I kind of tag that period as '99-'03, bookended by Rushmore in late '98 and Eternal Sunshine in early '04.

very beautiful piece of writing, david....and you're right. absolutely. i just recently watched AMERICAN BEAUTY and didn't find it as compelling as when i saw it at age 16 my sophmore year of high school. Funny. I remember all of these films for shaping me who i am now...whether good or bad, they influence, eh? but funny how tastes change and truths come to light.

Right on about 1999, David. You practically wrought in this piece everything I've always wanted to say about that year, but were too afraid to question. This is the sort of blog entry that'll get you new readers.

I'm with you (I own American Beauty on DVD, but haven't watched it since 2000 or so), but I still love '99 and always will.

I think it was such a nostalgic time and those films are so incredibly nostalgia inducing (Iron Giant for crap's sake) that you can't help but love the year and most of the films from it.

That year was one of the years I was a projectionist during. An amazing time of being fairly carefree and getting to watch movies for no cost and before everyone else (hell, I even liked Phantom Menace the first time I watched it just because I got to see it before everyone else).

I refer to 98 and 99 as the "projectionist period" of my life and the list of films released during that period has been better than both the "film school period" and the "my life sucks" periods that have come and gone since.

RK, 1999 was definitely a defining year in my life, and through that exact confluence of quality and nostalgia, I'll always hold it in high regard. I was a projectionist at the time, too (my own "projectionist period" was 1997-99 and then again from 2001-2003), and I have wonderful memories of staying up at the theater all night on Wednesdays and Thursdays to screen the new prints. I even have strong attachments to crappy movies like The Messenger and ... uh... House On Haunted Hill.

Mutinyco, you're absolutely right about the end-of-'98 curve, which not only included the magnificent Rushmore but Malick's The thin Red Line. By the way, I enjoyed your profile of Ellen Kuras in Filmmaker. I never really appreciated her until Eternal Sunshine, and now I suddenly love everything she does. One caveat, though - didn't Malik Hasssan Sayeed shoot He Got Game?

i remember watching all those films at the theater: eyes wide shut, american beauty, blair witch project,the sixth sense and fight club.

at the time, i was momentarily persuaded by a friend that american beauty was a great film. but another friend of mine pointed out that american beauty was made to win an oscar. this other friend also said that the best films of the 90s included both eyes wide shut and fight club. seven years later, my other friend was right on both counts (namely, that american beauty was strived for greatness, whereas eyes wide shut and fight club are great)

1999 was the year of the white man having a breakdown genre. I doubt we'll ever see a vast collection of guys going through a personal crisis ever again. I'm annoyed by every commercial movie released that year, Fight Club and The Matrix winning over that fortune cookie American Beauty because of the idiotic cults that followed them. Blah.

She actually DP'd the Chicago shoot for He Got Game. But it's a better regarded movie than Summer of Sam or Bamboozled. So, yeah, it's a call.

While I by no means think American Beauty is a perfect film I still think it's a good and effective film. Just because you've "outgrown" it doesn't make it any less exceptional in it's quality. To say it ends in a big warm fuzzy hug is a giant overstatement. Those splattered brains leave a lot of angst in its wake. Sure Spacey's character is all warm and fuzzy because he's dead and done with it, selfish in death as in life. However, the characters that live say a lot more, a widow, a girl with a dead father, an in the closet gay man who solved his temporary self-guilt with violence and will most likely continue his violent outburst and his son who will continue to deal with the pressure of his father. I mean none of the characters who live are really let off the hook except maybe Suvari's character who learns to like herself a bit more.

Sure, maybe if this film was made in the seventies he would of fucked the girl but it was made in the 90's. In those 20 years men have learned a few things about being a sleazy pig. I think the comparison is pointless and asinine.

It's not that I even really care that much about this film it's just that I feel there has to be some dissent to the idiotic cults of people who turn their backs on a film just because it wins an oscar or is embraced by the mainstream (I know Lowery enough to know this isn't his reasoning but most people I question). Just 'cos you can find an excuse to stop liking it (when most of you cleary did when you first watched it) doesn't mean it's no longer good.

What are you talking about? Men haven't learned a thing about being sleazy pigs!

In all seriousness, though, the comparison isn't asinine because it isn't one of cultural ideals and norms but of artistic intentions. Sure, we'll never have the 70s again, but just like '99, it's a handy point of comparison.

And regarding those characters who say a lot more - I'd agree with you, if they were actually characters. Instead we get a potentially great tragic figure (Chris Cooper) reduced to not one but two defining punchlines, a son who were he to stop spouting those cringe-worthy platitudes would evaporate into the thin air he mostly consists of, a daughter who -- well, okay, the daughter's enough of a blank page to be okay , but let's not get started on Annette Bening's over-the-top harpy of a wife. And mabye I'm being a bit over-the-top myself here, but my point is that all those open endings are, in fact, closed because there's nowhere for any of those characters to go at that point. They're all functions of a screenplay.

The sole exception: Wes Bentley's mother, in the scene where he says goodbye to her. It's probably the best scene in the film. Terribly sad, perfectly written and performed, and deeply suggestive.

So anyway. People do turn their backs on films because of mainstream success -- I've been guilty of doing it myself. (Poor Titanic - I turned on it so fast!) But generally speaking, when a film falls out of favor amongs people who care about film enough to actually think about it, it's not because those people are looking for an excuse to buck a trend. It's because they've found something in the film that they perceive to be legitimately problematic.

That doesn't mean that you can't still like the film (witness me and The Fountain). And like I said, I don't begrudge anyone who likes or loves American Beauty. I wish everyone would follow the trailer's advice and look closer, but that doesn't mean they'll all see what I see.

The worst thing that ever happened to American Beauty was that it was successful. I saw it opening day, took it as a bleak Coens/Wilder satire (life is tiny, then you die), and told people to see it quickly cause it wouldn't make a dime.

Somehow, the public took the opposite meaning from it.

I think the movie would've been better off if it had gone the way I initially viewed it. Thematically, it was in synch with other movies that year. It was just a little more accessible. So now, people look at it as over-praised against more esoteric films from that year. Against its better being, it now has a reupation to live up to.

Um...reputation

Lovely piece, this. 1999 was a damn good year for movies, but to look back on it with a sense of melancholy is to put the lid on an era. Why? That way of thinking is an insult to the fine movies that are made today.

Dude, my 12 year old cousin totally got on my computer and wrote that post under my name. He just loves it 'cos you get to see titties in it.