1999, could that be the greatest year in film history?

[Duck Sauce]

Nothing about 1999 was really special at all. I looked at the list of films mentioned for coming out that year and honestly thought half were bad, a quarter were good and 10% being overtly good while 5% were great.

I have yet to see one movie from that year that I've really wanted to see, The Straight Story.

But I think 2003 will turn into an actual great year. 2002 seems more dissapointing.

~rougerum

So give us a better year

[snaporaz]

i've always said that 1999 was the last great year for movies. i'm glad i'm not the only one.

well, actually, i've never said it...out loud. i just always thought that.

[Gold Trumpet]

Top of my head comparison year from same time period that produced better movies.................1994.

~rougerum

[Fernando]

I looked up some films from 1994 and these ones are really fine films:

Forrest Gump
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Pulp Fiction
Quiz Show
Shawshank Redemption
The Madness of King George
Ed Wood
Bullets Over Broadway
Three Colors
Heavenly Creatures
Interview with a Vampire
La Reine Margot
Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Shallow Grave
Natural Born Killers
Exotica
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Crow

Of the list above Ed Wood, Three Colors, Pulp Fiction,  Shawshank Redemption and Heavenly Creatures are truly great films, but for me it's almost impossible to top a year that had films by directors such as Kubrick, PTA, Polansky, Allen, Mann, Fincher, Neil Jordan, Alan Parker and Jonze, but well, that´s just me.

[Fernando]

Damn, I forgot to include Lyinch and Soderbergh, of course there should be others, I just don't remember everybody.

[Ernie]

Yes, 1999. A year with equal greatness will never be seen again..

No way. Are you being sarcastic? Cause you really can't say that for sure...you never know. That's like saying film is dead already. Film is undpredictable man. That's what people were probably saying back in the 70's with Scorsese and Kubrick. There are still a lot of future talented filmmakers out there (me for instance   )...some of them are suffering through high school now, they'll come out soon enough.

[Gold Trumpet]

This argument is getting silly. Its almost near impossible to really prove what year is better or what. I personally think a lot of the films from '99, including a lot of acclaimed ones, really are not that good at all. Titus is a joke because its stylizes Shakespeare by sacrificing the emotional impact of the original play. Stylization isn't a bad thing, but at least do it to make the story better. Reason is being lost in most movies today, especially ones that are overtly stylized. Go had no reason to make itself R rated, except to conform to the new cool geek cinema. Being John Malkovich had charm on first viewing, but now looks like a short film extended into a feature that didn't really want to fill in all the blank spots and tried to extend the cuteness of the ideas it had thinking they were great enough to last an entire movie. Polanski's The Ninth Gate was a major mess of a thriller that at the time was put down, but for The Pianist now, seems to be given credit only because of the name of the director applied to it. Soderbergh's The Limey was a minor success, that seemed for the most of the movie to go at an ok pace, but made itself good through one flashback scene at the end. American Beauty lasts on the performances alone; the story is too calculated for its own good. I could go on and on, but this seems like a weird argument to make anyways.

~rougerum

[Jeremy Blackman]

Titus is a joke because its stylizes Shakespeare by sacrificing the emotional impact of the original play. Stylization isn't a bad thing, but at least do it to make the story better.

It's one of my favorite movies, and its ingenuity never struck me as offensive. There has never been anything like it, and it's beautiful... don't hate it cause it's beautiful. And did it really sacrifice anything that was in the original play? That seems like an odd argument to make, for several reasons. A play is meant to be seen, not to be read, and Taymor didn't change one word. The only thing that Titus could have changed would be your personal vision of the play, assuming that you read the play before the movie came out (you did, right?).

[soixante]

As good as 1999 was (and 1994 and 1998), I think 1971 was the best year ever -- McCabe and Mrs. Miller, A Clockwork Orange, Dirty Harry, French Connection, Straw Dogs, Carnal Knowledge, Harold and Maude, Last Picture Show, Sunday Bloody Sunday.  

1974 wasn't bad -- Godfather II, Conversation, Parallax View, Chinatown, The Gambler, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Blazing Saddles, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Young Frankenstein, Badlands, Lenny, California Split, Thieves Like Us.

1975 was great -- Barry Lyndon, Shampoo, Nashville, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Day of the Locust, Tommy, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Man Who Would Be King, The Passenger, Night Moves.

1973 had a few good movies -- Mean Streets, American Graffiti, The Sting, The Exorcist, Last Tango in Paris, Scarecrow, Last Detail, Paper Chase, Long Goodbye.

[Ghostboy]

Titus blew my mind. Loved it.

[Gold Trumpet]

JB,
your arguments do not get down to what my arguments of the movie even are. I'm not arguing differences between plays and movies. Of course Taymour didn't change one word which happens to be the problem. Actually, my complaints come from the cheap stylization effects to modernize the story more. The movie attempts to make itself more relevant by mixing things of our times with the past associated to the original story. But the story never really evolves to our times to the stylization really even relevant as an idea of importance. The movie deals strictly with the original story and the contempary aspect of the movie seem more intruding on that original story. Yes, the original play does generalize to where it can be revelant to our times, but in the case of identifying where the real power of the story can be felt, it really belongs to realizing the world of the past the story was originally imagined for. The idea of bringing it part past and part modern times seems like a film school idea that can be as much discussed on paper as on film. And on film, in my opinion, it simply deludes from the power of the story.

~rougerum

[Pubrick]

whatever, hoes.