1999 in film.

Top ten box-office films of 1999:

1. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
2. The Sixth Sense
3. Toy Story 2
4. The Matrix
5. Tarzan
6. The Mummy
7. Notting Hill
8. The World is Not Enough
9. American Beauty
10. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

What are your top three films for 1999? We will keep a running tally and eventually have some sort of bracket. For me it would be:

1. Rosetta
2. Eyes Wide Shut
3. Beau Travail

What are some of the forgotten gems from the year? What is overrated? What did you discover at a young age and what did you discover later?

YEARS IN FILM • forum.chorus.fm

 

This is where international releases get tricky. I have seen most of the "major" films from 2000 and on, but some of those films came out in 1999 overseas. Magnolia, Man on the Moon, Humanite, The Insider, The Matrix, Ratcatcher, Election, so many other options.

This is also the year that American Beauty, the worst film ever made, was released, which is notable.

 

Might be my hardest year yet:

Magnolia
Eyes Wide Shut
The Matrix

HM: The Straight Story, Fight Club, The Iron Giant, Being John Malkovich, The Green Mile, The Insider and Talented Mr. Ripley

 

1. Beau Travail
2. American Movie
3. Idle Hands

 

Also:
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Office Space
Magnolia
Go
Cruel Intentions
Varsity Blues
Austin Powers 2
Being John Malkovich
Toy Story 2

 

1. The Iron Giant
2. The Insider
3. Toy Story 2

For my money The Iron Giant is the greatest animated movie of all time. I've watched it countless times since my youth and it remains incredibly special to me. The Insider would be my top pick for most years, it is pretty handily Mann's most underrated movie, given that it hasn't developed a cult following around it the same way Miami Vice has. Toy Story 2 is superior to the original imo

 

Impossible year but here’s a list

1. Beau Travail
2. Eyes Wide Shut
3. The Insider

Notting Hill is my favorite romantic comedy. Magnolia was tough to leave out for the GOAT Tom Cruise performance. The Wachowskis Sisters have their lasting imprint with The Matrix. Election and Office Space are two of my favorite comedies. Bringing Out the Dead is a uniquely chaotic Scorsese film. Being John Malkovich and the Talented Mr. Ripley are both standouts. Three Kings is the only good David O. Russell movie. 90s icons with recent resurgences M. Night Shyamalan and Adam Sandler put out The Sixth Sense and Big Daddy. Ang Lee had the solid Ride With the Devil. Takashi Miike had Dead or Alive. Outer Space is a haunting short from Peter Tscherkassky. Jim Jarmusch had Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai. Any Given Sunday is one of the more complex Oliver Stone works, one of the few of his that I legitimately like.

 

1. Night Wind (Garrel)
2. La Lettre (Oliveira)
3. Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick)
-
4. Kikujiro (Kitano)
5. L'humanite (Dumont)
6. Sicilia! (Straub-Huillet)
7. As Bodas de Deus (Monteiro)
8. The Straight Story (Lynch)
9. My Neighbours the Yamadas (Takahata)
10. Peppermint Candy (Lee)

HM: Holy Smoke (Campion), Topsy Turvy (Leigh), The Blair Witch Project (Myrick & Sanchez), The Insider (Mann), Gemini (Tsukamoto), Charisma (Kurosawa), Sylvia Prieto (Rejtman), The Mission (To), Pola X (Carax), Nowhere to Hide (Lee), Gohatto (Oshima), eXistenZ (Cronenberg)

Honestly, I could keep going lol. Have long held this as my favourite year for film but putting it all down like that is genuinely overwhelming. Any of the films in my top 10 and even a few into the honorable mentions could easily be a number 1 pick in just about any other year.

Really want to recommend Lee Myung-se's Nowhere to Hide for anyone who is into East Asian action/genre cinema. It feels like some bizarre amalgamation of the styles of Wong Kar Wai, Johnnie To, Shinya Tsukamoto, and others. I probably thought of work by a dozen other filmmakers while watching it but it's so idiosyncratic that it doesn't feel like a derivative of any of these.

One of my all-time favourite shorts is from this year too. Peter Tscherkassky's Outer Space:

 

Can't believe I forgot Topsy Turvy. Might've been 3 if I'd remembered. Oh well.

 

1. Eyes Wide Shut
2. Fight Club
3. Being John Malkovich

4. American Beauty
5. Tarzan
6. The Matrix
7. The Sixth Sense
8. The War Zone
9. Peppermint Candy
10. Julien Donkey Boy

Also love Magnolia, Audition, Romance, Galaxy Quest, The Green Mile, Man on the Moon, The Mummy, All About My Mother.

 

insane year

1. Magnolia
2. Being John Malkovich
3. The Insider

 

1. Not One Less
2. The Wind Will Carry Us
3. The Mummy

Not One Less is a truly phenomenal little film from Zhang Yimou about a young, rural schoolteacher venturing down into the big, bad city to look for a runaway pupil. Filmed in neo-realist / cinema verite style, with non professional actors, it's a beautiful, simple little film. Along with his early Story of Qiu Ju, it's fascinating look at the gap between rural and urban China in the late 20th Century.

Another film about the urban meeting the rural, is Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us, about a "telecoms engineer" spending time in a little isolated village. The film, as are all Kiarostami films, are filled with the beauty of the mundane, those little small moments, a dung beetle pushing a ball, a woman milking a cow, a car driving through a winding landscape, people drinking tea etc and turning them into a film.

Something very different to my first two, but I utterly adore The Mummy. I think it's one of the best written blockbuster films, and while there's been lots of imitators since, nothing has come close to the sense of adventure and peril that this brings. Possibly the film I've watched most overall in my life maybe?

Lots of honourable mentions this year!

From America, we have Bringing Out The Dead, a great fun mid-career Scorsese film. Eyes Wide Shut Kubrick's final psychosexual masterpiece. There's David Lynch's The Straight Story, a film that feels very un-Lynch like at times, a beautiful little film about a pilgrimage made by Alvin on his trusty lawnmower. Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich is incredibly funny and surreal at times, with a great performance from the man himself.

For another slightly surreal but very funny American film, there's Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog, Jarmusch's trademark oddball film about a hitman. Finally, Fight Club - which I must have watched a dozen times when I was like 15, and then didn't watch it for 15 years. I re-watched it, slightly nervously, last month, and was happy that I still enjoyed it, albeit not necessarily in the same way I did when I was 15. I haven't seen The Matrix in a similarly long time, but I bet that's still great,

Another great Zhang Yimou film from this year is The Road Home, a lovely romantic film, about an old woman at the end of her life reminiscing about meeting her husband, and the first feature film from Zhang Ziyi.

From Japan, there's two great Miike films, this year; Audition, which builds to the most visceral moment of violence that I can recall, an absolute clinic on how to use extreme violence in cinema. Prolific as always, he also made Ley Lines, his final part in his Black Society trilogy about low level organised crime, and violence in general.

Two from Europe, Claire Denis' Beau Travail, which has one of the most memorable and remarkable finales that I can think of. I also really like Almodóvar's All About My Mother, a very Almodóvar film that looks beautiful, and features a fantastic performance from Penelope Cruz.

Finally, Lynne Ramsey's Ratcatcher, a film that starts looking like it'll be a Loach-esque hard hitting drama about a impoverished Glasgow estate. However, there's a truly wonderful cinematic moment in the mid-point of the film where James clambers through a window and it's absolutely magic. Can't imagine what seeing that in the cinema, without any knowledge of it, would be like.

 

1. Magnolia
2. Being John Malkovich
3. Election
4. Fight Club
5. Office Space
6. Sixth Sense
7. 10 Things I Hate About You
8. American Beauty
9. Cruel Intentions
10. Virgin Suicides

this might be the first time I did a full top 10 in these threads. 1999 was a stellar year.

 

Legendary year - from a sheer quantity perspective, I feel like it has to be the best ever?

1. Being John Malkovich
2. The Matrix
3. Magnolia

Honorable mentions:

Fight Club
The Iron Giant
Eyes Wide Shut
Office Space
The Straight Story
Galaxy Quest
Toy Story 2
The Insider
Election
10 Things I Hate About You
The Limey
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Mummy
American Pie
The Blair Witch Project

 

1. Boys Don't Cry
2. The Audition
3. The Virgin Suicides

jawbreaker is up there too

 

God I forgot Ratcatcher, too. Too many good ones

 

Why is American beauty the worst film ever made

 

The Matrix
Toy Story 2
Fight Club

 

Not my favourite year by any means but it is still a great end to the decade with several favourites but these are the three that right now I enjoy the most -

1. The Matrix
2. Being John Malkovich
3. Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris

Other favourites are in bold while the rest are notable efforts that I at least like; The Sixth Sense, Galaxy Quest, The Limey, American Beauty, Bringing Out the Dead, Three Kings, Toy Story 2, The Mummy, Sleepy Hollow, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Office Space, Stir of Echoes, The Blair Witch Project, Arlington Road, Payback, End of Days, Bats, Virus and Lake Placid.

Would also like to say that Terence Stamp gives two of my favourite performances from this decade in both The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and The Limey.

 

Still waiting

 

it's not the worst ever, but even taking kevin spacey out of the equation, it's a messed up film to be watching in this day and age. that there were enough oscar voters convinced it deserved best picture over the insider is no less than a travesty

 

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen it, but I remember that the Spacey character is meant to be a pathetic man-child, and the film isn’t endorsing his behaviour, it’s showing how predatory and delusional he is, with his obsessions over his daughter’s friend. I don’t recall there being anything messed up in there that the film is somehow endorsing, or unintentionally there - but it will have been years and years since I last saw it.

 

Not as bad when you look at the previous Best Picture race tho

 

American Beauty is the worst best picture winner ever, that alone makes it really bad without getting into whether it’s worse than Troll 2 or something like that. Everything about it is so inauthentic and cheesy. I didn’t love it initially but I didn’t realize how awful the whole thing is until I rewatched it. There are so many scenes as bad as the plastic bag scene. Ok maybe not that bad but close.

 

it isn’t even the worst of the 90s