The Best of Film in 1999
I'm busy writing other things so I'm digging back to some of my earlier remarks on film. This time, it is the year 1999. (Reading through the movies I admired, I would now have to recognize The Sixth Sense. It really has lingered with me.) Full reviews of my official top ten films of this year will be added to the blog at a later date.
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1999 started with grand expectations. With sequels and prequels such as The Phantom Menace, Austin Powers, Toy Story 2, The World is Not Enough, and the return of Adam Sandler in Big Daddy, Will Smith in Wild Wild West, Tom Hanks in The Green Mile, and Julia Roberts and Richard Gere in Runaway Bride, the industry was looking at one of the brightest box-office cash-cow possibilities in history. Little did anyone know that the industry would meet that expectation before the Thanksgiving/Christmas season.
However, 1999 will go down in history as one of the most unique in memory for a few reasons, 1) those unexpected films that became blockbusters, namely The Matrix ($171 million), The Mummy ($155 million), The Blair Witch Project ($140.5 million), The Sixth Sense ($282 million), and Stuart Little ($134 million).
2) It was the year that animation was king, in which The Iron Giant ($23 million), Princess Mononoke, Tarzan ($171 million), South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut ($52 million), and Toy Story 2 ($240 million) were as good, clever, well-written, and/or beautiful as their un-animated foes. In fact, Toy Story 2 won the Golden Globe for Best Picture, Comedy or Musical by beating the very noteworthy films Being John Malcovich, .
3) It was also the year of the psychological horror flick, in which the films The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense were among the biggest box-office accumulators and that sank deep into the psyche of American society. Blair Witch became the top-grossing independent film of all time at $140.5 million; and Sixth Sense dominated the box-office at $282 million behind mega-monster Star Wars: The Phantom Menace ($431 million).
4) It was the year that the most memorable and celebrated films were not the blockbusters (e.g., The Phantom Menace) or those we expected to be blockbusters (e.g., Anna and the King, Snow Falling on Cedars). The following is a list of the films I most cherished during the final year of the millennium.
Magnolia
American Beauty
Being John Malcovich
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut
Three Kings
The Blair Witch Project
Eyes Wide Shut
Bringing Out the Dead
Princess Mononoke
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The End of the Affair
The Matrix
Cookies Fortune
The Iron Giant
Toy Story 2
All About My Mother
Dreamlife of Fishes
Run Lola Run
Three Seasons
Bowfinger
Galaxy Quest
The Green Mile
Sleepy Hollow--Artistic and Set Direction
10 Things I Hate About You
Election
October Sky
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