Like It's 1999

There are a lot of retrospective pieces that have been written this year about 1999 movies, and it's not hard to see why. 1999 was a great year for film, full of unexpected hits like "The Matrix," "The Sixth Sense," "Fight Club," and "American Beauty." It was a milestone year for me at the movies too, the year I finally moved to a big city, got full control over my viewing choices, and had access to nearly any movie I could name. It was suddenly possible for me to go out and see things like "Eyes Wide Shut" in theaters. I got carded, even! My first trip to an art house theater was to see the US release of "Princess Mononoke," the first Miyazaki film to get a Stateside theatrical release

And so 1999 is the first year that I can really quantify as a moviegoing year for me. Before that point, I watched a lot of movies, but always at random, always having to negotiate viewing times and selections with the rest of my family. My parents were pretty open-minded and we watched plenty of independent and foreign movies, but they had their tastes and I had mine. And it was still mighty uncomfortable watching adult dramas like "The Ice Storm" and "Leaving Las Vegas," with their frank depictions of sexuality, in the same room as my parents. They still don't do so well with certain kinds of movies with a lot of adult content. (Mom hates all the cursing.)

I think that early excitement was a big reason why I still remember what I watched in 1999 so well. I still have very good recall of even the oddball pictures like and "Muppets in Space" and "Stigmata" - remember that trend where the new millennium was going to trigger the Apocalypse? The bigger titles like "American Beauty," which I saw in theaters multiple times, wound up having a major influence on my own developing tastes. I was lucky that 1999 was the height of the American indie boom, when the studios were giving chances to smaller filmmakers and weirder films that they would never get today. I watched "Being John Malkovitch," "Three Kings," and "Magnolia," from up-and-comers Michel Gondry, David O. Russell, and Paul Thomas Anderson, having no idea who these directors were.

The internet was still getting off the ground. There wasn't the hype cycle and the instantaneous judgement passed down on every new release, but it was a new source of information that made me aware of titles I wouldn't have known about otherwise. I was still relying mostly on television and print ads, however. Ain't it Cool News might have had early reviews of "Sleepy Hollow," but nobody had the bandwidth to download more than poster images and productions photos back in those days. Online marketing was just beginning to be a thing, with titles like "The Blair Witch Project." Heck, DVDs were only just getting off the ground. "The Matrix" was one of the first to do anything creative with the menus and easter eggs.

Speaking of "The Matrix," it's still one of my favorite films, but I'll never be able to think of it separate from the Columbine shooting, which happened a few weeks after "The Matrix" was released in theaters. The news media pointed fingers, and for weeks we saw clips of "The Matrix" and "Doom" used to illustrate the purported dangers of violent media. Similarly, the hype for "The Phantom Menace" was so massive, part of me still gets a little excited whenever I see any of the old promotional images. It took me a few years to realize how little I cared for that movie, though I still enjoy the soundtrack.

And it was the year I watched "The Iron Giant" stumble at the box office, to the dismay of my fellow animation fans. The year "The Cider House Rules," revived Michael Caine's career as a supporting actor. The year nobody liked "Wild, Wild West" or "Inspector Gadget." The year I got my very own Blockbuster card. And Hollywood Video card. And Reel Video card.

It was the year I truly started down the path toward becoming a media junkie, and sometimes I miss it. And then I remember 1999 was before I could drink legally, and I count my blessings.
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