THE RANKING
Movies of 1997
Four Empire writers. Ten movies. Ordered definitively.
Illustration: Jacey
Chris: What does 1997 mean to you, cinematically speaking?
Dan: This was the year I got a proper job in journalism. And I also got married.
Alex: I was working at the Prince Charles Cinema in 1997, and I was trying to break into film journalism. It was an amazing place to work. I would just watch films all day long.
Helen: I was in my first year of uni, and going to the cinema a lot. In a couple of cases, like The Fifth Element, many times. Chris: I think it’s genuinely a great year, with a really deep bench. It was an incredible year in arthouse terms and for action cinema, there were films that scared me shitless, and it contained, right at the tail end, the then-biggest film of all time in Titanic.
Dan: It was a terrible year for blockbusters. You had the unholy trinity of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, although it isn’t quite as bad as people said at the time, Batman & Robin and Speed 2.
Chris: Let’s burn this year with fire.