1999 is a big movie year. It is fairly legendary as one of the stand out years with big releases and that makes it a tough one to write about just in terms of narrowing down the list. Some of the cuts this week are more painful than others but it was a bit of a rough ride.
This year was a pretty big year for me personally. I got my black belt at the beginning of this year which was an enormous accomplishment for me at the time but was also crushing in its own way because I had my shoulder dislocated during my belt testing. I was supposed to refrain from training for six months but that was impossible, so I just put my right hand inside my gi and trained one handed.
I also went back to full time at Blockbuster and became a manager. This was a pretty big change for me but I was generally pretty happy about it. It set me on the path of retail management that would carry me through almost 10 years. I really loved Blockbuster and while management was a different beast, I really dug it.
Blockbuster also contributed to my next big change which was finally moving out of my parents’ house. Because they had been traveling so much, I mostly lived by myself but when they would come home, things got a bit too uncomfortable. My friend and co-worker Oliver was looking to find an apartment and a roommate so we started the process of searching the city for the right place near the University when neither of our cars had air conditioning. Heady times to be sure.
It was also the last year before I would accidentally get engaged and start me on a path of failed marriages. I will touch on that more next week but suffice it to say that this year was the end of some eras and the precipice of others. This is fitting as it was perched on the edge of uncertainty with Y2K looming and the world was concerned that everything would fall to shit on New Year’s. I had a party at my house where a few of my co-workers from Blockbuster came over to spend the night and watch a bunch of movies we rented. My family was there as well and we all waited for my Uncle to get off work from Tucson Electric Power to see if the apocalypse was upon us. I am not sure why we weren’t taking cues from states in other time zones who had already not encountered any apocalyptic effects but it was a whole vibe. I remember having been at Costco earlier in the day watching people buy entire pallets of milk and other such supplies in case the worst happened and I wondered what they were going to do with all the perishables if there was no power. As it turned out, Y2K was fine and my friends and I watched Betty White nurturing a killer alligator in Lake Placid.
Runners up in roughly release order: Payback, Blast from the Past, Office Space, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Ravenous, 10 Things I Hate About You, Go, Pushing Tin, Idle Hands, the Mummy, Star Wars Episode 1: the Phantom Menace (At least the Duel of the Fates scene if nothing else), Austin Powers: the Spy Who Shagged Me, Tarzan, Big Daddy, American Pie, Blair Witch Project, Lake Placid, Deep Blue Sea, the Iron Giant, Mystery Men, Sixth Sense, Bowfinger, Stir of Echoes, Mumford, Three Kings, the Limey, Being John Malkovich, House on Haunted Hill, Sleepy Hollow, Toy Story 2, Any Given Sunday, Man on the Moon, and the Talented Mr. Ripley.
If you have not read the introduction to this exercise, I recommend you do so for context regarding what this all is. In short, be nice, these are my favorites based on how I encountered them in my life and what they mean for mean to me. This is not a list of objective best movies in their respective years and if a movie that you love or is considered great does not appear, it does not mean that I think it is shit or that I don’t love it. These are just my favorites for particular personal reasons. Feel free to let everyone know your favorite five for 1999 and why as well. It is also worth mentioning that there will be spoilers here for what are now 27-year-old movies. Let’s dig in!
1.Dogma-Kevin Smith
Kevin Smith’s fourth movie Dogma is a religion based fantasy comedy that upped the scope from his previous films while upping the controversy leading to protesters showing up at theaters to picket the film. It is also my favorite of his movies hands down.
When two disgraced angels Bartleby (Ben Affleck) and Loki (Matt Damon) are sent an article about a rededication ceremony for a Catholic church in New Jersey that offers plenary indulgence, a catholic tradition in which passing through the arches of the church automatically forgives sins, they see a way to finally end their long exile and allow them back in heaven. The problem with this is that it would prove god wrong and unmake all of existence. God is MIA and Heaven scrambles to find a way to stop the angels. They sent the Metatron (Alan Rickam), the voice of god, to tap the Last Scion, Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), an abortion clinic worker, to find and stop the angels. She will be aided along the way by the 13th apostle Rufus (Chris Rock) and two ‘prophets’ in the form of Jay and Silent Bob.
Dogma is a singular sort of movie in that it is at once irreverent and deeply faith affirming and insightful. It is a movie that tackles the nature of faith and belief while characters fight a rubber shit monster in a strip club. The writing is Kevin Smith’s typical snappy and hilarious dialogue but this time is infused with philosophy and real heart that eschews the dick and fart jokes that make up the backbone of the comedy. It is something of a paradox in that way and as much as I already loved Kevin Smith before Dogma came out, it solidified him as one of my favorite writer/directors of all time.
The movie feels big and expansive in scope while also being an intimate character piece examining fate, sacrifice, responsibility, and faith. Those characters are well drawn and have real depth and that is the most important part of this because if it were not the case, the movie just wouldn’t work. Bethany is bitter and has a grudge against god for the infection she got in her uterus that prevented her from having kids. Bartleby and Loki are essentially jilted lovers heart broken to be cut off from god’s notice and attention, desperate to do anything they can to once again feel what it felt to be in god’s presence. Following a chance meeting with Bethany and her crew on a train, when Bartleby realizes that Heaven’s plan is to kill them, Bartleby goes way off the deep end, deciding that he would rather unmake existence than have to deal with the pain of estrangement any longer. Even finding out that the whole plot was dreamed up by the demon Azreal (Jason Lee) cannot dissuade him.
This is where the movie is at its strongest, dealing with these feelings that all of us can relate to whether in a religious context or not. The longing to matter to someone who once loved and the resentment felt toward someone you love who wronged you are emotions that most people can tap into and if you add a religious background on top of it, you are really cooking here.
What is amazing about Dogma, is how Smith navigates these waters without ever feeling preachy or like it is pushing an agenda but still managing to make a compelling case for having ideas versus faith. Smith understands and digs into the dangers of dogmatic thought without throwing everything out with it. The danger in that kind of fanatical thought is brought to the fore but there is a counterpoint offered, that an idea can be refined and expanded upon as needed, as circumstances change and information is learned without having to be fixed on a single belief of how things MUST be.
That the philosophical meditations of ideas vs faith is wrapped in the comedy equivalent of a religious super hero movie makes Dogma that much more remarkable. The performances are fantastic and the drama is every bit as good as the comedy. The writing is sharp, the lines quotable, and everyone (aside, maybe, from Linda Fiorentino) seems to be having a great time.
As mentioned earlier, the movie was lambasted and protested by the Catholic League, led by William Donohue, who had never seen the film. He eventually asked for a ‘special screening’ of the movie so he could ‘speak intelligently’ about the movie. This led Smith to ask “So what has he been doing the last six months?” Showings of the movies were picketed by Catholic League supporters when it opened, which arguably boosted the movie’s signal far farther than it might otherwise have been. Smith himself infiltrated these picket lines with a sign that said ‘Dogma is Dog Shit’ and was interviewed for the news about why he hated the movie. All of this fervor is really pretty silly once you actually see the movie.
I was very excited for this movie but also somewhat nervous about it. I was a Christian at the time, just a year away from starting a Christian alternative band, Pascal’s Wager, and while I had faith (Ha!) in Smith, I was also not looking forward to putting up with something that was going to make fun of my faith. I had a lot of angst about this sort of thing at the time. I loved a Perfect Circle and Judith was a great song but fuck, why did it have to be anti-Christian? This was a common refrain and it was kind of a weird overcorrection following the pseudo-Christian cult I had been in. I kind of swung away, and the swung back because it made me feel more secure in a time when I was more insecure than I had ever been.
I was already a proponent of the ‘one god many faces’ idea that all of the various religions were just describing the same god in the vocabulary that they had available to them but when I started dating my first ex-wife, her very religious family helped pull me back into a much more Christian centric belief structure.
I say all that to say that I was nervous about what Dogma would be after reading that Loki’s backstory had included throwing down his fiery sword and giving god the finger. But I loved Kevin Smith so I went opening night. What I found was something that made me feel a lot better and aligned very much with the direction my beliefs were headed. I loved the idea vs faith and that rigid adherence to a dogmatic belief was the road to ruin.
I shared the movie with my mom, this time more confident than with Chasing Amy and warned her to ignore the language and the poop monster. She loved it for the same reasons I did and found it equally as faith affirming. I went on to evangelize for the movie with other Christians as a thing that they really needed to see and that is was not blasphemous or disrespectful.
It was this increased engagement with Kevin Smith discourse that led me to seek out fan groups and message boards. While I took some small part in the official Kevin Smith fan board, where I really hung my hat was the News Askew Forum. It was a website dedicated to Kevin Smith news that was run by people adjacent to Kevin himself. I connected with people here in a big way and when it appeared that the forum would shut down, a group of us formed a new forum, aptly called the Fallout Shelter, so that we could continue to talk to each other. These people became my online family for the next 27 years right up to today.
Last year I went to Pittsburgh to meet up with some of my friends from FOS and we took a bit of a pilgrimage to the Dogma church where the climax of the movie was filmed. It is closed down and in disrepair now, with trees and plants growing out of its windows, but it felt like, for lack of a better term, a religious experience. That I was able to visit with my online family who I would never have met without Dogma made it much better. My friend Troy was with me that day and he passed away earlier this year. Today is his birthday. I miss him deeply and I am enormously thankful to have that experience last summer and I am enormously thankful to Kevin Smith and Dogma for allowing me to find him and my other friends from FOS. They have been there for me in so many difficult and dark times over the years and I don’t know what I would do without them. Dogma gave all that to me.
Dogma was unavailable for a long time due to it being out of print and the rights were being held hostage by Harvey Weinstein for years until they were acquired two years ago and Smith was able to finally release it in 4k and he did a theater tour before it was re-released theatrically. I saw it in Phoenix with Smith in attendance and one of my friends from FOS two rows in front of me. Coming back to it was interesting because a lot has changed about me since 1999.
I am no longer Christian and my sense of spirituality is much different than it once was. But I still see this as a film that offers love and hope. It absolutely still holds up now and is an antidote to the massive uptick in toxic and exclusionary Christianity that has been amplified in the MAGA era. While the Christian message is largely divorced from anything that Christ says in the Bible and is used to support genocide, erasure, and persecution Dogma shows what it is MEANT to be. I find it interesting that a piece of media that was protested as blasphemous upon release is a better example of what Christianity should be than anything a pastor has to say today but such is life in a time of intolerance and political extremism. And on top of that it is still hilarious.
2.Fight Club-David Fincher
David Fincher’s adaptation of the novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club is one of the rare examples of a movie that manages to be even better than its excellent source material.
Following the protagonist (colloquially known as Jack) narrator (Edward Norton) as he finds himself unable to sleep while working a dead end office job at an insurance company in a dreary life that leads him to visit support groups for ailments he does not have just to feel something. After meeting Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) at a testicular cancer group, Jack finds himself disrupted by the affront of her obvious trauma tourism as it makes him feel exposed as a tourist himself, he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) on a plane on a business trip. He considers Tyler a ‘single serving friend,’ a connection made that will not last, but when he arrives home to find his apartment burned in a fire, he finds himself calling Tyler to have a place to go. This leads Jack to stay at Tyler’s decrepit house at Paper Street and the two of them to start a fight club that quickly gains traction with other disaffected men and ultimately leads to the formation of terrorist organization Project Mayhem. As Jack tries to get a grip on things and feels Tyler slipping further away from him, he makes a terrifying discovery that recontextualizes everything we have seen up to this point: Jack is Tyler. We have just lost cabin pressure.
Fight Club is a fucking amazing movie that protects its secret perfectly before we ever get to the rug pull. It is a mind bending experience that would make M Night Shyamalan blush. That it came out in the same year as the Sixth Sense with that film’s legendary rug pull twist is remarkable. The Sixth Sense was incredible but I would say that Fincher really comes out on top here if only because he has not relied on using surprise twists for the rest of his career the way that Shyamalan has.
The running commentary about the nature of toxic masculinity and the cost of capitalism is straight from the book but Fincher provides the perfect deliver system with confident style that absolutely supports the substance. The grimy design aesthetic is perfect and the Dust Brothers’ techno score is the perfect accompaniment to the crazy, out of control trajectory the movie takes.
The performances here are amazing with Pitt delivering a career best, while Norton and Carter are note perfect. Meatloaf is fantastic as fight club member and eventual Project Mayhem casualty Robert Paulson, and Jared Leto is equally good as Angel Face. Now it is fair to say that Leto doesn’t do a ton before having his face absolutely wrecked by Jack in a fight but that is a gift that has paid dividends in the years since.
Fight Club is a bit of a complicated movie now. When it came out in theaters, it was a flop but gained a massive cult following after. The cultural impact that Fight Club had is very disproportionate to how well it did on release but that is a bit of a double edged sword. It is kind of weird that two movies I am talking about this year have a progressive message but have been co-opted by those who don’t understand it but here we are.
Before Fight Club, the term ‘snowflake’ was not in common parlance and it has been co-opted by the Right to chastise people who find something offensive or have feelings about something. The context in the movie is that Durden is using the language to break down the member’s of Project Mayhem (Space Monkeys) individuality and get them to leg go of their own identities. “In Project Mayhem, we do not have names.” This is depersonalization and is not what right wing grifters are trying to invoke when using ‘snowflake.’
The Men’s Rights movement is largely based on a misunderstanding of what is going on in Fight Club because they don’t understand satire. Tyler Durden is an unhinged cult leader designed as a coping mechanism for Jack who feels disenfranchised by a system he feels has abandoned him. Fight Club starts as a thing they do to feel something and the escalation to Project Mayhem is violent chaos disguised as identity and catharsis. Rather that finding solace in something of substance, they reach for the most base affirmation of their power through masculinity. The irony of this, of course, is that in doing this they become the sort of snowflakes that conservatives think they are talking about in the first place. It is also amusing when you consider this homophobic group has sprung out of ideas they misunderstood from a book written by a gay man.
Viewed in the intended context, Fight Club is a brilliant piece of satire with a lot to say about the disaffected and the lengths people will go to in order to justify their feelings of inadequacy. That the message is really addressing the perils of extremes and falling into a mindless sheep mentality is lost of a lot of viewers but this is what makes it essential viewing to understand how people fall into these same traps.
I saw this movie in the theater with my friend and roommate Oliver. He had seen it the night before and raved about it after so we went together when I had the day off. As the movie ended and we stood up to leave he put his hand on my shoulder and said ‘I am glad I was able to experience this again with you.’ I was absolutely blown away and shuffled out of the theater somewhat dazed. I genuinely had no idea how the movie wasn’t a hit. The theater was full and it was all people were talking about that weekend. Maybe it was just in my circles.
I read the book and loved that too, but I was struck but how much better of a job I felt that the movie did at delivering the story and the message. I love David Fincher and that love was largely crystalized with Fight Club. It remains my favorite of his films, which is saying a lot because I love all of his movies.
It is kind of an interesting thing to see when you are 23 and still trying to figure some shit out. I spend a lot of my spare time sparring with my friends in parks and in the dojo and I understood the feelings of power that could come from that and related to that in the context of the movie but I was very clear on what it was trying to say and what the pitfalls are in deriving your sense of self from it. I was never really taken down the path of ‘Project Mayhem was right!’ and I was kind of confused by the people that were, but I think I understand it better now when I look back. It is categorically the wrong read but when you are disaffected and feel entitled while being rejected, it is pretty easy to fall into that hole. Especially when you watch Fight Club and Tyler seems so fucking cool. It is just really kind of sad.
As an side, I met Chuck Palahniuk at San Deigo Comic Con when the Fight Club 2 comics came out. After he signed my copy of Fight Club we took a picture in which he put me in a headlock and whispered ‘fight me’ in my ear. I have met a lot of authors and people whom I admire and this is one of my favorite moments. If you ever have the opportunity to have Palahniuk put you in a headlock, you should take it right away. He is awesome.
3.The Matrix-Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski
A groundbreaking movie visually, the Matrix kind of came out of nowhere. This sci-fi Keanu Reeves vehicle looked like a direct to video effort on the poster but once trailers came out, people started to notice. When it came out in theaters, it became something of a revolution.
Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is an office worker at a nameless corporation by day and a computer hacker named Neo at night. He starts getting messages from someone named Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and after meeting a woman named Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) at a club, Anderson finds himself being stalked in his office by Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) and a cohort of other suited fed looking thugs and ultimately interrogated about Morpheus. Things start getting weird when Smith somehow removes Anderson’s mouth and implants him with a mechanical bug. Anderson is subsequently picked up again by Trinity and, after the bug is removed, is taken to see Morpheus who offers Anderson two pills: the blue pill will allow Anderson to return to his normal life and the red pill will show Anderson what the Matrix is. He takes the red pill and the rug pull twist of the Matrix begins.
Anderson, now going exclusively by Neo, awakens to learn that he is installed as a human battery to power the machines that have taken over the world. He is rescued and subsequently joins the resistance to these machines and learns that the world he thought he knew was all a simulation. He also learns that he may be the One, the prophesied savior who can bend the Matrix to his will and liberate all those trapped by the machines.
The Matrix was like an atomic bomb when it hit. The slick visual style, kinetic martial arts action choreographed by legend Yoon Wu-Ping, the revolutionary special effects including ‘bullet time,’ a slow motion system that utilized rotoscoping to show a 360 degree rotation at full speed around action while the world is slowed down, and a mind bending story that keeps the audience off balance the entire way through all added up to this movie disrupting the industry in a way that reverberated for decades to come.
I saw this in the theater and fell in love. I saw it several times in the theater, coming back for the philosophical implications as much as the mind blowing action. The Matrix has big ideas on its mind and however much some of that dulled with subsequent installments, the first movie was very unique at the time.
There was a massive ground swell of love for this movie and its creators were exalted as the freshest new voices in the industry while at the same time being eyed suspiciously by executives who saw them as punks who were disrupting the industry. The love and subsequent backlash for the creators was interesting to watch and as each of them eventually came out as transgender, that intensified even more.
At the time it came out, however, the Wachowskis were largely lauded as brilliant innovators of enormous talent in changing the status quo. And that was true for the most part but I will say that once the Matrix came out on DVD and I watched all of the special features and commentary, I started to sour on them a bit. This wasn’t because I found them to be reprehensible or annoying or anything and I stand by the Matrix as an awesome movie (I like the sequels, particularly Matrix Revolutions, more than a lot of people). It was because there were a lot of ideas from the Matrix that came from other things that they were not giving credit to.
There was a lot of talk about the influences from Anime and Manga, and obviously Hong Kong wire fu Kung Fu movies, but some other big influences went unmentioned. The big one of these is William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy which is as obvious of an inspiration as one could get from Trinity being an ersatz version of Molly Millions all the way to cyberspace being called ‘the Matrix.’ It is possible that the Wachowski’s have credited Gibson for the swath of ideas from his novels they used but I have never seen it and I have spent a fair amount of time looking. This does not take away from the achievement of the Matrix at all but it bums me out that they don’t give credit for things that influenced them like that. As excited as I am for the upcoming Neuromancer adaptation on Apple+, I am already dreading all the people who are going to accuse it of ripping off the Matrix when it is the very foundation upon which the Matrix is built.
Reservations about source material aside, the Matrix is an amazing piece of sci-fi and cyberpunk filmmaking. The Wachowskis did an excellent job of bringing together a collection of influences to create something original in the same way that Quentin Tarantino does and the impact is every bit as significant. People’s mileage may vary on the subsequent sequels but it is hard to find much disagreement that the Matrix was a revolutionary achievement.
4.South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut-Trey Parker
A musical theatrical outing for the kids from South Park, Bigger Longer, Uncut is an Oscar nominated animated comedy with scathing political commentary mixed with hilariously raunchy humor.
After a theatrical Terrance and Phillip movie called Asses of Fire teaches the South Park Kids how to cuss, the parents, particularly Cartman’s mom, escalate until the US is at war with Canada, a condition of which allows Satan and Sadam Hussien to rise from hell to take over the world.
This very rational and normal plot paves the way for typical South Park jokes but mixed with truly awesome musical numbers all while commenting on accountability, unchecked feelings of moral superiority, and jingoism. All while asking what would Brian Boitano do?
I saw this at the theater with my ex-wife and former brother-in-law after recovering from a migraine earlier in the day. It was rainy and dreary and I felt like garbage. The movie turned things around immediately. I have loved South Park since the first season and I was pretty amazed by how much they were able to escalate the show to feature form while still retaining the humor and style that made the show so good. The movie loses nothing in the translation and did it while commenting on the world in a meaningful way. If you look at the asinine bullshit going on between the current government and Canada, the movie views absolutely current now. That is kind of sad when you think about it but at least the movie still works. That is something, I suppose.
5. Galaxy Quest-Dean Parisot
The best non-Star Trek Star Trek movie ever, Galaxy Quest gives Star Trek the Three Amigos treatment and asks what if washed up actors from an old Star Trek style show are mistakenly enlisted to help an oppressed people fight off a space tyrant? The answer is an incredibly funny and well made parody that rivals the original show’s best efforts.
The cast is stacked her featuring Tim Allen, Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver, Tony Shaloub, Sam Rockwell, Enrico Calantoni, Missi Pile, and Justin Long. Holy Shit. All of them are on their game and they collectively knock it out of the park. The effects in the movie are fantastic and manage to look impressive while mimicking the design aesthetic of a low budget 60s TV show. It has laughs where it needs them, drama where it needs it, and action in the right spots. Just a top notch movie all the way through.
I saw this in the theater with friends and fell in love right away. It has become one of my go to movies to cheer me up ever since. I have seen it more times than I can count and it always makes me smile. It has always made sad that a sequel never got off the ground but honestly it is probably best to let it just be wonderful on its own.