End of History

1999 has been the best year for movies I can ever remember. Probably 'cause the world's gonna end soon, so they might as well get the good ones out, huh?

Anyway, here's my Almost-End Of The Year Movie Round-UP. This is in no way complete, since I still have to see Being John Malkovich, Dogma, Man of the Century, The Messenger, The Green Mile, End of Days, the list goes on...

So here is my list.


**********IMPORTANT NOTE*************

Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace is NOT on here because it's a Star Wars movie. I judge it differently than I would any other type of film. Did I like it? I saw it 19 times, what do you think?

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1.) Fight Club
dir: David Fincher

In what could be contrued as one of the ballsiest and weirdest movies to ever be bankrolled by a major studio (although "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" and "Brazil" are up there, too), Fight Club walks away with my Movie Of The Year So-Far nod.

The movie is about a nameless corporate drone (whom we will refer to as "Jack" since that's what he calls himself) realizing how shallow his life is.

And that's how he met Marla Singer.

And that's how he met Tyler Durden.

It's a movie impossible to describe. It's one of those films where certain images are burned into your conscience forever after watching. Like Tyler's black and white realizations towards the end (i don't want to get into too much detail, since it's the most major spoiler I can think of), like "Jack" walking through the IKEA catalog. The scene with the lye. "Jack" wanting to destroy something beautiful. It's all there.

Plus, it has the perfect ending. Think of it as a paranoid anti-consumerist/pro-terrorist tribute to the end of "Dr Strangelove", with the PERFECT song "Where Is My Mind?" (that song is really the entire message of the movie boiled down into three and a half minutes) standing in for "We'll Meet Again".

"You were looking for a way to change your life. You got it. Now shut-up."


2.) American Beauty/The Matrix

American Beauty is the exact same movie as Fight Club. The only difference is the reaction of the main character to his realization.

If Narrator/Jack from Fight Club were in his mid-40s, he would have been Lester from American Beauty. If Lester were 30, he would have been Jack.

I'm not going to get too heavily into American Beauty, because I have a super-long review of it coming up soon, and it covers all the bases between that and Fight Club.

Man, when I went to go see The Matrix at the cheap theater the night before school started in September, I was SO ready to rip it a new asshole. I thought it would be really overrated and stupid.

Well, it wasn't.

The Matrix is just really a movie you have to see. Some of the dialouge is either too expositional or too stupid, but it doesn't really matter.

One of the best SF movies of the 1990s was The Fifth Element. The Matrix is The Empire Strikes Back to The Fifth Element's A New Hope. Everyone at DFFQI scoffed at that comparison until they actually SAW the movie.


3.) The Iron Giant/Rushmore

The Iron Giant is the best American animated movie I've ever seen. One of those things that's hard to describe. It just IS. The movie makes me feel like I'm a little kid. Fantatic film.

And it has a robot.

I forgot Rushmore even came out this year.

Thrillhouse mentioned a couple of days ago at lunch that it came out this past Febuary. We saw it the day it came out, if memory serves correctly. I think I forgot it was so recent because it is already kinda considered a New American Classic. It has Bill Murray's best performance since, oh, "Ghostbusters".

Max Fischer should be the rightful idol of millions.


5.)Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels

Exudes coolness. Like The Matrix, it's just one of those things you have to see to really get the effect of. Anyway, I couldn't recount the complex plot if I tried.

LS&2SB was one of those movies that has provided DFFQI with an immense wealth of quotable lines. I think Pause's computer is filled to the brim with WAVs of the movie.

"Guns for show, knives for a pro."


6.) South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

Does it appeal to the innate need to hear little kids call each other an uncle fucker in full THX glory, or does this movie function as a biting political satire seldom seen on movie screens anymore?

Both.


NEXT COLUMN: Most Overrated Movie Of The Year (HINT -- "I see dead people")

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Michael Keegan
11.13.1999

http://www.klink.net/~tatara/DFFQI.html