I’ve been writing about the 1999 movie year for seven months, and in a selective examination of the most popular years in cinema before the turn of the millennium, it’s striking that much of it really does look like any other year of its era – drastically different, sometimes almost unrecognizable from the perspective of a quarter century later, but not a wealth of endless treasures either. Admittedly, some of that has to do with my attraction to the year’s little-remembered and sometimes little-noticed curiosities, and my avoidance of some of the biggest, most-mentioned titles. But the fact is that it took those of us who lived through it a while to realize that 1999 could be a far above-average year for movies. It would also be ridiculous to point to a single day as a turning point in that year. And yet, there’s something fascinating about August 6, 1999, arguably the best weekend for American movies all year. Has there been a better weekend of its kind since then, by the way?
Opportunism, strategy, superstition and luck collide every week in the release calendars, so don’t give them too much importance here either. Does it really matter whether three Kings, Bringing the dead back to life, Be John Malkovich, The true story and the American release of Princess Mononoke Didn’t they all come out on the exact same opening day if they all came out at the same time in the same autumn? Probably not, but the idea that on a single weekend – and in August, of all days, which was still largely considered a dumping ground at the time – everyone with access to a multiplex cinema could choose between M. Night Shyamalan’s The sixth Sensethe remake of Thomas Crown is unbelievablethe instant animation classic The Iron Giantthe crazy superhero parody Mysterious men or, what causes some big problems, the sweet-subversive teen comedy Thick. In addition, 6.8.99 was also the weekend on which The Blair Witch Project added another 1,000 theaters (and damn, Deep blue sea another 47 added). Eyes wide closed was still there, and Bow finger stepped in the following weekend. Sometimes it can take months to get ten releases this good together.
August 6, 1999 was the epicenter of this unexpected boom in quality, and it goes without saying that this day offered a more varied program than the corresponding weekend 25 years later, which begins in parallel with the release of another thriller by M. Night Shyamalan, but then immediately Harold and the purple crayon and gives up (at least as far as wide releases go). In 1999, moviegoers could choose between Bruce Willis in a quiet, creepy thriller with what were then faint hints of a murderous ending; the last and perhaps best hurrah of Rene Russo as the decade’s most enduring on-screen chemist in a charming heist love story; Ben Stiller leading an eclectic alternative comedy cast through a colorful, big-budget spoof with some Simpsons/SNL-Style disrespect; a direct SNL-inspired cast of comedians acting alongside a delightful Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst in a period teen comedy; and the decade’s best challenge to the supremacy of Disney animation, from the filmmaker who will next The Incredibles.
Of course, most people simply chose The sixth Sense – this weekend and the weekends after, when the hype surrounding the surprisingly strong opening became one of the biggest hits of the year. Not quite as big as the war of stars Prequel, which is the highest-grossing domestic release since Titanicbut with weekly delays that were more reminiscent of the latter than the former. If dark threat came with what was closest to a guarantee of big money, The sixth Sense was the true cultural phenomenon of the year, turning a typically direct line from Shyamalan – say it with me: “I see dead people” – into a catchphrase and (not that) eventually into a hackneyed punch line, if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s an imperfect, sometimes stupid move, but it works: Truly, no single line from a 1999 film lives on so permanently in the cultural afterlife. The The sixth Sense The fact that the book also contains many sensitive reflections on grief and lasting relationships has made it seem less and less likely with each passing year that Shyamalan could top it – at least as a mass audience phenomenon.
Thomas Crown is unfathomableWhile it wasn’t director John McTiernan’s biggest hit, it was his last popular and well-reviewed film to date, and one of his most elegant films. It’s also Pierce Brosnan’s only good film that embraces his laid-back James Bond persona without parodying it, and the only time Rene Russo played a star’s action love interest in a ’90s film that actually gives her scenes from her character’s point of view. In general, the film prioritizes its characters over the action; it’s a gangster film, with a total of two gangster sequences, one at the beginning and one at the end of the film, that are more clever than titillating. The rest is Russo and Brosnan circling each other attractively and occasionally frustrated (and having surprisingly explicit sex).
Thomas Crown became the top choice for adults throughout August – while the three more youth-oriented films of August 6 all more or less flopped. Mysterious men was arguably ahead of its time, parodying superheroes before they became ubiquitous in the following decade – and was thus forced to develop a broader approach to its satire, either stealing from the Schumacher era of Batman films or lovingly parodying them (probably both). The film now feels deeply alienated from what most superhero films look and feel like, not least because it has a much more pronounced live-action cartoon look, full of fisheye lenses, busy production design and advertising campaign distortions. (The director, Kinka Usher, made commercials and returned to that world immediately after his only film appearance.) The Iron Giantreturned to hand-drawn animation in the same year, in which Toy Story 2 pushed the form further toward a computer-generated future. Anyone who liked the film knew it would be considered a classic for decades after its flop, and they were right—though to little benefit, as Bird never made another 2D cartoon and Warner Bros. once again cancelled any plans for an animated feature preserving the legacy. Thickwas appropriate for its time, featuring two rising stars (and future faces of cinematic boredom) in Williams and Dunst, but its own setting – a trip back in time to the Watergate era, complete with a pitch-perfect Dan Hedaya as Richard Nixon – probably confused some of the studio’s intended target audience.
It would be difficult to make five new films into hits under any circumstances; the idea that even one of them would be a huge success is already a contradiction in terms. This success is one of the five films with a measurable impact on the new millennium, it launched Shyamalan’s career and gave Bruce Willis another ten years as a star in major studios. But even The sixth Sense did not exactly herald a new avant-garde of cinema – part of Shyamalan’s enduring appeal is his willingness to direct B-movies and Twilight Zone premises. Some of the summer of 1999 crew may have even helped (in however small a way) hasten the end of These Types of Movies, gradually adding them to the ever-growing list of studio programs we look forward to with nostalgia. You can glean premillennial excitement from many of the great (and not-so-great) films that followed in the fall of 1999; by comparison, this group of five seems, if not cavalier, then understandably ignorant of their place. They’re just several months of good movies released on a single day. It’s easy to look back on 1999 with affection, given the sheer volume of good-to-great movies we got, which regularly became breathtaking sometime around mid-summer. That abundance of time, however, can also reveal something less sweet: a clearance sale that some of us were lucky enough to attend and are now forbidden to remember.
Jesse Hassenger is Associate Movies Editor at pasteHe also writes about movies and other pop culture topics for a number of media outlets, including GQ, Decider, Vulture and SportsAlcohol.com, where he also has a podcast. Following @rockmarooned on Twitter is a great way to find out what he’s watching or listening to and what awful flavor of Mountain Dew he’s recently drunk.
