I remembered being surprised about fifteen years ago when I saw an article ranking 1999 as the best cinematic year of all time, and even more so when the notion developed significant legs. Like 1939, a notable year excessively exalted by movie fans, I thought the reputation was overstated; 1999 produced some terrific films, to be sure, but I doubt its top ten list would make my all-time top ten movie years list.
Now that the 25th anniversary is here, the lack of celebration seemed to indicate that the fervor had subsided. The only commemorative showing I’ve noticed at my small town’s art cinema has been Run Lola Run; the only other such viewing I’ve heard of was when my sister in another state went to the silver jubilee of South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, which despite not being a fan I’d see over the year’s Oscar winner American Beauty any day of the week. But now the analyses are appearing in increasing numbers, including in the paper of record, generally accepting the premise that the 1999 crop is close to if not the best ever as established fact.
Of course, these kinds of things are inherently subjective. For me, I like 1999 as a movie year despite many of the more celebrated examples. In addition to American Beauty, I immensely disliked critical favorite Magnolia and multiple award-winner The Cider House Rules. Some watchable pictures had actually been done better and/or more compellingly in other contexts. The Talented Mr. Ripley, despite the best efforts of Jude Law and Philip Seymour Hoffman, was a bloated Patricia Highsmith adaptation that couldn’t remotely match the French version (Purple Noon) from a generation prior. Even the laudable Boys Don’t Cry I’d already seen in more affecting form through the documentary about Brandon Teena and the other real people depicted so well in the fictional version by Hilary Swank, Peter Sarsgaard, Chloe Sevigny, etc.
There were also some critical successes I just didn’t go to, which is even more true of the box-office hits. I didn’t see American Pie or The Best Man, catching sequels years later when an obscure art museum membership somehow got us automatic free admittance into one of the less popular Santikos theaters in San Antonio for a couple of years until someone up the chain plugged the loophole. I also missed Blair Witch, Fight Club, and at least half of Eyes Wide Shut (ironically, I rented it and fell asleep; I should probably revisit despite my general aversion to Tom Cruise).
Of course, there are many movies that make 1999 significant. My favorite is a Chinese import that didn’t get to Texas until more than a year after the Y2K scare had passed: The Road Home, to me the masterpiece of the excellent Zhang Yimou and along with her Wong Kar-Wai collaborations the peak of magnetic star Zhang Ziyi. The other definite A+ from the year is also foreign but much more lauded both then and now: Pedro Almodovar’s All About My Mother, his best since Women on the Verge as well as a picture that would pave the way to 21st century triumphs like Talk to Her and Volver. You also had some cinematic geniuses going against the grain, especially David Lynch with by far his most linear treatment Straight Story, which interestingly would lead immediately to his signature achievement Mulholland Drive, where he’s even less linear than usual. On the other end of the spectrum is Mike Leigh, who in Topsy-Turvy expands his focus on slice-of-life settings and realistic small-group interaction to a much more massive scope (the formulation and production of The Mikado) without losing a touch of the intimacy and detail.
The focus, of course, was on the Young Turks. If Paul Thomas Anderson’s results in Magnolia weren’t as appealing to me as his magnificent 1997 (Hard Eight and Boogie Nights!), his hand was as assured as ever. David O’Russell in Three Kings did not demonstrate the command he would later demonstrate in the brilliant Huckabees or his star-laden stock company pieces to follow, but that chaos served a purpose in his most overtly political movie. Sofia Coppola, on the other hand, proved a natural with an even defter touch than her father, but the Virgin Suicides debut which was so engrossing in the theater is thematically difficult to revisit in the comfort of home, at least for me (yet 25 years later, I still remember how great Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett were). And like some of the pictures on the lower ranks of my top 10 list, The Sixth Sense has aged excessively through no real fault of its own. Speaking of the list, it’s definitely solid, even without so many of the titles that generated so much enthusiasm for others.
My 1999 top films:
- The Road Home
- All About My Mother
- The Straight Story
- Being John Malkovich
- Topsy-Turvy
- The Limey
- La Buche
- Office Space
- Election
- The Insider
Shout-outs to the iconoclasts who made the cut, especially new ones like Spike Jonze (Malkovich), Mike Judge (Office Space) and Alexander Payne (Election), who respectively came from music videos, MTV animation, and Nebraska. And it had only been a decade since Steven Soderbergh (The Limey) was an audacious newcomer, yet his ’99 film played rawer than the Sex, Lies, and Videotape debut. Daniele Thompson (La Buche) came from a film family and collaborated with her son (the co-writer who also appears in the picture) for her feature directorial debut after a career of writing notable French comedies. Michael Mann (Insider) was at the top of his game after Heat, but in a completely different milieu manages one of his richest treatments and coaxes close to all-time performances out of the likes of Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, and Christopher Plummer.
Obviously, a terrific year. But is it even the best of its own decade? To help compare, I compiled a top 50 of my favorites from the nineties:
- Chungking Express (94)
- Goodfellas (90)
- The Road Home (99)
- Groundhog Day (93)
- Clockwatchers (98)
- Red Rock West (94)
- Out of Sight (98)
- The Big Lebowski (98)
- Next Stop Wonderland (98)
- Jackie Brown (97)
- Nobody’s Fool (94)
- All About My Mother (99)
- A River Runs Through It (92)
- L.A. Confidential (97)
- Metropolitan (90)
- Rushmore (98)
- Mother (96)
- The Straight Story (99)
- Quick Change (90)
- Clueless (95)
- The Flower of My Secret (95)
- Barcelona (94)
- Brassed Off (96)
- Eve’s Bayou (97)
- Waiting for Guffman (97)
- Sense and Sensibility (95)
- Being John Malkovich (99)
- A Tale of Winter (92)
- Good Will Hunting (97)
- Four Weddings and a Funeral (94)
- The Remains of the Day (93)
- The Shawshank Redemption (94)
- Days of Being Wild (90)
- Persuasion (95)
- Heat (96)
- Gattaca (97)
- La Ceremonie (95)
- Grosse Pointe Blank (97)
- Topsy-Turvy (99)
- Ashes of Time (94)
- Miller’s Crossing (90)
- Pulp Fiction (94)
- The Full Monty (97)
- The Secret of Roan Inish (94)
- Unforgiven (92)
- Flirting with Disaster (96)
- The Limey (99)
- Mrs. Dalloway (98)
- La Buche (99)
- Donnie Brasco (97)
Seven of the 50 are from 1999, peaking with The Road Home at number three. Every year in the decade was represented except 1991, with only Albert Brooks’s Defending Your Life even coming close. And a perusal of the top of the ranks indicates 1998 may be the best: four of the top 10, with another in the top 20. But only one more ’98 film made the cut after that, and then there’s another precipitous drop to the next tier of very good pictures like An Autumn Tale and The Negotiator.
There are two years with more representatives than 1999, in both cases with nine. One of those I expected, the loaded 1994 crop topped by the only film of the decade to make my all-time top ten list:
- Chungking Express
- Red Rock West
- Nobody’s Fool
- Barcelona
- Four Weddings and a Funeral
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Ashes of Time
- Pulp Fiction
- The Secret of Roan Inish
- Three Colours: Red
The one that surprised me was actually less of an anomaly than 1994, which was by far the most productive year in the first half of the decade. Things picked up from there, as almost half of my favorite films of the nineties were from its last three years. Perhaps I saw more movies at that time, as my graduate school years in the early nineties often made it difficult to get to the cinema. But even though there’s no Chungking Express or even a Red Rock West, 1997 gives ’94 a run for its money:
- Jackie Brown
- L.A. Confidential
- Eve’s Bayou
- Waiting for Guffman*
- Good Will Hunting
- Gattaca
- Grosse Pointe Blank
- The Full Monty
- Donnie Brasco
- Open Your Eyes
*Guffman is often referred to as a 1996 picture, but it didn’t seem to play anywhere other than the occasional film festival until 1997, so (since neither I nor almost anyone reading this could have seen it in ’96) for these purposes I’ll count it as a ‘97.
At first glance, 1997 seems to have more honorable mentions: the first two P.T. Anderson films, Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together, Kevin Smith’s peak work Chasing Amy, the rom-com highlight My Best Friend’s Wedding (better than Julia Roberts’s 1999 efforts Notting Hill and Runaway Bride put together), and some terrific action dramas like Cop Land and Absolute Power. But 1994 has the edge. Except for the fifth place Good Will Hunting edging out Four Weddings, ’94 is ahead at every position of the top nine, and its runners-up if less numerous are more substantial (Quiz Show, Go Fish, Ed Wood, my favorite Little Women adaptation, and the second Three Colours installment (White)).
I’m going to be doing more of these subjective comparative studies, analyzing other years and decades before and after the nineties. And 1994 may turn out to be my pick for top cinematic year of my lifetime, but…
Spoiler alert: As far as all-time honors, the winning year will definitely come from the fifties, with only the forties even likely to come close. The studio system certainly had its flaws, but it could churn out a lot of great pictures (with the fifties also benefiting from the postwar re-emergence of world cinema, especially in Europe and Japan).