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1999: The Year That Changed Movies Pt. 2 – The Majors

Written by Adam A. Donaldson Friday, 17 April 2009 09:55

In Part 2 of our look back at the Year in Movies that was 1999, we review the major films often cited as the definitive game changing pictures from the last year of the 20th century.

Being John Malkovich – October 22nd

Director: Spike Jonze
Why It’s Listed: Almost forgotten as a television writer on a few short-lived 90s comedy programs like The Dana Carvey Show and Ned & Stacy, Charlie Kaufman made a name for himself as modern cinema’s pre-eminent surrealist with his script for Being John Malkovich. Meanwhile Spike Jonze, a respected music video director for acts like the Beastie Boys, Weezer and Fatboy Slim, turned himself into an A-list auteur with his first feature film. The story about a puppeteer that finds a literal door into the mind of John Malkovich was so mind-bendingly brilliant that it had to be seen multiple times to fully appreciate all its whimsy and subtext.

Fight Club – October 15th

Director: David Fincher
Why It’s Listed: Spawning at least one catch phrase (“The first rule of Fight Club…”), few movies were as controversial or left as much of an impact. Lauded for its technical brilliance, though highly divisive for its content, looking back 10 years Fight Club is seen more and more as a prism for the times it was made in. Caught somewhere between animal instinct and the antiseptic nature of modern society is the life of the unnamed narrator played by Edward Norton, who starts Fight Club with a soap salesman played by Brad Pitt to try and reclaim so semblance of primal manhood. Love it or hate it, Fincher perfectly captured the disaffected mood of a generation.

Three Kings – October 1st

Director: David O. Russell
Why It’s Listed: It’s probably the most subversive war movie made by a mainstream studio since M*A*S*H, and one of the most difficult to birth. Warner Bros. put $40 million in the hands of Russell, an auteur whose first two films, Flirting with Disaster and Spanking the Monkey, were well-received but never budgeted for more than $7 million. With studio concerns off-set, and fighting (with eventual fisticuffs) on-set between Russell and star George Clooney, no one was entirely sure what Three Kings would turn out to be. But it turns out all the behind the scenes turbulence worked to the film’s advantage. Hailed as a masterpiece by a lot of critics, thanks to its combination of action, humour and political intrigue, it continues to resonate with new importance as the current War in Iraq soldiers on.

The Virgin Suicides – May 19th (Cannes Film Festival)

Director: Sofia Coppola
Why It’s Listed: For years after The Godfather Part III, Sofia Coppola, and her performance in the film was a kind of shorthand for nepotism to the talentless, even though she only took the role when Winona Ryder fell ill. Confounding the critics though, Coppola found her true calling in following her father’s footsteps as a filmmaker. Combining nostalgia with melancholy and a bittersweet after taste, The Virgin Suicides made Coppola a serious new voice in indie film, and helped transition star Kirsten Dunst from child star to adult actress. Though her next film, Lost in Translation, would be her breakthrough, it’s doubtful Coppola would have gotten that far with out so effectively proving her chops with Suicides.

Election – May 7th

Director: Alexander Payne
Why It’s Listed: Almost 13 years after playing the ultimate teenage huckster in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Matthew Broderick went all Mr. Rooney on us by playing a teacher who’s hatred for an overachieving student contributes to his own ruin. With iconic performances by Reese Witherspoon and Broderick, Election is razor sharp as both a political satire and a vicious dissection of the high school movie. And like a lot of movies in ’99, it was one of those films that debuted small, but became popular through word of mouth in revival theatres and on home video.

The Straight Story – May 21st

Director: David Lynch
Why It’s Listed: A film so low key, so focused, so Capra-esque, it could only have been made by… David Lynch? So it would seem. In a year when most filmmakers were not only pushing the envelope, but licking the stamp and stuffing it in a mailbox, Lynch astounded with this straight-forward, based-on- true-story tale about Alvin Straight. Straight traveled 240 miles – from Laurens, Iowa to Mount Zion, Wisconsin – on a red, John Deere tractor to visit his estranged brother. Distributed by Disney of all people, this G-rated film opened against Star Wars: The Phantom Menace to much more critical acclaim. Richard Farnsworth, who took on the part though he was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, received an Academy Award nomination for playing Straight.

Dogma – November 12th

Director: Kevin Smith
Why It’s Listed: Dogma represented a huge creative leap for Smith, which he has truly yet to capitalize on. What it did though was cement Smith’s reputation as a provocateur, as well as allowing him to demonstrate an element of technical growth as a filmmaker. Following Chasing Amy, it felt as though Smith’s was actually trying to say something about the culture, rather than just riff on it. But Smith wasn’t the only one that got legitimacy thanks to Dogma. After a serious of protests against the film deeming it as anti-Catholic, Miramax parent company Disney allowed the film to be released through then Vancouver-based Lions Gate instead. The move helped the fledgling studio develop a reputation as a distributor unafraid of scandalous or controversial material.

Magnolia – December 8th

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Why It’s Listed: At just over three hours in length with three interlocking storylines featuring several different characters, sitting through Magnolia is no mean feat. As follow-up to Anderson’s previous opus, Boogie Nights, Magnolia digs even deeper into themes of regret, loneliness and failed relationships. Like a lot of the major films of ’99, Magnolia provoked a lot of strong emotion in an either love it or hate capacity. Some saw it as self-involved and self-important, but to many it’s a challenging ensemble drama that tests normal narrative restraints of problem-action-reaction-resolution. Anderson’s character-first approach would continue to serve him through to his Academy Award-wining There Will Be Blood.