It is Star Wars, The Phantom Menace which gets this years award for
being the most over-hyped film of the year, if not the decade, and what it
delivered was a lot less than promised; overt racism, poor plot, poor acting
and a screenplay a child of ten could have written. In the case of Bond,
the world has had enough.Most of the films on offer provided something by way of an evening's
entertainment but very few rose above the rest. Luckily, very few fell to the
bottom.
Standing head and shoulders above all other releases was
Fight Club. An excellent piece of work and sure to
take the Oscars by storm; best film, best director, best leading actor, best
supporting actor, best screenplay, best musical score, best plot twist, best
Meat Loaf, best fight sequence and best soap. Norton repeats the excellent
performance he gave us in American History X.
George Lucas, on the other hand, should be content with the award for talking
bollocks for his Midichlorin c--p and self-concocted religious beliefs. If
Phantom Menace walks away with much more than the most offensively
crafted character award ( Jar Jar Binks ) and a special mention in the,
"Who the f--k's Padme now ?", competition it will be a great shame.
Also soaring high in the hype stakes was
The Blair Witch Project ( with its fabricated news
stories pushed out over the internet ) taking a gold star for concept if not
for execution. Repeating, and well exceeding, the earlier success of
Pi, it shows that low budget films still have a lot of
life, both visually and commercially, in them.
Starting from pretty low-key beginnings, The Matrix
showed the leading edge of technology at its best, showed just how poor
Lucas's offerings were in comparison and made itself a number one best seller
when released on video and DVD. A superb mix of Science Fiction, action and
special effects.
Whilst The Matrix is in the running for best screenplay and best
special effects, Cronenberg's eXistenZ tags at its
coat tails just inches behind. Both have a plot which cries out to be seen
again; Star Trek, Insurrection on the other hand
would indicate that the Trekkie gravy train has finally run out of steam.
On the comedy front, East is East wins hands down. The
funniest film presented for a long time which also managed to magnificently
capture the darker side of home life tensions in a mixed marriage,
Pakistani-English, family living in England's North West during the 70's.
Also in the home life category was
This Year's Love ( Camden Town ),
Waking Ned ( Ireland )
and Orphans ( Glasgow ). All offered cutting insights
into the worlds they explored as did
All About My Mother ( Todo Sobre Mi Madre ) which
definitely deserves the best foreign film award. It is This Year's Love
which must take the award for most depressing film of the decade, if not the
century.
On a lighter note, it was Go from the States, along with
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which provided us with
our American, Road Movie course.
Bringing up the comedy rear was Guest House Paradiso,
showing just how quickly yesterday's comedy vehicles become jaded.
Meanwhile, South Park served us well with its message of
unwarranted censorship although its whole was diminished by its so excellent
opening sequences. It was Arlington Road,
The Siege and
Enemy of The State which warned us of dangers
elsewhere.
The horror fans were served well with the re-release of both
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist,
putting both The Haunting and
The Mummy in the shade. John Carpenter's
Vampires was the most disappointing of the bunch with
The Blair Witch Project emerging as this year's clear winner.
John Trovolta performed stirlingly in both
A Civil Action and
The General's Daughter whilst Arnie Schwarzenegger
returned in the apocalyptic End of Days. Robert de
Niro made a welcome comeback in Analyze This with Billy
Crystal giving his best performance for a long time as supporting actor.
Disney came up trumps with A Bugs Life and
Ed TV finally made it to the screen, both contrasting
interestingly with last year's offerings of Antz and
The Truman Show.
The surprises this year were Pleasantville and
Election which were far better than I'd expected and
Dogma made for an unexpected but satisfying end to the
year's viewing.
Among the block-busters, Notting Hill, Austin Powers and
James Bond were a few of the casualties of a discerning palette whilst
Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, The Sixth Sense and many more, simply
did not appeal. Once again, Virus mysteriously failed to appear.
A good, but average, offering for the UK in 1999; Fight Club, The
Matrix, eXistenZ and the retrospectives American History X
and Pi being the films I'd like to see again in the year 2000.
It was Fight Club which was easily the best film of
1999 with the UK's, homegrown, East is East taking the
second place whilst The Phantom Menace was easily the
worst.
