Movies To Kill By
SK’s best movies of 1999

Even serial killers can feel pressure. Right now this serial killer is feeling the heat from a pushy editor named Mnke to come up with a Top 10 movie list. I’d rather not make such a list, here’s why: I didn’t see THAT many movies this year. Certainly I missed many good movies that deserve to be included in a "best of" list. Therefore, any list that I make feels incomplete. Also, I am in no way a movie critic or expert. I wouldn’t even count myself as a knowledgeable fan who can ramble endlessly about the effect that a different lens filter has on a scene. I’m just a kid who goes to see movies that look "cool" in a Beavisian way.

With those disclaimers aside, here’s a list of movies from 1999 that didn’t piss me off, or at least made me forget about how uncomfortable my back gets in those damn movie seats.

American Beauty: Probably my pick as the year’s best. I was slightly disturbed by the whole pedophilia vibe, but excellent performances all around made up for it in the end. Admit it, even that stupid plastic bag blowing around was kinda cool after awhile.

American Movie: Good God Damn, this movie was like a horror film for a California kid who’s never been to the Midwest. People look like that? Talk like that? Live in towns like that? In the nineties? Culture shock. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. But it still made me laugh until I had tears in my eyes.

American Pie: The third installment in my "American" trilogy. I, like may others, went into this movie thinking it would be nothing more than a modern Porky’s. I had no idea that I’d be laughing so hard that I would miss several lines. Admittedly, this film is not a huge step forward for feminism. But Natasha Lyonne’s smart role as the school’s savvy sexual advisor makes me feel less guilty about liking this film.

Fight Club: In my non-film school vocab - this kicks ass! Brad Pitt tried to make himself less attractive for this role? Uh, didn’t fool me. Helena Bonham Carter is yet another example of how a British actor can play an American, but when an American tries to pull off a foreign accent, everyone is embarrassed.

South Park: Please please please, someone get "Uncle Fucker" nominated for Best Song at the Academy Awards! We’ve suffered through enough Celine Dion performances, we’re due for some blatant profanity to be broadcast to a worldwide audience!

Being John Malkovich: Note to Brad Pitt - ask John Cusack about how to make yourself unattractive for a role. If I were Cameron Diaz, I’d fall in love with Catherine Keener too if John was sulking around my house looking like that while dreaming of fame and fortune via puppets. I like movies that try not to explain too much. Why does one get dumped aside the New Jersey turnpike after a tour of Malkovich’s head? Why not?

The Insider: Good stuff. I don’t care if the movie did take some liberties with the true story. Whatever they did, it made for a good movie. Bonus points: Had shots of Berkeley that were actually IN Berkeley.

Election: Although I still can’t get over the fact that Reese Witherspoon looks exactly like Alicia Silverstone, she may have outdone that Aerosmith chick’s performance in Clueless. Here’s another film with middle aged men behaving badly and lusting after teenage girls. Yet, this one didn’t seem to bother me either. And who knew that MTV, the network that brings us daily TRL doses of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, could get behind a film where kids use such naughty language? I guess MTV’s not as dumb as it looks, if you can forget about Joe’s Apartment.

Go!: The Dawson’s Creek fanatic in me breathed a sigh of relief after Katie Holmes got through this without embarrassing herself. I’m also a newly converted Sarah Polley fan. Although I’m absolutely convinced that most 17 year olds are not that hip, I’ll take this as a nice slice of LA teen culture. Give a nigga a break.

Tumbleweeds: Janet McTeer reinforces the fact that British actors can do flawless American accents. Someone tell me why we Americans are so bad at accents. A movie with a plot like this had massive potential to suck. But, the filmmakers found a child actor who wasn’t annoying and had a female lead who refused to be a victim, despite endless shitty events in her life.

Dogma: I was slightly disappointed with this film since I’ve come to expect so much from Kevin Smith. But still, it was one of the year’s best comedies. However, the shit monster was a little too gross for me. My biggest problem with this film is that God is played by a Canadian who looks like she has Down’s Syndrome. If Kevin Smith is going to hell for anything, it’s that.

That’s all folks, just a few movies that come to mind today as being my favorites from last year. Let me note a few that I quite deliberately left off my list: The Phantom Menace (fell asleep at least three times in this); Magnolia (wish I could have fallen asleep in this); The Iron Giant (cause I’m a grown up); The Matrix (omitted just to piss people off); and Run Lola Run (good flick, really should have been on my list, but I just can’t get over the funky way that Europeans dress).

What will make my list for 2000? Well, we never know, do we? But I have a slot reserved already for Supernova.