By Annabel Schofield



By Annabel Schofield

Best Films of 1999



All About my Mother  (Pedro Almodovar:SP:Comedy)         
A single mother in Madrid sees her only son die on his 17th birthday as he runs to seek an actress's autograph. She goes to Barcelona to find the lad's father, a transvestite named Lola who does not know he has a child. First she finds her friend, Agrado, a wild yet caring transvestite; through him she meets Rosa, a young nun bound for El Salvador, but instead finds out she is pregnant by Lola. With echoes of “Lorca”, "All About Eve," and "A Streetcar Named Desire," the mothers live out grief, love, and friendship.

CAST: Penelope Cruz, Cecilia Roth, Candela Pena & Marisa Paredes. 

 Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

American Beauty      (Sam Mendes:US:Drama/aRomance) 
From the outside, Lester and Carolyn Burnham are the perfect couple, in a perfect house, in a perfect neighborhood. But inside, Lester is slipping deeper and deeper into a hopeless depression. He finally snaps when he becomes infatuated with one of his daughter's friends. Meanwhile, his own daughter, Jane is developing a happy friendship with the shy boy-next-door, Ricky who lives with his bitterly homophobic father.

CAST: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Peter Gallagher, Chris Cooper, Mena Suvari, Wes Bentley & Thora Birch.   

Courtesy of Dreamworks

Being John Malkovich     (Spike Jonez:USA:Comedy/Drama)
Puppeteer Craig Schwartz and pet store clerk, Lotte Schwartz are just going through the motions of their marriage. Craig loves his profession as it allows him to inhabit the skin of others. He begins to take this ability to the next level when he is forced to take a job as a file clerk for LesterCorp. Behind one of the filing cabinets, Craig finds a hidden door which is a portal into the mind of John Malkovich. Maxine Lund, one of Craig's co-workers, thinks that it is a money making opportunity in selling trips into Malkovich's mind for $200 a visit. Craig, Lotte and Maxine begin to understand that anyone entering the portal has the ability to control Malkovich's mind. This ability to control his mind begs the question of the ultimate psychedelic trip for Malkovich himself, who begins to feel that something is not right in the world as he knows it.

CAST: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Octavia Spencer & John Malkovich.

Courtesy of USA Films

Election      (Alexander Payne:USA: Comedy)        
Tracy Flick is running unopposed for this year's high school student election. But school civics teacher Jim McAllister has a different plan. Partly to establish a more democratic election, and partly to satisfy some deep personal anger toward Tracy, Jim talks popular varsity football player Paul Metzler to run for president as well. Chaos ensues.

CAST: Maxhew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Klein & Jessica Campbell.

Courtesy of  Paramount Pictures

Fight Club    (David Fincher:US:Drama) 
A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.

CAST: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt & Helena Bonham Carter.

Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

Go      (Doug Limon:US: Comedy/Crime/Drama) 
Told from three perspectives, a story of a bunch of young Californians trying to get some cash, do and deal some drugs, get wasted, score money and sex in Las Vegas, and generally experience the rush of life.

CAST: Sarah Polley, Timothy Olyphant, Katie Holmes, Jay Mohr & William Fichtner.

Courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Magnolia       (Paul Thomas Anderson:US; Drama) 
24 hours in L.A.; it's raining cats and dogs. Two parallel and intercut stories dramatize men who are about to die: both are estranged from a grown child, both want to make contact, and neither child wants anything to do with their dad. Earl Partridge's son is a charismatic misogynist; Jimmy Gator's daughter is a cokehead and waif. A mild and caring nurse intercedes for Earl, reaching the son; a prayerful and upright beat cop meets the daughter and leads her toward a new calm. Meanwhile, guilt consumes Earl's young wife, while two whiz kids, one grown and a loser and the other young and pressured, face their own truths. The weather, too, is apocalyptic.

CAST: Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, William H Macy, John C Reilley, Phillip Baker Hall & Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Courtesy of New Line Cinema

The Matrix    (The Wachowski Bros: US:Drama/Sci-Fi)     
By day, Thomas A. Anderson is an average computer programmer and by night a hacker known as Neo. Neo finds himself targeted by the police when he is contacted by Morpheus, a legendary computer hacker branded a terrorist by the government. Morpheus awakens Neo to the real world, a ravaged wasteland where most of humanity has been captured by a race of machines that live off of the humans' body heat and electrochemical energy and who imprison their minds within an artificial reality known as the Matrix. As a rebel against the machines, Neo must return to the Matrix and confront the agents: super-powerful computer programs devoted to snuffing out Neo and the entire human rebellion.

CAST: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburn,  Carrie Ann Moss & Hugo Weaving.

Courtesy of Warner Bros
  
Summer of Sam      (Spike Lee:US:Drama) 
Spike Lee's take on the "Son of Sam" murders in New York City during the summer of 1977 centering on the residents of an Italian-American South Bronx neighborhood who live in fear and distrust of one another.

CAST: John Leguiziamo, Mira Sorvino, Adrien Brody, Jennifer Esposito & Patti Lupone.

Courtesy of Buena Vista Pictures

The Virgin Suicides   (Sophia Coppola US:Drama) 
The lives of an eclectic group of men who live in an affluent American suburb in the '70s are forever changed by their obsession with five doomed sisters.


CAST: James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Josh Hartnett & Kirsten Dunst.

Courtesy of  Paramount Pictures

Three Kings     (David O Russell: US:Drama)     
A small group of adventurous American soldiers in Iraq at the end of the Gulf War are determined to steal a huge cache of gold reputed to be hidden somewhere near their desert base. Finding a map they believe will take them to the gold, they embark on a journey that leads to unexpected discoveries, enabling them to rise to a heroic challenge that drastically changes their lives.


CAST: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube & Spike Jonez.

Courtesy of Warner Bros

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