No David Cronenberg film is really complete until you’ve seen it twice, which makes him an ideal candidate for this reevaluation series. In 1999, eXistenZ got slightly lost amid the surprise hype of The Matrix and the manufactured hype of The Phantom Menace. It seemed like a strong movie then, and in some ways even stronger now. Double identities, the mind-body split, infection, the divide between reality and illusion and innovative forms of sex have been pet Cronenberg themes as long as he’d made movies; in eXistenZ, these ideas have gained in resonance in light of A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007).

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In 1999, Election seemed to mark the arrival of a fresh talent. Alexander Payne, director of the overrated (albeit at the time, little-seen) Citizen Ruth, had solved the problem of the earlier film by making all of his characters equally contemptible. True, Citizen Ruth may treat both sides of the abortion debate with scorn, but the movie makes the fatal error of shifting focus to Ruth herself (Laura Dern) at the end. It’s far too earnest a closing note for a scathing comedy, and it’s already clear that Ruth’s own feelings have been lost in the battle over her pregnancy.

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As expected, I’m not the only one who had the idea of revisiting the films of 1999, although the title of the series PopMatters started last week—the most memorable films of 1999—sort of misses the point, I think, even if their individual write-ups do not. The whole idea of this series—for which I’ll post entries roughly corresponding to the anniversary of a film’s release—was to include some of the films that aren’t as memorable, or that seemed important at the time but don’t look that way now. When’s the last time you watched Summer of Sam? Does Arlington Road seem more prescient in a post-9/11 world? Some movies go on to become classics and others don’t, and part of the frustration of reviewing is that it’s virtually impossible to peg films in their own time. The biggest lesson of Pauline Kael: No matter how much you like a movie, do not—do not—compare its premiere to the first performance of The Rite of Spring. Read more »

Clint Eastwood’s stock has been so high in recent years (with Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima and Gran Torino) that it’s hard to believe his first film this decade—which was, according to some sources, supposed to be his last film—was the dopey Space Cowboys (2000), which was followed by the even more ludicrous Blood Work (2002). Although it got some good reviews at the time, True Crime (1999) generally gets lumped in with the embarrassments, and the sub–John Grisham premise—a womanizing, ex-alcoholic reporter (Eastwood) saves an innocent man on death row (Isaiah Washington) at the literal last second—certainly doesn’t do it any favors. But the movie, however flawed, is actually good evidence for the notion that Eastwood can turn mediocre scripts into compelling, personal entertainments. Read more »

With the doldrums of February behind us, it’s time to inaugurate the first in an occasional series: the films of 1999 revisited.

Why 1999? Why now? (And why in March, after we’ve already missed the opportunity to reflect on such sterling entertainments as Virus and She’s All That?) It’s been said that it takes at least 10 years of reflection to assess a film’s lasting worth, and 1999 was packed with releases that are still debated today: Election, South Park, The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, Fight Club. It gave us the movie I spent more time anticipating than any other—that would be Kubrick’s posthumous Eyes Wide Shut, not The Phantom Menace—and a movie that threw me for such a loop that I mistakenly groaned aloud during what I now regard as one of the most heartrending scenes of the ’90s (the sing-along in Magnolia). It was a year when Martin Scorsese’s reunion with Paul Schrader (Bringing Out the Dead) arrived on a wave of hype and then fizzled; and when one of the best-reviewed films, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flowers of Shanghai—which actually premiered at Cannes in 1998—didn’t even get a proper release in most cities. It was also the first year I started writing about movies on a weekly basis, and although I’m loath to revisit my original reviews, this seems like an ideal occasion to reflect on film criticism then and now. (Because, of course, there are no pieces like that these days.)

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