My Top-Ten Movies of 1999

I felt cinema took a great leap forward this year in terms of the ability to transport me into total environments - radical storytelling and effects often left me dazed as I exited the theater. It's hard to keep the list at ten, and I feel many of my honorable mentions are just as important.

1. Being John Malkovich
2. The Matrix
3. Magnolia
4. The Sixth Sense
5. American Beauty
6. Three Kings
7. Election
8. Existenz
9. Straight Story
10. Iron Giant

Honorable Mention: South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, The Ciderhouse Rules, Boys Don't Cry, Toy Story 2, Afterlife (Japanese), The Virgin Suicides, Croupier, The Five Senses, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Hideous Kinky, Hurly Burly

My Top-Ten Movies of 1998

1. Pleasantville (Gary Ross: Big, Dave, Seabiscuit)
2. Rushmore (Wes Anderson: Bottle Rocket, Royal Tannenbaums)
3. Buffalo 66 (Vincent Gallo: Tricks his girlfriends into filming blow jobs)
4. Big Lebowski (Coen Brothers: See everything by them)
5. Truman Show (Peter Weir: Fearless, Witness, Gallipoli)
6. Happiness (Todd Solondz: sequel Life During Wartime)
7. Out Of Sight (Steven Soderbergh: Oceans 11, Che, Liberace)
8. The Butcher Boy (Neil Jordan: Crying Game, Interview W/ Vampire, Breakfast on Pluto)
9. Wag The Dog (Barry Levinson: Best thing he'd made since 1990 and prior. He still sucks.)
10. Dark City (Alex Proyas: I, Robot, upcoming Paradise Lost)
11. Pi (Darren Aronofsky: The Wrestler, Black Swan)

Honorable Mention: A Simple Plan, Love & Death On Long Island, Good Will Hunting, As Good As It Gets, Saving Private Ryan

My Top-Ten Movies of 1997

1. Boogie Nights
2. L.A. Confidential
3. Ponette
4. Wings Of The Dove
5. Ice Storm
6. Waiting For Guffman
7. Contact
8. Lost Highway
9. Sweet Hereafter
10. In The Company Of Men

Honorable Mention: Flamenco, Ulee's Gold, Copland, Face/Off, Fifth Element

My Top-Ten Movies Of 1996

1. Lone Star (John Sayles)
2. Welcome To The Dollhouse (Todd Solondz)
3. Angels & Insects (Phillip Haas)
4. Flirting With Disaster (David O. Russell)
5. Trees Lounge (Steve Buscemi)
6. Trainspotting (Danny Boyle)
7. Swingers (Doug Liman)
8. Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh)
9. Shine (Scott Hicks)
10. I Shot Andy Warhol (Mary Harron)

Where are they now?
1. John Sayles - He's working out his obsessions with S. America and the rural South.
2. Todd Solondz - Directed well-reviewed sequel to "Happiness" called "Life During Wartime".
3. Phillip Haas - Ain't doing shit.
4. David O. Russell - Directed Mark Wahlberg in "The Fighter". Yaay!
5. Steve Buscemi - Currently starring in "Boardwalk Empire" and directing "Nurse Jackie".
6. Danny Boyle - Directed "Slumdog Millionaire" and fantastic "127 Hours".
7. Doug Liman - Directed Nicole Kidman & Sean Penn in excellent "Fair Game".
8. Mike Leigh - Directed Oscar-nominated "Another Year".
9. Scott Hicks - Kind of a crap director, actually.
10. Mary Harron - Just wrapped production on vampire film "The Moth Diaries".

My Top Ten Favorite Movies of 1995

1. City Of Lost Children
2. The Little Princess
3. Babe
4. Seven
5. The Usual Suspects
6. Funny Bones
7. Safe
8. 12 Monkeys
9. Living In Oblivion
10. Theremin

Honorable mentions: Apollo 13, Leaving Las Vegas, Dead Man Walking, Smoke, Carrington, Unzipped, Devil In A Blue Dress, Persuasion

Everything's Wrong: Best Documentaries For A Better America

Sometimes it's hard to watch an exhaustively researched, factual accurate documentary about politics or the environment because they make your blood boil and you simultaneously feel so helpless. And it's troublesome that almost all these documentaries make the Republican party look like the worst kind of corporate-bought villains and, yet, there are the facts staring you in the face. And when you look at the refutation of these documentaries by conservatives, it usually devolves into mere contradiction instead of disproving anything, that's why I've never seen a right-wing documentary that ever moved me or schooled me (see my previous post). I also challenge you to look at member reviews on Netflix and comments on various blogs - the people who most passionately dispute documented facts and eyewitness video are usually mouth-breathing trolls who can't spell or reason, and are clearly regurgitating Republican hearsay the way geese vomit force-fed grains while producing fois gras (and both are an equally sickening practice). I hope one day liberals stop being so equanimous, and prosecute governmental, corporate and economical sociopaths to the fullest extent of the law. They should at least be humiliated with a slap to the face.

Anyway, prepare to get pissed:

1. No End In Sight (W. Bush and his administration are war criminals)
2. The Corporation (Your entire life is being co-opted)
3. Unprecedented (W. Bush cheated his way into office)
4. Inside Job (Wall Street and the banks have not been punished or regulated)
5. Food, Inc. (You are eating dogshit. Monsanto is the devil)
6. 11th Hour (Anyone who denies quantifiable science I will slap)
7. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War On Journalism (He's a nefarious patsy)
8.  Who Killed The Electric Car? (I'll give you one fucking guess)
9. Flow (May I please have a drink, multi-national corporation?)
10. Sicko (Cry "socialism" without telling me what it means and I will slap)
11. Panama Deception (Before there was Bush, there was Bush)
12. Hunting Of The President (Horrifying even if the Clintons aren't blameless)
13. The Atom Smashers (Bullies are still picking on the nerdy kids)

TOP TEN SIGNS YOUR NATION IS MOVING TOWARD A CLOSED SOCIETY

From Naomi Wolf's bestseller "The End Of America". She notes the similarity in the U.S. under the Bush Administration to dictatorship growth under Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler and Kim Jong-IL.

1. Establishment of external and internal enemy. (Al-Queda)
2. Secret prisons where torture is allowed. (Guantanamo)
3. A private and autonomous paramilitary force. (Blackwater)
4. Surveillance of citizens. (wiretaps, hidden and public cameras)
5. Infiltration of opposing groups. (misinformation, spying, disruption)
6. Detainment and release of citizens. (psychological intimidation)
7. Targeting of key individuals. (See "Shut Up & Sing" about Dixie Chicks)
8. Restriction of free press. (Factual opposing evidence is declared treasonous)
9. Recasting criticism as espionage - neighbor vs. neighbor. (See: The Patriot Act)
10. Subversion of law by Cabinet. (W. Bush openly defied congressional law 110 times)

Anyway, you'll notice, if you pay attention to unbiased reporting (not muckraking), that the Republican party is notorious for this. Try to find me a critically-acclaimed documentary that disproves this theory. Again, you'll only find snide, distorted, Right-wing dreck like Ben Stein's "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", "Michael Moore Hates America", "IndoctrinateU" and "Not Evil, Just Wrong". Conservatives seem to embrace a sort of defiant ignorance that, by focusing on pointless bullshit like Bible-fueled morality lawmaking (contraception, abstinence, abortion, in-class prayer, evolution, legislating the human body, stem cells) and anti-Socialist hysteria (universal healthcare, education of the poor, humane prisons, community programs, higher taxes for the wealthy) only serves CEOs, money-grubbing non-profit televangelists, and budding despots working on their plutarchy. They seem to believe everything any right-wing pundit or celebrity tells them. They're hopeless rubes willing to smear or shoot you over conjecture instead of thorough research, or they're corporate-backed Devil's (i.e. Lord's) Advocates - Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Miller, Ann Coulter (too many to list - throw a dull rock and you'll hit one), or they're genuinely dangerous and insidiously intelligent sociopaths who know how to manipulate obese and/or shallow Americans through manufactured terror, sanguine patriotism, opiate religiosity, bank-rolled wars and profiteering, the creation of dependence, and the systematic erosion of any kind of fact-based critical thought. All the Christians will have their Beast soon enough (they also get ecstatic when their prophecies are self-fulfilled), and I guarantee HE'LL be a Republican.

The library and Google are free. Educate yourself. To assist you, I'll be posting a list of essential level-headed, thoroughly-researched, indisputable documentaries (not Alex Jones, btw).