After the highly-loved hideousness of the '80s, the '90s came to wipe the slate clean. Long-haired rock fell to disheveled grunge, and a sea of personal expression, rebellion against pop, and teen sexuality exploded. Unlike the '60s, which are touted as a sexy free-for-all, the '90s focused on its many aspects. In the realm of film, having sex wasn't link to "good" or "bad," but rather, to its different manisfestations and preferences. Emphasis was placed on the characters rather than the story, and this bred a collection of youthful films unlike the movies of other generations.

Here are the films that rocket me back to the '90s with their great characters, music, and sexual expression. Which do the same for you?

Empire Records

I know this -- that if I win this roll, I will save the place that I work from being sold, and the jobs of my friends that work there -- thus striking a blow at all that is evil and making this world a better place to be in.

People usually either love or hate Empire Records, and the ones that love it cherish its quirk, uniqueness, and killer lines. As the Empire employees fight against the news that their beloved workplace will be turned into a Music Town, they also struggle with their own personal issues. Artist A.J. glues quarters to the ground, which drives hooligan Warren crazy, while he obsesses over his secret love for Corey. She, meanwhile, plans to sweetly seduce the aging rock star guest Rex Manning, but he's more into her bad-girl best friend, Gina. Debra tried to kill herself with a pink, plastic razor with daisies on it. Lucas lost $9,000 of the store's money in Atlantic City, but it more interested in relaying his pearls of wisdom: "In this life, there are nothing but possibilities." Mark just gets stoned and hallucinates. And Joe, well, he loves these guys, but is weighed with the responsibility of running the store, and fighting the incoming music chain.

From Rory Cochrane's philosophical rambling to Renee Zellweger's stint as a sex-crazed wanna-be singer, Empire Records is a film in love with music and being different. The characters have extremely diverse interests and attitudes, but they all come together and happily co-exist in this tune-laden environment. Yet it isn't sickeningly saccharine; it's just accepting and honest.

Trivia: Deb's boyfriend Berko is played by the wonderful Coyote Shivers, who, at the time, was Liv Tyler's stepfather.

Although the audio tape is pretty much dead, people still love making mix tapes, even if they now come in CD form. It's funny how this ritual of appreciation has transcended age and time. We used to scour radio stations for the perfect mix of songs, and now we whip up aural delights from thousands of mp3s. Mixes were useful to tell that certain boy or girl that you liked them in school, and today we often send mixes to say hello, or to gently shake a person and show them all the good music that they are missing.

There's also no short supply of movies that have absolutely fantastic soundtracks that work like a visual mix tape, sending the viewer through an optical pathway of music, sometimes even bringing new meaning and depth to the tunes that are played. While I would love to gush about Beethoven's music set to drama in Immortal Beloved, or even the brilliance that is Simon and Garfunkle in The Graduate, this space is reserved for the films with varied soundtracks full of a myriad of sounds and artists, which somehow all morph together into a cohesive and enjoyable whole. Sometimes they are just great collections of music, and sometimes they completely make you rethink something you might have heard many times before. If only I could list 14, or even 21! But I can't, so here are 7 films to inspire you into a mix-making frenzy:

High Fidelity

This almost seems like cheating, being such an obvious and no-brainer sort of choice, but you really can't talk about the power of mix tapes and movies without talking about the film that is all about creating musical mixes that portray slices of life. John Cusack stars as Rob Gordon, the music store owner who is at a crossroads in his life -- his serious girlfriend is leaving him, and through music, he delves into his less-than-desirable relationships with women. The beauty of this movie's soundtrack is how many different slices of music it tastes -- from the melodic Dry the Rain from The Beta Band to Aretha Franklin's Rock Steady. The old is mixed with the new, introducing us to what we might not have heard, while reminding us of songs we might have forgotten.

After writing and directing the wildly popular Pump Up the Volume, Allan Moyle picked up his filmmaking pace (to that point he'd been averaging about a movie every decade), and enjoyed moderate indie-style success with The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag and Empire Records. Since then, however, it's been 10 years of relative silence (apart, I mean from his brilliant TV movie, Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story) from the director.

According to this morning's Variety, Moyle back, this time with an indie film with enough cute boys in it to guarantee both a release and a solid audience of teenage girls. Set to star Scott Speedman, Wes Bentley (where the hell has he been, anyway?) and Hustle & Flow's Taryn Manning, Weirdsville is about two "hapless slackers" - that's industry code for morons - who, while trying to bury the body of their buddy who (oops) just ODed, "stumble on a satanic cult performing a ritual." Oh, and it's a comedy. Of course it is. Written by Willem Wennekers, the movie is being produced by Darius Films, a small, Toronto-based company, and has already secured US and Canadian distribution - we should see it sometime next year.