Ahhh!!! What's happening here???
My Favorite Year : An Introduction
(including the first three films - Fight Club, Being John Malkovich,
and The Blair Witch Project)
My Favorite Year : Part Two
(including the next two films - Run, Lola, Run and Go)
My Favorite Year : Part Three
(movin' slowly ahead with a fourth choice, Election)
Okay, slowly but surely we're getting there. I've now named 6 of my top 8 films for the Greatest Single Year of Movies (Whilst I've Lived & Watched). So many qualifiers for this thing, good grief.
Anyway, here comes the final 2 of my Top 8, to be followed now by 6 - instead of 5; I discovered one I'd forgotten before - more movies from 1999 that I enjoy, maybe not as fully as these 8, but well-enough to be mentioned for... something or other.
Ahem. Next two. Which funny enough are both kind of cheats because both were released at the very end of the year and, seeing as how I didn't live in NYC in 1999, I surely saw neither until some time in 2000. Oh well, it's my list, I do what I wanna!
Anyway, here comes the final 2 of my Top 8, to be followed now by 6 - instead of 5; I discovered one I'd forgotten before - more movies from 1999 that I enjoy, maybe not as fully as these 8, but well-enough to be mentioned for... something or other.
Ahem. Next two. Which funny enough are both kind of cheats because both were released at the very end of the year and, seeing as how I didn't live in NYC in 1999, I surely saw neither until some time in 2000. Oh well, it's my list, I do what I wanna!
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The Talented Mr. Ripley (dir. Anthony Minghella)Released December 25, 1999
Oh, Dickie. Let me count the ways. Dickie in a bathtub. Dickie in tiny swim trunks. Dickie with his head split open. TMR is genius (as is Jude Law's performance) in the way it makes us understand wanting to both screw Dickie Greenleaf and bash his head in at the same time.
In a wonderfully Hitchcockian way (this is Patricia Highsmith's book, and favorite character, we're dealing with after all), Minghella captures the lure of the icy blonde (it's a man this time!) in all his frigid glory. Like Gwyneth's character says, when Dickie's letting you into his world all is glorious, but when he grows tired of you, as he invariably will, the world turns cold and he is cruel.
But, all Jude-rhapsody aside, this is Matt Damon's movie and he gives us a character for the ages - confused and overwhelmed, yet diabolical at the same time, Ripley's a hard glance into the coldest corners of ourselves, where we sometimes wonder how far we could find ourselves going to get the things we can't even say we want.
Seriously, though - that bathtub scene? H-O-T.
In a wonderfully Hitchcockian way (this is Patricia Highsmith's book, and favorite character, we're dealing with after all), Minghella captures the lure of the icy blonde (it's a man this time!) in all his frigid glory. Like Gwyneth's character says, when Dickie's letting you into his world all is glorious, but when he grows tired of you, as he invariably will, the world turns cold and he is cruel.
But, all Jude-rhapsody aside, this is Matt Damon's movie and he gives us a character for the ages - confused and overwhelmed, yet diabolical at the same time, Ripley's a hard glance into the coldest corners of ourselves, where we sometimes wonder how far we could find ourselves going to get the things we can't even say we want.
Seriously, though - that bathtub scene? H-O-T.
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Magnolia (dir. P.T. Anderson)Released December 17th, 1999 (in NYC)
Like Nate at Film Experience said today, while wishing for a higher output from director P.T Anderson (amongst others), "He's made four full length features. None of them have been any less than very good." While Magnolia isn't my favorite of his four films (I don't know what spell it is that Punch-Drunk Love casts over me every time, but man that thing works me over), it is, I think, his best (best and favorite are different... see?) and that's saying a lot.
But what makes Magnolia so great, for me at least, is that much-discussed final act, where the world we, and the characters, know becomes something odd, different, Biblical in its ramifications, and through the haze of uncertainty at what's even possible in the world they, and we, find some sort of understanding with, of, the world.
Oh, and might I just interject - Julianne Moore rocks the fucking house.
But what makes Magnolia so great, for me at least, is that much-discussed final act, where the world we, and the characters, know becomes something odd, different, Biblical in its ramifications, and through the haze of uncertainty at what's even possible in the world they, and we, find some sort of understanding with, of, the world.
Oh, and might I just interject - Julianne Moore rocks the fucking house.
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COMING UP NEXT:
6 (count em, 6!) other movies
from 1999 that bear mentioning
for one insane reason or another
...
6 (count em, 6!) other movies
from 1999 that bear mentioning
for one insane reason or another
...
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