Some Other Movies From 1999 (2)

For further background on the year in film, please refer to the Some Other Movies From 1999 entry.

The following things happened in 1999:

• The euro currency was established.
• Bill Clinton was acquitted after impeachment proceedings.
• Shakespeare in Love won the Oscar for Best Picture.
• Nunavut became Canada's third territory.
• Bill Gates became the richest man in the world.
• The Columbine shootings took place in Colorado.
• Napster appeared.
• Falun Gong was banned in China.
• The 9-21 Earthquake struck Taiwan.
• Boris Yeltsin resigned as Prime Minister of Russia, leaving Vladimir Putin as acting president.*

Underlined entries were viewed on Netflix.

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.

Disclaimer: I was scraping the bottom of the YouTube barrel with this one.  The "Excellent" category aside, "Good" in this context is relative.  Is a movie like Aftershock: Earthquake in New York REALLY good?  No, definitely not.

Excellent 

1. American Beauty 

Yes, we all hate Kevin Spacey now, but once upon a time he was one of the best actors in the business.  American Beauty is excellent regardless of his tarnished reputation, and it's still one of the most heartfelt movies ever made.

What's it about?  I suppose you could boil it down to the dangers of conformity, and of being so invested in the rat race that you overlook the simple joys of life.  Besides Spacey, the supporting cast is also great.  Especially Annette Bening, as Spacey's controlling wife.

Fun Fact: This was director Sam Mendes' very first movie.  He'd go on to direct Road to Perdition, Skyfall and Spectre.

2. The Matrix

One thing American Beauty and The Matrix have in common: they both end with the perfect song.  American Beauty ends with an Elliot Smith tune, and The Matrix ends with Rage Against the Machine.  Those two songs both capture the moods of their respective movies perfectly.

Every so often I feel the need to revisit the first Matrix.  In my opinion it's a perfectly executed science fiction movie, and those revisiting it in 2021 will find it hasn't aged a day.  It's also a perfect synthesis of trends in science fiction up until that point - the existential depth of anime like Ghost in the Shell, Hong Kong-style gunplay and martial arts, trends in virtual reality and gaming, and a host of actors and actresses who would become much bigger names as the 2000s wore on.  In essence it does just what a movie like Jaws did before it: it encapsulates what came before, and also offers us a glimpse of what's to come.

Of course I realize that Jupiter Ascending was terrible, but I'm still a bit sad that it's not the Wachowskis directing the Dune adaptation.  Plot elements from Dune Messiah were almost certainly incorporated into The Matrix Revolutions, and a more direct adaptation of Dune by the Wachowskis would have been a great ride.  Nothing against Denis Villeneuve - he's one of the great directors working today - but yeah, the Wachowskis doing Dune would have been epic.

And can we talk about how Laurence Fishburne almost carries this entire film?  Or how awesome Hugo Weaving is?  I could watch those guys do their thing all day.

Fun Fact 1: The Wachowskis originally wanted Will Smith for Neo and Val Kilmer (!) for Morpheus.  Will Smith turned down the movie in favor of Wild, Wild West.

Fun Fact 2: That rooftop set in the beginning was constructed for Dark City, which had just finished filming.  Both Dark City and The Matrix came out the same year, and share many themes in common.

Fun Fact 3: The fourth installment in The Matrix franchise will be released at the end of this year.  Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss will be the only cast members retained from the first movie.

3. Witness Protection

Tom Sizemore, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Forrest Whitaker star in this movie about a family entering the witness protection program.  It's miles better than Don't Look Behind You (below), and offers a lot of insight into problems encountered by families in that situation.

Some Good Ones

1. Aftershock: Earthquake in New York

Shades of 9-11.  There's even a part where Erika Eleniak tells Tom Skerritt that "the Twin Towers are still standing."  Not for long though...

It's slow to get going, but as disaster movies go it's much better than the recently seen Volcano and Deep Impact.  Tom Skerritt stars as the obligatory disaster relief guy, with Jennifer Garner and Charles S. Dutton in supporting roles.  A big budget spectacle?  Not exactly, but you don't always need a big budget to make disasters convincing.

Fun Fact 1: This entire movie was filmed in Vancouver, Canada.  All the shots of New York are either stock footage or models.

Fun Fact 2: Speaking of Erika Eleniak, her first movie was 1982's E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial.

2. Primal Force

Ron Perlman leads a group of would-be victims around an island infested with killer baboons.  It reminded me of 1996's The Island of Dr. Moreau, though of course it lacks the big ideas present in that earlier movie.  The baboons look fake at times, but given the budget I think those responsible did a good job.

3. Rollercoaster

No, not the 70s disaster movie.  This one's about a group of adolescents sneaking into an abandoned amusement park.  It's very angsty, and also very representative of the time period.  Anyone else remember all those introspective, guitar-driven songs of the late 90s?

Some Bad Ones

1. Big Daddy

Brought to you by McDonald's and Hooters!  It's occasionally funny but overall rather mean-spirited.  Adam Sandler stars as a man burdened with an abandoned child.

2. Silver Wolf

What, you ask, were Michael Biehn and Roy Scheider doing in 1999?  Ok, maybe you weren't asking, but the answer lies in this kid-friendly movie about a young boy befriending a wolf.  I guess if you were into snow boarding you might like it.

3. Undercover Angel

Yasmine Bleeth, remember her?  And... James Earl Jones?  Casey Kasem?  It's a bewildering mix of actors and actresses.

In Undercover Angel an aspiring writer is asked to watch a friend's daughter for several days.  The daughter in question displays the level of precociousness which inspired the creation of Zyklon B.  And why the fuck is that guy using a typewriter?  In 1999 even struggling artists had word processors!

Weird Fact 1: Jim Varney was scheduled to appear in this, but Yasmine Bleeth's agent refused to allow Varney to appear in the same movie as his client.  Why?  I have no idea!

Weird Fact 2: Bleeth was addicted to cocaine during the filming of this movie.

4. Don't Look Behind You

It's impossible to sympathize with this family.  And if I've learned anything from the internet, it's that YOU DON'T FUCK WITH THE CARTEL.  And if you do, you better vanish right quick.  

Yet instead of vanishing right quick, this family spends a lot of time whining about the witness relocation program.  "Oh, why can't I call my boyfriend!  So unfair!"  By the time this move's over you actually feel a bit sorry for the cartel, who at least had their shit together.  

Seeing Patrick Duffy and Pam Dawber subjected to a slow death at the hands of cartel enforcers would have been much better than the way this movie actually ends.

5. Survivor

Crewmen in the arctic drill too deep and discover an ancient extraterrestrial threat.  Half of this low budget made-for-TV movie is so dark it's hard to see what's going on, and the other half utilizes some of the worst special effects I've ever seen.  Really, even compared to some of the lower budget 80s movies this one looks bad.  A lot of it reminded me of John Carpenter's The Thing, though of course it's not nearly that good.

6. Komodo

I suppose after the success of Anaconda a movie like Komodo was inevitable.  It was either that or Iguana, which for all I know was also a thing.

The only thing I liked about this movie was the ridiculous "happy" ending.  All those deaths?  Not a big deal, now that we've all learned to be more resourceful and the boy has overcome his childhood trauma.  Aren't a few horrific deaths justifiable when a therapist is trying to "reach" a young boy?

I once stayed at a resort in Malaysia which kept an adult Komodo dragon as a pet.  Once you've seen one of those things eat a live chicken you learn to keep your distance.

7. Killer Deal

It's the future - or sometime after 2009 anyway - and the rich are harvesting the organs of the poor.  Has this happened?  Is it happening?  I suppose it depends on who you ask.

8. Cleopatra

Pretty much unwatchable.  The actress playing Cleopatra is beautiful, but she can't act worth a damn.  Even Timothy Dalton, who probably has some background in Shakespeare, is terrible in this one.  Lines which should have force come off sounding like something from a car commercial.

There are a few things that TV movies - at least until the advent of Netflix and other streaming services - did better than movies.  Chief among these things is telling a longer, more complex story with a greater depth of characterization.  Grand, meticulously staged battle scenes?  Leave that to Hollywood.

9. Animal Farm

Like Cleopatra another Hallmark movie.  The acting in Animal Farm is much better, but the animatronic animals look incredibly fake.  Even worse is the cgi applied to actual animals.

Like many others, I was compelled to read Orwell's novel in high school.  As much as I will always love 1984, I found Animal Farm to be both heavy-handed and extremely obvious.  The TV movie adds more human drama to the story (i.e. the humans are better fleshed out and more obviously evil), but the story does not benefit from this addition.

Related Entries:

Some Other Movies From 1998 (2)

Some Other Movies From 1997 (2)

Some Other Movies From 1996 (2)

Some Other Movies From 1995 (2)

*Putin has been in and out of office several times.  No, he hasn't been overseeing Russia since 1999.

Some Other Movies From 1999

1999 was the year I earned my B.A. in International Studies.  What good is is a B.A. in International Studies?  I'm still working on that.  If it means anything, my life did become more "international" that year.

For most of 1999, I was having a pretty good time.  During the Seattle portion of that year I was living just north of the University of Washington, getting stoned and getting laid... and occasionally attending classes.  During the Taiwan portion of that year I was learning about life in Taiwan, dating, and eventually meeting the woman who is still my wife, 20 years later.

The five biggest movies of 1999 were Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, The Sixth Sense, Toy Story 2, The Matrix and Tarzan (the Disney cartoon).  I can remember seeing The Phantom Menace in the theater and thinking it was BAD.  I can also remember seeing Tarzan not long after, and liking it.  The Sixth Sense remains M. Night Shyamalan's best movie, and The Matrix was undoubtedly the best blockbuster of that year.

Critical favorites were American Beauty (great movie), The Insider (also great), Magnolia (good, if overwrought), and The Green Mile (excellent).  An underrated movie from that year was Boys Don't Cry, a movie that introduced me (and most of the movie-going public) to Hilary Swank.

Other good movies from that year were Payback, Office Space (!), Election, Existenz, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, American Pie, Arlington Road, The Blair Witch Project, Eyes Wide Shut (awesome), Mystery Men, Detroit Rock City, Fight Club, The Cider House Rules, Any Given Sunday (one of the best football films) and Galaxy Quest.

For worst film I'd have to nominate Kevin Smith's Dogma.  Damn that movie was bad.  Just thinking about Ben Affleck's soliloquy in the parking garage makes me cringe.  Also the rest of that movie's dialogue.  Also Alanis Morissette.  Also its theology.  In a word: Yikes.

Some Good Ones

1. All About My Mother

One of the weirder movies I've seen lately.  A woman from Barcelona takes a walk on the wild side (in the larger, Lou Reed sense of the term) after tragedy strikes.  Pedro Almodovar directed.

I'm not at all familiar with Spanish directors or Spanish films, but this one has me intrigued.  Are any of Almodovar's other movies this good?  Are there other Spanish directors I should know about?  If I learn the answer to either of these questions, I'll be sure to write about it here.

2. The Iron Giant

A boy becomes friends with a giant extraterrestrial robot during the Cold War.  I'd seen bits of this movie before, but never sat down and watched the whole thing until recently.  It's ok.  Not awesome.

Fun Fact: You may remember seeing the Iron Giant in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One.  He/it was only in that movie because the filmmakers couldn't get the rights to Ultraman.

3. Blue Streak

I suppose after having Martin Lawrence star as a cop who occasionally impersonates criminals in Bad Boys, it made sense to have him star as a criminal impersonating a cop in Blue Streak.  It's completely derivative, and all of the cops fooled by Lawrence are raging idiots, but his performance in this movie is still funny.

4. The Thirteenth Floor

Noirish murder mystery set in virtual reality.  It's surprising this came out the same year as Existenz and The Matrix.  The three movies have a lot in common, and The Thirteenth Floor might also remind you a bit of Dark City, or the even older Tron.  It's been overshadowed by all of those other films, and critics hated it in 1999, but I thought it was pretty good.  My only complaint is the virtual reality device, which looks really cheap.

5. Girl, Interrupted

It would be easy to dismiss this movie as a female version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie are so great in it.  James Mangold's direction is also pitch perfect.  Definitely one of the best movies of 1999.

6. The End of the Affair

I highly recommend the novel, which was one of the best and most personal things that Graham Greene ever wrote.

The movie?  It's still good, but not as concise as the novel is.  Director Neil Jordan, apparently unsatisfied with the minimalistic plot present in the novel, felt compelled to add embellishments to the story which detract - to some extent - from what was originally a more primal tale of love and jealousy.  Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore are very convincing in their roles, but the movie seems to meander a bit, and doesn't seem to end in the right place.

7. Jawbreaker

Black comedy in which a high school girl makes a devil's bargain after learning of a murder.  It's alright, but it lacks the insightfulness of movies like Edge of Seventeen or Mean Girls.  I'm also not buying the ending.

8. Lake Placid

Bridget Fonda and Bill Pullman try to catch a giant crocodile living in Maine.  The wonderful thing about this movie is that it KNOWS how ridiculous it is.

Fun Fact: Bridget Fonda would appear in five more movies before her retirement from acting in 2001.  The most famous of these was probably Kiss of the Dragon, a movie featuring Jet Li.  In 2003 she married Oingo Boingo frontman Danny Elfman.

9. Rogue Trader

Low budget exercise in international finance.  Ewan McGregor stars as a young banker sent by his bank to Singapore.  He gets in over his head fast, and has to cover his losses by using ghost accounts.  It's not exactly absorbing, and if you don't pay close attention to the banking jargon it'll go right over your head, but it's not bad, either.  If you've already seen The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short you might like this one.

10. Rajaji

Hindi film.  A young man goes to Bombay (Mumbai) to make his fortune.  And because it's a Bollywood movie someone has to fall in love and songs must be sung.  It's interesting from a sociological perspective,  Govinda is a great leading man, and the songs - what really make or break any Bollywood movie - are very catchy.

One That's Sadly Forgotten in Discussions of Clint Eastwood's Filmography

1. True Crime

If this movie has a thesis it's that "bad" people often do good things, and "good" people often do bad things.  Moral ambiguity, in other words.  It's executed (if you'll forgive the pun) flawlessly, and Eastwood is at his best as an investigative reporter assigned to interview a man on death row.  It was one of the bigger movies of 1999, but no one seems to talk much about it now.

Two Movies That Just Were

1. Virus

Virus is a movie that struggles heroically against itself.  It wants desperately to entertain you, but in its heart it knows that it's neither very original nor very well executed.

Think Aliens meets The Thing, but with some kind of techno-organic virus substituted for the more organically minded Thing.  Jamie Lee Curtis stars to cement the John Carpenter connection, with William Baldwin and Donald Sutherland in supporting roles.  It was made before cgi was in widespread use, and the special effects aren't all that special.

Donald Sutherland must have had a blast making this movie.  His performance in it, by the way, has to be the most Canadian thing ever. 

Fun Fact: This is a comic book movie!  Chuck Pfarrer, who wrote the comic, also co-wrote the screenplay to Virus.  In the comic book it's a Chinese vessel, not a Russian vessel, that gets taken over.

2. Gorgeous

Jackie Chan stars as a rich tycoon in Hong Kong, with Shu Qi as a poor Taiwanese girl trying to win his affection.  It's forgettable in the way that the more innocuous Hong Kong movies always are, and the way they sped up the film during the fight scenes is painfully obvious.

Fun Fact #1: Jackie Chan filmed this the same year as the first Rush Hour.  He regarded Rush Hour as something he did "for the money," and this movie as "his baby."  Just goes to show that even movie stars often don't know which of their movies are actually good.

Fun Fact #2: Shu Qi was just attaining superstar status at the time.  In 1999 she was known more for her erotic roles, and was little known outside of Hong Kong.

Some Bad Ones

1. 10 Things I Hate About You

Like all teen comedies, this movie features a lot of people who would be more famous later.  Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and even Heath Ledger.  Trouble is that the plot doesn't make a great deal of sense, and the editing makes what would have otherwise been snappy bits of dialogue seem ill-timed.  It might be an adaptation of Taming of the Shrew, but it's a far cry from Shakespeare.

Fun Fact: Julia Stiles was in more than one cinematic attempt at Shakespeare.  She also appeared as Ophelia in 2000's Hamlet, and as Desdemona in 2001's O, based on Othello.

2. Deep Blue Sea

The Poseidon Adventure meets Jaws.  Weirdly enough, LL Cool J leads a cast consisting of Samuel L. Jackson, Thomas Jane and others against a genetically enhanced trio of sharks.  The way various characters die, and the order in which they die, is extremely predictable.

3. Idle Hands

A high school student gets his hand possessed by a demon.  It's very low budget, and the gags would only be funny if you're in your teens.  Jessica Alba's in it for a bit, but that bit's not worth sitting through the rest of the movie for.

Fun Fact: Somehow this movie cost $25 million to make, and only grossed about $4 million.

One So Bad It's Good

1. The Boondock Saints

The making of this movie must have been a disaster.  You can just tell from the finished product.  "Missing" action sequences, strange character choices - it's all there.  Willem Dafoe does his best with the material, but at the end of the day he's still just playing a watered-down version of Gary Oldman's character in The Professional.

Fun Fact #1: Mark Wahlberg, who would later appear in The Departed, was almost cast in this movie.  He had the good sense to pass on it in favor of Boogie Nights.  The Boondock Saints, like The Departed, is set in Boston and features Irishmen taking on organized crime.

Fun Fact #2: Ron Jeremy, adult film star of note, is in this movie for a few minutes.  He also worked as a consultant on the set of - you guessed it - Boogie Nights.

Related Entries:

The Other Movie Oscars: The 2000s
Some Other Movies From 2001
Some Other Movies From 2003
Some Other Movies From 2005