Ninety somethings

It’s such a convenience living in the 21st century. You can find any film, literature, music or whatever form of knowledge digitally remastered, uncut. You can even get it with never before seen content, with commentaries and special features . This type of at-your-fingertips access has allowed me to explore an era that I felt I didn’t fully appreciate – maybe because I was too young, too ignorant or both. It was that decade where movie, music and literary geniuses emerged and are now raking in millions. For those of us born in the mid-’80s, it was that time when I was just starting grade school and watching Ninja Turtles.

But, hey, I’m talking about the early ’90s. Here are five films, music albums and books that will make sure that the ‘90s are remembered.

Reservoir Dogs (1992) – The opening scene of this movie is so funny and well written that I searched the Internet for the script and read it for fun. Reservoir Dogs is violent, funny and contains brilliant dialogue for an action film. It’s about perfect strangers pulling off the perfect crime until something goes terribly wrong and people start getting shot all over the place. The movie features such underrated talents like Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi and Tim Roth. It’s also the film that brought Quentin Tarantino into the scene and established him as one of the most unique filmmakers of our time.

The Usual Suspects (1995) – I saw this just a couple of weeks ago on DVD and I loved every second of it (and so did my mother). Kevin Spacey delivers a subtly disturbing but nevertheless great performance as Verbal Kint, a limp convict narrating the exploits of five different ex-cons who have banded together and their connection to a legendary crime lord. The film also stars Gabriel Byrne, Benicio Del Toro, Kevin Pollack and Stephen Baldwin and was directed by Bryan Singer.

"Nevermind" (1991) – I would be lying if I said I liked Nirvana when they came out. I was about five years old then and had no musical knowledge nor preference outside nursery rhymes and overplayed pop songs. But as soon as it became possible to download songs and listen to music on my computer, it wasn’t long before I had my earphones blazing with this musical genius.

Wonderwall (1995) – The title track has recently been named the greatest British song of all time. Yes, ahead of hits from The Beatles, Queen and the Rolling Stones. Oasis had the potential to be Beatle-esque before a falling-out between brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher sidetracked them and since then, in my opinion, they haven’t fully recovered. But as it stands, Oasis still has their legacy cemented as one of the all time greats and it all started with Wonderwall.

High Fidelity (1995) – Of all the books I’ve read, I think this is the ultimate for men. It contains far more male wisdom and humor than any one piece of literature I’ve had the pleasure of reading. High Fidelity is an extremely smart, sharp and funny novel that narrates the story of Rob Flemming, a man in his 30s with a dead-end job and an obsession with music and pop culture and who finds himself on the wrong side of a bad breakup with his long-time girlfriend. The book, written by Nick Hornby was so great that it was made into a movie in the year 2000 starring John Cusack and Jack Black.

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For questions, comments or suggestions, please e-mail me at emailcarlramirez@yahoo.com.