What Film Most Defined 1999?

IndieWire has a 25th year anniversary piece up for the movie “Dick” which is another underrated comedic gem from 1999. Then you have a recent viral clip featuring Keanu Reeves getting all teary-eyed when it’s mentioned “The Matrix” turns 25 this year. Meanwhile, this week also marks 25 years since “The Sixth Sense” and “The Iron Giant” got released.

These 1999 think-pieces keep springing up. Want more? You can find recent 25th anniversary writeups for “Eyes Wide Shut,” “The Matrix,” “Election,” “Magnolia,” “The Blair Witch Project,” “Fight Club,” “Being John Malkovich,” “The Sixth Sense,” “The Insider,” “The Iron Giant,” “Run Lola Run,” “Office Space,” “South Park,” “Toy Story 2,” “Three Kings,” “Bringing Out the Dead,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “The Straight Story,” “Go,” “American Pie,” “10 Things I Hate About You,” “Man on the Moon,” “Dogma,”

Still left to be tackled, and deserving 25-year celebratory dissections are “The Limey,” “Summer of Sam,” “The Green Mile,” “Bowfinger,” “Sleepy Hollow”, “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai,” “The Hurricane,” “Arlington Road”, “Payback,” “Analyze This,” “Mystery Men,” “Galaxy Quest,” and “Limbo.”

Not to mention international standouts such as “The Dreamlife of Angels”, “Romance,” “Rosetta,” “Topsy-Turvy,” and “All About My Mother.”

Nothing has been written yet about Sam Mendes’ “American Beauty” turning 25. Will anybody dare write a piece on the film that featured the defining role of Kevin Spacey’s career? it triumphed at the Oscars as well, winning Picture, Director, Actor, Original Screenplay and Cinematography.

I highly recommend Brian Raftery‘s book “Best. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen” which has been in bookstores now for over four years. It should have been released this year because the conversation around 1999 — the best movie year of my lifetime — keeps reappearing on a near-weekly basis.

No, I am not overhyping 1999. It really was that great of a year. It signified the end of a certain type of cinema, and revealed a new kind, one that would shape the 21st century in ways we never could have imagined, good and bad.

Back in the fall of ‘99, Roger Ebert summed up the year pretty well:

The Telluride and Toronto festivals had already started lobbing in great new films, and by the time I saw "Being John Malkovich" and "Three Kings" early in October, it was clear that Hollywood's hounds of creativity had been set loose and were running free. The last four months of 1999 were a rich and exciting time for moviegoers--there were so many wonderful films that for the first time in a long time, it was hard to keep up.

Is it the best movie year ever? Possibly. Is there any other modern-era year that came remotely close? Maybe 2007.

In fact, maybe there were too many good movies. For all the glorious writeups that 1999 keeps getting, there isn’t a clear consensus as to what was the one film that defined that movie year. You could make the case for a dozen of them. At least in 2007, the consensus could be narrowed down to three films: “There Will Be Blood,” “Zodiac,” and “No Country For Old Men.” That’s not the case with 1999.

A recent massive Rotten Tomatoes user poll had “The Matrix” winning as best of 1999. how about you? If you had to narrow it down to just one film that defined 1999, what would it be? The contenders are too many.