1999: The Podcast

Happy Halloween! We're joined by critic and horror maven Kristin Battestella to discuss the 2001 remake of the William Castle horror schlock B-movie Thirteen Ghosts (or, in this case, uh...Thir13en Ghosts) Is it scary? No! But is it fun? Also no! We talk about the difficulty of remaking B-movies, how great practical effects and set design aren't enough, and the weird joy of truly deranged performa...

Brad Bird's second live action film Tomorrowland was released in 2015 to a great deal of hype and high expectations. Bird was flying high on s string of critically acclaimed animated features, including The Iron Giant (which we covered recently), The Incredibles, and Ratatouille, in addition to his hit entry into the Mission: Impossible franchise Ghost Protocol. But Tomorrowland was Bird's dream p...

Appropriately the 113th-highest grossing movie of 1999, The Thirteenth Floor opened on May 28th in 4th place behind The Phantom Menace, Notting Hill, and The Mummy It was the third Cartesian nature of reality philosophy movie set against computer simulation realities in three months, following The Matrix in March and Existenz in April. The Thirteenth Floor was just the 2nd English language fe...

No new episode this week, but please enjoy this rerelease from a year ago, about a movie with a lot of connections to our last episode, The Iron Giant: October Sky was the 63rd-highest grossing movie of the year, just behind The 13th Warrior. Opening on February 19th with just shy of $6 million, it went on to gross $34.7 million worldwide on a $25 million budget. October Sky was adapted from...

Our episodes on robots and animation have finally led us here: The Iron Giant, one of 1999's most notorious duds, and also one of its most beloved films. The Iron Giant was the feature directorial debut of Brad Bird, who would go on to direct landmark Pixar films The Incredibles and Ratatouille  and now serves in Pixar’s senior creative team. Unfortunately released in the...

Following up on our discussion of Bicentennial Man, we discuss two movies, starting with the 28th highest-grossing movie of 2001, Steven Spielberg's A.I. - Artificial Intelligence. A.I. has a lot of connections to 1999, since it was originally meant to be directed by Stanley Kubrick, who died in 1999, and starred two of 1999's Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominees, Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law. I...

Bicentennial Man was the 40th highest grossing movie of 1999, opening December 17th in 4th place and taking in $87 million dollars worldwide on an almost literally unbelievable $100 million dollar budget. It's also the one movie of the year to star the late Sam Neill. Directed by Chris Columbus with script by Elia Kazan’s son Nicholas Kazan, based on the short story “The Bicentennial Man” AND the...

This summer's Toy Story 5 is unique among Toy Story movies in that it's a direct continuation of the story of Toy Story 2, so we decided it was a great time to take a second look at Toy Story 2! Originally conceived as a direct-to-video sequel, Toy Story 2 opened November 19, 1999, bringing in $487 million worldwide and going on to become the 3rd-highest gro...

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was the 4th-highest grossing movie of 1999, behind Toy Story 2, The Sixth Sense, and The Phantom Menace, opening on June 11 and taking in $55 million that weekend, going on to make $206 million at the domestic box office on a $33 million budget. Directed by Jay Roach and written by Mike Myers and Michael McCullers, The Spy Who Shagged Me saw Heather Graham ste...

VARSITY BLUES director Brian Robbins follow-up was another inspirational, somewhat edgy sports movie HARDBALL - this time about baseball and set in Chicago. 1999 icon Keanu Reeves plays down-on-his-luck sports gambler Conor O'Neill who finds himself the head coach of an inner-city Chicago youth baseball team. Somehow, he makes the team better. Somehow, the team makes him better. Diane Lane is also...

We sadly lost 1990s icon James Van Der Beek in February, so we decided it was time to look at his most prominent non-Dawson's Creek role - the teen comedy-drama sports movie Varsity Blues. Released very early in the year on January 15th, Varsity Blues was the 45th highest grossing movie of the year. Opening as a surprise number, it made back most of its 16 million dollar budget in its debut weeken...

Last time we looked at Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 film Magnolia, so we decided to take a look at his follow-up, 2002's Adam Sandler-led absurdist romantic dramedy Punch-Drunk Love. Anderson's shortest and most overlooked film, Punch-Drunk Love is now considered by many to be among his best. At 95 minutes, the film never faulters and drags, and its balance of performance, direction, and musical sc...

We last talked about Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia nearly four years ago, so given Anderson recently (finally) won an Oscar for One Battle After Another, what better time than now for a revisit? Magnolia was a modest commercial success at the time but was lauded by critics, became something of a cult hit, and eventually worked its way into the cultural zeitgeist, in no so small part due to Tom C...

A president faking a war to distract from a political scandal?? WHAT??? We’re doing a new See Also this week, related to some of the recent movies we’ve discussed. The 57th highest-grossing movie of 1997 and the 46th highest-grossing of 1998. Released limited on Christmas Day 1997 and wide on January 4th 1998 where it finished 4th behind Titanic, Good Will Hunting, and As Good As It Gets, it went...

EDtv opened in third place on March 26th right behind our last movie, Analyze This in 2nd and Forces of Nature in 1st, going on to gross $35 million worldwide on a budget of $80 million. Directed by Ron Howard, it is a remake of the 1994 Quebecois film Louis 19, King of the Airwaves, with a script adapted by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, it stars Matthew McConaughey, Jenna Elfman, Woody Harrelso...

57th on the 1999 box office chart, For Love of the Game marked director Raimi’s first foray into big-budget, mass-market filmmaking (which would ultimately pave the way for being handed the enormous task of finally bringing Spiderman to the screen in 2002) But love and baseball was very different territory for Raimi, and his inexperience in the realm of pop movie making (as well as in directing ro...

It's Oscars Weekend! 1999 was a weird year in Oscar history, as the awards held that year saw one of the most controversial Best Picture wins ever (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE) and the awards held the following year honoring the awards of 1999 gave the Best Picture Oscar to a film that, well, has not aged well at all (AMERICAN BEAUTY) So to mark the weekend, we took some time to discuss those two films an...

Analyze This was the 18th-highest grossing movie of 1999, opening on at #1 March 5th – the same day as Cruel Intentions, which opened number 2 - and taking in $177 million worldwide on an $80 million budget. Analyze This gave us the unlikely comedy duo of Billy Crystal and (a then new to comedy) Robert DeNiro, alongside Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palminteri, and Joe Viterelli Directed by the late great Ha...

It's Valentine's Day, so we're taking one last look at the non-1999 landscape before we return to 1999 next week with the movie that reset the standard for romantic comedies, Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally. Joining us is returning friend of the pod Dan Colón, co-host of our podcast network's very own The Monsters that Made Us. We talk Crystal, Ryan, Carrie Fisher, Barry Sonnenfeld, and if we've...

This week, Julia reports back from the screening she attended of "Father Mother Sister Brother", the latest from "Ghost Dog" writer/director Jim Jarmusch. "Father Mother Sister Brother" is an anthology dramedy starring Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Sarah Greene, Indya Moore, and Luka Sabbat. Julia and John discuss the film and take another...

In honor of the late Rob Reiner we are looking at The Story of Us, the 74th highest-grossing movie of the year, finishing just ahead of earlier entry Blast from the Past. Opening #2 behind Fight Club on October 15th and going on to gross $59 million worldwide on a $50 million dollar budget. Starring Bruce Willis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Reiner himself, Rita Wilson, Julie Hagerty, Paul Reiser, and Tim M...

Merry Christmas and happy every other holiday! In this episode, John and Julia each recommend five of their favorite "alternative" Christmas movies. The like of It's a Wonderful Life, Home Alone, Love Actually, Miracle on 34th Street, and, yes, even Die Hard are off-limits. Instead, we present 10 movies that are maybe not in your annual Christmas rotation but ought to be! Enjoy! Julia's picks: The...

It's Christmas time, so we're looking at a movie that tells the story of a mysterious man who spends a lot of time on the roof with his animal friends and has the ability to sneak into your house undetected as if by magic: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai! Ghost Dog appears nowhere on the 1999 box office charts because it technically didn’t have a major theatrical release in the US until March of...

The first of what will be a series of smaller episodes where we take a look at a movie that is somehow related to our most recent subject. This time, our See Also recommendation for The Insider is Billy Ray's superb 2003 docudrama/thriller Shattered Glass. Featuring incredible performances from a uniformly excellent cast, especially Hayden Christensen as the title character and Peter Sarsgaard as...

Michael Mann's The Insider is easily the most glaring omission from the our initial 18, universally regarded as one of the best – if not THE best – movie of 1999. Finishing in 69th place, sandwiched between two previous entries, Girl Interrupted at 70th and Mystery Men at 68th, The Insider stars Russell Crowe, in an Oscar-nominated performance, and Al Pacino alongside an incredibly deep supporting...