1999: The Podcast

Stir of Echoes was David Koepp's second directorial venture following the success of his 1996 thriller The Trigger Effect. Adapted from a lesser-known work by genre legend Richard Matheson, the film hit at a weird and perhaps unfortunate time. Just 6 years off his massive breakthrough penning Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (a film he wrote when he was not yet 30 years old), Koepp was riding high in the industry. But Stir of Echoes was a low-key ghost story thriller involving a boy who can see and talk to dead people, and, suffice to say, a lot of that oxygen had been sucked up when it arrived more than a month after the runaway hit The Sixth Sense. Still, it was a modest, fairly low-budget success that enjoyed critical admiration for the most part, especially in the form of Kevin Bacon's well-tuned performance - one that could have easily gone off the rails in the hands of a different actor. But is Stir of Echoes actually good? Is it scary?? We invited horror journalist Mary Beth McAndrews to talk to us about her experiences with the film and ask those very questions. You can learn more about her here: https://www.mbmcandrews.com/

It's time for our Round Four recap and it's a very special one! After 40 episodes and 36 movies, and two specials...big changes are coming to 1999: The Podcast. Is it our very own Y2K?? Are we pivoting to video??? Will we both be replaced by cheaper AI alternatives????? No. But find out what IS coming following a look back a the nine movies from the round. We'll recap our favorites, our biggest surprises, our least favorites, and how Wild Wild West artificially inflates the round's total box office and lowers its overall Rotten Tomatoes score! Plus, we'll preview what's ahead for Round 5 (and, yes, there is going to be a round 5!)

Topsy-Turvy, writer-director Mike Leigh's ambitious period musical about the creation of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado", was not a commercial hit, losing about $14 million of its $20 million budget. But like almost all of Leigh's work, it was a critical smash, remaining one of his best-reviewed movies and the recipient of a number of awards, including two Oscars, and landing on a number of year-end best-of lists in 1999. Topsy-Turvy never really had "commercial hit" written all over it, though. It offers a uniformly spectacular cast including Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall, Kevin McKidd, Lesley Manville, and Andy Serkis, and absolutely none of them were at the time (or really are today) bankable stars. And much of its appeal depends on how you feel about (or even if you know the first thing about) the work of Gilbert and Sullivan, hardly tapping into the zeitgeist of mainstream 1999 popular culture. And Leigh's most commercially successful film had been 1994's Secrets and Lies, a runaway, word-of-mouth indy hit and critical and awards season darling. But Leigh is one of the most consistent directors alive, both in terms of the quality and very nature of his films. So in our final "hosts choice" round selection, we invited Joey's co-host on How to Win the Lottery, "Shreds", himself a giant Leigh stan, to discuss Leigh's first real dip into the waters of grand period drama.

Mystery Men was 1999's 68th-highest grossing movie, and an overall money loser. It arrived at a strange but opportune time, as it both lampooned and heralded the rebirth of the superhero genre. The early stages of its production date to the mid 1990s, when movies like 1998’s Blade, often cited as the birthplace of the modern superhero film, began preproduction. Based on the comic book series by Bob Burden, Kinka Usher's Mystery Men was first offered to Danny DeVito and Stiller, who both turned it down for personal reasons. Usher landed the movie thanks to his reputation as a great director of commercials. But the movie's massive cast of established talent and big ambitions proved too much drama for Usher, who, according to Hank Azaria, said "I'm going back to commercials when this is done. I've had enough. I'd much rather do my cool little one-minute shorts that I make than deal with all this nonsense." Mystery Men is very much a product of its time, and is now considered a cult classic. It also stars the late Paul Reubens, so we decided now was the time to talk about it, and we invited filmmaker, pop culture junky, and die-hard Mystery Men evangelist Becky Ellis to join us.

The Straight Story was that other 1999 movie about someone trying to get to a place called Zion. In all seriousness, the beloved film about a man at the end of his life driving his lawnmower across the Midwest to visit his estranged brother is notable for a number of reasons. It's a rare G-rated non-aminated movie (though the rating itself is a source of some controversy). It comes from legendary weirdo auteur David Lynch, most famous for films like Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, and the TV series Twin Peaks, and yet it is astoundingly, aggressively naturalistic and warm. And it's the final film for stuntman-turned-actor Richard Farnsworth, whose performance carried the movie and whose health deteriorated as the film's shoot went on. He would die shortly after its release. And while the awards behemoth American Beauty has aged like fine milk, The Straight Story, which also featured on a ton of critics' best-of lists from 1999, has only earned more and more admirers along the way. Among them our guest today - Lynch fan and film writer Julia Sirmons, who you can learn more about here: juliasirmons.com

Bowfinger could not have come at a better time for any of its three biggest names. In 1999, Frank Oz, who had a string of successful collaborations with Steve Martin, was coming right off the critical and commercial hit In and Out in 1997, which happened to star 1999’s most cursed star yet, one we’ve talked a lot about lately, Kevin Kline. But Martin was in need of a return to form, having come off a string of duds like A Simple Twist of Fate, Mixed Nuts (now a cult Christmas favorite), Father of the Bride 2 and the dire Sgt. Bilko and The Out-of-Towners. And Murphy’s career had hit a similar snag before the late 90s. After a string of huge comedy hits like 48 hours, Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop in the early 80s, Murphy’s track record began to sour, with the diminishing returns of Another 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cops 2 and 3, so-so comedies that never made the best of him like Distinguised Gentelman and Boomerang in the early 90s, all culminating in the legendarily terrible Vampire in Brooklyn in 1995. But Murphy had been given another shot of life with Tom Shadyac's The Nutty Professor remake in 1996. It was Bowfinger that really played to the strength of Oz, Martin, and Murphy, allowing Murphy to showcase his wild comic versatility, Martin his sharp comic writing, and Oz his ability to craft a great, quick-paced feature-length comedy. Even though Bowfinger isn't the best-known or best-remembered of any of the their work, it was a critical hit and is beloved by those in the know, including filmmaker and editor Greg MacLennan, who joined the show to talk about his love of this love-letter to scrappy filmmaking. You can learn more about Greg and his work at electricowlcreative.com

At the 1999 box office, the Dennis Rodman action vehicle Simon Sez came in at... Well, actually, we don't know, because Box Office Mojo's rankings end at #200, which was American Movie, which made $1,165,795. Simon Sez made $292,152 (somehow) on a budget of...well, quite a bit more than that, probably. You've probably never heard of Simon Sez, and we hadn't either, until Joey came upon it accidentally and it was just a movie we couldn't pass up. Simon Sez is a very strange relic of its time, a Eurotrash martial arts action movie, directed by the guy who wrote the Iron Eagle trilogy, that keeps switching genres, featuring an unbearable performance by an unbearable human being (Dane Cook) that was meant for Robert Downey Jr. It is, to use a variation of a phrase we often use on the show, a movie that could only be made at the time. But it's so bizarre and bad that it's impossible to not be fascinated by. We watched it so you don't have to, but we had a great time talking about it with filmmaker Matt Stuertz. You can find Matt on Twitter @MattStuertz

Michael Hoffman's adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream came at the end of a big decade for Shakespeare adaptations in general. Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet starring Mel Gibson was released in 1990, and other hit adaptations would follow - notably Kenneth Branagh’s celebrated Much Ado About Nothing in 1993, Oliver Parker’s Othello, starring Branagh and Laurence Fishburne, in 1995, and Baz Luhrman’s huge hit Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in 1996, a movie that made ten times its 14 million dollar budget. So when A Midsummer Night's Dream, often cited as the most popular Shakespeare play ever, hit early in summer movie season of 1999, it was basically a sure thing, especially given its stellar cast. However, grossing just 16 million dollars, it barely made money on its 11 million dollar budget. Compare that to Romeo + Juliet or even Much Ado, which made 43 million on a less than 6 million dollar budget, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream has to be seen as a dud. It was met with a very mixed (but largely approving) critical response, but what did we think of it? This week, John and Joey welcome accomplished Shakespearean actor, director, and producer Steven Sabel to talk about it. Steven is also the host of Don't Quill the Messenger, a podcast exploring the Shakespeare authorship question.

It is late 1998, Wild Wild West is well into its production, and things are not going well. The film has gone through a stunning roster of would-be stars - Tom Cruise, George Clooney, and Mel Gibson among them - before landing on Will Smith, who turned down the lead role in an obscure sci-fi picture called The Matrix from a couple of fringe indy filmmakers named the Wachowski siblings in order to sign on to director Barry Sonnenfeld's sci-fi/Western mashup adventure. The stars have little chemistry. None of them are happy with the material. Wild Wild West has burned through six writers and several reimaginings. Sonnenfeld - coming off a string of hits in The Addams Family, Get Shorty, and his previous team-up with Smith, Men in Black - sits at a table opposite producer Jon Peters. "I've lost control of the film," he tells Peters. "It has no story, no core, no charm - the jokes don't work and the tone is all over the place." Peters takes a deep breath. He looks down at the table and then up at Sonnenfeld. Suddenly, he slams his fist on the table, shoots up from his chair, and screams at his director. "DAMN IT! I don't care if it has no plot! I don't care if the actors hate it!! I don't care if it's miscast!!! I. ONLY. CARE. ABOUT. GIANT. METAL. SPIDERS. Get that spider onto the big screen. Nothing else matters!!" Peters takes another breath. He sits back down. He looks a startled Sonnenfeld right in the eye. "Nothing. Else. Matters." Wicky wicky wah wah. We're joined this week by Dan Cólon (@DanColon) and Mike Manzi (@the_mikestir), hosts of The Monsters That Made Us.

The shortest-titled movie of 1999 (and among the shortest ever), Go was Doug Liman's follow-up to his 1996 debut, a collaboration with writer John Favreau, Swingers. There is some shared DNA between the two movies - both explore a very specific subculture in LA at a very specific time in the 90s, both drip with cool, and both borrow heavily from other films while creating something all their own. But they're also very different. And Go was often labeled by critics - who overwhelmingly praised the movie - as "Tarantinoesque". Of all the movies we've covered, this one is perhaps the most of its time (by design) and, weirdly, among the least aged, as Go's emphasis on clever dialogue, fast-paced storytelling, and characters that feel like real people make it a movie that is every bit as enjoyable, frantic, surprising, and oddly sweet as it was 24 years ago. John and Joey invited two giant Go fans to discuss all of this - friend of the network Jess Collins, and the co-host of the podcast You Are Good, Alex Steed. Jess is on Twitter @jayarekay_ Alex is on Twitter @alexsteed

Chris Smith and Sarah Price's heartfelt, quirky, and utterly original documentary American Movie was not one of 1999's major blockbuster hits. And of the 200 movies listed in Box Office Mojo's list of film grosses from that year, American Movie comes in at number 200. But it has gone on to become of the most critically successful and beloved documentaries ever made. The story of filmmaker Mark Borchardt's attempt to make his dream movie on a microbudget in his quiet midwestern town. The film ends up as something of a meditation on artistry, the American Dream, family, and the true costs of the relentless will to create. And it is now considered by many to be one of the greatest documentaries ever made, and in some way helped usher in a new era of documentaries as a commercially viable, culturally relevant genre of film. BJ Colangelo, who established herself as the expert on midwest quirkiness in our Drop Dead Gorgeous episode. rejoins us. And this time, so does Harmony Colangelo (who happen to be married and are also the co-hosts of the podcast This Ends at Prom) as we take a loving look at American Movie. Check out This Ends at Prom on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/thisendsatprom

It's the Sarah Rose Cosmetics Mount Rose American Teen Princess Round 3 Review Show. One year and 27 movies later, we're wrapping up round 3 and previewing our fourth round - this time, it's hosts' choice, as John and Joey each pick 4 movies and one they decided on together. But before that, they are joined by their friend and #1 fan Tyler Birth to take a look back at the highs and lows of our request round. Thanks to all our guest from this round: Bridget Todd (The Talented Mr. Ripley) Jenn Tisdale (Jawbreaker) Cody and Garth from Least Haunted (Ravenous) BJ Colangelo, Chelsey Weber-Smith, and Miranda Zickler (Drop Dead Gorgeous) Mark Hofmeyer (Deep Blue Sea) Heather Antos (Tarzan) Dahlia Balcazar (The Haunting) Sebastian Major (The Messenger) and Austin Wolf-Sothern (Bats) You can find Tyler on Twitter @OhThatTyler

"Dusk! With a creepy, tingling sensation, you hear the fluttering of leathery wing! BATS!" Bats. So, not every 1999 movie was a paradigm-shifting landmark. Some of them were unabashedly absurd b-movie creature features about bats. Like Bats. 1999’s 127th-highest grossing movie, Bats opened at #9 just in time for Halloween, on the weekend of October 29th. But it nearly earned back its budget in its opening week, taking in 4.7 million dollars, and going on to earn more than 10 million dollars on a US-only release. Bats is also the worst-reviewed film we’ve covered. But is the Lou Diamond Philips-led horror romp a hidden gem? Maybe! So we asked the world's #1 fan of the movie Bratz, Austin Wolf-Sothern, to go to bat for Bats, a movie Joey ended up loving and John ended up rooting for in spite of all its frustrating shortcomings. You can check out Austin's Patreon site here: The Truth About Cats and Bratz

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc was...big in France? Actually, The Messenger was indeed touted as "Oscar bait" prior to its release in November of 1999. Luc Besson was fresh off of his most commercially successful hit The Fifth Element, and so reteaming with Fifth Element star Milla Jovovich (who at the time was married to Besson) for a big, epic, gritty retelling of the Joan of Arc story seemed like a sure thing. Add in star power from John Malkovich, Dustin Hoffman, and how could you go wrong? Well, The Messenger goes wrong a lot of ways. But it's also not the abysmal disaster some people seem to remember. The Messenger, for all its faults, tries to do something different with the well-worn Joan of Arc story, and it has a lot to recommend it (just maybe not its run-time). This week, Our Fake History host Sebastian Major, who covered Joan in his podcast's first season, joins John and Joey to share his thoughts on the award-winning epic that wasn't.

It's our first anniversary, and so we invited fellow 1999-podcaster Dahlia Balcazar to talk about her podcast, 1999 FOREVER, and her hand-picked 1999 movie: The Haunting! Dahlia tells us why she decided to make an audio essay about the year of all years, and we touch on what was going on in other areas of culture outside of the movie theater, like Y2K and The Sopranos. Dahlia's requested movie was Jan Debont's follow-up to Speed and Twister, the 2nd major...um...adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House. Originally planned to be release with the novel's title intact, it was shortened to The Haunting to avoid confusion with another 1999 movie, The House on Haunted Hill. Starring Lily Taylor, Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Owen Wilson, The Haunting was not a disaster at the box office, cracking the top 25 for the year. But it is, nonetheless, a disaster...and not in the way it's supposed to be, like Twister. Is there any reason to watch this movie? Find out! But there are definitely reasons to listen to 1999: Forever, which you can find here! https://www.salvadordahlia.com/1999-forever

Disney’s Tarzan was, as the 6th-highest grossing movie of the year, a big hit. But it also had a giant budget. Made for $130 million, it grossed $171 million domestically and $448 million worldwide. Tarzan did well with critics, as well. It was nominated for more than 2 dozen different awards, and won the Oscar and Golden Globe for best original song, Phil Collins’ “You’ll Be in My Heart”. It holds a an 89 percent Rotten Tomatoes score with more than 100 reviews, and 79 Metacritic score with 27 reviews, putting it right in the middle of the pack of the so-called Disney Renaissance films. But, oddly, this de facto grand finale of the Disney hand-drawn era just doesn't loom as large as the like of The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, or even Hercules. It will, however, always be in the heart (get it?) of our guest, artist and senior editor at IDW, Heather Antos. She joins John and Joey to talk about why Tarzan is great and deserves its seat in the Disney pantheon. Heather is on Twitter @HeatherAntos

A modest success, Deep Blue Sea was the 29th-highest grossing movie of the year, putting it close the likes of Any Given Sunday, Galaxy Quest, and The Thomas Crown Affair, earning $74 million at the domestic box office on an $80ish million budget but going on to take in $165 million worldwide. Opening on July 30, Deep Blue Sea debuted in 3rd place behind the #1 opening of Runaway Bride and a still-strong Blair Witch Project coming in #2 in its third week. It would continue to stay in the top 10 for a respectable three further weeks. Writing in Wired in 2016, friend of the show and giant Deep Blue Sea fan Brian Raftery noted that it was one of the last movies of its kind, one ubiquitous in the mid-90s, “A]n R-rated B-movie, full of gore and chaos and smart-stupidness.” It felt old-fashioned and anachronistic by the eve of the 21st century, but has gone on to be celebrated as, at once, a shameless facsimile, delightful celebration, and singular exemplar of its specific subgenre. To discuss its legacy and surprising effectiveness, John and Joey invited Deep Blue Sea's most notable fan, Mark Hofmeyer, to explain why it's so great, and to settle which of the film's many doors are best. You can find Mark, and link to his many ventures, on Twitter @Mhofmeyer

John and Joey talk to "Drop Dead Gorgeous" director and founding member of "The State" Michael Patrick Jann. Jann shares his thoughts on the film's journey from critical and commercial dud to beloved cult classic, and shares what he's been up to lately (spoiler, his second feature film is due out this year!)

A critical and commercial failure upon its release, Drop Dead Gorgeous was the 125th-highest grossing movie of 1999. Filmed in the then still novel mockumentary style, the movie about a beauty pageant in Mount Rose, Minnesota was written by a former beauty pageant contestant from Rosemount, Minnesota, Lona Williams (also known as 1985’s Minnesota Junior Miss) and directed by former member of The State and accomplished TV director Michael Patrick Jann. And it boasts a jam-packed cast, including Kirsten Dunst, Allison Janney, Ellen Barkin, Denise Richards, and the film debut of Amy Adams. But in the years since its release, it has become an enormously popular cult favorite, with appreciative audiences finding themselves baffled over its initial critical panning. Drop Dead Gorgeous was requested by return guest Chelsey Weber-Smith, who appeared on our Blair Witch Project episode, this time joined by American Hysteria producer Miranda Zickler and This Ends at Prom co-host BJ Colangelo.

1999's 180th-highest grossing film, Antonia Bird's Ravenous never finished higher than 18th at the domestic box office, earning just over 2 millions dollars on a 12 million dollar budget. And it was never released theatrically outside North America. Ravenous was also the recipient of decidedly (often wildly) mixed critics' reviews, all of whom seem to agree that the movie shifts tones so often and dramatically that it’s hard to actually pin it to any one genre. But like our previous movie, Jawbreaker, it has since developed a loving cult following. So this week Joey and John invited back Logan Ashley-Kisner, who considers Ravenous one of his favorite movies, to help them with the intro, and then speaks to the hosts of the podcast Least Haunted, Cody and Garth, about the history and folklore that serves as the movie's inspiration, as well as a healthy debate about whether Guy Pearce is actually attractive. Logan is on Twitter @transhorrors and his Linktree is available here Check out Least Haunted at their website: https://www.leasthaunted.com/

Our second Round 3 film, Jawbreaker, was requested by our friend and Office Space guest Jenn Tisdale. Jawbreaker was released in theatres on February 19th, making it one of the earliest 1999 films we’ve covered to date. The sophomore feature from writer Darren Stein, Jawbreaker is a John Waters-esque psychedelic high school satire. The 171st-highest grossing movie of the year, it earned 3.1 million on a 3.5 million dollar budget and was a complete failure with critics, holding just a 14% Rotten Tomatoes score and a 22 Metacritic score. The film was really intended for home video consumption, however, and it quickly became a cult classic in that form. Additionally, several critics gave the film a second look much later and came to a much different conclusion. How does it hold up? And does Jenn still love it? And what about that Marilyn Manson cameo? Find out this week!

The Talented Mr. Ripley is one of a few movies that just barely didn't make our first 18, so we were delighted to learn the talented Bridget Todd wanted to give it a shout-out. The second motion picture adaptation of the novel by Patricia Highsmith, Ripley was released just under the wire on December 25th, going on to earn $127 million on a $40 million budget. The film stars Matt Damon, a pre-Goop Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cate Blanchett, Jack Davenport, and James Rebhorn, with music by Gabriel Yared and adapted and directed by Anthony Minghella, just a couple years of his big Oscar haul for The English Patient. Bridget joins John and Joey to argue that, far from being merely an incredible period-specific psychodrama, Ripley has a lot to say about the ways the world was changing in 1999, and is just as relevant as it was 23 years ago...and 70 some-odd years since Tom Ripley first graced the page. Find Bridget on Twitter (where you can link to the rest of her work) @BridgetMarie

Merry Christmas! In the spirit of the season, John and Joey asked their friend (and friend of the network) Juhi Khemani to spend 45 minutes watching the 1999 animated Christmas TV special Olive the Other Reindeer. Olive the Other Reindeer is based on the children's book of the same name by artist J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh. With its unique style, an all-star voice cast, and Michael Stipe, Olive is something of a forgotten gem. And we're here to unforget it! (Except Joey and Juhi, who had never seen it at all...) Enjoy our laid-back Christmas chat and get the fireplace going as you enjoy Juhi's incredible recapping skills and sit in amazement as John regales the listeners with his incredibly random Drew Barrymore story. We hope you and yours are happy and well. Look out for frogs, and see you in 2023!

We have reached the end of Round 2, completed our list of the 18 essential movies of 1999, and it's time for a (Woody's) Roundup last nine episodes. This round saw a lot more comedies, a lot more animation, and some pretty stellar guests. We take a moment to look back at it all, discuss some of what surprised us both, offer ideas on which movies might be ready for a sequel or two, and take preview what's to come (hint: it's a lot!) The show will be back with a new round with a new theme and brand new episodes on January 9th, but in the meantime keep an eye out on your feed for a potential Christmas surprise!

Toy Story 2 is our final film of round 2 and our final pick for the 18 essential movies of 1999. Originally conceived as a direct-to-video sequel, much in line with Disney's strategy of releasing its other sequels to blockbuster animated films like The Return of Jafar and The Lion King 2, it soon became clear that Pixar's vision for Toy Story 2 was far too big and too bold not to grace the big screen. So instead of relegating it to video, Disney triples the budget of the original Toy Story and wound up with a mammoth holiday season hit. The film went on to win a number of awards and wind up on several critics' year-end Best Of lists, and it, along with its predecessor, holds the rare honor of a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating. For this episode, film critic and Pixar enthusiast Aaron Neuwirth joined the show to talk about Toy Story 2's place in the series, where it ranks among the best of Pixar's work, and that damn Sarah McLachlan scene. Aaron is on Twitter @AaronsPS4 You can check out his website here.

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut is...very funny. It's also absurd, obscene, and one of the best movie musicals not called Moulin Rouge of the last few decades. The humor of the show and the movie, though, has always been too things - edgy (bordering on shocking) and timely. South Park the series has produced some of the smartest, most incisive satire anywhere in its 25 years of existence, but that kind of humor doesn't always age well? So how does this movie hold up in that regard? We asked someone who loved it at the time - John's friend George Freitag - if he would still rave to strangers about it at Denny's like he did 23 years ago. Blame Canada, join La Resistance, and save Terrence and Phillip as we talk about South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, a title that refers solely to the the fact that the movie is bigger and longer than an episode of the show and did not have to be edited for television! Find George on Twitter if it still exists @georgefreitag

Run Lola Run only technically meets the criteria of our podcast, but no discussion of the revolutionary, groundbreaking films of 1999 could really be complete without it. Because while it was released in 1998 in its native Germany, its US theatrical release came in June 18, 1999. Starring Franke Potente and Moritz Bleibtreu, Run Lola Run was the breakout feature from writer-director-composer Tom Tykwer. The style and themes of the film share a lot in common with the first film we covered on the podcast and one of your favorites, The Matrix. Beyond just the superficial, like a telephone serving as the catalyst for the plot, both films borrow as much from the kinetic pace and jump-cut editing of music videos of the era as they do from the styles and techniques of traditional filmmaking. Not surprisingly, then, Tykwer, used Run Lola Run as a springboard for much more mainstream (if still pretty avant-garde) success with his collaborations with Wachowskis in films like Cloud Atlas and the Netflix Series Sense8, as well as serving, again with Klimek, as composer for Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections. Is the film as vital today as it was two decades ago? To find out, we asked someone who wasn't born when it was released. Jacob Meirovich is one of the editors responsible for the Run Lola Run remix Run Lola Run the Jewels Run, and he joined John and Joey to explain why this movie is one of his favorites. Find Jacob on Twitter @nerdyton Other links! https://twitter.com/exportz_ https://twitter.com/MonMovMad https://twitter.com/dvdivision https://twitter.com/MagnoliaRMSTRD https://twitter.com/SegFest https://www.twitch.tv/exportz https://www.twitch.tv/beesonehundred https://www.twitch.tv/caymanislandspublicaccess https://www.twitch.tv/mondaymoviemadness https://www.twitch.tv/dreamvideodivision https://www.twitch.tv/segfest

Of the 18 movies that made our first two rounds, Office Space was far and away the most abject failure. Released in the frigid box office month of February and featuring an advertising and marketing campaign that was so bad classes should be taught about it, Office Space went on to become the year's 134th-highest grossing movie, falling short of the box office hauls for beloved, critically-acclaimed classics like Chill Factor and Wing Commander. The live-action feature debut of Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge deserved so much better, and it would soon get it. Office Space caught on when Comedy Central began airing it (on heavy rotation) shortly after its release on home video, in August of 1999, and the movie began to develop the audience it always deserved. It was very funny then. But does it still work now? Or is its satirizing of late-90s office life lost on the audiences of 2022. We pose this question to podcaster, comedian, writer, and all-around spooktacular person Jenn Tisdale, cohost of Too Many Jennifers.

What better time than this, the intersection of Spooky Season and our cultural Brenaissance, to talk about the beloved Brendan Fraser vehicle, The Mummy?! The 8th-highest grossing movie of 1999, The Mummy is - there's no other way to say it - weird on a lot of levels. It feels completely out of place among its peers, embracing both state-of-the-art digital effects and very old school practical effects, it pays homage to the adventure films of the golden age of Hollywood while also somehow functioning as modern blockbuster. It's not for everyone (including, at is turns out, Joey), but it was so earnest and unexpected at the time that it still has some pretty rabid fans, including our guest for out The Matrix episode, the first movie we covered on this podcast, Chris Kluwe, who returns to talk about bugs that crawl under your skin, whether this should be compared to Indiana Jones, and whether anybody should bother with the sequels (or the Tom Cruise version!)

When Election premiered on April 23rd, audiences, it is safe to say, did not Pick Flick. Election was a pretty giant dud. With a reported $25 million price tag, the film earned just $15 million at the box office, making it the 98th-highest grossing movie of the year. And that's despite near universal critical acclaim and a number of major awards nominations. What went wrong? A lot, including a very limited release right after Columbine and sandwiched between The Matrix and The Mummy. But Election also defies genre, and having the MTV Productions label attached to it made the movie seem like something it...wasn't. But the growing acclaim for its writer-director Alexander Payne in the years that followed made audience give it a second look, and today Election is something of a cult favorite, as well as powerful time capsule for a lot of the pre-9/11, pre-millennium, post-Clinton angst that made 1999 so unique. John and Joey invited High School Slumber Party host Brian Rodriguez on to chat about this very not-a-teen-movie high school comedy.

Being John Malkovich may well be the 1999est movie we have yet covered on the show. And the only reason it didn’t make it into the first nine (and just barely) is that 1) it really took some time to fully sink in to the culture, sort of like Fight Club, and 2) unlike Fight Club, it has largely been marginalized in recent years, due in no small part to the successive work of both Jonze and Kaufman, who produced films that would go on to greater critical and commercial success than this one did. But it explores many of the same issues that films like The Matrix and Fight Club explore, though with a much more insane glee than those films. And it comes across as the kind of movie that could only hit theaters during the year of Y2K end-times paranoia, when the whole culture sort of shared and “I dunno, fuck it!” kind of attitude. It also happens to be previous guest Brian Silliman's favorite 1999 movie, so John and Joey asked him back to take a little trip through the tunnel on floor seven-and-a-half to get inside the mind Malkovich and talk about this brilliant, groundbreaking classic. Find Brian on Twitter @BrianSilliman

The fact that American Pie was the twentieth-highest-grossing movie of 1999 wouldn't suggest that film was a mammoth hit, but it was. American Pie made back its tiny 11 million dollar budget and then some in its opening weekend. And it went on to gross more than 100 million domestically and 235 million worldwide, making it one of the most profitable movies of the year (an honor obviously belonging to the freakishly budget-to-gross ratio obliteration machine that was The Blair Witch Project). But like 10 Things, it had almost no star power whatsoever. While much of the cast would go on to various levels of fame, the most famous cast member at the time was Alyson Hannigan, who had spent three seasons playing Willow Rosenberg on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, followed by Thomas Ian Nicholas, who had starred in a couple of popular family movies in the 1990s. American Pie was also buoyed by some surprisingly warm critical praise. But do the movie's gross-out humor and depictions of sexual angst still hold up? Find out in this episode, where John and Joey invited Tessa and Nicole from the Doom Generation podcast to talk about what happened that one time in band camp. Everything you need to know about Doom Generation you can find out here!

10 Things I Hate About You has become a generational favorite, joining the ranks of The Breakfast Club and Fast Times at Ridgemont High among the teen movie pantheon. Filmed on a $13 million budget, it made $38 million at the domestic box office, making it the 53rd top grossing movie of the year (one ahead of Fight Club). It would go on to break $60 million worldwide. But while it boasted a very impressive cast of very good actors, it had virtually no star power, and the central draw was a virtually unknown young actor named Heath Ledger. Neither Joseph Gordon-Levitt nor Julia Stiles were yet household names. And it was released against another big 1999 movie called The Matrix, and right in the crowded midst of the revival of the teen movie that had begun a year earlier with the release of Can’t Hardly Wait, and had already in 1999, by the time of 10 Things I Hate About You's release, seen the releases of She’s All That, Varsity Blues, Jawbreaker, and Cruel Intentions (to say nothing of the juggernaut that was American Pie, released several months later). So why did 10 Things work so well, and find such a devout audience, that it makes it so beloved today? John and Joey invited one such devotee, author Kelly J. Baker, to tell them. Find Dr. Baker on Twitter @kelly_j_baker

In this end--of-round recap mini episode, Joey and John share their thoughts on the first nine movies, pick a "winner" from round one, and preview what's up ahead in the second round: The Back Nine. Thanks to Brian Raftery, Chris Kluwe, Brian Silliman, Matt Romano, Lila Shapiro, Chelsey Weber-Smith, Stephanie Gagnon, Aislinn and Tobin Addington, Amanda Moore, Logan Kisner, and Tyler Huckabee for sharing their time and thoughts with us! We'll be back to on Monday, 8/22 with a new episode!

Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia was just his third feature film. It remains both his most beloved and most divisive. Released at the very end of 1999, Magnolia was largely lauded by critics, received a number of year-end awards and nominations, and mostly overlooked by audiences. But like Fight Club before it, it found second life on DVD and quickly found an adoring audience, in addition to the source of a number of ubiquitous pop culture references, largely due to Tom Cruise's outrageous motivational speaker character, Frank T. J. Mackey. Still, three hours of high drama, weird dramatic flourishes, multiple storylines, falling frogs, and Aimee Mann sing-a-longs doesn't exactly sound like everyone's cup of tea. But it is the cup of tea of Relevant Magazine's senior editor Tyler Huckabee, who joined John and Joey to talk all about this classic in our round one finale! Find Tyler on Twitter @TylerHuckabee

Boys Don’t Cry holds a 90% Rotten Tomatoes critics score and a pretty astonishing 86% Metacritic. And with scores like that, one might get the impression that was and is a universally admired classic. Billed as a dramatization of the events leading up to the 1993 rape and murder of 21-year-old trans man Brandon Teena, it was nominated for 57 major awards and won 37 of them. 14 of went to star Hilary Swank, 6 to costar Chloe Sevigny, and 8 to writer director Kimberley Peirce. And Swank of course won the Oscar for Best Actress, while Sevigny was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. But critics at the time almost always misgendered Brandon in their reviews. And the film effectively erases the trans identity of its protagonist, which some argue is the result of a conscious and unforgiveable narrative and creative decision made my Peirce, who cast a cisgendered woman to play Brandon and who shut out essentially all input and participation from anyone in the trans community. In the 23 years since its release, Boys Don't Cry has not aged well. But this week's guest, writer and trans horror historian Logan Ashley Kisner, argues that it's not all about aging - Boys Don't Cry is a fundamentally, irredeemably transphobic film. Find Logan Ashley on Twitter @transhorrors and find links to his writing at linktr.ee/transhorror His essay on Boys Don't Cry is available here: “Boys Don’t Cry” Has Always Been Violently Transphobic Trans Rights Organization Links: Transgender Map Advocacy Page National Center for Transgender Equality Transgender Law Center Trans Justice Funding Project The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund The Trevor Project Trans Lifeline Transgender Media Portal TransAction Florida Trans Pride Initative TransOhio

Fight Club may well have been 1999's most important box office bomb. With a budget of $65 million, the film barely made back half that at the domestic box office, and barely cleared $100 million worldwide. Yet it remains one of the cult classics of the 1990s, and people often remember it being a lot more successful than it was. A lot of that has to do with the format that would define film in the pre-streaming era of the late 90s and early 00s: DVD. Its themes of toxic masculinity, cultural decay, overbearing capitalism, fascism, and how all those things are expressed in violence seem particularly relevant today. And so this week, John and Joey invited Amanda Moore (aka Frank) - who spent a year infiltrating the world of the alt-right and neo-Nazis and has spent her time since exposing them and writing about her experience - to talk about her love of the film and how well it reflects what is happening beneath the surface of American culture today. You can find Amanda on Twitter @noturtlesoup17 and on TikTok at noturtlesoup17

American Beauty was 1999's Best Picture winner at the Academy Awards. And it was an unstoppable behemoth when it came to end of year accolades, cleaning up as well at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, SAG, and more. Critics practically tripped over themselves digging deep into their vocabularies to properly articulate the film's genius. And yet, 23 year later, the consensus seems to be that the film is...bad. So what happened (beyond the dark revelations of Kevin Spacey's long history of terrible, abusive behavior and sexual assault)? And is there anything left to make American Beauty a film that can still be appreciated? Is anything about American Beauty still beautiful? This week, John and Joey are joined by the Addington siblings, Aislinn and Tobin, co-hosts of CageClub's very own The Contenders podcast. They discuss their journeys from loving and then really, really hating Sam Mendes and Alan Ball's strange, misguided, ambitious, and hopelessly outdated failure.

The Sixth Sense was 1999's most unexpected phenomenon. And it really was a phenomenon. Filmed on a $40 million budget, the film made a respectable $26 million its opening weekend, but great reviews and word of mouth propelled it to a $293.5 million domestic box office gross and a worldwide gross of just shy of $673 million. It was the only movie to stay #1 for 5 weeks aside from The Phantom Menace, and, most impressively, it made at least $20 million all five weekends it was #1, making more than $29 million its final weekend. Not bad for a decidedly not-action movie centered around Bruce Willis, a year after Armageddon and then at the early stages of the waning days of his star power, and a relatively obscure child actor named Haley Joel Osment, and written and directed by an almost entirely unknown filmmaker named M. Night Shyamalan. So much of The Sixth Sense rests on its legendary plot twist, so already knowing how it ends, we invited Stephanie Gagnon, host of the horror book podcast Books in the Freezer, to join us in taking another look at the movie to see if it still holds up as a haunted horror movie. Check out Books in the Freezer here.

Stanley Kubrick’s final film (and perhaps the nail in the coffin for Hollywood's most famous couple), the psychosexual thriller Eyes Wide Shut, was released on July 16th, two days after the limited release of The Blair Witch Project, and on the day that birthed a thousand QAnon conspiracy theories as John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy died in a plane crash while everyone in America kept listening to Destiny’s Child’s Bills Bills Bills. The film was, at the time, well received if not overwhelmingly praised by critics and audiences. But it’s worth noting that the critical division is unusually stark, with critics who reviewed it positively giving the film overwhelming praise and vice-versa, with very little in between (Slate’s David Edelstein called it “a somnolent load of wank,” for example). And, to be fair, many critics have given the film a second look and come to their senses. But the question now is not whether or not Eyes Wide Shut is a great film (it is) but whether or not it’s Kubrick’s greatest film. In this episode, John and Joey welcome New York Magazine feature writer Lila Shapiro, who wrote the 2019 essay What I Learned After Watching Eyes Wide Shut 100 Times for Vulture. Check out more of Lila's work here.

Starring Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard as themselves – or people who happen to have their exact names – and written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, 1999's 10th-highest grossing film, The Blair Witch Project was produced on a budget of less than a half million dollars and grossed $248.6 million at the box office. One of the founding films in the "found footage" genre, the film was perhaps most famous for the unprecedented marketing campaign that led up to its release. The movie made innovative use of a relatively novel outlet called "the World Wide Web" and deliberately blurred the lines between fact and fiction, giving the film an air of reality that actually fooled some its audience into believing they were watching real documentary footage. Heralded by critics for its ingenuity as well as its genuine scares, Blair Witch may well have been the buzziest of buzzy movies ever. But its legacy is slightly more complicated. While it was a huge hit with the public at the time, it is less liked by audiences now, who often complain that the movie doesn't hold up on its own, having relied too much on the multimedia "project" of which the film is merely the final ingredient. This week, we talk to Blair Witch superfan and host of American Hysteria Chelsey Weber-Smith about what made it a great movie then and why we should still love it today. Chelsey on Twitter: @AmerHysteria

The Phantom Menace was, at the time, universally referred to as "the most anticipated movie of all time", and it's unlikely that any movie will ever again carry that distinction. But with anticipation like that, how could it not disappoint? The movie has gone on quite a journey in the last 23 years, from "the first Star Wars movie in 22 years", to "the biggest disappointment of the summer", to "the worst Star Wars movie", to now, where it finds itself beloved by a generation of fans who grew up on it and admired by older fans who have come to overlook its obvious flaws in favor of its considerable (and many) charms. Just in time for Star Wars Day, May the Fourth, Star Wars fans (and prequel lovers) Brian Silliman and Matt Romano, the hosts of the Star Wars podcast Return of the Pod, join us to talk about all the ups and downs of The Phantom Menace, and how the film has become a nostalgic favorite and continued to find new fans two decades later. (NOTE: John keeps referring to the span between RotJ and TPM as 17 years. It was 16. John is old and time is an illusion. 1999: The Podcast regrets the error.) Check out Return of the Pod on the web. Return of the Pod on Twitter: @ReturnOfThePod Brian on Twitter: @BrianSilliman Matt on Twitter: @mattromano

Former Minnesota Vikings punter and current science fiction author ("Otaku") Chris Kluwe joins us to discuss our first movie from our Essentials series - The Matrix. Released on March 31, 1999, written and directed by the Wachowskis and starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano, The Matrix was something of an unexpected hit that would go on to become a cultural phenomenon. To this day, we use terms like "glitch in the Matrix" and "red pill" in memes and casual conversation because the things the reference are nearly universally recognizable. Kluwe joined John and Joey to talk about their memories of seeing it for the first time, how well it has aged, and how it has influenced his own writing. Find John on Twitter @ProbablyRealJB Find Joey on Twitter @soulpopped Find Chris on Twitter @ChrisWarcraft For more on Chris's book Otaku: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250203939/otaku

Was 1999 the best movie year ever? We think it might be, and in this podcast we’ll be exploring the movies that made that year so memorable. Before we start, we invited journalist and author Brian Raftery, who quite literally wrote the book on the movies of 1999 — Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen — to share his thoughts on why it was such an important year for movies and for our culture. Find John on Twitter @ProbablyRealJB Find Joey on Twitter @soulpopped Find Brian on Twitter @BrianRaftery For more on the book, Brian's website is https://www.brianraftery.com/