by Wow I’m excited! It’s not often I set a goal and actually meet it, but here we are at the end of the Nineties with ten posts, one for each year, listing my favorites. Next step is to try and come up with a top ten list for the entire decade. Before that I sure would love to hear some comments, arguments, etc on why you think I’m completely nuts in what I’ve picked.
A lot of movies I missed in 1999 — here’s the ones I’m putting on my to-watch list: The Blair Witch Project, The Green Mile, Any Given Sunday, The Cider House Rules, Eyes Wide Shut, South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut, October Sky, Magnolia, EdTV; Summer of Sam; Go; Brokedown Palace; The Straight Story; Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai; The Limey; Holy Smoke; and The Boondock Saints.
And here is my top ten list:
- Three Kings
- Being John Malkovich
- Office Space
- Fight Club
- The Matrix
- The Talented Mr. Ripley
- Mystery Men
- Dogma
- Galaxy Quest
- Toy Story 2
I’m a little dubious as to whether or not The Sixth Sense and Man on the Moon are as good as I remember them. Sixth Sense had its plot twist gimmick and Man on the Moon had Andy Kaufman as a gimmick.
The Iron Giant is a wonderful movie that I liked a lot and would definitely like to see again.
There were a lot of other pretty good movies that year including a bunch of comedies including Analyze This, Notting Hill, Bowfinger, Happy, Texas and 10 Things I Hate About You. I think Sleepy Hollow might be the last Tim Burton movies I really liked. There was also a trio of movies that kind of touched on themes of corruption and loneliness: American Beauty, Election and The Insider.
UPDATE
12/28/12 Saw Go tonight and had a fun time. Can’t believe I missed this in the theaters. Second effort by Swingers director, Doug Liman, and written by John August (who I am now very aware of from listening to his podcast Scriptnotes). The three tracks of the story are a bit experimental (not quite as fractured as the earlier Pulp Fiction was but perhaps influenced a bit) and once you got the second track and realized what was going on, it really got to be fun on another level. The characters could have been a bit more — weird? The drug dealer and Simon were the strongest characters, but even Simon was pretty a average personality overall — just someone very, very confident. Would I bump something to put this in my top ten favorites? I have a fond memory of Toy Story 2, but I wonder if head to head I liked this better than Mystery Men, Dogma or Galaxy Quest?
12/27/12 I watched Any Given Sunday and it was a very Oliver Stone movie but that style works pretty well in conveying the smash-mouth vibe of modern football. I liked it — Jamie Foxx was really good and Al Pacino chewed up all kinds of scenery. The last speech by Pacino before the big game — I don’t know how much coaches can do at these moments but it’s a staple of sports movie and Pacino delivers a pretty good one here:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSDhhZtRwFU?rel=0]
