For further background on the year in film please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2000 entry.
The following things happened in 2000:
- The world didn't end.
- Some, not all, computers crashed.
- The Dot-com bubble burst.
- The PlayStation 2 was released in Japan.
- Microsoft was found guilty of having violated antitrust laws in the United States.
- India's population reached 1 billion.
- George W. Bush was elected President of the United States.
Underlined films were viewed on Netflix.
Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.
Excellent
1. Cast Away
In case you've been living under a rock - or were stranded on a tropical island - in Cast Away Tom Hanks survives on a coral atoll after a plane crash. I can't say I've loved everything director Robert Zemeckis has done, but two decades after seeing this in the theater I enjoyed Cast Away just as much. The story is captivating and Hanks made the role his own.
Fun Fact 1: This movie was made over the course of two years to allow for Hanks' weight gain and weight loss.
2. Boiler Room
The Wolf of Wall Street long before The Wolf of Wall Street. Ben Affleck's opening pitch has been doing the rounds on YouTube, but the person holding this movie together is Giovanni Ribisi, who stars as a young man trying to get rich trading stocks. I really liked the relationship set up between him and his father, which is something a bit more subtle than what you usually see in this kind of movie. It's not as funny or as over the top as The Wolf of Wall Street, but it's still a very engaging movie.
Fun Fact: I haven't seen director Ben Younger's Prime, but Bleed for This, his most recent movie, is pretty good too.
Fun Fact 2: Vin Diesel is in this. It's proof that he can actually act!
3. Men of Honor
Melodramatic at times, but what an ending. Both Cuba Gooding Jr. and Robert De Niro are great in this movie, and among De Niro's many excellent performances his performance in Men of Honor might just be my favorite. This movie tells the real-life story of African-American Master Diver Carl Brashear, and even though it tries a bit too hard to shove racial politics to the forefront it's still an involving story. Critics weren't kind to it, but it worked just fine for me.
4. Erin Brockovich
Evil corporation knowingly endangers the lives in small town America and then attempts to cover it up. In movie terms it's a theme that's been explored countless times, but Julia Roberts' character was really something new, something we hadn't seen before - a beautiful woman with a serious character defect who succeeds anyway. I'd say this was Roberts' best performance, but then again there's August: Osage County to consider. Just the same, both her and Albert Finney are excellent in this movie, the script was first-rate, and Steven Soderbergh's had a real eye for the story he was trying to tell.
Fun Fact: This movie won Julia Roberts the Oscar for Best Actress. Steven Soderbergh won Best Director the same year for Traffic.
Some Good Ones
1. The Guilty*
It tells a good story, and Bill Pullman was a good choice for the lead, but it bungles a couple of pivotal scenes. If only the director had been more invested in the characters, and less involved with applying a Hollywood gloss to the story.
2. Love and Basketball
It's a solid movie, but Omar Epps' dad is hard to sympathize with. "Son! Don't make the same mistakes I did! A life in the NBA isn't for you! The money! The fame! The women! Not for you!" Whatever, dude.
3. Sexy Beast
A London gangster is pulled back in for one more job. Ben Kingsley steals every scene he's in, and Ray Winstone is convincing as the reluctant thief. The fact that the heist is somewhat beside the point weakened the movie for me, and that little flourish at the end was completely unnecessary. Even so, a well written film.
4. Scream 3
How many people get knocked out in this movie? And how many times each? And why is it so hard to shoot people in the head?
Scream 3 is a slasher movie about the making of a slasher movie which was based on a series of murders which were in turn based on slasher movies. More "meta" for your money! Wes Craven returned to direct it, and even though it trades in a great deal of implausibility it's still a decent conclusion to the franchise. Scream 4? I haven't seen it, have you?
Fun Fact: Carrie Fisher is in this for a bit.
Take It Or Leave It: A fifth Scream movie will be coming out next year.
5. Hollow Man
By no means a bad movie, but I think director Paul Verhoeven was trying a too hard to please too many people. As it is it's a fairly derivative invisible man movie, featuring Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin. Even so, I'd take it over the more recent The Invisible Man. Neither movie is especially interesting in terms of story, but at least Hollow Man added something new to the genre.
6. Battle Royale
I get why Quentin Tarantino liked this movie. It seems like exactly the kind of movie Quentin Tarantino would like.
The warnings in the beginning had me worried. I thought maybe this was going to be a Grotesque-style gore extravaganza, but instead the warnings were just post-Columbine paranoia. As if any movie could compete with a modern sense of alienation as far as motivating violence goes.
But I digress. Battle Royale involves a group of ninth graders forced to play a round of The Most Dangerous Game, or maybe it's The Running Man, but definitely not The Hunger Games, which appeared long after. It's a surprisingly fun movie, even if the characters are never really developed.
Fun Fact 1: Tarantino borrowed from this movie when making Kill Bill Vol. 1. The actress who plays Gogo in Vol. 1 also appears in Battle Royale.
Fun Fact 2: The director of this movie, Kinji Fukasaku, directed two other B movie classics: Shogun's Samurai and Message from Space.
Hmm...
If you can buy Icelandic singer Bjork as a Czech immigrant living in the U.S. who's slowly going blind... you might like it? Then again I'm also not buying the two crimes committed halfway through the movie. The script just didn't set those up well. Dancer in the Dark could have also used a bigger budget. The musical numbers are awkward transition points, and they don't feel very necessary to the film.
I've been a Bjork fan since Homogenic, and even I struggled with this one. It's SO depressing, even judged against other Lars von Trier films. I had to quit an hour and a half in. I wouldn't argue that Bjork's performance isn't riveting, but the movie doesn't hold together.
Silly But Fun
1. Python
Call me crazy, but I enjoyed this movie more than both Anaconda and Komodo. The special effects are crap, but it knows it's bad and it doesn't care.
The cast is pretty great too: William Zabka (The Karate Kid, Back to School), Wil Wheaton (Stand By Me), Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street), and Dana Barron (National Lampoon's Vacation). It's like an 80s All-Star team - minus the major stars of that decade.
Some Bad Ones
1. Center Stage
Zoe Saldana and several actors I've never heard of try to make the grade in a prestigious New York dance school. Both Saldana and the lead in this movie can act, but the other cast members - who I can only assume were chosen based on their dancing skill - are painful to watch.
2. Next Friday
The first half of this movie is funnier than the first installment. The second half? A real grind. Like the first film, there are whole sections of this movie that could have used more music, and many of the scenes don't feel very cohesive.
Depressing Fact 1: The actor who played "Roach" in this movie committed suicide the same year.
Depressing Fact 2: Tommy Lister Jr., who plays the heavy in Next Friday, is also dead. The cause of his death is still being determined, but it's assumed he died of COVID-19-related complications.
Depressing Fact 3: John Witherspoon, who played Ice Cube's dad is - you guessed it - also dead. He died of a heart attack in 2019.
3. Shark Lake
Hey guys, for a movie called Shark Lake there aren't many sharks or much lake on hand. And don't be fooled by Dolph Lundgren, who's not in that much of the movie. Most of Shark Lake involves an annoying cop lady trying to claim a child that's not hers. A riveting thriller? Watch Jaws instead. A gorier take on the genre? Watch Piranha 3D. Shark Lake is a waste of time.
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