Cinema · 1989 Ranked
Best Films of 1989, Ranked by IQ Score
The year the modern indie movement launched. The films of 1989, ranked by IQ Score.
1989 is the year the modern American independent film movement launched. Sex, Lies, and Videotape won the Cannes Palme d'Or and proved indie distribution was commercially viable, the founding text of the Miramax / Sundance era. Do the Right Thing reset American racial-cinema. Crimes and Misdemeanors is Woody Allen's most-philosophically-direct work.
The structural argument for 1989-as-canonical-year: the simultaneous indie-cinema breakthrough (Sex Lies and Videotape, Sundance's launch year), prestige-Hollywood peak (Glory, Born on the Fourth of July), Hong Kong action peak (The Killer), Taiwanese-cinema breakthrough (A City of Sadness, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Golden Lion winner). The cinema-of-1989 list is among the most-globally-diverse single years in the catalog.
8 titles · ranked by IQ Score
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