200 & 99 Of My Favorite Films From The 1990's

  Before he donned the armor of a man of iron and became the current avenging darling of Hollywood,
Robert Downey Jr. donned the mustache, cane and over-sized shoes of silent film legend Charlie Chaplin.
A bit over-produced, and a bit over-dramatic, not to mention, a bit underwritten,
Chaplin still benefits from RDJ's Oscar-worthy performance (which, IMO, he deserved more that Pacino's overblown "booyah" role that took the prize that year), which, for me, was just enough to place this missed opportunity among my extensive faves of the 90's (although, just barely).

  Here's a movie that probably would have been more fitting if it had come out these days during the age of social media than back when the internet was just starting out. Because as anyone who romps through any of the popular discussion platforms can easily observe, conspiracy theorists are running amok all over the world wide web. But then again, this motion picture was more about being a vehicle for teaming up two of the era's biggest box office draws, lethal weapon Mel Gibson and pretty woman Julia Roberts. Or at least, that's how it appears on the surface. Maybe CT could've been a film that is filled with subliminal messages to brain wash the movie going masses. I wouldn't know.
I'm just a humble member of the Illuminati.
And I know that you guys out there reading this might not believe that, but it's okay. 
  That's kinda the point. 

  Hey look, it's a movie where Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage both have hair!



 While I usually don't like Michael Bay's movies (sorry, I really think so many of 'em are just bad), I gotta admit, when I watched this one, I found myself enjoying it, quite a lot. I don't know why this particular Bay flick stands out more than his others (I don't even like Bad Boys, which is usually the most well-regarded of all of his films), but the fact that it has a place on this list, shows that there are sometimes that the law of averages will eventually work out.
 Or maybe it's just because with this one, unlike his other action films, I could smell what The Rock wuz cookin'.
I dunno....

  In the first Jurassic Park, modern science demonstrated it highest possibilities to date by genetically re-introducing the dinosaurs of the Jurassic era to our time. Then, it went about creating an island theme park in which to inhabit these prehistoric ganstas of giant monsters, in the speculative hope that the general public would eat them up.
  As it turned out, it had the opposite effect. It was the park that began eating up the public.
So, in this 2nd installment of the series, we find out that there was a spawning ground for all those back-in-the-day beasties before they were transported to the ill-fated amusement park.
Named "Site B", it's the setting for the prehistoric pandemonium that "naturally" ensues from the lessons not learned from the first time (but will keep the franchise going).

She's single,
she's white,
and she's female.
And why doesn't the movie title also describe her as crazy?
Because, as any man of reasonable experience with women knows,
that would be insanely redundant.

Actually, after placing this movie on this list, I noticed that 1992 saw the release of three psychological thrillers themed around the idea of a fearsome femme fatale (Basic Instinct, SWF and this one). Each one of them a story about women so wacked out, that a hot flash of murderous rage was all it took to make 'em pick up a sharp object and wield it in a manner that makes their male counterparts all look like a buncha bitchez.



I guess for 1992, that "time of the month" was one that lasted all year long.

   Little Man Tate is Jody Foster's directorial debut about a mom (Foster) who is trying to raise her intellectually advanced child (some kid named Byrd) with as normal a childhood as possible but with enough support to allow his "gift" to fully grow..
  This is something that my mother never had to worry about when I was growing up. As a matter of fact, it was the opposite since her main concern about me was how much time I tended to lie around and waste time.
Which is something I obviously never grew out of considering the amount of time I spend nowadays on the internet, posting up girlfight videos on youtube, downloading free onion-booty porn and posting up long-ass lists here on this site.

  The American President is about a President of the United States (d”uh!) who is a widower and therefore finds himself "out there" in the field. The dating field as well as in the political field.
  Now the Commander-In-Chief must find a way to mix the two fields together without having two worlds collide.
A story of modern romance in the White House that does not involve an intern.
  Ah,
only in the movies, I guess.

 For its time, A Bug's Life, along with its 1998 sister computer-created crawlies cartoon Antz, was the next step in the advancement of 3D animation technology.
  The animators from Pixar were able to show how the medium can make good use of the physical aspects that make up the distinctive surroundings of the insect world to create a relatable anthropomorphic society that would allow the individual personalities of the main characters to come to life.
 This these types of movies during the late 90's were progressing examples that were revealing the extent of what computer graphics could to do within the visual dimensions of the genre. And thus, made it quite exciting for movie fans of all ages to see just what the hi-tech handed animators of Hollywood were gonna come up with next.

        I scream, you scream, we all scream for some more scream.
Or at least, we all did back in 1996, after the first Scream was first released in theaters and became a runaway success. 
 The truth is that by this particular point in time, the sharp edge of the slasher flick had pretty much become kind of dull. And incredibly predictable. But with a script that was full of sharp wit and had a keen sense of self awareness, the first Scream film was not afraid to hold its knife up real high and vociferously proclaim that this was a genre which still had some life in it. And for the slasher eating market, that was they needed to support a brand-new franchise. This second film, aptly titled "Scream 2", was produced well enough to make sure that this series would be stacking up its body count for a long, long time. 

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So the basic premise of this particular rom-comming chick-flick is all about falling in love with a woman like Sandra Bullock while you sleep.
Well, I just wanna say that this doesn't just happen in the movies.
I do this all the time.
But then, to my dismay,
I always end up waking up.

Eastern folklore and environmental symbolism meet head on, anime style, in this richly textured and complicated fairy tale.
Even though I enjoyed this as a movie that features mythological beasts and forest gods, gremlins and spirits, that focuses more on the adult sensibilities of it's viewers, I probably would've liked it a bit more had I not been so distracted by the heavy accented (and IMO, the terribly miscast) voices of Billy Bob Thornton and Minnie Driver in the English dubbed rendition.
In other words, if I were to recommend to anybody to watch this movie, I would advise to sticking to the original version, which is undubbed and subtitled.
Plus, as far as I'm concerned, I think the original language helps to enhance atmosphere of the Japanese fable that this story is supposed to be.

It's bad enough when an innocent family of vacationing road-trippers find themselves in the midst of the carnage and blood of a hidden coven of cravenous, murderous vampires out in the middle of the desert. But then, on top of that, they also hafta face the threat of the snake-cradling Selma Hayek and her absolutely formidable and absolutely perfect puppies. I promise you, after watching her in this Tarantino/Rodriguez monster mash-up, it won't be her neck that will you be fantasizing about sucking. 
  Count Dracula can only wish that his will-sapping gaze was this hypnotic.

The supernatural world collides with the natural world when live action meets animation in this tale about a kid who can see dead people. But in a cute, heartwarming way, considering that this is a film for all ages and is centered on the friendliest ghost you know.*



*BTW, for you young'ns out there, that's reference to the tagline of the original Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon series.

Robert Rodriguez's "El Mariachi," goes from micro-budget indie to macro-budget hit as the traveling gunslinging guitarrero goes from looking like a Mexican everyman to looking like a Spaniard, well, Antonio Banderas. Who, even speaking as a straight-up hetero, you gotta admit.... is a really good looking guy.
Which is probably the main reason why the gal that the hero gets in this flick is played by the always insanely-beauteous Salma Hayek.
Kinda makes me wish I was good-looking.
Maybe then, I'd be spending alot more time outside of the house getting some action instead of kooked up in a dark room putting lists like this one together on the internet.

A transatlantic airliner is hijacked en route to the United States. A special forces team is sent to intercept the hijacked plane while the Pentagon prepares to negotiate for the outcome. That is, until they discover that the demands of the terrorists may just be a ruse for an even more catastrophic result.



*Spoiler Alert*
Executive Decision is by far my favorite Steven Segal movie. And I think that a large reason for that is because Steven surprisingly gets killed off pretty early in this flick.
Which made it alot more bearable for me to stay in my seat for the rest of the "flight". Not to mention that, despite the plot's standard premise and follow-up, ED is a pretty entertaining thriller. Decision is the rare type of formula flick that shows that even if Hollywood has pretty much run into a wall when it comes to this type of movie, they can still be escapingly enjoyable.

These types of animated movies that're spun-off of equally animated TV series, are usually ones that I don't hold much hope for.
Therefore, I was quite surprised at not only how much I enjoyed this big screen adaption the Bruce Timm little screen episodes, but also, at how I found it's story to be better than many of those of the TV program. Walking out at the end of Phantasm, I actually found myself feeling like the giant comicbook nerd that I truly am, but for years, had denied myself of truly being.

Yeah, I know that Mr. Pacino won an Academy Award for this role. But, to be honest, I thought that his performance as a blind, curmudgeony war vet was a tad over the top, not to mention, a bit overrated.
And yeah, while I agree that Al was in high octane form, still, I felt that the Oscar was awarded more because of an accumulation of years of developing his "loud screen persona", something which, IMO at least, has reached the level of consistently being "too much". Besides, I much more enjoy watching an actor, especially a seasoned one like A-Pac, bring a fresher approach to a role than the same-ol' same-ol' of which has become their standard signature.
All that said, Scent Of A Woman is still an enjoyable journey of eye-opening inner-discovery and burgeoning friendship between two people of different chemistry.

Kalifornia is a multi-murdering road trip movie that proves that before he became the goodlooking glamor boy that makes all the girls go ga-ga,
Brad Pitt was just plain kreepy.

Back during my college days, the whole time that I was enrolled, I probably consumed enough beer so as to qualify me as some sort of a drunken master.
But through my lack of training and discipline, I was never enough of a master to be able to fight in any kind of a kung fu battle whilst in this alleviated state of inebriation. Particularly in any manner that allowed me to use every piece of furniture, silverware and/or knick-knacks that was in my immediate disposal in a cool offensive style like Jackie Chan does in this movie.
But, I was always drunk enough to at least think I could.

During the early to mid 90's, when he was kickstarting his career, character actor John Turturro had a habit of popping up in alot of Spike Lee Joints.
Which was a good thing because whenever you saw JT's name on the credits, you knew you were about to watch a film that costarred an actor who took his craft seriously. He seemed like he was determined to focus his career on more relevent films.
Fast forward to the late 2000's, and now, you can see John Turturro in movies like the badly-written kiddie blockbuster Transformers franchises....
in scenes where he shows off his hairy thonged bare ass in extreme close-up (if there was a ever a scene in movie history I wish I could unsee, that one has gotta be near the top......).
I guess once you start getting paid the blockbusting dollars,
clocking in to show your least "sunny" feature just becomes part of the big paying job.



But don't let my ambling rant on JT's career distract from my rating on this film. Costarring Harvey Keitel (his flicks have always been cool with me) and as I mentioned earlier, directed by Spike Lee back when he was making movies which both socially and cinematically relevant (oh, don't get me started on the decline of Spike's career...!)

Al Pacino in the role of a mobster with a really bad Spanish accent. Even worse than the one he used in the "also directed by Brian DePalma" drug ditty, Scarface.
In other words, a formula that just couldn't lose.



Now don't get me wrong,
just because I make fun of Pacino's inability to speak a convincing Spanglish (especially when compared to Viggo Mortensen's convincing cameo scene), and despite director DePalma's retreading of familiar waters, I liked Carlito's Way.
The streetwise story-line, which includes the type of etiquette that fuels the power structure of the urban-drug underworld, combined with a climatic edge-of-your-seat chase scene was entertaining enough for me to recommend it.

  1998 was the year that there were two movies that were inspired to use the latest in computer generating technology for taking the idea of the macrocosm of the insect universe and transforming it into a cute, wonderful world of innocent anthropomorphic fun that was sure to entertain the elementary-level audience for which this type of animated adventure so often depending on banking upon. Yeah, by today's standards, both Antz and A Bug's Life may seem a bit clunky when it comes to digitally crafted visuals, but believe me, back then, these colorful fantasy-based tales of  scintillian invertebrates had movie goers swarming towards their local theater, cineplex and motion picture venues. 

Here is a movie about World War II that goes against everything that most WW2 movies go for.
Instead depicting the conflict and tragedy that other films of the same subject matter usually try to portray, Mediterraneo goes the opposite route and tells a tale of peace and serenity that comes from being abandoned by the worldwide war machine.
A band of soldiers who range from average to below average are assigned to a remote Greek isle to stand as a lookout for the enemy. After realizing that they have been forgotten, the small group soon find themselves integrating with their new surroundings and its picayune community of people into a life more satisfying and fulfilling than even before the war began.

Listen, while I've got my fair share of a dark side within me, my life will never be the subject matter of a movie like Natural Born Killers. To be honest, the only thing I've ever killed alot of is time, coming up with all these lists on this site.
So my experiences with snuffing out the life-force of countless of other individuals human beings is about as close to nil as possible.
Still, even with my severe lack of bodycounts, even I know that a shallow grave will always lead to one getting caught.
So remember all you young budding sociopaths out there, when it comes to hiding bodies effectively,
ya gotta dig deep, kids.

A quadruplet of teenage mystic she-Mages, already at an age fraught with growing pains, must learn how to balance their new found abilities of witchery with just keeping it cool as to avoid suspicion from their high school classmates. However, one in their circle, craftily portrayed by an actress named Fairuza Balk (heck, even her real name sounds like it belongs to a witch), eventually gives in to the Dark Side that persistently plagues all those who practice the eldritch arts of sunless sorcery. And ends up becoming a danger not only to the student body, but also to her closest comrades within the coven.

Agent Smith becomes friends with the Gladiator in this tale of a friendship that gets caught up in a kind of triangle that gives a new spin to the phrase "love is blind" and validates the idea of "bros before ho's".

When I heard that alot of the visuals of this film were gonna be based off the works of French comicbook illustrators Moebius and Jean-Claude Mézières, as a comicbook nerd, I was super stoked. I didn't just want to like The Fifth Element, I wanted to love it.
Therefore, I was bit dissappointment by the avant garde goofyness of the plot which, IMO, only simulated the depth more than it actualized it.
I really wanted a story with a stronger structure and a more cohesive point, that would match the grandness of the visuals.
As good as it looks, storywise, I was really looking for more.
I think that this is just one of those examples of either you get it or you don't. And I didn't.
All that said, there is still an over-all creative beauty to this film that prevents labeling my reaction to it as "dislike". On the surface level, I still like it.
Alot.
But only as a friend.

With it's cinematographic visuals and rich score, Kundun is a film that sounds and feels like a sweeping epic, but silently sneaked passed all the Hollywood hub-bub to leave it's mark under the radar as a beacon for those who are in a constant search for under-appreciated cinema.
Directed by the ever capable hands of Martin Scorcese, it's an illuminately layered biopic that covers several stages of the life of the 14th personage of the Dalai Lama. A life dedicated to the pathway of peace that is the heart of the Tibetan tradition, but which proves ineffective against the oppressive invasion of Communist China.

Two separate stories about two different police officers, each trying to deal with their situations of heartbreak.
Even though Chungking Express deals with matters of the heart, it's not really a romance movie. It's a film about dealing with the concept of love.
The usual formula of love isn't followed in the premise, and instead, it is left almost ambiguous on what the people involved are feeling towards each other. These are couples that are definitely looking for love, but in the midst of the dense crowds of Hong Kong, they are lonely rangers whose definition on how to couple are as jumbled & stagnant as the jungled buildings of the city in which they reside.
Express is a film that uses the visual imagery of background colors and the kinetic energy of a hand held camera to help charge this story of emotional yearning through the subtle yet tangled search for a "partner in crime".

A straight laced and caring physician (played the usually manically looney comedian Robin Williams) discovers that a new experimental drug seems to have beneficial effects on patients who've been in a vegetable state for several years.
Sounds like a drug that could probably come in handy for those of us who spend alot of time on sites like this.
Am I right, guys?

...guys...?

Aw,
what am I asking you people for? Y'all are probably just catatonically browsing through these lists, not even aware of what you're reading, huh?
Hell, why am I even here, wasting time listing stuff like this?

Man....
I need a new drug.

In 1990, French actor Gérard Depardieu brings his hefty presence as a romantic leading man to it's full weight as he stars in not just one, but two major rom-coms. Each utilizing a different language and in a year already over flowing with light-hearted love themed movies. The first one, filmed in his home country of France, is the Academy Award nominated Cyrano de Bergerac. Based on the famous French play which, in turn, is based on a real life dramatist of the same name.
This film version of the tale of a large nosed Casanova not only dutifully follows one of the most famous stories to come out of the Land of romance, but also, does a successful job of traversing over the Atlantic, into the cinematic shores of the American Rom-Com.

Looking to receive a pardon for his crimes, a convict from the future agrees to let scientists send him back into time in order to collect information that would hopefully help to prevent the world from a planet scale of diseased destruction. Information about a terrorist organization known as the Army of the 12 Monkeys.
A task that proves that when dealing with an extremist group from the past via a not-so-perfect method of time-travel, 12 Monkeys is no barrel of monkeys.*
With good performances by the then over-used Bruce Willis, the then ultra-popular Brad Pitt and the always under-appreciated Madeleine Stowe, this production is a valiant effort for those who prefer their bleak sci-fi thrillers to be a bit more on the cerebral side.

* Sorry... but I just couldn't resist such an obvious pun.

On the streets, the only way to survive,
is if you got the power and the respect.
In other words, you gotta have da juice.
Once you got da juice, den you gotta get the crew to back you up.
No juice,
no crew,
no chance.
A'ight?

The Ugly is one of those stories that relies heavily on it's ending to give it a distinction that separates it from others of it's kind. So, in order to prevent myself from revealing any spoilers, I should probably try to keep my comments about this flick as short as possible.
While the "job" of killing people "serially" is never a pretty one, here is a movie that shows that trying to live with the ghosts of those you've killed can get pretty ugly.

This is one of those artsy foreign flicks that takes the use of "artsy" both literally & allegorically, and uses it effectively and efficiently, on it's most basic level. Using all the methods that films like these use, it tells the story of a burnt-out artist who finds his muse thus reigniting his motivation for his art in a manner that affects his life & of those around him.
In other words, La Belle Noiseuse is the kind of cinema that will bore the mainstream escapist to tears and yet provide the thought-hungry connoisseur to his/her ecstatic fill.
In a movie season that saw one of the biggest blockbusters of the 90's (T-2: Judgment Day) and also featured the last film to sweep the Palme D'Or (Barton Fink), this is either one of the best films of 1991 or one that should be avoided at all costs, depending on which side of the theater screen you prefer to sit on.

To this day, whenever I see John Turturro on screen, no matter what movie he's in, my first thought is "Oh look... it's` Barton Fink." I don't know if that's a testament to his portrayal of this character or if it's because of the very slight chill I felt in my soul leftover by the vague, sense of darkness of this comedy, or if it was just a result of watching for the very first time a movie that has been commonly labeled as retro-surrealism (yep...Fink is one of those type of films that is so artsy that it demands one of these kinds of labels).
All I know is that when it comes to the Coen Brothers' filmography, this is one of their works that captures best their off kilter brand of quirkiness.

With it's long standing traditions of it's own brand of folk songwriters and music, Ireland isn't exactly the place to find any real solid R&B groups. So when a local Dubliner decides to form a band in the stylings of Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, he expects to have his job cut out for him.
Only to find out that the real battle of starting a band together is not a lack of soul, talent or skin color, but a lack of "commitment" due to a big headed clash of egos that rivals any episode of Behind The Music.

After a series of life experiences which include unforeseen twists of fates, a young Frenchman (played by the always interesting John Malkovich) ends up as a soldier on the side of the Nazis at the outbreak of World War two.
After an additional set of turns that he would never have anticipated, he unexpectedly finds himself in a position in which he recruits children for the German cause. Thinking that by doing this, he is somehow protecting the young boys, he soon learns that the locals are of the opposite opinion, and instead of a protector, they regard him more as an "ogre" who steals their children away.

Hey,
check it out....
I got a film, or an animated short in particular, that only lasts for five minutes on this list of 300 movies from the decade of the 90's.
B'cuz as short as it is, it's that good.

It is the ultimate dream of many music writers to someday write an opus that becomes lauded, conducted and renown throughout the world. In an effort to free up his time to compose such a piece of work, Glenn Holland takes up a position in a high school to teach music.
After years of showing his students how to perform at their best, both within and without the music classroom, he finds that the accumulated end result of his teaching efforts is his true magnum opus.

My Own Private Idaho is a film that features two strong performances by then-rising stars with weird names, Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix. However, as good as the leads were, I found this story of two male street walkers embarking on a journey of self-discovery to be a bit more flat that alot of the film critics who praised it at the time. Written and directed by the usually more reliable Gus Van Sant, I would've like to have seen more depth in the script and the general concept, to match the Shakespearian premise that this movie is inspired by.
Now don't get me wrong, I still think Idaho is a good film, just not worthy of the higher rank that most other folks tend to put it in.

For any of you gals out there reading this, if you've ever wondered just how you should behave in order to get any man to do your bidding, no matter how sinister, and get away with it while setting it up so that the guy entirely takes the fall, this is the movie to see.
The Last Seduction isn't just a movie about a manipulative bitch, it's a movie about being the ultimate manipulative bitch.
Linda plays the aforementioned manipulative bitch to such an extent, that I truly hated her in this role. And I mean that in a good way. I love her for for being able to take this role and using it to manipulate my masculine feelings to the point that makes me her hate at to such a high level that I did.
Rarely does any actor, male or female, make being a bad person look this good.

Two siblings, a brother and a sister on the opposite side of the personality spectrum, find themselves trapped in another dimension that is of a 50's black & white television show. Unable to escape and in an effort to accept their new reality, they decide to try to make the most of it by introducing a little color to the set.
And of course, we're talking metaphorically here.

The Truman Show is certainly a sign of it's time. While these days, reality shows are just a regular part of entertainment programming, at the time of this film's release, reality based entertainment was new and huge and only getting huger. Combined with the onslaught of online services that allowed ordinary people to make it possible for world wide web "audiences" to view their lives for 24 hours a day, the 90's was "reeling" from all the "over-exposure".
So you know that eventually, someone had to use the subject as a basis for a movie.
Fortunately, the movie was a good movie and it was also a perfect vehicle for the pliable comedic actor Jim Carrey to step away from the zany antics of his more fruitful flavor of frenetic farce, and into something which provided him with the flexibility to tap into something that was centered more on "reality". That is, "reality" as it was captured by the zeitgeist of the 90's.

While Mike Leigh had directed a fair share of television projects & stage plays, Life Is Sweet was, at the time, only his third feature film. Highly acclaimed by many movie critics and his most successful at the box office (up to that point), he would later garner more notability when later works such as Happy-Go-Lucky made it onto to the top ten of most critics' "best of the year" lists. Not to mention when Secret And Lies ended up being nominated for multiple Academy Awards.
Yep,
when it comes to a high respectability within the inner circles of the cinema world, for Mr. Leigh, there's no doubt that life must be pretty damn sweet.

Many of the younger members of this site might not know this, but there was a time back in the early 90's where Whoopi Goldberg was the biggest female box office draw for the movies. She had begun garnering an up-slope of attention with films like The Color Purple and the romantic thriller Ghost. But it was flying solo with her Sister Act (Whoop, there it is) that finally proved that the browless comedienne had the ability to get people to purchase theater tickets. In it, the visually offbeat Mz. Goldberg acts as a sista who acts like a sister in order to hide from the mob and to help a group of nuns find their soul.

  I think it's pretty obvious by the placement of this movie on this list that Interview With a Vampire isn't one of my top movies about long-lived bloodsuckers. However, with it's depiction of the emotions and mindsets of those who are forever trapped within the dark, supernatural, and according to Anne Rice, decadent lifestyles of vampirism, it does contain an interesting and entertaining view into a lore of horror that most other films tend to get kinda lazy and/or subjectively sloppy about. So for me, that kind of effort does help to alleviate the pain in the neck compromises that the author made in order to present her ideas of what the everlasting curse of a Victorian style vampire would "impale". 

Way back in 1940, the first Fantasia film (at the time, only the third in Disney's full feature cinema released canon) managed to successfully integrated classical music with animation in eight featurettes with each medium complimenting the other. The power of the music was enhanced by the visuals of each short (with various degrees of success of course) while at the same time, the hand crafted artwork of each cell seemed to be powered by the notes and melodies of each time tested arrangement.
Almost sixty years later, Disney released this follow-up, which follows the same format of the original with the same amount of varying degree of success of each feature. Although, TBH, personally, I wouldn't have minded if they could've found a way to rev up the stylings of both music and visuals in way that would have better demonstrated the progress made in each field. But in the end, F2000 still manages to entertain and delight in the same manner that Uncle Walt had envisioned when he first dreamed up this moused-eared manner of movie magic.

On an Italian island so small that there are no automobiles, a local and dissatisfied fisherman looks for other, more "exciting" forms of employment. So he becomes the island's sole postman. With only one customer: a famous poet from Chile exiled to the island for political reasons. A friendship soon developes between the two, and the postman soon finds out the power that poetry has to change one's life.
A small piece of cinema about quiet people in remote circumstances who yearn for more expansion, not so much in their physical surroundings, but in their hearts, minds and souls.