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Reasons to be Cheerful: It
will be remembered as a year of bounty and vision and boldness, will 1999, a
year of confronting established filmmaking forms and taking audacious chances
with stories, performances and styles. All in all, a very good year (which
explains the reluctance to throw brickbats and thus the transformation of the
ten worst list below). Here, in the order of their importance, are the best
films of 1999: Magnolia Equal
parts majesty and mystery, P.T. Anderson’s much-anticipated follow-up to
1997’s Boogie Nights is nothing less than a Nashville for the
late 1990s (complete with two major players from that landmark film in minor
roles), with the action shifted to SoCal’s San Fernando Valley and the style
amped up to reflect the cacophony of modern living. And while much will be
written of the labyrinthine relationships among the characters, the
across-the-board emotional accuracy of the cast (not coincidentally, Tom Cruise
has never been better) and the extraordinary use of Aimee Mann’s music,
perhaps the most talked-about element of the film will be that out-of-nowhere
climax, predicted throughout the film by references, both veiled and overt, to a
single bible verse, Exodus 8:2. Magnolia may not smite the box
office (it’s on the verge of a wide release as this is written), but it
confirms Anderson’s status as among the most promising young filmmakers in the
world. American
Beauty The
history of Hollywood is studded with examples of suburban living given new vigor
through the gaze of an outsider (Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt is but a
single example), so British stage director Sam Mendes’ extraordinary film
debut isn’t without precedent. From the echoes of Wilder’s Sunset
Boulevard in the mischievously macabre narration of protagonist Lester
Burnham (Kevin Spacey) to the magnificent photography of Tahiti-born Hollywood
veteran Conrad L. Hall (who won an Oscar 30 years ago for shooting Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and could very well win another one for his
work here), American Beauty seems at once reassuringly familiar and
bewilderingly strange, as if aliens were masquerading as an average family. Of
course, this is precisely the point: the heartaches in this dream home are no
different than those felt by untold numbers of people. It is in the details of
the sad dance in Alan Ball’s audacious script, scored to Thomas Newman’s
perfectly calibrated and spell-inducing music (at once respectful of and spoofy
towards the New Age-y tropes it mimics, that American Beauty). Run
Lola Run Love
can do everything,” Lola’s always told her low-level hood boyfriend Manni
(Moritz Bleibtreu), and now she’s got to prove it: nervous about collecting
for his boss, he’s forgotten DM 100,000 in a plastic bag on the subway he had
to hop because Lola was late and now he’s got 20 minutes to replace or find
it. “Stay where you are,” says Lola (flame-haired Franka Potente, Tykwer’s
current real-life love interest), “I promise I’ll come up with something.”
Guaranteed to leave first-time audiences sucking wind after a half hour
(about the time things really get interesting), Run Lola Run orchestrates
live action, animation, split-screen, slo-mo and most every other trick in the
book to spectacular effect. Nothing less than the missing link of contemporary
German cinema, writer-director Tom Tykwer unifies the philosophical navel-gazing
of the 1970s to the beat-driven 1990s aesthetic, creating a mischievous yet
deadly serious time-shifting emotional action epic that, like Rashomon
and Breathless and Muriel and O Lucky Man! and Groundhog
Day and Pulp Fiction before it rewrites the rules of narrative
storytelling with a propulsive blast of pure, exuberant cinema. Tykwer’s
really come up with something: the year’s most effortlessy kinetic movie
joyride, Run Lola Run is a millennial milestone from Germany’s most
promising young filmmaker. Similar territory is covered in Doug Liman’s Go,
albeit with a much larger cast and decidedly more forced approach to hipster
cool. The
Blair Witch Project The
year’s -- if not the decade’s -- shining example of art by accident, this
bona fide cultural phenomenon plays even better on tape and DVD than it did in
theaters, where audiences seemed either sickened by the camerawork or disgusted
by the misleading hype. With groundbreaking support by a canny, straight-faced
internet site, the picture was sold as a low-budget psychological horror film
about three student filmmakers who are lost in the woods of Maryland as they
search for the title entity. But stripped of it’s nearly unstoppable momentum,
the movie is also very much about the stubborn sense of entitlement and deep
self absorption endemic to today’s young people, traits instilled via
contemporary child-rearing that doom these fledgling filmmakers as surely as the
most determined ax-wielding maniac. Credit young directors Daniel Myrick and
Eduardo Sanchez for having the discipline to jettison all the extraneous
mockumentary material and focus on the real drama of poor, dumb, bratty Heather
(“this can’t happen to us,” she wails, “we’re in America!”) and her
two increasingly petulant crew members, Joshua and Michael, as they flail around
the forest in search of something they clearly have no idea what to do with
should they ever find it. Being
John Malkovich The
proof of this movie’s merit is in the relative ease with which newcomer Jonze,
who cut his teeth on music videos (that’s him as a spastic featured dancer in
Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You”) and can be seen in a distinctive supporting
role in David O. Russell’s Three Kings, sells the patently absurd idea
of average people climbing inside the head of one of our most intense and
enigmatic actors. Part of this success comes from the clean logic behind the
patently absurd idea in Charlie Kaufman’s script (one of many truly great
original screenplays on display throughout the year), and much of it arises from
John Cusack’s typically selfless performance as Craig Schwartz, the
frustrated, idealistic puppeteer whose filing job (he’s got fast fingers)
leads him to the aforementioned portal. Many critics have pointed out how much
less successful the film might’ve been with any actor other than the at once
approachable and off-kilter Malkovich, but the true inspiration on view here is
the inspired casting against respective types of Amerindie queen Catherine
Keener as the vampy Maxine and a virtually unrecognizable Cameron Diaz as
Craig’s frumpy, spacy wife Lotte. These are just the most obvious gambles in a
movie possessed of many brave choices that pay off cumulatively in a movie of
off-the-wall charm and subtle profundity. The
Limey Along
with Run Lola Run the year’s most exhilarating example of noodling
around with time and character point of view, Soderbergh’s pithy follow-up to
the bravura Out of Sight features a delightfully droll yet commandingly
intense turn by Terence Stamp as intense British ex-con Wilson, determined to
find the person or persons who caused the death of his daughter while he was in
stir. To this end he makes his first trip to Los Angeles in search of preening
record producer Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda), who is surrounded by the Southern
California good life and protected by ruthless personal attorney Avery (Barry
Newman, making a welcome return to the screen). Sort of a cross between the cool
stylistic calisthenics of John Boorman’s Point Blank and the scruffy
1970s Raymond Chandler retooling of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, The
Limey was written by Lem Dobbs, directed by Soderbergh and photographed by
respected international vet Ed Lachman with a knowing wink towards those and
other genre movies as well as the flamboyant and well-documented public
histories of Fonda and Stamp. In fact the latter’s character name, Wilson, is
the same as the young man he played in Ken Loach’s 1967 Poor Cow -- the
film from which black and white clips are lifted to illustrate his memories
here. This is only one of the numerous time-shifting strategies employed by
Soderbergh in a continuation of the stylish structure he brought to Out of
Sight. Taken together, the two films signal a tangible rebirth for a
director whose track record until now (from the indie fave sex, lies &
videotape to the wretched The Underneath) can charitably be called
erratic. The
Insider It
is indicative of the power of Michael Mann’s determinedly meticulous yet
hyper-stylized method of storytelling (remember “Miami Vice”?) that, judged
solely on the theatrical and television trailers, The Insider looks like
a bad television show, pompous and inflated. Yet in one of the year’s truly
great performances, the unlikely Russell Crowe so completely inhabits the
real-life character of prickly whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand that viewers may
never know in real life he’s an intense, chain-smoking Australian hunk (hint: L.A.
Confidential.). And Mann’s style over a very deliberate three hours, at
once jittery and elegant, turns the tale of skullduggery in the tobacco industry
and “60 Minutes” into a nervous moral opera of colliding interests. Serving
the same function as his character in Mann’s Heat, Al Pacino’s Lowell
Bergman, a real-life producer at the CBS television program, brings a smooth
thuggishness and strong moral compass to a conflicted man on the front lines of
societal responsibility. Less finely-drawn is Christopher Plummer’s Mike
Wallace, who comes across as too much the spineless idiot to represent the
survivor he so clearly is. Through the meticulousness of their script, Mann and
co-writer Eric Roth make an abundantly clear case that the tug-of-war between
big business and TV represented by this real-life tobacco company scandal is a
vital battle in the war for equilibrium between the interests. As an added --
albeit obscure -- grace note, one of the year’s busiest actors, Philip Baker
Hall (he’s also in Magnolia and The Talented Mr. Ripley) does a
precise turn as “60 Minutes” producer Don Hewitt. Three
Kings Doing
for the Persian Gulf War what Catch-22 did for World War Two and M*A*S*H
did for Korea, this irreverent and kinetic anti-war movie -- improbably
reminiscent, above all, of the giddy clash of greed and glory in the cult 1970
Clint Eastwood movie Kelly’s Heroes -- spreads its cynicism thicker
than most entries in the genre but tempers it with a cheerful streak of
absurdist panache that keeps the irony from overwhelming the drama. Little in
director David O. Russell’s previous two features (Spanking the Monkey
and Flirting With Disaster) indicated his leanings towards this
kind of epic sweep, yet the picture struts along for three-quarters of its
conventional 105 minutes on the sheer brio of its conceit: with a map plucked
from the ass of a dead Iraqi soldier, four unlikely compatriots chase down a
cache of gold ingots and discover the flaws of the military action and strengths
of their individual characters in the process. George Clooney finally seems on
track to get the kind of roles he excels in, while Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and
Spike Jonze (see Being John Malkovich, above) are precise in support.
Special mention to cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel for one of the year’s
most unorthodox visual styles and composer Carter Burwell (Fargo) for a
memorable score. South
Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut If
exuberant excess is a reliable yardstick of satire, then this big-screen version
of the popular -- if primitive -- cable television program towers above the
year’s releases for sheer inventive tastelessness. Ensnaring the previously
quasi-dignified Marc Shaiman (the Sister Act franchise, Bette Midler’s Diva
Las Vegas) to collaborate on the music and lyrics, Parker and co-creator
Matt Stone have written fifteen howlingly funny and breathtakingly obscene songs
that punctuate the new, broad-ranging adventures of Cartman, Kenny, Kyle and
Stan. Whether spoofing the efforts of government to regulate movie ratings or
the complications of war (Saddam Hussein and Satan team up to exploit a
misguided conflict against Canada), the Swiftian satire on display holds a
mirror up to the contradictions of pop culture and the importance of free
speech. That the creative team behind the movie wallows so gleefully in the
adolescent muck they try so hard to defend is simultaneously the movie’s
biggest drawback and most hilarious benefit. By no means the only notable
animated feature of the year (others include Tarzan, The Iron Giant
and Toy Story 2), South Park is decidedly the most adult. Alexander
Payne’s Election is a live-action (and infinitely more dignified)
satire of note and Dick is, well, Dick. All
About My Mother There’s
something to be said for consistency, particularly over a thirteen-film career
now on the verge of its third decade. And while there’s the legitimate
question of what makes Pedro Almodovar popular with a wide audience just now --
did the world finally catch up with his gender-bending worldview or has he
gradually retooled his approach for the mainstream? -- there’s little debate
about the unity of his vision. Since he first burst on the American art-house
scene with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown over a decade ago,
Almodovar has staked out the territory of a Spanish cross between George Cukor
and John Waters, the flamboyant but compassionate chronicler of the often
tangled but always rewarding relationships among women. Following the momentum
of 1995’s The Flower of My Secret and 1997’s Live Flesh, All
About My Mother confirms his increasing maturity as a filmmaker of great
visual and emotional gifts (a pity the 1999 Cannes jury didn’t think so,
giving Almodovar the Best Director award instead of the Palm d’Or everybody
else thought the movie deserved). The complex and rewarding saga of a mother who
travels from Madrid to Barcelona after her son dies tragically, the film makes
pointed structural references to the Bette Davis picture All About Eve
and Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” in its story of show
business, sexual ambiguity and support. Drawing from the circle of actresses
that have appeared in many of his films, Almodovar elicits rich performances
from Cecilia Roth as the grieving mother, Marisa Paredes as a vulnerable
actress, and Penelope Cruz as a pregnant nun (what would an Almodovar movie be
without a pregnant nun?). Thoughtful and heartfelt, All About My Mother
is a melodrama for moviegoers wary of the genre. Films
that could just as well made the list in any other year of the decade include
(in no particular order) Election, Fight Club, The Sixth Sense,
Limbo, Buena Vista Social Club, The Matrix, Rosetta,
The Iron Giant, Toy Story 2, Dick, The Mummy, 42
UP, American Pie, Eyes Wide Shut, Sitcom, The
Straight Story, Bowfinger, The Dreamlife of Angels, Felicia’s
Journey and My Name is Joe. The
Ten Most, uh, Exasperating Films of 1999 Not
so much bad as just plain overhyped (although some of these are pretty
intolerable), the following movies proved disappointments (some larger than
others) relative to their advance tub-thumping:
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