this pair, as the two developed a long-lasting relationship despite Mr Zhang’s marriage, his wife refusing to grant him a divorce.

It was in ‘Red Sorghum’ that the world became familiar with 22-year-old Gong Li as the bride with a lustful smile in a crimson palanquin, forever transforming Chinese cinema. She was reunited with Zhang for two other great films, ‘Ju Dou’ (1990) and ‘Raise the Red Lantern’ (1991), contributing to the director’s global fame and helping to usher in a new ‘star system à la chinoise’ that was easily exported to the West.

‘RED SORGHUM’ (1987), ©XI’AN FILM STUDIO

An iconic film of the Eighties—one that haunts its first viewers to this day, is Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Full Metal Jacket’ (1987). It’s a powerful work of silver screen art, and this power is incredibly condensed into the closeup of the dying Vietcong woman. Kubrick has no military or wartime experience whatsoever, yet he delivers a gut-wrenching scene with the wounded sniper who begs for Matthew Modine’s Joker to finish her off. The hatred in her eyes is absolute, making this particular scene impossible to forget, especially once we see ‘Gomer Pile’ grinning insanely just before he shoots Sergeant Hartman.

‘FULL METAL JACKET’ (1987), ©STANLEY KUBRICK PRODUCTIONS

In Brian De Palma’s ‘The Untouchables’ (1987), the showdown at the train station is a veritable work of art. It’s also a splendidly crafted update of a legendary silent-film sequence that ultimately demonstrates the perennial life force of pure visual storytelling. Ennio Morricone’s score gives it a final dash of authenticity. Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness and his partner, played by Andy Garcia, are determined to capture Al Capone’s bookkeeper. In David Mamet’s original screenplay, this was supposed to happen as the accountant’s train was pulling out of Chicago’s Union Station. Paramount stuttered at the cost of production, asking De Palma to shoot the whole scene inside.

Regarding himself as a visual stylist who cares not for where his plots come from, De Palma thus shows us why he’s one of cinema’s greatest borrowers by taking a cue from Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potemkin’ (1925) and refurbishing the ‘Odessa Steps’ scene for Eliot Ness through montage and alternating shots that inflate tension.

‘THE UNTOUCHABLES’ (1987), ©PARAMOUNT PICTURES

1988: The Rise of Anime and the Impact of Film on Real Life

Before Katsuhiro Otomo’s ‘Akira’ (1988), most Westerners considered Japanese animation to be cartoons like ‘Speed Racer’, kids’ stuff with technical shortcuts and annoying overdubs. But the Japanese director gifted his dystopian epic animation feature with a convoluted plot, plenty of graphic violence and hallucinatory visuals, a dollop of black humour, an incredible attention to detail and a minutely synched dialogue sprinkled with meditations on evolution, enlightenment, and mass destruction. In ‘Akira’, Tokyo exploded on 16^th June 1988, and the world was never the same again. ‘Akira’ was theatrically released on 16^th June 1988, and the real world was never the same again, either, as the Japanese animated feature paved the way for illustrious works such as Studio Ghibli’s ‘Spirited Away’ (2001) and ‘Ghost in the Shell’ (1995).

‘AKIRA’ (1988), ©AKIRA STUDIO/TMS ENTERTAINMENT

Meanwhile, in the United States, Errol Morris’s ‘The Thin Blue Line’ (1988), presented as a non-fiction film noir, was universally applauded as a masterpiece of unconventional documentary that ultimately got an innocent man out of prison. The filmmaker and private detective began his journey with ‘The Thin Blue Line’ by making inquiries about James Grigson, a forensic psychiatrist known as a star witness in major capital murder cases. After interviewing him and some of the felons he’d put on death row, Morris became fixated on Randall Adams, in particular, who resolutely swore he was innocent.

By combining talking-head interviews, re-enactments, photographic evidence, and Philip Glass’s hypnotic score, Morris created a visual poem of slowly surfacing evil that climaxes with David Harris, the teenager whose confession put Adams in prison in the first place, as he finally reveals the truth. Because of the evidence presented in this film, Randall Adams was released from jail in 1989.

RANDALL ADAMS IN ‘THE THIN BLUE LINE’ (1988), ©AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE

1989: Of Avid and Blockbusters

The last year of the Eighties was a fruitful one. In April, Avid introduced the film industry to digital nonlinear editing with its Avid/1 Media Composer system, which revolutionized the postproduction process by ‘providing editors with a faster, more intuitive, and more creative way to work than was possible with traditional analogue linear methods’. It didn’t just change the filmmakers’ view on the editing process, it also changed the way films looked. Digital editing confirms the status of image and sound as data, freeing them from their material support, as they’re no longer dependent on strips of film and tape. This was the true birth of digital cinema.

Though cynically conceived, Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ (1989) was an absolute smash, generating five sequels, a new animated series, an animated movie, and billions of dollars’ worth of branded merchandise. It made George Lucas’s success with ‘Star Wars’ seem almost quaint by comparison. In the end, ‘Batman’ perfected the blockbuster as a product, a concept that was still new to the suits in Hollywood at the time. What Lucas’s film was to the Seventies, Burton’s was to the Eighties—an iconic distillation of its era, further named ‘the film of the decade’ by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine.

‘BATMAN’ (1989), ©WARNER BROS.

The one moment that everyone remembers from James Cameron’s ‘The Abyss’ (1989) is the water tentacle. This set piece, organic rather than mechanic, was as revolutionary as the first sound in the moving pictures. Within months from its premiere, other ambitious movies moved to development, including Cameron’s ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ (1991) and Spielberg’s ‘Jurassic Park’ (1993), and they were built entirely around CGI creations. Back then, when the scene was shot, no one knew if the effect would work, so these CGI-dependent sequences were written in a way that made it easy to cut them out if the computer programmers failed to deliver the proper effect. The tentacle of ‘The Abyss’ basically kickstarted computer-generated graphics in cinema.

‘THE ABYSS’ (1989), ©TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

Spike Lee made history with ‘Do the Right Thing’ (1989), a defining moment for New Black Cinema. The director wrote, directed, and led the cast onscreen, conforming to the era’s do-it-yourself model of African American cinema—previously adopted by the likes of Oscar Micheaux in the Twenties and Melvin Van Peebles in the Seventies. But no other Black American filmmaker had ever won such a public platform as Spike Lee even before he released ‘Do the Right Thing’, a simmering drama about racial tensions in America, as experienced right then in those days in Brooklyn. The film further propelled him as a master of the silver screen. It also earned a couple of Oscar nods for Best Screenplay and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Danny Aiello).

‘DO THE RIGHT THING’ (1989), ©40 ACRES & A MULE FILMWORKS

1991: Driving Off a Cliff

The unexpected conclusion of Ridley Scott’s road drama ‘Thelma and Louise’ (1991) sparked a wave of consternation and controversy from viewers and critics alike. It was a conversation piece in the early Nineties, especially since its lead characters were women—there already were ample discussions about the representation of female characters in pop culture at the time, along with Hollywood’s blatant appropriation of feminist motifs.

In ‘Thelma and Louise’, two working class women from Arkansas hit the road after they confront and kill a brutal would-be rapist. Their decision to drive off the cliff at the end of their fiery journey annoyed academic and feminist commentators, too, though the film did earn an equal amount of praise for its screenplay and manner of dealing with hot button topics such as rape and spousal abuse from a woman’s perspective.

‘THELMA AND LOUISE’ (1991), ©PATHÉ ENTERTAINMENT

‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991) by Jonathan Demme made for an equally compelling start to the decade. Hailing from Roger Corman’s B-movie generation, Demme was a natural with the chilling and sensationalist source material of Thomas Harris’s second Lecter novel after ‘Red Dragon’. Few, however, expected a film of such deliberate rigour, so neatly matched to Ted Tally’s screenplay, almost word by word. The first meeting between Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins’s Hannibal Lecter is proof, as the young FBI recruit is ‘wide-eyed with terror yet stubbornly determined not to wilt in the heat of pure evil’, as David Stratton once wrote. This sinister sequence is complex and beautifully crafted, coming across as an example of Demme’s thinking-man’s-thriller style.

‘THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS’ (1991), ©STRONG HEART/DEMME PRODUCTION

1993: Postmodernist Cinema à la Kusturica

‘Arizona Dream’ (1993) wasn’t Emir Kusturica’s greatest film—my eternal favourite will forever be ‘Black Cat, White Cat’ (1998). But it is a superb example of cinematic postmodernism, with wonderful performances from Johnny Depp, Vincent Gallo, and Faye Dunaway. The sequence where Paul (Vincent Gallo) ‘performs’ Cary Grant’s crop-duster attack from Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘North by Northwest’ (1959) is magnificent. Shot by shot, albeit with only four stalks of corn as props behind him, Paul does an exact reconstruction, leaving us to imagine each buzz of aircraft flying overhead.

‘ARIZONA DREAM’ (1993), ©CANAL+

This moment requires us to see two movies at once and overlapped, offering laughter as we notice the titanic differences between Paul’s performance against Cary Grant’s. That was the point of it, in the final analysis, to take advantage of this little pocket in time to feast on a slice of absurdity.