Like most of K’s stuff, see it on a big screen, ideally HDTV. I was absolutely riveted by the baroque phantasmal world he creates in the middle of the film - you’ll know it when you see it. Read Nick Lannon’s piece about it here! (Side note: Jessica Campbell gives a wonderful supporting performance in this that led to her being cast as a guest star in two episodes of the Mockingbird favorite FREAKS AND GEEKS.)
#The year 1999 nextime movie
Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick are SO much fun in this movie about high school.
Not only a true rendering of facts but (like Magnolia and others) a true account of private suffering, the terror of our inner lives being exposed, and the aching need for love. It was a career making film for three of my favorite actors: Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevigny, and Peter Sarsgaard, all of whom were in their 20s at the time. Like October Sky and The Insider, another amazing true story. (In Crowe’s later film A BEAUTIFUL MIND he plays a similar character and the illusion is shattered by a stupid decision to show Crowe in a muscle-shirt.) Crowe creates the illusion of a middleaged quiet intellectual whom you really believe could be successfully mugged by a five year old - about 20 light years from Crowe dripping with testosterone in GLADIATOR or LA CONFIDENTIAL. Some of the best work ever done by Russell Crowe or Al Pacino - and they have both done a lot of good stuff. Fatherhood, sonship, growing up, love, judgment and rockets! What more could you want? THE ROCKET BOYS would have been a better title (the book the movie was based on) but that’s about all I would change. Jake Gyllenhaal and again Chris Cooper and many other great performances. Less talked about is the quiet but perfect performance by Chris Cooper. Won about every award under the sun in 1999, including the oscars for Best Picture and Director and Actor and Actress and Screenplay. A sure to be amazing director’s cut of this movie is being released on DVD in May 2010 by the Criterion Collection (the gold standard of film snobbery). Touching work by Tobey Maguire and all the actors (including Jewel!).
Also rare as a Civil War picture in which all of the action happens West of the Mississippi. One of Ang Lee’s greatest films (alongside Crouching Tiger, Sense and Sensibility, Brokeback Mountain, etc.). Also a movie that truly understands suffering and its mystery. Lovely magic-realist film about “several interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness, and meaning in the San Fernando Valley.” (IMDB) I love it all, but I love most the work done by Julianne Moore, William H. There aren’t many movies that four Mockingbird writers as different as Dave Zahl, Nick Lannon, Paul Zahl, and myself all consider one of the best movies of the last 15 years. 1999 was just a WAY better year for movies than 2009. Which made me realize how very differently this decade ended vs. I mean that was amazing! Wasn’t that done in 2000 or 2001?”Īnd I’d look it up, and I was wrong. I’d think “Well, I gotta include movie _. And in trying to come up with it I kept having the following frustrating experience.
A couple weeks ago, Dave Zahl asked me to produce a list of my own favorite films of the last decade.