In 1999:
The euro was established;
US President Bill Clinton was acquitted in impeachment proceedings;
Nunavut became Canada’s third territory;
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and one teacher at Columbine High School;
Napster debuted;
The US Women’s team defeated China to win the Women’s World Cup;
Kiribati, Nauru, and Tonga joined the United Nations;
Exxon and Mobil merged;
Macau was transferred from Portuguese to Chinese control;
Vladimir Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin as President of Russia;
Lil Nas X, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Harley Quinn Smith, Chandler Riggs, Ethan Cutkosky, and Kiernan Shipka were born;
While Susan Strasberg, John Osteen, King Hussein of Jordan, Iris Murdoch, John Erlichman, Gene Siskel, Glenn T. Seaborg, Dusty Springfield, Harry Blackmun, Del Close, Richard Kiley, Stanley Kubrick, Joe DiMaggio, Rick Rude, Senor Wences, Dirk Bogarde, Dana Plato, Shel Silverstein, Owen Hart, Gene Sarazen, Mel Torme, Deforest Kelley, Fred Trump, Edward Dmytryk, Sylvia Sidney, Mario Puzo, John F Kennedy Jr., Victor Mature, Pee Wee Reese, Allen Funt, Catfish Hunter, George C. Scott, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Gorilla Monsoon, Wilt Chamberlain, Payne Stewart, Walter Payton, Mary Kay Bergman, Gene Rayburn, Madeline Kahn, Joseph Heller, Robert Bresson, Desmond Lleweyln, Curtis Mayfield, and Clayton Moore died.
The following is a list of my ten favorite movies released in 1999:
Loosely based on La Strada, Woody Allen reworked an earlier script to produce one of his middle period highlights. Famed jazz guitarist Emmet Ray (Sean Penn) meets and falls in love with a mute woman, Hattie (Samantha Morton). The insecure Ray doesn’t believe he can be in a monogamous relationship and impulsively marries Blanche (Uma Thurman), only to realize the depth of his love for Hattie.
Ray is devastated to learn she has moved on, but his pain inspires him to write some of his best and most renowned music.
A frequent trope in many of Allen’s films, he frames the story around interviews with himself, jazz historian Nat Hetoff, and Douglas McGrath. In these interviews, they provide a fake, historical perspective on Ray’s life.
Penn is amazing and rightly received an Oscar nomination (losing to Kevin Space in American Beauty), while Samantha Morton is sublime as the mute Hattie and received an Oscar nomination despite not uttering a single word.
It’s a sweet film about the choices we make and how we delude ourselves into believing we know who we are, limiting our potential. The ending suggests art is borne from pain and loss.
9) Fight Club
The Narrator (Ed Norton) is an unhappy thirty something year old professional in a tenuous relationship with Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter). His life is uneventful, until he meets soap salesman Tyler Durden.
The Narrator and Tyler create a secretive fighting group, then use this group to form Project Mayhem, advocating for anarchy.
Slowly, the Narrator realizes Tyler is a dissociated personality sharing his body. Horrified at Tyler’s plan to blow up buildings which contain credit card records, he tries to stop him.
Brad Pitt is wonderfully charismatic; Ed Norton is a well cast everyman; and Helena Bonham Carter does some of her best work.
The film is expertly directed by David Fincher whose movies focus on the outcasts, the misfits, and the dejected. He frequently shows people struggling to find meaning in the world, often reacting in off putting ways to create their own purpose. Based on the acclaimed novel by Chuck Palahniuk, this tough, brutal film is an insightful examination into the relationship between destruction and art.
8) The Matrix
Years after machines have decimated mankind, Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is recruited by resistance fighters Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss), while sentient programs personified by Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) hunt them down.
The movie wisely place the action after intelligent machines have taken over our planet, and slowly reveals the nature of the Matrix.
The Wachowskis exploded into our consciousness with this visual tour de force. As Neo bends the laws of the universe, it set the standard for what special effects could be in the next millennium. and few movies since have been able to reach these awe-inspiring heights.
While I enjoyed them, the later sequels were a bridge too far for many, turning the brilliance of the first film into a confusing and semi-religious allegory.
7) Notting Hill
When movie actress Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) meets bookseller Will Thacker (Hugh Grant), the two have instant chemistry, but their vastly different lifetysles conspire to keep them apart.
From writer Richard Curtis, this is a romantic comedy in the vein of his earlier Four Weddings and a Funeral and later Love Actually: an idealized version of what love is and the power it has. If you like those films (I do), this will be your cup of tea.
Rhys Ifans is hilariously off kilter as Spike, Will’s roomate. Curtis cut his teeth writing for Blackadder and Mr. Bean and you can see those influences in Spike, one of the best sidekicks in romantic comedy history.
With Roberts at the tail end of her reign as America’s sweetheart, and Grant peaking as the ideal romcom lead, this was a perfectly cast movie.
6) Galaxy Quest
The stars of the defunct television show, Galaxy Quest, shuffle from one fan convention to the next. Egotistical James Nesmith (Tim Allen) who played Commander Peter Taggart, is adored by fans of the show, but disliked by his castmates. Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub) was the ship’s engineer, Sergeant Chen. Guy Fleegman (Sam Rockwell) was a red shirt from one memorable episode who parlayed his brief moment into a career on the convention circuit.
What makes the movie special is the double star power of Alan Rickman as Alexander Dane who played science officer Dr. Lazarus, and Sigourney Weaver as Gwen DeMarco who played communications officer Tawny Madison.
Rickman is perfect as Dane, a classically trained actor who resents being associated with a role he thinks is beneath him.
Weaver, who cut her teeth in two of the biggest sci-fi films of all time (Alien and Ghostbusters) adds a layer of meta humor to the film.
Allen’s performance as the Shanteresque captain is easily his best non-Toy Story role.
I love the concept: episodes of a classic sci-fi TV show broadcast into space and seen as literal representations by aliens. I love the sendup of fandom obsession. I love Rickman’s performance and the way Dane reconciles his aspiration with his career as Dr. Lazarus. If you enjoy science fiction, you will appreciate this film.
Millionaire Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) enjoys planning elaborate art heists in his spare time. His latest escapade, stealing a Monet from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, attracts the attention of Detective Michael McCann (Dennis Leary) and insurance investigator Catherine Banning (Renee Russo), leading to an elaborate cat and mouse game between the trio. There’s forgeries, plot twists, romance, and heists within heists.
I’m a sucker for movies with elaborate tricks and Crown’s staging of a real life version of Magritte’s Son of Man as his cover is inspired.
A motivated Pierce Brosnan oozes charm, Dennis Leary is always funny, and Renee Russo can hold her own with anyone. The movie doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s a lot of fun and makes you think it’s smarter than it is (like a proto National Treasure). It’s not a significant piece of art (unlike the many works it references), but it is a significantly fun movie.
4) Toy Story 2
This movie expands the world of the first film, introducing backstories for Woody and Buzz: Woody’s TV show origin and his costars: Jessie (Joan Cusack), Bullseye, and the duplicitous Prospector Pete (voiced by Kelsey Grammer); and Buzz’s arch nemesis Zurg.
The Toy Story formula is pretty straightforward. Someone (usually Buzz or Woody) is separated from the group and everyone else launches a rescue mission. Along the way they gently ask deep questions about their purpose, stressing the importance of community and family and exploring the transient nature of childhood. Is it enough to have an important job for a small period of time?
Twenty years later, Toy Story is still expanding their world, using their imaginative world to explore the nooks and crannies of ours.
Italian-American director Martin Scorsese revisits the Italian movies he watched with his parents as a young man, exploring the ways these films informed his career.
Oddly, Scorsese wound up marrying Isabella Rossellini, the daughter of the most prominent director featured in this four hour documentary.
If you enjoy movies and want to learn more about them: this is heaven sent.
Retiree Paul Edgecombe (Tom Hanks) cries as he watches Top Hat. In an extended flashback, we learn why: it reminds him of his time in charge of a death row prison during the Great Depression.
We see prisoner John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) arrive. A gentle, slow man with supernatural powers; he cures Paul’s debilitating bladder infection, heals the wife of the warden, and resurrects a deceased mouse. John convinces Paul of his innocence, but doesn’t wish to stop his execution: he’s tired of the world’s cruelty.
Per his last request, the guards show him Top Hat, bringing Paul’s memories full circle.
Paul then reveals another secret: John gifted (cursed) him with an extended lifespan; he’s 108 years old.
Frank Darabont previously turned Stephen King’s novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption into a cinematic masterpiece; he returns to King’s material to create another transcendent work. It’s a beautiful tale with echoes of Christ, and remarkable performances. Sam Rockwell is chilling as the crazed killer Wild Bill Wharton; Michael Jeter is haunting as the inmate Eduard Delacroix; Dough Hutchinson’s Percy Wetmore is one of the most despicable onscreen characters; Michael Clarke Duncan delivered a star making performance; and Paul Edgecombe is another homerun for Hanks in his remarkable career.
1) Magnolia
The lives of the characters in this film intertwine in a ridiculous labyrinth.
Phillip Baker Hall, perhaps best known as Lt. Bookman in an episode of Seinfeld, is Jimmy Gator, an aging, alcoholic host of a children’s quiz show who, because of his alcoholism, can’t remember if he sexually abused his daughter.
The underrated John C. Reilly is Jim Kurring, a dimwitted policeman in love with Gator’s daughter.
William H. Macy is Donnie, a former quiz show champion who believes dental work will solve his insecurities. After Fargo (1996), it seemed Macy was destined to become a major star, but he seems content with smaller character work.
Jason Robards is Earl Partridge, who wants to reconcile with his son before he dies. Robard’s death one year after the film’s release adds an urgent poignancy to his performance.
Julianne Moore is Linda Partridge, the morphine-addicted, much younger wife of Earl. In my opinion, Moore’s an overrated actress, but she’s compelling here.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman is Phil Parma, a hospice nurse who takes care of Earl.
Tom Cruise plays against type as Earl’s son, the misogynist / pick up artist Frank Mackey, whose fractured relationship with his father manifests in unexpected ways. His performance is a career highlight.
Just as we realize it will take a miracle to unravel the film’s ridiculous plot, the miracle happens: a storm carrying thousands of frogs descends on the city.
Near the end of the film, a succession of characters sing “Wise Up” by Aimee Mann. It’s an odd, haunting scene, forcing us to remove ourselves from the story and focus on the characters.
Director and screenwriter Paul Thomas Anderson understands films in a way few in Hollywood do: the details of the plot of a movie will be forgotten, but great characters such as Jack Horner, Daniel Plainview, and Lancaster Dodd will survive.