1992 was one of those deceptively stacked years that didn’t announce its greatness all at once. It represented a moment where Hollywood spectacle, literary adaptations, political biography, genre reinvention, and abrasive indie cinema were all colliding in productive ways. Most important of all, a new generation of filmmakers was ripping up all the old rules.

The result was an interesting collection of bangers. Several of these films were commercially successful on release, but many were controversial, divisive, or misunderstood. With time, however, their ambition has become unmistakable. The titles below represent the best of the best of 1992.

10

‘Candyman’ (1992)

Image via TriStar Pictures

“Be my victim.” While occasionally a little rough around the edges, Candyman‘s sheer density of frights earns it a place in the horror pantheon. Story-wise, it focuses on a graduate student (Virginia Madsen) researching urban legends who becomes entangled with the myth of a supernatural killer said to appear when his name is spoken five times into a mirror. That sounds like fairly standard genre stuff, but what initially plays like a conventional slasher gradually reveals itself as something far more ambitious.

The movie’s themes are just as important as the scares, grounding the supernatural in real social divisions. In particular, Candyman uses horror to explore race, class, and the way violence is mythologized and erased within American cities. The killer (Tony Todd) is not just a monster, but a symbol shaped by collective fear and historical injustice. Todd’s fantastic performance does most of the heavy lifting. (That scene with the bees! Talk about being committed to the role.)

9

‘Unforgiven’ (1992)

Image via Warner Bros.

“Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” Clint Eastwood consciously conceived of Unforgiven as his final Western, his closing statement on the genre that made him a star. Here, he plays an aging former outlaw pulled back into violence for one last job, using the character to pretty much dismantle the mythology of the American Western. While the plot centers on a bounty offered for the men who disfigured a prostitute, the story quickly becomes an interrogation of legend, reputation, and moral consequence.

Eastwood was in a unique position to tell this story. His direction treats the genre with both familiarity and skepticism, acknowledging its power while stripping away its lies. Most strikingly, Unforgiven refuses to glamorize killing. The violence in it is clumsy, terrifying, and permanent, leaving emotional wreckage in its wake. The result is a moving farewell to heroic fantasy and a reckoning with what those stories concealed.

8

‘The Crying Game’ (1992)

Image Via Palace Pictures

“I know who you are.” The Crying Game is simultaneously a political thriller involving an IRA kidnapping and an intimate drama about identity, guilt, and desire. The plot follows a British soldier (Forest Whitaker) captured during a conflict in Northern Ireland and the unexpected emotional bond that forms between captor and captive. After the soldier’s death, the story shifts to London, where loyalty and memory blur into obsession. The narrative twists are hard-hitting, yet what really sets the movie apart from others in the genre is its empathy.

The Crying Game takes an intelligent, sensitive approach to its material. It treats identity as fragile and deeply personal, resisting sensationalism even when dealing with taboo subject matter (The Troubles in Ireland were still underway when it was released, making it somewhat controversial). Over time, however, the movie’s reputation has matured beyond shock value, recognized instead as a thoughtful exploration of how political violence spills into private lives.

7

‘The Last of the Mohicans’ (1992)

Image via 20th Century Fox

“I will find you.” By 1992, Daniel Day-Lewis had proven himself in dramas like The Unbearable Lightness of Being and My Left Foot, but he was still a surprising pick to headline a sweeping frontier romance set during the French and Indian War. Nevertheless, he did a fantastic job in the part. He plays Nathaniel “Hawkeye” Poe, a colonial-raised frontiersman caught between cultures as imperial powers clash. He finds himself caught in a storm of warfare, survival, and doomed love.

On the directing side, Michael Mann strips away pageantry in favor of physical immediacy, treating landscapes as living forces rather than scenic backdrops. In the process, he achieves an impressive balance between epic scale and human emotion. The action scenes are visceral, the romanticism unguarded, and the sense of loss profound. Fundamentally, the film is a kind of blockbuster fantasy, but one with much more heart than most.

6

‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ (1992)

Image via New Line Cinema

“Always be closing.” Glengarry Glen Ross takes place almost entirely in offices and restaurants, yet it feels as brutal as any battlefield. The plot revolves around desperate real estate salesmen pushed to compete for their jobs through manipulation, humiliation, and moral compromise. Based on David Mamet’s play, the film is driven by language: profane, rhythmic, and razor-sharp. The stars, including Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, and Alan Arkin, deliver the barbed dialogue with clear relish. The “Always be closing” monologue, in particular, has become iconic for a reason.

Most of these characters posture at power, but every one of them is trapped in a system that rewards cruelty and punishes hesitation. Indeed, this movie is an unsparing portrait of the worst of capitalism. The anxieties it captures (precarious work, hollow motivation, performative masculinity) feel even more relevant today. Despite (because of?) all this, the movie was a box office disappointment, yet has since become a cult classic.

5

‘Batman Returns’ (1992)

Image via Warner Bros.

“I’m Catwoman. Hear me roar.” Batman Returns is a studio blockbuster that feels profoundly personal and strangely melancholy. The plot pits Batman (Michael Keaton) against two grotesque figures: a vengeful outcast (Danny DeVito) raised in the sewers and a woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) reborn through trauma. The visuals reflect this bleak mood. Gotham itself becomes a warped reflection of repression and spectacle. Building on the foundation laid by the 1989 movie, Tim Burton transforms the superhero genre into a gothic fairy tale about alienation and desire.

Indeed, heroes and villains alike are driven by loneliness and obsession to the point that good and evil are not always so easy to separate. This approach was bold and innovative for the time, paving the way for countless dark superhero films to follow (not least Christopher Nolan‘s Batman trilogy). Over time, the film has been reappraised as one of the most idiosyncratic big-budget movies ever released by a major studio. Its darkness, once controversial, now feels daring.

4

‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ (1992)

Image via Columbia Pictures

“I have crossed oceans of time to find you.” With this movie, Francis Ford Coppola reimagined Dracula as a baroque tragedy, an ambitious undertaking that he (mostly) pulls off. The story follows Dracula’s (Gary Oldman) arrival in Victorian England, setting the stage for a battle between ancient desire and modern rationality. While some aspects, like Keanu Reeves‘ accent, caught a lot of flak, the film’s atmosphere and visual grandeur are worthy of praise. The whole thing is unapologetically excessive.

Coppola embraces theatricality, practical effects, and operatic emotion, rejecting realism in favor of sensation. The film knows exactly what it is and commits fully, swinging for the fences with a big, gothic spectacle. Some viewers will find that simply too over the top and overwrought, but others will appreciate the craft and commitment. The movie also deserves props for deviating from Dracula tropes, particularly with the count’s look and clothing.

3

‘Malcolm X’ (1992)

Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

“By any means necessary.” Denzel Washington received an Oscar nomination for his towering performance in this biopic from Spike Lee. He plays the civil rights leader from troubled youth to global revolutionary figure, convincingly portraying his transformation through crime, faith, activism, and political awakening. At the time, Washington was most well-known for playing calm heroes, so it was striking for audiences to see him getting fiery and full of anger.

The result is a complex, challenging epic, clocking in at well over three hours long. Crucially, Lee refuses simplification, presenting Malcolm as evolving rather than fixed. He treats history as contested, shaped by ideology, betrayal, and reinvention. Simply put, this is one of the most ambitious American biographies ever made. By leaning into the messiness and contradiction of its subject, Malcolm X also becomes a fascinating study of the era and society that the man both grappled with and shaped.

2

‘A Few Good Men’ (1992)

Image via Columbia Pictures

“You can’t handle the truth!” A Few Good Men capped off Rob Reiner‘s remarkable run of movies from the late ’80s into the early ’90s, a streak that gave us classics like Stand By Me and The Princess Bride. This one is a legal drama built around a military trial investigating the death of a Marine (Michael DeLorenzo) following an unofficial disciplinary order. While the movie runs on legal thriller mechanics, its real interest lies in institutional loyalty and moral evasion. The courtroom becomes a stage where authority is performed rather than questioned.

In particular, the movie understands how systems protect themselves by outsourcing blame. The dialogue is sharp, the conflicts legible, and the ethical stakes unmistakable. The legal drama has been around for so long and has been explored so well that it’s difficult to find something new and interesting to say in it, but A Few Good Men managed to put its own distinctive stamp on the genre, one that still holds up today.

1

‘Reservoir Dogs’ (1992)

Image via Miramax Films

“I’m gonna torture you anyway, regardless.” Reservoir Dogs detonated into cinema like a challenge. The premise is deceptively simple: a robbery goes wrong and trust unravels among the criminals involved. However, that seemingly straightforward setup is elevated by bold, energetic storytelling, firing on multiple cylinders at once. Quentin Tarantino fractures time, foregrounds dialogue, and treats genre as language rather than formula, weaving in film references and allusions with total confidence. This is one of the most assured directorial debuts of all time.

In 1992, Reservoir Dogs announced a new sensibility, one where pop culture, brutality, and wit coexist without hierarchy. Every scene is calibrated for maximum tension, every line is memorable, and the use of music is ironic yet still deeply entertaining. In other words, all of QT’s hallmarks were here in microcosm, hinting at the more complex masterpieces he would deliver in the decades to follow.

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Release Date

September 2, 1992

Runtime

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99 minutes

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  Mr. White / Larry Dimmick

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  Michael Madsen

  Mr. Blonde / Vic Vega

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  Chris Penn

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Published
February 3, 2026
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At the Grammys on February 1st, Steven Spielberg quietly crossed one of the last remaining thresholds in American entertainment: the EGOT. The designation is given to artists who have received each of the highest honors in entertainment: Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and Tonys. Fellow EGOT recipients include Mel Brooks, John Legend, Whoopi Goldberg, and Elton John.

Spielberg received the Best Music Film Grammy for producing the documentary Music by John Williams, which streamed on Disney+. The film provides a fitting capstone to Spielberg’s journey to EGOT status, in part because it also serves as a look back at the most enduring partnership of his long filmmaking career.

Steven Spielberg and John Williams Make Beautiful Music Together

Image via Walt Disney Studios

Directed by Laurent Bouzereau, Music by John Williams charts the composer’s towering career. Composer John Williams discusses his early days as a session musician for several movies and then his transition into scoring, beginning with Westerns before he went on to become one of the most respected and awarded composers in film history. The film touches on his iconic work for Star Wars and Superman — themes so tied to their films’ identity that they continue to be franchise touchstones — and includes such famous faces as George Lucas, Ron Howard, and Chris Columbus, for whom Williams created scores for Home Alone and the Harry Potter franchise.

But Williams’s most famous and enduring partnership has always been with Spielberg, dating back to when the director tapped him to provide the score for his theatrical debut, The Sugarland Express. In the documentary, Spielberg notes how he picked Williams based on his rousing orchestral score for The Reivers, but the composer instead realized a more intimate, wistful soundtrack would be a better fit for the film. It wouldn’t be the last time the musician surprised the director with his choices. Williams also recalls how Spielberg initially expected an all-encompassing horror score for Jaws; instead, he delivered one of the most iconic movie themes ever with just two notes he originally played on a piano for the director.

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Music by John Williams is consistently engaging, but it’s never more compelling than when it details his long partnership with Spielberg. Throughout his career, Williams has earned 54 Oscar nominations — 19 of which were for his work on Spielberg’s films. He won Oscars for creating the scores for Jaws, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and Schindler’s List, which Spielberg says is his favorite score Williams has composed for him. His themes are crucial to the success of Spielberg’s films; it’s impossible to imagine Close Encounters of the Third Kind without Williams’s “five tones,” or Indiana Jones traipsing into the unknown without “Raiders March” playing underneath. In the documentary, Spielberg says his favorite part of any directorial project is when Williams first reveals his score, because he knows it’s always going to surprise and delight him.

An EGOT for Cinema’s GOAT

Earning the Grammy and attaining EGOT status further cements Spielberg’s standing as one of the most important and accomplished storytellers in American art. He is, of course, one of the most nominated Oscar directors of all time, with his nine nominations placing him behind only Martin Scorsese, with 10, and William Wyler, with 12. He’s won twice, for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan. He’s been nominated for Best Director in six different decades, and he has produced 14 films that received Best Picture nominations, more than any other director in history.

But Spielberg’s award reach extends well beyond the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In addition to his Oscars, he has several Emmy Awards, ranging from stirring and vital miniseries like Band of Brothers and The Pacific to his work producing the animated special A Pinky and the Brain Christmas. He earned a Tony for producing Michael R. Jackson’s Broadway Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Strange Loop, and was later nominated for his work producing the stage adaptations of Water for Elephants and Death Becomes Her. His Grammy for Music by John Williams only reinforces that Spielberg’s influence stretches beyond film, touching nearly every American art form.

There Are Spielberg and Williams Collaborations to Come

It might seem as though the awards for Music by John Williams would mark a capstone for an enduring partnership. But there’s more ahead. Spielberg’s science fiction event film Disclosure Day is set to release this summer, once again featuring a score by his longtime collaborator. Even after decades of working together, the two seem to know better than to stop a good team.

Music by John Williams stands as a celebration of a partnership that changed the sound of cinema, and earning a Grammy is a fitting honor for that musical collaboration. At the same time, it reinforces that Steven Spielberg remains one of the greatest American storytellers — and that his talent reaches far beyond the screen.

Music by John Williams is available to stream on Disney+ in the U.S.

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Release Date

October 25, 2024

Director

Laurent Bouzereau

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The White House is sending prayers to Savannah Guthrie‘s family as her mom, Nancy Guthrie, remains missing.

“The search for Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy Guthrie, is ongoing, and authorities are requesting assistance from the public,” read a message shared via the official White House X account on Tuesday, February 3. “Anyone with information is urged to contact 911. Our prayers are with the Guthrie family as we hope for Nancy’s safe return home.”

The post included information from Nancy’s missing person’s report, including her age, weight, height and more. Nancy, 84, was last seen on Saturday, January 31.

News broke on Sunday, February 1, that Nancy was reported missing in Arizona. The Guthrie family confirmed in a statement that they were “working closely with local law enforcement” to help bring Nancy back home.

Savannah, 54, did not appear on the Monday, February 2, episode of the Today show, but cohosts Sheinelle Jones and Craig Melvin addressed the “deeply personal” story at the top of the broadcast.

Savannah provided an additional statement, which read, “On behalf of our family, I want to thank everyone for the thoughts, prayers and messages of support. Right now, our focus remains on the safe return of our dear mom. We thank law enforcement for their hard work on this case and encourage anyone with information to contact the Pima County Sheriff’s Department at 520-351-4900.”

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos initially noted after Nancy was reported missing that foul play could not be ruled out as the search continued. During a subsequent press conference, however, Nanos said that authorities were treating Nancy’s home as a crime scene.

“We don’t want anybody to lose hope,” Nanos later told Us Weekly. “But in the same sense, just as there’s hope, there’s also things that point to us that say, ‘This lady’s in danger.’”

Nanos previously revealed that there were “some concerns” about what was found at Nancy’s home. “I’ve been doing this for 50 years. When something doesn’t sit well, it doesn’t sit well,” he explained to Us. “Something unusual at that house occurred that made us go, ‘Wow … something’s wrong here. Something doesn’t fit.’”

Authorities have not yet determined a motive for the crime, and there has been no public mention of a ransom. “I wish somebody would call us and say, ‘Hey,’ because that’s what the family wants. They just want her back. ‘Hey, no questions asked, call us where to come and get her,’ and we’ll do that,” Nanos added.

Related: Sheriff Addresses Possible Motive in Savannah Guthrie’s Mom’s Disappearance

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has addressed the possibility of a ransom being the motive for the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mom, Nancy Guthrie. “No, there’s not, we’ve not heard anything like that,” Nanos exclusively told Us Weekly on Monday, February 2, when asked whether there was a possible motive. “I wish somebody would call […]

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The sheriff has also said that Nancy is “sharp as a tack” when it comes to her mental state, but she has some limitations with her physical health. Nancy also requires medication on a daily basis.

During a separate press conference on Tuesday, Nanos was asked whether he believes police are looking for someone who is still alive. “We hope we are,” he replied.

Savannah, meanwhile, has remained off the air in her family’s time of need. She issued a heartfelt statement via Instagram on Monday, sharing a photo with the words “Please Pray.”

“We believe in prayer. We believe in voices raised in unison, in love, in hope. We believe in goodness. We believe in humanity. Above all, we believe in Him,” she wrote in the caption. “Thank you for lifting your prayers with ours for our beloved mom, our dearest Nancy, a woman of deep conviction, a good and faithful servant. Raise your prayers with us and believe with us that she will be lifted by them in this very moment. We need you.”

Her message continued, “‘He will keep in perfect peace those whose hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.’ A verse of Isaiah for all time for all of us. Bring her home.”