The Editors of Entertainment Weekly - The must list: ranking the best in 25 years of pop culture

Contents Introduction W hen you think about the greatest movies, TV shows, albums, and books of the last 25 years, what makes your list? Nothing inspires more passionate debate at Entertainment Weekly than identifying the very best pop culture has to offer, as we do each week in the magazines The Must List. Now, for EW s 25th anniversary, we offer the absolute Musts of the past quarter-century. From Good Will Hunting to Breaking Bad , X-Men to The X-Files, and from Prince to Queen Latifah to Stephen King, youll find your favorites here, along with some forgotten gems and new discoveries. And while we expect you may disagree with some of our heartfelt and hard-argued choices, thats the fun of making lists. Well continue searching out the best in the decades to come in the magazine and on EW.com. Hammer pants: not our fault. 25 Things We Cant Believe About 1990 U Cant Touch This. 25 Things We Cant Believe About 1990 U Cant Touch This.

MC Hammer revived both Rick James and harem pants with this hip-hop hit. James sued and settled over the Super Freak sample; nothing could be done about the pants. We knew K.D. Lang when. The not-yet-mainstream singers bold mix of musical styles was celebrated on the first cover of EW (and later that week, she won her first Grammy, for Absolute Torch and Twang ). The NC-17 movie rating was created.

Youre welcome, Henry & June and Showgirls . The Wall live in Berlin. Pink Floyds Roger Waters and friends performed this rock opera where the Berlin Wall had stood eight months earlier. Andrew Dice Clay on Saturday Night Live. SNL used a time delay when the shock comic hosted; Nora Dunn and invited musical guest Sinad OConnor boycotted the episode. Roseanne Barr desecrated the national anthem.

There were some notes only dogs heard during her performance at a San Diego Padres game. Milli Vanilli, Best New... Lip-Synchers? Nine months after the duo won the Best New Artist Grammy, it was revealed they didnt actually sing. Macaulay Culkin was Home Alone . Mack is not like a 9-year-old, costar Joe Pesci told EW of the kid who carried the comedy to a $476 million worldwide gross. Its like working with a 30-year-old midget.

Law & Order settled in for a 20-year run. And that iconic chung-chung sound? Its a piece of music, composer Mike Post has said, that brings in royalties. Blue Steel. The Jamie Lee Curtis thriller was the cover of EW s issue 5. Regrets, weve had a few.... Madonna did Dick Tracy .

But the memorable part of that odd project was her single Vogue, off the films companion album, Im Breathless . Longtime Companion put the focus on AIDS. The first major feature to deal with the crisis, its impact went far beyond its $4.6 million box office gross. Bruce Davison even earned an Oscar nod. Cheers turned 200. Fans toasted the comedys bicentennial episode, and by seasons end it was the years top-rated show.

Wind Beneath My Wings snagged two Grammys. The Beaches ballad won Record of the Year and Song of the Year. We Didnt Start the Fire must have been too edgy. Save CBS! EW mounted a campaign to turn the ailing network around. Twenty-five years later, its at the top of the heap. Coincidence...? Ah-nold showed his range.

The future governor of California excelled in both sci-fi action ( Total Recall ) and comedy ( Kindergarten Cop ). Mariah Carey took the slow road to success. Her debut album took 43 weeks to top the charts, but it was the best-selling album of 1991. Green Acres returned to the tube. Arnold the pig shined in a reunion movie EW deemed shamelessly hokey but affectionate. Oprah grilled the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Interspecies relationships were mentioned. Awkward! We saw the end of the Future . Reflecting on the last Back to the Future film, Michael J. Fox told EW , Im a little older now, and Im very comfortable about just goofing around. Critics do change their mindssometimes. In 1990, EW s Owen Gleiberman gave Pretty Woman a D for its plastic screwball soap opera quality.

Twenty years later, he bumped that up to a B, in newfound appreciation of the Richard GereJulia Roberts chemistry. Videogames got bigger. On the computer, Kings Quest I-IV had already launched, but the fifth installment in 1990 replaced the typing interface with point-and-click. And a little game called Final Fantasy was released in the United States on the NES. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air premiered. And a superstar was launched in Will Smith.

With video, was seeing believing? As footage of D.C. mayor Marion Barry smoking crack played a role in his trial, EW recalled the fallout from videotapes featuring Patricia Hearst, Rob Lowe, and more. Jurassic Park made its mark in fiction. If youre going to do a dinosaur book, people must be munched, author Michael Crichton told EW , but the ideas... are much more important to me than the munches. The Greats It isnt an easy job: To find the best, you have to consume a lot of the worst.

But naming the finest in movies, TV, music, and books is our never-ending passion. And to then rank the greats of the past 25 years, weve made tough calls: Friends vs. The Sopranos , Beyonc vs. Nirvana. Here, our top picks, plus under-the-radar hits, and more. The Greats Movies TRAVOLTS BOOGIED.

NEO DODGED A BULLET. AND SHREK CAPTURED HEARTS. THESE ARE THE FILMS THAT STAND THE TEST OF TIME Pulp Fiction
Directed by Quentin Tarantino (1994) This low-down dirty tale of L.A. hitmen, palookas, and femmes fatales is a feast of ultraviolent thrillsand also a heady pop-literate consideration of surf rock, foot massages, diner culture, and honor among scoundrels. Youd be hard-pressed by now to name a moment from its time-warping, movie-mad genius that isnt iconic. PULP FICTION The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Directed by Peter Jackson (2001-03) Peter Jackson did the impossible: He conjured a dark, ravishing vision all his own without desecrating author J.R.R.

Tolkiens; he made a nine-hour trilogy that lives and breathes like one movie; he got a riveting performance out of a slithery CG cave dweller with a split personality; and he made fantasy a box office monster. Titanic
Directed by James Cameron (1997) The beauty of this epicthe one disaster movie thats also a primal work of popular artis that it knows all too well the breathless affair between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet wouldnt have lasted had it not been for that iceberg. In Titanic , its death that makes love eternal (and worthy of 100 hankies). The sinking of the ship is one of the cinemas great spectacles of beauty and dread. Toy Story