My Favorite Year : Part Three

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You can catch up, if so inclined, on this series of posts at the following links:

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)

And now we continue our rummaging through the cinema-heap of the past. 1999! A stellar year for cinephiles. We've already named 5 of my top 8 films (in no particular order of course... trying to give these things numbers would make my brains explode), and now here's another! Whee!

Election (dir. Alexander Payne)
Released May 7, 1999

Ah, simpler times, when I didn't have to negotiate a minefield of my own prejudices to like, nay love Reese Witherspoon (seriously though, I HATE Legally Blonde, and if she talks about bein' a lil' bit Country one more time I'll puncture my eardrums with a power-drill).

Tracy Flick, not June Carter Cash, was the role Witherspoon was born to play, and the one she deserved an onslaught of awards for. Every single one of us knew a Tracy Flick in high school, and Witherspoon perfectly realized every shading of the academic-Gorgon.

But everything about this comedy is pitch-perfect, from Matthew Broderick's sleazy bedroom mind-wanderings to the dull-amiable jock played by Chris Klein.

"My leg wasn't bugging me too much, and the weather was so nice,
and every day after school Lisa and I would go to her house to fuck
and have a hot tub."

It's still Payne's best film, I think; I could watch it dozens more times (and have) than critical-darling Sideways.
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