MOVIE REVIEW: Parasite

(Image courtesy of NEON CJ Entertainment via EPK.tv)

PARASITE-- 5 STARS

This may seem a touch slight for what is easily the most cunning film of 2019, but the title says it all when it comes to Parasite. In that one word, a premise is generated that blindly and automatically intrigues. Your instincts say “eww” and your sensory responses to the word trigger certain and escalating discomfort. You tell yourself what you are going to watch isn’t going to be entirely pleasant. Oh, but dive deeper in a discerning way to prepare yourself further.  As this website so often does, grab a dictionary.

LESSON #1: THE DEFINITION OF “PARASITE”-- When you dig into this title (as it digs into you), three variations of meaning present themselves: 

1. an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment.

2. a person who receives support, advantage, or the like, from another or others without giving any useful or proper return, as one who lives on the hospitality of others.

3. (in ancient Greece) a person who received free meals in return for amusing or impudent conversation, flattering remarks, etc.

You read those definitions and wonder, gosh, which one of the three will this buzzed-about Korean film seize or probe. Big or small, any one of them could take a toll.  The staggering thing is, with many flourishes, Parasite, is all damn three of them, in twisted and overwhelming fashion. Somewhere, the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock is smiling with glee.

Opening on a makeshift clothesline drying a collection of dingy socks, such is the chandelier crowning the Kim household.  This place of squalor is a semi-sunken garden unit equivalent to dirty gum stuck under a crowded metropolis’s shoe. Beset by possible sewage flooding, sputtering wifi, deactivated phones, urban fumigation, and downright trickling piss, the armpit apartment is occupied by Ki-taek (Snowpiercer’s Song Kang-ho), his wife Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin), and two teenage children, son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik of Train to Busan) and daughter Ki-jeong (Park So-dam of The Priests).  They collectively take every odd job they can find to rub two coins together.

LESSON #2: THE POWER OF PERSONAL RECOMMENDATIONS-- People on the inside say it all the time.  You have to know somebody to get in. When one of Ki-woo’s college student friends passes him a valuable vouch on a job tutoring English for a wealthy teen (Jeong Ji-so), the family sees dollar signs, fulfilling the opportune superstition of a newly acquired “scholar’s rock.” Scouting his way into the opulent Park household of an IT CEO (Lee Sun-kyun of A Hard Day), Ki-woo impresses the matriarch Yeon-gyo (Obsessed star Cho Yeo-jeong) and creates recommendation scenarios where his family members soon get hired for other service jobs for the Parks.  

LESSON #3: ALWAYS CHECK A POTENTIAL EMPLOYEE’S REFERENCES-- The Kims are pretenders playing pretenders who cannot wash off the stink of the poor, and Mrs. Park is one frazzled, lonely, and gullible wife. Don’t just trust a sympathetic face or lark of a story. Catch the hustle of even the best hustler and go through the proper channels on someone and their paperwork. If that means a polygraph to check how “the heart doesn’t lie,” so be it.

Let not just the street-smart con begin, but the second and third definitions of “parasite” as well.  As the Kims roll in the fattening and intoxicating riches of their ruse, unforeseen circumstances (to intentionally say the least) threaten their exposure.  What was light gleaning before festers and burrows towards that symbiotic first definition and turns into something more feral for survival.

LESSON #4: AMENDING PLANS-- Plotting and rehearsing an ironclad plan take meticulousness for success.  Reacting to a swerve and changing a great plan takes equal meticulousness. That’s all well and good until something causes excrement to strike cooling devices.  The wily father Ki-taek may just have the only solution: Have no plan at all. That way nothing goes wrong because nothing was set to be ruined.

The unanimous winner of the 2019 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival earns and deserves every laurel and prize coming its way.  Brilliance is only the beginning at how this film whispers and shouts both razor sharp filmmaking and brazen social commentary. The production design constructions of Ha-jun Lee, from the pristine and polished locations to the claustrophobic dinge on the surfaces underneath, show purpose in both functionality and symbolism.  Kyung-pyo Hong’s voyeuristic cinematography bends our wide-eyed gaze around those surroundings like a contortionist of pent-up apprehension.  

Where Parasite lives up to its hype and its multiple meanings is in its originality and tone.  In most overindulgent Hollywood hands, this would devolve into home invasion horror and overplay its intended messages.  Not here with Bong Joon-ho. Even when Parasite means to jar and rattle, it’s exceptionally smooth in doing so.  Each performance, from the dastardly to the demure, sells this suspense.  Joon-ho good luck charm Song Kang-ho and Cho Yeo-jeong have the showiest performances, but Choi Woo-shik is the redeeming soul of the movie that turns it villainous to virtuous.

There is a swindling calculation to anything and everything fiendish or rancorous.  In channeling this hostile struggle through biting satire on social class and warped familial devotions, what normally might repulse zings instead.  There are infinite layers to this onion its cinematic scent is masked so incredibly well. Like parasites themselves, the imprint of this movie irks first and then smolders with a blistering patience that absorbs us to no end when its flames peak. 

Zoinks, does this movie have vigor!  For those folks who constantly lament that there is nothing original and interesting to watch anymore in this multiplex marketplace of creative bankruptcy, look no further than the minor challenge of following Korean subtitles.  The sly guile simmering behind the decadence of Parasite exceeds any trope one thinks that possible assign to this film.  This is your jaw-dropper. This is your water-cooler winner. This is the one that will keep people talking for a long time.

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GUEST ESSAY: Halliday's Golden Ticket in "Ready Player One"

Halliday's Golden Ticket in Ready Player One

By Janelle Dixon

Ready Player One depicts a world where people constantly escape their reality. Every person is no longer living in reality. Instead their distraction from reality, the virtual, has become their reality. Urban decay is brought to a new level with lower class living in trailer towers known as “The Stacks” and streets are shown neglected as well as trash and garbage piling and forgotten.

The Stacks

People are shown first in the real world not interacting with others or the world around them, playing the Oasis. The physical realm is only utilized to stay alive, necessities, food, sleep and restroom. The virtual has become the dominate reality where people spend all their time, where they socialize, work, express themselves. Even as far as body suits to feel physical sensations to better experience the virtual. Therefore all attention to the physical realm is forgotten, it may be assumed that the physical world would become purely functional and efficient but instead as shown in “The Stacks” no attention is shown towards organization or pedestrian considerations no new development is shown, as that’s not what’s important in this world. Instead all exploration of life and self is done in the “Oasis” which we may see as a game, but they present as important as life. The movie describes it as people’s livelihoods and where all time is invested, where if you die in Oasis its like your starting all over again, they show someone attempting suicide after dying in the Oasis.

 People are still shown in offices working or children in school but little of the built environment is new or different from today. Even in depictions of these spaces we are seeing people interacting with the oasis in some way. I see this as them expressing that development in the physical is no longer accelerating but moving at a constant. Instead the virtual is a boundless world of growth where all new development is focused. It’s not clear from the movie but its interesting to consider resource use in this world. Where their physical world may have depleted resources so to distract from that they utilize a world with unlimited resources. I think “The Stacks” is a strong representation of how the author has chosen to depict the world. In today’s world we are discovering more above efficient prefabrication but instead of this being utilized or developed, trailer homes are stacked on a minimal steel frame. Almost a vernacular solution but not a cost or time effective solution. Watching Wade move through the Stacks in the opening scenes gives us an idea of the circulation, vertical movement is done through a mesh of fire escape stairs and ladders  even descending rope jumping across peoples living spaces. Which makes it seem that people don’t often leave their home, there is no reason to. Even packages are carried by drones to people’s homes which enables people to never leave their homes. But observing the circulation its no easy thing to leave your 10th story trailer to take a stroll. 

This dystopia presented in Ready Player One may have moved into a degrowth type world. Where resource extraction has decelerated causing the use of systems that use less resources (Shaw). Since focus has been moved to the virtual and development of the physical has decelerated, physical resources are being utilized less. People travel less, and the built environment growth is limited. This could explain the adaptation and reuse of trailer homes in the stacks. An interesting component at play is that the concept of degrowth is considered site specific, by using the resources on site. In the real world their resources on site are mainly trash. In the Oasis the scale is global since it’s a global platform and all have access to the same resources. The consideration of place and site transforms. As designers of the built environment site should be strongly taken into consideration yet in the Oasis designers are in control of the context. Would this lead to the loss of a sense of place? Presenting a complexity, what responsibility comes with influencing the site, context and building an immersive design.

There are reinforcements of a separation of class represented in the main opposing characters, Wade and Nolan, Orphan and CEO. We can see this in the players ‘gear’ and playing space. Wade plays in a junk yard in an abandoned van which later becomes his home. He barrows playing gear from his aunt his only living family member. While Nolan plays in top tech body suit and gaming sphere, in his CEO office overlooking his armies playing ground. 

Wade’s Van

The scene immediately following the images above Nolan makes Wade an offer for money and status in replace for ‘clanning up’ or his help in finishing the Easter Egg. When Wade denies Nolan attempts to kill Wade by blowing up the tower in the Stacks where his aunt lives. The Term ‘clanning up’ comes up a few times in the movie usually in context that it’s a bad choice, Parzevil playing the lone wolf, the lone questing knight, while Nolan runs the biggest Clan of ‘Gunter’s’ or die hard Egg hunters, the sixers. The Sixers are presented as robotic faceless emotionless players, looking at the oasis as a job. Money in the virtual world is highlighted throughout the movie. People make money in Oasis and spend it there, it’s not a free utopian world, you can die and must start over, and everything costs money just like the real world. If the aspect of money isn’t what’s different and making people want to live their lives, there instead I’d say it’s the freedom of identity. 

In the Oasis each person creates an avatar giving a new consideration to how we present ourselves to others. We no longer are limited in our physical appearance people can change clothes, hair style, sex, and even species. We see this with Parcevil in the beginning when he changes his hair the first time, we see him in the Oasis. Or when his best friend online who is seen as a large strong male cyborg and ends up being a female in the real world. Not only does this make us more strongly consider our appearance and manipulating it but also requires us to reflect into how we want to be seen. The mirror stage in your infancy is when you develop the understanding that you are an object seen by others and start to define yourself by how others see you (Fink). Does the Oasis present a further mirror stage and defining yourself even further by your appearance to others? 

The Oasis plays a unique role as a distraction for the public, the game presents a utopian world for the people in the world of Ready Player One. The decayed urban environment provides no place for human interactions, public amenities and spaces are non-existent in the film. All have been moved to the Oasis, focus on development for human interactions has also been focused in the virtual world. The game is presented as a double-edged sword (Nordstrom). The game promotes social interaction it’s made for personal expression, yet it causes the users to withdraw from the real world into fantasy. This takes the publics focus off the problems surrounding them and offers them an escape. Justin Nordstrom offers that this dystopian world requires this game to be possible, the game is a necessary social and creative escape offered which allows the decay to occur in his “A Pleasant for the World to Hide” article. The titles reflecting that the Oasis is a utopia with-in this dystopia for the people to hide or escape from the grim apocalyptic reality. The idea of this double-edge sword offers that this masquerading utopia is the publics enabler to allow the neglect. Users of the Oasis retreat into the virtual and themselves. This brings into question the effect on people that this retreat into self brings. Perhaps people are liberated and can find more out about themselves through the self-expression the game offers. Some people choose to wage wars on the planet only for war, sometimes for money, others may spend their time on vacation planet. This self-expression is the utopia that’s presented a world where you can be whatever you want and do even as a career whatever you want free of real-world limitations. 

Nolan’s Sphere

Consideration of the built environment in Ready Player One, we are only offered a few settings in the real world of Ready Player One, the school briefly in the beginning, the stacks, the dump that surrounds it, a building which appears to be refuge for homeless which the lead female lives in, the downtown area, the loan collectors building, the 6ers work space and the CEOS office and play sphere. These different places combined paint a picture of the dystopic society. The main difference we see from today’s world is the decay of the city and the further separation of the classes with trailer parks overflowing stacked carelessly on top of one another. The industrial building housing people with no other place to go setting up camp in large empty cold spaces. Even the dump around the stacks Wade himself inhabits and uses as a third space. The company buildings have seemingly no consideration to create good working/living environments probably since everyone’s usually in the virtual even there. Loan collector pods barely five feet by five feet hardly livable where people who are in debt spend their days basically as slaves working to pay off their debt but accruing living expenses we are even presented with the example of the lead females father dying while trying to work off his loans to depict how poor the experience is. Wades family showing how close they are or how easy it is to end up in debt losing battles in the Oasis betting all money in a video game and losing it in moments. 

I argue this isn’t different from today and completely relatable, our society expects us to have our phones on us 24/7. Daily life and ‘office hours’ are less and less 9 to 5. Globalization connects us through work and social life. TV shows used to be once a week you watch and episode of your favorite show. Now with Netflix full seasons are released and binged the day its released hours on end of mindless laziness. Temptations that fill our time and distract us from reality. Providing a platform for self-expression and an escape from reality. New advances allow us to be lazy with more and more delivery services, we already can escape our physical world. Ready Player One shows us a possible world and how our world today could respond like a kid at a candy store, society being the unsupervised child and technology being our candy that we must be told not to eat because we weren’t ready to handle it. The presentation of ourselves on social media is similar to the Oasis avatars, profile were individuals can express themselves even hide their true identity and become whoever they want. The is an epidemic especially in cities of people feeling lonely, is this a sign of our technology separating us from the physical? 

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Endnotes

Speilberg, Steven, director. Ready Player One. Warner Home Video, 2018.

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994

Nordstrom, Justin. ““A Pleasant Place for the World to Hide”: Exploring Themes of Utopian Play in Ready Player One.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 18, no. 2 (2016): 238–56. https://doi.org/10.5325/intelitestud.18.2.0238

Shaw, Matt. “What Is the Architecture of Degrowth?” Archpaper.com, October 8, 2019. https://ift.tt/2MHzxGQ.

Fink, Bruce, trans. Jacques Lacan Ecrits. W. W. Norton and Company, 2006.

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SPECIAL: Fourth annual CIC Award Nominations

The recently rebranded Chicago Indie Critics have announced their nominees for the fourth annual film awards. The voting members completed ballots to compile five nominees for 23 categories. I am one of the founders and directors of the CIC since its start in 2016. The CIC members will commence a final round of voting ending on January 2, 2020. 

The 2019 CIC Award winners will be announced on the evening of January 4, 2020. This year’s Awards Party will be emcee by stand-up comedienne and former film critic Katie Baker. The event will be held at the Cards Against Humanity Theater in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago starting at 5:00pm and open to the public with ticket admission.  Fans and followers can watch the awards event live-streaming on the CIC’s YouTube channel.

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Leading all films with an impressive eight nominations is Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women.  Two of those nominations highlight Gerwig’s work as a director and screenwriter. Following next with seven nominations each is the quartet of The Irishman, Marriage Story, 1917, and Parasite. On an individual level leading the field, Parasite’s Bong Joon-ho earned five personal nominations and Lulu Wang of The Farewell earned four across the 23 categories. In all, 43 films are represented with nominations for the 2019 CIC Awards.  

COMPLETE NOMINATION LIST AND PRESS RELEASE

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20 YEAR RETROSPECTIVE: The best of the rest of 1999

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In an annual series, Every Movie Has a Lesson is going to look back twenty years to revisit, relearn, and reexamine a year of cinema history to share favorites, lists, and experiences from the films of that year.

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As I was saying one column earlier when I laid out my absolute Top 20 from 1999, I was a 20-year-old undergrad Elementary Education major at Saint Joseph’s College twenty years ago. I was a country kid absorbing cable television for the first time, working at a local video store, writing movie reviews for the college newspaper. I was devouring movies new and old and the rural boundaries of Rensselaer, Indiana or my activity time as the football equipment manager didn’t stop me. On football road trips, I was more or less “staff” where I wasn’t bed-checked like the players. I used to go out after hours, pre-Uber and without a cell phone, and scout ahead the closest movie theater to the team hotel in order to find ways to see movies on opening Friday nights. Man, that was living.

As the historians will tell you, 1999 was a damn fine year. There are many films from that year that count as favorites and greats in several different ways. Some have gotten better with age and some have worsened, even dropping at as former favorites. Here are my little breakdowns of the “rest of 1999.” Enjoy!

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Personal Favorites

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Message in a Bottle, Entrapment, Deep Blue Sea, The 13th Warrior, The Mummy, Double Jeopardy, Life, Star War: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, The Best Man, The Bone Collector, Bicentennial Man

My 1998 retrospective last year will show you that I am an absolute softy for a romantic genre. My first taste of anything Nicholas Sparks came in movie form and it was the Kevin Costner-starring Message in a Bottle. This might have been my #2 favorite movie of 1999 in the college newspaper behind The Green Mile and I swallow a minute amount of shame. I still love this one. Kostner is a lifetime favorite of mine and his pairing with Paul Newman set against melodrama with rich production values (that Caleb Deschanel cinematography and Gabriel Yared score still get me) was gold for me.

Along the same lines, 2014’s The Best Man Holiday made me re-fall-in-love with The Best Man, a favorite that has only gotten better. Sappy Robin Williams has a limit, but Bicentennial Man can still arouse bigger sci-fi thoughts I appreciate. I’ll never grow tired of the best big-screen WTF moment of that year with Deep Blue Sea and its Samuel L. Jackson swerve.

The 1990s were the peak of the “mid-budget programmer,” studio-backed star vehicles with easy budgets, proven talent, and often genre content risks. Many of those became your steady diet of basic cable entertainment years later before reality TV took over. I’ll gladly put on the likes of Entrapment, Deep Blue Sea, Double Jeopardy, Life, Bicentennial Man, and The Bone Collector over many of today’s straight-to-Netflix films of the same budget level. The old stuff is so much better. The 90s also did blockbusters pretty damn well for its time too where I have no problem still enjoying Star Wars: Episode !- The Phantom Menace (just turn on Darth Maul and those John Williams choir voices) and The Mummy. Story came before effects still and it shows.

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Guilty Pleasures

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Varsity Blues, Any Given Sunday, American Pie, She’s All That, Simply Irresistible, Cruel Intentions, 10 Things I Hate About You, Austin Power: The Spy Who Shagged Me, The World is Not Enough, Lake Placid, Galaxy Quest. The Boondock Saints

Speaking of those mid-budget programmers, the next class down was the lost art of the “high school movie.” The 1980s has John Hughes and the 1990s had the R-rated raunch phase that pushed further what the 80s started. Made for virtually pennies with mostly unknown talent or TV stars, these movies raked at the box office with the youth of the day, myself included. Honestly, they don’t make these kinds of movie anymore. Hell, they couldn’t get made today with the same landscape and lenses. Six years ago, I wrote an editorial here on Every Movie Has a Lesson on that phenomenon and it feels even more true in 2019. The raunchy teens grew into the “man-child” movies of the 2000s and 9/11 made everyone grow up into a wiser political culture since.

With that in mind, it’s probably wrong and more than a little misogynistic to enjoy the debauchery of American Pie, Varsity Blues, and even the intentional camp of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me in 2019. Alas, I could and I do. They’re time capsules of eye-rolling fun at this point. I just can’t show these movies to my students or own children. They count as guilty pleasures, right next to James Bond films and cheesy creature features.

Not all in this section are contraband. One can argue there isn’t a 1999 movie that has aged better, surprisingly, than Galaxy Quest, which grows with esteem and fandom the more other things retread and reboot. The football fans still rightfully worship the swagger of Any Given Sunday. Pygmalion and Shakespeare students can still be proud of She’s All That and 10 Things I Hate About You (which is many folks’ introduction to the late Heath Ledger, including mine). The buried treasure I recommend the most is Sarah Michelle Geller’s Simply Irresistible, an airy and easy romance that also couldn’t be made today with the same panache. I gave that one some anniversary love this year writing for 25YL. Seek it out for a good time.

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Underrated Gems

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Payback, True Crime, EDtv, A Walk on the Moon, The General’s Daughter, Summer of Sam, The Wood

Here are a few to add to Bringing Out the Dead and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai which made my Top 20 in the last post. These titles are a step down from personal favorites, but movies that I find more solid than flimsy compared to the rest of the offerings from 1999. Most are more of those mid-budget programmers like Payback and The General’s Daughter, but don’t sleep on director Spike Lee’s under-seen Summer of Sam or Viggo Mortensen’s swooning Woodstock romance A Walk on the Moon. Plenty cheesy for sure, but EDtv counts as slightly ahead of its time even after trying to follow The Truman Show from 1998.

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Re-Visitations Needed

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Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, Being John Malkovich, 8mm, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Pushing Tin, Dick, Sleepy Hollow, Ride With the Devil, Girl Interrupted

With full admission, the 20-year-old version of me did not have his teeth completely cut or his eyes fully focused as a fit critic who could see past the entertainment and into the art. There are many movies on fancier “Best of 1999” lists that were simply lost on me back in their day. I recognize the impact and greatness of Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, and Being John Malkovich, for example, but they will always be distant. Some of them I’ve tried again. Some need another chance or two. For the others, I want to see how a few top directors’ (Guy Ritchie, Ang Lee, Tim Burton) earlier works look now against their current stuff.

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Blind Spots

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The Straight Story, Ravenous, All About My Mother, The Thirteen Floor, Flawless

These are the movies looking to make the queues and wish lists on platforms and streaming services so richly available to us in 2019.

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Overrated

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The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, Analyze This, Never Been Kissed, Big Daddy, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, Mystery Men, Dogma

Alright, let me get my next umbrella to cover the crap coming to fall. I’m going to come right out and call M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense overrated. It’s the biggest 1999 movie that has fallen out of favor for me personally. I blame the director’s degrading work since this first hit. Smart as it is, it loses a little each viewing and only exposes his twist-dependent lack of creativity. I know Mystery Men has earned a level of cult status, but I find it to be a busy mess still. The repeated crappy comedy phase since 1999 for Robert De Niro has not helped Analyze This.

After that, it’s about personal taste. I’m never been a South Park lover, TV or otherwise. Kevin Smith’s work has not aged well for me and Dogma, as bold as it was, feels like preening more than deep satire. I’m not a horror guy and couldn’t care less about the 1999’s equivalent of click bait with The Blair Witch Project. Thanks for the motion sickness, though. I’ve never been a Drew Barrymore fan, and I think Big Daddy is where Adam Sandler started to lose his edge and sink into the weak sauce territory that, other than a few moments like Uncut Gems this year, he’s never recovered from.

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Still Bad

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Wild Wild West, Baby Geniuses, My Favorite Martian, Virus, Wing Commander, Forces of Nature, The Mod Squad, Runaway Bride, The Out-of-Towners, Bowfinger, Mickey Blue Eyes, The Bachelor, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, The Haunting

Yikes, was Wild Wild West a trainwreck! But then, we also got Wing Commander. Double yikes!

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20 YEAR RETROSPECTIVE: The 10 Best Films of 1999

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In an annual series, Every Movie Has a Lesson is going to look back twenty years to revisit, relearn, and reexamine a year of cinema history to share favorites, lists, and experiences from the films of that year.

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1999! Man, what a time it was to be alive. That Prince song finally came true, Y2K be damned. I was a 20-year-old college junior and loving life. Can we go back yet?

Looking back, many cinephiles and experts put 1999 right next to 1939, 1969, and 1982 are one of cinema’s greatest years. Seeing the year’s impact 20 years later, I cannot argue with that distinction from an historical impact between the many emergent movies of future auteurs, the peak of the now virtually extinct mid-budget programmers, and the increasing reach of cell phones and the internet. Personally, I like the movies from last year, 1998 (and even 1997 too), better than 1999, but history wins and I’ll grant 1999’s earned place.

Just as I did last year, I need to offer a personal level of clarification when I build and justify lists like the one you’re going to read below for 1999.  That challenge is that there can often be a distinct difference between a movie that is considered one of the “best,” respected and revered on technical and artistic levels, and something held dear as a personal and subjective “favorite.”  I find myself torn between “bests” and “favorites” all the time, every year present or past, when creating any “10 Best” list as a credentialed film critic. Call it an occupational hazard. Alright, as Prince said, let’s party like it’s 1999.

(All poster images from IMDb)

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The 10 Best Movies of 1999

1. The Matrix

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2. The Green Mile

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3. The End of the Affair

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4. Arlington Road

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5. American Beauty

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6. Fight Club

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7. The Hurricane

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8. Office Space

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9. Election

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10. The Iron Giant

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I’ll have dig through my old college archives, but there is a good chance 1999 was the first year I ever printed a “10 Best” as a wannabe film critic writing for The Observer student newspaper at Saint Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana. I would have been a well-traveled junior who was consuming more movies with each year. If memory serves me write 20 years later at the age of 40, I’m pretty sure my #1 then was The Green Mile, meaning my top spot has changed with time and I’m not surprised by what. The Matrix is an undeniable game-changer for its era and the kind of movie that is a dual “favorite” and “best” on my lists when I vote with my head or my heart.

One of the films that really moved me in 1999 and does so still today is The End of the Affair. I know I was swept by the torrid World War II romance, Graham Greene’s prose, a fetching Julianne Moore, and the powerful drama in the mold of The English Patient. Easily the most under-seen of my Top 10 is Arlington Road at #4. It’s probably one of my most recommended “blind spots” I share with others who want, as they always say, “something different.” It’s a frighteningly topical pre-9/11 terrorist film that makes you shudder harder today.

Beyond that, I was a big fan of Norman Jewison’s The Hurricane and have long been a Denzel Washington worshipper. However, I cannot deny the power and historical impact that American Beauty and Fight Club have generated in two decades. They are watersheds, even if I didn’t see their full greatness as a younger man. The end of my list is closed by two perfect dark comedies (which is subjectively hard to say) and cult classics in Office Space and Election. Election was the real head-turner, dropping its acidic wit in a peak year of the high school movie genre. Finally, no top list of 1999 is complete without The Iron Giant. It beats the best of 1999 by Pixar or Disney by a country mile.

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The Next 10 Best:

11. The Thomas Crown Affair

12. For Love of the Game

13. Notting Hill

14. Toy Story 2

15. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

16. Bringing Out the Dead

17. Tarzan

18. The Cider House Rules

19. Three Kings

20. Magnolia

Once again, going back to that young college kid’s brain, I can guarantee you I had The Thomas Crown Affair and For Love of the Game in my Top 5 back then. I think the Pierce Brosnan vehicle is a ultra-cool heist film remake that easily improves on the original, even against Steve McQueen. It’s probably the 1999 movie I’ve re-watched the most in 20 years. It’s instantly entertaining. I know Bull Durham and Field of Dreams will always be bigger baseball films for Kevin Costner, but I have a romantic sweet spot for Sam Raimi’s little gem where the a guy reflecting on how he blew it with his girl takes precedent over the sport for two hours.

I’ll go with a deep cut in giving a spot to Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. I’m not really a Jarmusch guy, but damn, Forrest Whitaker was outstanding and the zen tension dichotomy of that movie builds well. I’ve always felt that Bringing Out the Dead was ballsy and underrated Scorsese. It absolutely still zips now. The same goes with Three Kings, which feels ahead of its time. Tarzan makes the list because, at the time, Disney finally made an animated movie with a non-princess lead for a dude like me.

Lastly, go ahead and call me out, film snobs, for having Magnolia this low. It was lucky to make the list. It needs a re-watch from me because it confounded and maddened me back in 1999. It’s aged well, but that one is still going to take time. Call me again in 2039. As always, it loses me at the frogs.

COMING NEXT: Part 2 with the best of the rest of 1999 including personal favorites, underseen gems, blind spots, and overrated duds

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