1999 - My Favorite Year in Film History

The medium of cinema has been around for over 100 years and in that timeframe, thousands of films have been released. Everyone's cinematic experience is different and for me, the most important year in my film life occurred in 1999. This was the summer I was 16, usually a year of change in the lives of American adolescents and I was no exception. I turned 17 in the fall, just after seeing the two films that would change the course of my life (for better or worse) in Fight Club and American Beauty. My thoughts on that experience can be found in my previous post. However, the year was so much more than just those two films. This year was filled with incredible experiences from all genres and during all points of the calendar. Here are some of my favorites.

The Top Three
Fight Club, American Beauty, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

This is the one movie that I can never properly categorize into one genre. Whether it spends it's time rolling in black comedy, pummeling the viewer with gritty action or crystalizing great moments of human drama, this film transcends genre to become something more. Fight Club did not make a lot of money when it came out in theaters. It was not until the DVD hit the shelves that everyone started hearing, "you have to see this movie". That's when adolescent males started their own "fight clubs" and a revolution was under way. Actually it was less a revolution and more a reflection of how influential this film is and how effectively it subverts the consumer driven culture of the late 90's. Brad Pitt gives one of his best performances as the charismaticly insane Tyler Durden and Edward Norton plays an excellent straight man. One of the things that I love most about the film is how it breaks the 4th wall and incorporates the audience into the story more effectively than any other film. Without question, this is one of the best films of the 90's and one of my favorite films of all time.

American Beauty is many things. It's a beautifully shot film and a true testament to color acting as character. The great Conrad Hall was the cinematographer on this, his last film and his work here thematically will stand against any of his other projects. It's also a wonderfully acted film with great work from the leads but also very touching performances from the supporting characters. Kevin Spacey was on a roll at the end of the 90's and this acted as the coup-de-gras to all that momentum.  It's a brilliantly written film, with biting comedy, poignant drama and a touch of sentimentality thrown in for good measure. What this film is mostly though, is the perfect story at the perfect time. At the end of the 90's everything was going great in the good ol' USA. The economy was up, the internet was booming and everything looked like roses up ahead. That sense of comfort allowed a story like this to be made. Once everything is great and you have everything you say you want, what do you do? Do you become a creature of habit and slowly devolve into a shell of the person you used to be or do you recognize the beauty in the world? Do you have the ability to appreciate how lucky any of us are to be alive? Do you do anything about it? A film that asks these questions with conviction and incorporates all of the other accolades I have heaped upon it, surely must be one of the greats and another personal favorite of mine.

One of the hardest times I have ever laughed at a movie, came from South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut in the mid summer of 1999. As I was walking out of the theater, my face literally hurt from laughing so much. I was already a fan of the show and the movie took everything that the show did well and amplified it. The whole thing is so deliciously absurd and over the top that you can't help but laugh. One of the most amazing things about the film is that it's a traditional Hollywood musical, just with very, very filthy language. The songs are all original and (almost) all of them are hilarious. My personal favorites are Uncle Fucka, Kyle's Mom's a Bitch, La Resistance and Mountain Town. Anytime I hear one of the songs, it gets stuck in my head (in a good way). Like Anchorman, Caddyshack, and The Blues Brothers, this is one of the great quotable movies as well and never fails to incite memories of mirth and warmth and other feelings of 'mth. It's simply put, hands down, the best R-rated, animated, musical of all time.

Best of the Rest
The Matrix, The Iron Giant, The Insider, Office Space, Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Galaxy Quest, Sleepy Hollow, The Sixth Sense, Election, Toy Story 2, The Green Mile, Three Kings, The Limey, The Boondock Saints, The Blair Witch Project, Being John Malcovich

This was another year that was heavy on originality. The aformentioned Matrix aside, Three Kings, Being John Malcovich, Election, The Boondock Saints and The Limey all played within their own sandboxes to create new elements of genre. Other films did not so much stretch genre conventions as perfect them. South Park gave musicals a new, dirty life. Toy Story 2 and the Iron Giant showed us what computer animation could be and were bright lights towards the future. The Blair Witch Project was a phenomenon, mostly because half the people who saw it thought it was real (myself included) thanks to a very clever marketing campaign. The Green Mile, The Sixth Sense and Sleepy Hollow all incorporated elements of style into their stories that felt fresh but classic at the same time. There was also the wonderfully spot on Office Space, the calculated send up of Star Trek in Galaxy Quest and the all out bombastic Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Lastly, The Insider showed everyone that Russell Crowe could act and Al Pacino could still act. This film still has one of my favorite lines when the lawyer deposing Crowe's character tells the tobacco lawyer who keeps objecting and interrupting Crowe's testimony essentially that he has no power here and to "wipe that smirk off your face!" The contempt in that line delivery is spot on perfection and worth sitting through the rest of the movie even if you enjoy nothing else about it, which would be hard to do because it's a very well made film. This year was full of moments of perfection just like that and one of the reasons I am so fond of this collection of celluloid.

Other Films of Note
American Pie, Arlington Road, Analyze This, Go, The 13th Warrior, Payback, Dogma, Stir of Echoes

Overall this year is one of the greatest collections of stories we've ever known. There was no one specific genre that was more represented or massively important drama towering over everything. No this year was more a time when things felt like we were very close to something. Whether it was a new achievement, a new kindred spirit with our fellow man, a new desire to make the world better, is hard to say, probably because it wasn't any of those things. What I do know is this collection of films made me feel hopeful for the future. The fact that we were about to flip the calendar from the 1900's to the 2000's probably had a lot to do with this pervasively imminent feeling but I think more of it had to do with a level of optimism that was well represented in the films released this year. I've already mentioned in my last post how much Fight Club and American Beauty affected my life, but it was the full tapestry of cinema that year which really affected me and had a large hand in molding me into the person I am today. Truly one of the best years of my life.