Best. Movie. Year. Ever.
Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen is culture writer Brian Raftery's tribute to and analysis of what he considers a year of the most visionary films in the history of American cinema. In terms fitting of the topic, our Best. Movie. Year. Ever.
At first you might read the book's title and be like, 1999? Best ever? That's just, like, your opinion, man. That's what I thought anyway. But then I read Best. Movie. Year. Ever's table of contents, divided into 4 seasons and 17 chapters, each of the latter covering one or more of the year's pivotal films. You start in winter with The Blair Witch Project, Office Space, and The Matrix. And that's just winter. Do I even need to go on?
Remember, when we're talking about How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen, we're talking more than movies we loved and that were blockbuster hits. Some of these, with their feats of filming, technology, and storytelling, extended or eliminated the previous boundaries of filmmaking and box offices. Fight Club came out in the fall of 1999. The year also saw American Beauty. Being John Malkovich. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. The Sixth Sense. The Virgin Suicides. Magnolia.
Best. Movie. Year. Ever. delves into how the films it covers were made, and how they affected not only the films, but also the century that followed them. Raftery also scores 130+ new interviews with some of the films' actors and directors, including Edward Norton, Steven Soderbergh, Sofia Coppola, David Fincher, M. Night Shyamalan, David O. Russell, James Van Der Beek (Varsity Blues, baby!), the Office Space dudes, and the guy who played Jar-Jar Binks.
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