1999: The Podcast

Happy Halloween!

We're joined by critic and horror maven Kristin Battestella to discuss the 2001 remake of the William Castle horror schlock B-movie Thirteen Ghosts (or, in this case, uh...Thir13en Ghosts)

Is it scary? No! But is it fun? Also no!

We talk about the difficulty of remaking B-movies, how great practical effects and set design aren't enough, and the weird joy of truly deranged performances when actors have no idea what movie they are actually in!

PLUS! We recommend our Halloween go-tos!

Brad Bird's second live action film Tomorrowland was released in 2015 to a great deal of hype and high expectations.

Bird was flying high on s string of critically acclaimed animated features, including The Iron Giant (which we covered recently), The Incredibles, and Ratatouille, in addition to his hit entry into the Mission: Impossible franchise Ghost Protocol.

But Tomorrowland was Bird's dream project and sometimes...that can be a problem.

It's a hard movie to hate. But it's also very hard to love. What went wrong? And should Bird stick to animation? We'll talk...

Appropriately the 113th-highest grossing movie of 1999, The Thirteenth Floor opened on May 28th in 4th place behind The Phantom Menace, Notting Hill, and The Mummy

It was the third Cartesian nature of reality philosophy movie set against computer simulation realities in three months, following The Matrix in March and Existenz in April.

The Thirteenth Floor was just the 2nd English language feature from German filmmaker Josef Rusnak, it came following his work as 2nd Unit Director for 1998’s Godzilla, directed by Roland Emmerich who serves as a producer here.

With production design by Bla...

No new episode this week, but please enjoy this rerelease from a year ago, about a movie with a lot of connections to our last episode, The Iron Giant:

October Sky was the 63rd-highest grossing movie of the year, just behind The 13th Warrior.

Opening on February 19th with just shy of $6 million, it went on to gross $34.7 million worldwide on a $25 million budget.

October Sky was adapted from the memoir Rocket Boys (an anagram of "October Sky") by NASA engineer Homer Hickman and directed by Joe Johnston, beautifully shot b...

Our episodes on robots and animation have finally led us here: The Iron Giant, one of 1999's most notorious duds, and also one of its most beloved films.

The Iron Giant was the feature directorial debut of Brad Bird, who would go on to direct landmark Pixar films The Incredibles and Ratatouille  and now serves in Pixar’s senior creative team. Unfortunately released in the highly competitive first week of August, coming in at #9 behind the likes of, among others, The Thomas Crown Affair, Runaway Bride, The Blair Witch Project and, also debuting that weekend, the box...

Following up on our discussion of Bicentennial Man, we discuss two movies, starting with the 28th highest-grossing movie of 2001, Steven Spielberg's A.I. - Artificial Intelligence.

A.I. has a lot of connections to 1999, since it was originally meant to be directed by Stanley Kubrick, who died in 1999, and starred two of 1999's Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominees, Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law.

It's also proven stunningly prescient and holds up in a way that makes it arguably better now than it was 25 years ago.

<...

Bicentennial Man was the 40th highest grossing movie of 1999, opening December 17th in 4th place and taking in $87 million dollars worldwide on an almost literally unbelievable $100 million dollar budget.

It's also the one movie of the year to star the late Sam Neill.

Directed by Chris Columbus with script by Elia Kazan’s son Nicholas Kazan, based on the short story “The Bicentennial Man” AND the novel “The Positronic Man” by Isaac Asimov, with perhaps the most phoned-in score James Horner ever wrote,

Bicentennial Man stars Robin Williams, Sam Neil, Embeth Davidtz, Wendy Crewson, O...

This summer's Toy Story 5 is unique among Toy Story movies in that it's a direct continuation of the story of Toy Story 2, so we decided it was a great time to take a second look at Toy Story 2!

Originally conceived as a direct-to-video sequel, Toy Story 2 opened November 19, 1999, bringing in $487 million worldwide and going on to become the 3rd-highest grossing movie of the year.

The film brought back Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Annie Potts, Laurie Metcalf, R. Lee Ermey, Estelle Harris, from the first film, ad...

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was the 4th-highest grossing movie of 1999, behind Toy Story 2, The Sixth Sense, and The Phantom Menace, opening on June 11 and taking in $55 million that weekend, going on to make $206 million at the domestic box office on a $33 million budget.

Directed by Jay Roach and written by Mike Myers and Michael McCullers, The Spy Who Shagged Me saw Heather Graham stepping in to the Powers Girl role, replacing Elizabeth Hurley. The hugely anticipated and hyped sequel to the 1997 original, the movie came in with sky high expectations.

The results w...

VARSITY BLUES director Brian Robbins follow-up was another inspirational, somewhat edgy sports movie HARDBALL - this time about baseball and set in Chicago.

1999 icon Keanu Reeves plays down-on-his-luck sports gambler Conor O'Neill who finds himself the head coach of an inner-city Chicago youth baseball team. Somehow, he makes the team better. Somehow, the team makes him better. Diane Lane is also involved for unclear reasons.

Is HARDBALL a good baseball movie? No. But is it a good movie? Also no.

But the kids are great, including a very young Michael B. Jordan.

We sadly lost 1990s icon James Van Der Beek in February, so we decided it was time to look at his most prominent non-Dawson's Creek role - the teen comedy-drama sports movie Varsity Blues.

Released very early in the year on January 15th, Varsity Blues was the 45th highest grossing movie of the year. Opening as a surprise number, it made back most of its 16 million dollar budget in its debut weekend and would go on to gross an impressive 54 million dollars worldwide, but it really became a summertime hit in its home video re...

Last time we looked at Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 film Magnolia, so we decided to take a look at his follow-up, 2002's Adam Sandler-led absurdist romantic dramedy Punch-Drunk Love.

Anderson's shortest and most overlooked film, Punch-Drunk Love is now considered by many to be among his best. At 95 minutes, the film never faulters and drags, and its balance of performance, direction, and musical score amount to so much more than the sum of their parts.

It also has some interesting connection to 1999, not least because Anderson - a huge Adam Sandler fan - was determined to...

We last talked about Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia nearly four years ago, so given Anderson recently (finally) won an Oscar for One Battle After Another, what better time than now for a revisit?

Magnolia was a modest commercial success at the time but was lauded by critics, became something of a cult hit, and eventually worked its way into the cultural zeitgeist, in no so small part due to Tom Cruise's character Frank TJ Mackey (and his, uh...speeches).

The film has, for a number of reasons, taken on new cultural significance in the ensuing yea...

A president faking a war to distract from a political scandal?? WHAT???

We’re doing a new See Also this week, related to some of the recent movies we’ve discussed.

The 57th highest-grossing movie of 1997 and the 46th highest-grossing of 1998.

Released limited on Christmas Day 1997 and wide on January 4th 1998 where it finished 4th behind Titanic, Good Will Hunting, and As Good As It Gets, it went on to gross 64 million dollars on a 15 million dollar budget

Directed by Baltimore Barry Levinson and written by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet, and...

EDtv opened in third place on March 26th right behind our last movie, Analyze This in 2nd and Forces of Nature in 1st, going on to gross $35 million worldwide on a budget of $80 million.

Directed by Ron Howard, it is a remake of the 1994 Quebecois film Louis 19, King of the Airwaves, with a script adapted by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, it stars Matthew McConaughey, Jenna Elfman, Woody Harrelson, Ellen DeGeneres, Sally Kirkland, a frankly Oscar-worthy Martin Landau, Rob Reiner, Dennis Hopper, Elizabeth Hurley, Harry Shearer, Ian Gomez, Rupaul, Michael Moore, Jay Leno, George Plimpton, and Bill...

57th on the 1999 box office chart, For Love of the Game marked director Raimi’s first foray into big-budget, mass-market filmmaking (which would ultimately pave the way for being handed the enormous task of finally bringing Spiderman to the screen in 2002)

But love and baseball was very different territory for Raimi, and his inexperience in the realm of pop movie making (as well as in directing romance) proved to be a hindrance.

For Love of the Game is, unofficially, the third and final entry in Kevin Costner's baseball trilogy, following 1989's Field of Dreams and 1988's Bul...

It's Oscars Weekend!

1999 was a weird year in Oscar history, as the awards held that year saw one of the most controversial Best Picture wins ever (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE) and the awards held the following year honoring the awards of 1999 gave the Best Picture Oscar to a film that, well, has not aged well at all (AMERICAN BEAUTY)

So to mark the weekend, we took some time to discuss those two films and their legacies and discussed our picks for some of the worst Best Picture wins in recent history. We talk FORREST GUMP, BRAVEHEART...

Analyze This was the 18th-highest grossing movie of 1999, opening on at #1 March 5th – the same day as Cruel Intentions, which opened number 2 - and taking in $177 million worldwide on an $80 million budget.

Analyze This gave us the unlikely comedy duo of Billy Crystal and (a then new to comedy) Robert DeNiro, alongside Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palminteri, and Joe Viterelli

Directed by the late great Harold Ramis and written by Ramis, Peter Tolan, and, somewhat shockingly, Kenneth Lonergan, Analyze This made a lot of its then very novel premise of a gangster getting therapy...but also happ...

It's Valentine's Day, so we're taking one last look at the non-1999 landscape before we return to 1999 next week with the movie that reset the standard for romantic comedies, Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally.

Joining us is returning friend of the pod Dan Colón, co-host of our podcast network's very own The Monsters that Made Us.

We talk Crystal, Ryan, Carrie Fisher, Barry Sonnenfeld, and if we've really seen a romantic comedy since (not called Notting Hill) that has come close to reaching its considerable romcom heights.

This week, Julia reports back from the screening she attended of "Father Mother Sister Brother", the latest from "Ghost Dog" writer/director Jim Jarmusch.

"Father Mother Sister Brother" is an anthology dramedy starring Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Sarah Greene, Indya Moore, and Luka Sabbat.

Julia and John discuss the film and take another stab at what makes a Jarmusch film a Jarmusch film, the career of Tom Waits, great casting, and some of their favorite anthology films.

In honor of the late Rob Reiner we are looking at The Story of Us, the 74th highest-grossing movie of the year, finishing just ahead of earlier entry Blast from the Past. Opening #2 behind Fight Club on October 15th and going on to gross $59 million worldwide on a $50 million dollar budget.

Starring Bruce Willis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Reiner himself, Rita Wilson, Julie Hagerty, Paul Reiser, and Tim Matheson, The Story of Us is one of Reiner’s worst-reviewed movies, who, after an unbelievable run of movies in the late 80s and early 90s started running into tro...

Merry Christmas and happy every other holiday!

In this episode, John and Julia each recommend five of their favorite "alternative" Christmas movies. The like of It's a Wonderful Life, Home Alone, Love Actually, Miracle on 34th Street, and, yes, even Die Hard are off-limits.

Instead, we present 10 movies that are maybe not in your annual Christmas rotation but ought to be! Enjoy!

Julia's picks:

The Ref (1994)

Carol (2015)

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941)

A Christmas Tale (2008)

The Shop Around the...

It's Christmas time, so we're looking at a movie that tells the story of a mysterious man who spends a lot of time on the roof with his animal friends and has the ability to sneak into your house undetected as if by magic: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai!

Ghost Dog appears nowhere on the 1999 box office charts because it technically didn’t have a major theatrical release in the US until March of 2000 (it did begin its festival run in 1999, starting in May at the Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for the Pal...

The first of what will be a series of smaller episodes where we take a look at a movie that is somehow related to our most recent subject.

This time, our See Also recommendation for The Insider is Billy Ray's superb 2003 docudrama/thriller Shattered Glass.

Featuring incredible performances from a uniformly excellent cast, especially Hayden Christensen as the title character and Peter Sarsgaard as New Republic editor Chuck Lane, Shattered Glass deserves it place among the best movies about journalism and the best movies of 2003.

It's also newly relevant in...

Michael Mann's The Insider is easily the most glaring omission from the our initial 18, universally regarded as one of the best – if not THE best – movie of 1999.

Finishing in 69th place, sandwiched between two previous entries, Girl Interrupted at 70th and Mystery Men at 68th, The Insider stars Russell Crowe, in an Oscar-nominated performance, and Al Pacino alongside an incredibly deep supporting class (including the greatest character actor alive, Stephen Tobolowsky)

Directed by Michael Mann and adapted from the 1996 Vanity Fair article "The Man Who Knew Too Much" by Marie Brenner, The Insider received rave reviews...

True Crime was the 94th-highest grossing movie of 1999, grossing just $17 million on a $50 million budget with a fairly limited release.

Starring and directed by Clint Eastwood, True Crime was largely forgotten and remains overlooked most likely due to its release at what can be described as Eastwood’s most prolonged artistic lull in the mid 1990s, starting with 1997’s Absolute Power and Midnight in the Garden of Eden, 2000’s Space Cowboys, and 2002’s Blood Work. That lull would end with 2003’s acclaimed Mystic River, which earned Oscars for both Sean Penn and Tim Robbins as well as Best Direct...

The Sixth Sense was one of the biggest movies of the year, second only to The Phantom Menace. And since it's Halloween and Julia had never seen it before, we thought it was time to take a second look.

A movie best remembered for its plot twist (and the meticulous build up to it), The Sixth Sense is nonetheless at its core a drama about grief. Once you know the ending, the experience of the movie changes. But is it still good? Does M. Night Shyamalan's breakthrough film deserve its status on the 1999 Mount Rushmore?

...

October Sky was the 63rd-highest grossing movie of the year, just behind The 13th Warrior.

Opening on February 19th with just shy of $6 million, it went on to gross $34.7 million worldwide on a $25 million budget.

October Sky was adapted from the memoir Rocket Boys (an anagram of "October Sky") by NASA engineer Homer Hickman and directed by Joe Johnston, beautifully shot by journeyman cinematographer Fred Murphy with a score by Mark Isham it starred newcomer Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Lauren Dern, William Lee Scott, Chad Lindberg, Natalie Canderday, Chris Ellis, and in a really wonderful pe...

Despite its reputation as giant bomb, Entrapment was the 24th-highest grossing movie of 1999, coming in just behind another movie starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, The Haunting.

Entrapment opened on April 30th at number 1 with an impressive $20 million debut, dethroning The Matrix at the top box office spot, going on to gross $212 million worldwide.

It has since gone on to be synonymous with "high profile dud from 1999", but does it really deserve that reputation?

Its relative success at the box office aside, Entrapment is unpretentious, silly, and a lot of fun, even if it neve...

The Thomas Crown Affair was the 31st-highest grossing movie of 1999, coming in one slot below another entry, Galaxy Quest, opening August 6th at number 3 at the box office behind the debut of the juggernaut The Sixth Sense at number one and Runaway Bride at number 2.

The first of two 1999 film besides (besides The 13th Warrior, which we also recently discussed) from Die Hard director John McTiernan, The Thomas Crown Affair is a remake of the 1968 Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway caper of the same name.

Starring Pierce Brosnan in the title role - at the height of his...

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 7/24/24:

Today marks the 26th anniversary of one of the true low points of 1999 and pop culture in general - the human rights disaster that was Woodstock 99.

Dan Colón, of CageClub's very own The Monsters That Made Us podcast, joined John to talk about the greed, mayhem, and madness that defined Woodstock 99.

The Woodstock that was just so great that it convinced everybody to never Woodstock again, 1999's 30th anniversary festival (inspired by the relative success of the 25th anniversary Woodstock 94) was...a lot of things. But mostly it was an epi...

Muppets From Space was the 95th-highest grossing movie of 1999, opening in 4th place behind juggernauts American Pie, Wild Wild West, and The Phantom Menace.

Directed by Tim Hill, the co-developer and longtime director of Spongebob Squarepants (which debuted 3 days later!) and written by longtime Muppet writer Jerry Juhl alongside Joey Mazzarino and Ken Kaufman, Muppets From Space was the third of the 1990s cinematic Muppet revival (following Christmas Carol and Treasure Island)

Unlike the two other films released that year, Muppets From Space was an attempt to get back to basics - less music...

Galaxy Quest was one of the great summer movies of 1999. Except it was released, for some reason, at Christmas.

Lovingly sending up television sci-fi of a certain era - and heavily grounded in Star Trek - Galaxy Quest was a modest success as 30th highest grossing movie of 1999

The second feature film, both overall and in as many years following the Vince Gilligan-penned Home Fries with Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson in 1998, from accomplished television director Dean Parisot, and witten by David Howard and Rob Gordon, Galaxy Quest stars Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan...

August 1999's The 13th Warrior was (mostly) directed by legendary Predator and Die Hard director – and occasional felon – John McTiernan, and released just three weeks after his other (far more successful) 1999 film The Thomas Crown Affair.

Based on the 1976 novel "Eaters of the Dead" by Michael Crichton (who also took over to direct several scenes), The 13th Warrior stars Antonio Banderas, Vladimir Kulich, Dennis Storhoi, Diane Venora, Richard Bremmer, Tony Curran, and Omar Sharif

It took two decades to finally get Crichton’s reimagining of "Beowulf" to the screen, and the film is best remembered as a fascinat...

We are kicking off the summer by returning to the box office top 10 for the first time since Runaway Bride with one of the 1999’s big summer blockbusters, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me!

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was the 4th-highest grossing movie of 1999, behind Toy Story 2, The Sixth Sense, and The Phantom Menace, opening on June 11 and taking in $55 million that weekend, going on to make $206 million at the domestic box office on a $33 million budget.

Directed by Jay Roach and written by Mike Myers and Michael McCullers, The...

Joe the King was the directorial debut of long-time career supporting actor and occasional indie leading man Frank Whaley, who also wrote the script based partly on his own life.

It stars Noah Fleiss in the title role, Karen Young, John Leguizamo, Whaley’s friend and frequent collaborator Ethan Hawke, Camryn Manheim, Max Ligosh, a very young Kate Mara, and Whaley’s The Doors co-star, the late Val Kilmer. as Joe’s abusive alcoholic father.

Critics were kind of all over the place about Joe the King, a film very much of its time, although the perfo...

The Limey was 170th highest grossing movie of 1999, finishing just one spot ahead of cult favorite Jawbreaker

Released October 8th in just 17 theaters and going on to make $3.2 million on a $10 million budget, The Limey was directed by Steven Soderbergh, just on the verge of his first major commercial successes (Erin Brokovich and Traffic, both released on opposite ends of 2000) and following another acclaimed crime caper, 1998’s Elmore Leonard adaptation Out of Sight.

Featuring a tour-de-force performance from Terrence Stamp,  The Limey crosses genre boundaries, it also straddles the line between Soderbergh's smaller, more risk-taking film...

Actor Val Kilmer died on April 1st of this year, after a long battle with throat cancer. He was 65.

Kilmer's film career began in the 1980s with iconic turns in the likes of Top Gun and Real Genius, but it was in the 1990s where be became an icon in a decade known primarily one dominated by iconoclasts, starting with his portrayal of Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's The Doors, and including memorable bit roles in movies like True Romance, replacing Michael Keaton as Batman in Batman Forever, and what man consider his greatest role as Doc Holida...

Sweet and Lowdown opened on December 3rd in just 3 theaters and taking in an impressive 31,562 dollar per screen average

Written and directed by Woody Allen, it stars Sean Penn as fictional jazz guitar legend Emmet Ray alongside Samantha Morton and Uma Thurman, Brad Garrett, John Waters, Anthony LaPaglia, and Brian Markinson, among others.

Sweet and Lowdown was a welcome end to what many saw as a mid-90s slump for Allen, who had released a string of movies who that had been received with mixed or sometimes scathing reviews, like 1995’s Mighty Aphrodite, 1996’s Everyone Says...

57th on the 1999 box office chart, For Love of the Game marked director Raimi’s first foray into big-budget, mass-market filmmaking (which would ultimately pave the way for being handed the enormous task of finally bringing Spiderman to the screen in 2002)

But love and baseball was very different territory for Raimi, and his inexperience in the realm of pop movie making (as well as in directing romance) proved to be a hindrance.

For Love of the Game is, unofficially, the third and final entry in Kevin Costner's baseball trilogy, following 1989's Field of Dreams and 1988's Bul...