Cinematic Throwbacks: March 1999 25th anniversary

Okay, now that we hit March the great movie year of 1999 was really ready to get going. 

First up, and the first movie I saw in my 20s, was Cruel Intentions.

This somewhat anachronistic film was based off of what earlier became Dangerous Liasons (I could check the French spelling of it, but I won't). But instead of adults engaging in various sexual manipulations, here it took place in a New York prep school.

The film was a huge deal for me going in because of Sarah Michelle Gellar. 1999 was prime Buffy time, and SMG was breaking into movies. She had just been in a trifle of a romcom called Simply Irresistible, which was also a big deal to me going in, but wasn't that good going out. This film always looked like the better bet anyway, with her playing the bad girl.

So she is the stepsister of Ryan Phillippe's womanizer, who bets that he can sleep with the innocent new girl Reese Witherspoon. But the two stepsiblings have their own kind of incestuous thing going on. And Phillippe falls for real for Witherspoon (in real life too).

Cruel Intentions is great fun. It has a wicked sense of humor. Yeah some of this wouldn't fly today but I still enjoy some of the film's less than PC material.

Gellar delivers her best movie performance. She's awesome, and trust me, 20 year old me seeing her deliver the line "I'll fuck your brains out" was a formative moment.

Witherspoon had her own big 1999, with Election coming not long after this. She's really good in this.

Always felt the weak link was kind of Phillippe. I don't think he is terrible, but he is a lot more convincing as a bastard than the supposedly changed man he becomes later in the film.

Supporting cast is super 1999, most notably with Selma Blair as the innocent pawn, who is played as the cutest girl ever with a severe brain injury. I'm convinced Emma Stone based her Poor Things character on this. It's extra funny when you know that Blair was by far the oldest actor of the younger cast. 

Joshua Jackson pops up for a couple scenes as a flaming homosexual. The film has a less than evolved take on gay people.

Cruel Intentions has one of the best soundtracks of the late 90s, and that Bittersweet Symphony needle drop makes for one of my all time favorite endings. 

This movie was a decent hit I theaters, then grew its following on video. They made a basically unrelated sequel that was notable for featuring an early Amy Adams performance. And they tried to do a sequel series some time later that brought back Gellar and never got picked up..

Then at the end of the month we got 2 more big winners of wildly differing styles.

Few films from 1999 cast a longer shadow than The Matrix. This is one of those cases where so much has been said about a film over such a long time that I'm not sure I have much to add.

History says this film came completely out of nowhere to become one of the biggest hits of that year. But no, I saw the trailer for this for months, and it was clear that this film was going to be something. The visuals were clearly amazing. The action looked cool. The only reason to have any doubt was the presence of Keanu Reeves, who at that point was 5 years removed from Speed, with a lot of duds since.

Now of course the film stands as maybe the signature moment of Reeves career, as Neo, the savior of mankind from the enslavement of AI. Famously, Neo was originally supposed to be played by Will Smith. It's hard to picture Smith at that point toning down his act. We were better off with Reeves, who fits this part like a glove.

The visuals got a lot of the hype at the time, and do mostly hold up, although this film used some techniques that we did already see in a couple other films (notably Blade and Dark City). Matrix still built on it in creative ways. The set pieces in this thing are still very exciting.

Laurence Fishburne is awesome as Morpheus. Always felt Carrie Anne Moss was kind of boring as Trinity, but she isn't bad either. Hugo Weaving is an iconic villain.

The music and look of the film is very dated, but it fits the.story. I mean, if I could live in a giant sim that still has it being 1999 I might do it. 

Some of the dialogue in this is pretty cheesy, but the world building is exceptional. Almost every scene adds something new and interesting.

If only the sequels weren't such a drastic comedown, but every time I watch the original I do want to see more of this world. Just maybe we needed different filmmakers, cause the Wachowskis never came.cloae.to equaling this.

Opening that same day was another teen movie classic, and another one based off an existing story. This time it was The Taming Of The Shrew.

Julia Stiles is said shrew, the prickly Kat. And yes, you have to suspend disbelief that nobody would be interested in her. Wikipedia tells me that her role could have been either Katie Holmes or Eliza Dushku though, which stings a bit. Still, Stiles is great in this and it kicked off a run of movies for her. 

She gets pursued by Heath Ledger, and boy does this movie in no way indicate that he was going to have the career he did. He IS age appropriate here (despite looking 30), and does have the requisite rogueish charm, but you never know.

The movie also helped launch a bunch of other actors, including the baby-faced Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and David Krumholtz (my fave performance here).

I would have thought the crazy cute Larisa Oleynik would also have gone on to more after this, but that never happened.

This movie is basically the same as She's All That (both feature Gabrielle Union). Now, this didn't have a Rachael Leigh Cook supernova, but I do think this is the superior movie, cause it has better written characters and a little more substance to it. Well, except for Andrew Keegan.

It also has the nicest looking movie high school setting I have ever seen. I mean, my god, it's beautiful.

Like most of these moves, 10 Things was a modest hit in theaters that grew a bigger following on video.