The Rage: Carrie 2 was not a box office success, but it wasn't the disaster a lot of people remember either. Finishing at #91 for the year, just ahead of Go and (somehow) just behind the Melissa Joan Hart/Adrian Grenier vehicle Drive Me Crazy, The Rage: Carrie 2 opened in late March at an impressive #2 behind the 1999 comedy hit Analyze This. But it didn't quite make back its budget, and it as since largely been forgotten about. Which is a shame, because it has a lot to offer. While the film...

Stigmata was, impressively, the 49th-highest grossing movie of 1999, finishing just ahead of House on Haunted Hill at 50th (which is upcoming in this round!) It made $50 million domestically and just shy of $90 million worldwide on a $29 million budget. Opening at #1 on September the 10th at over $18 million on a spooky box office weekend that saw The Sixth Sense take second with $16 million and ALSO opening, Stir of Echoes, debuting at $5.8 million in 3rd, the music video of a movie was...

At 174th place at the box office, eXistenZ was not one of the big hits of 1999, though the it has some proud company in the 170s, including The Limey, Cradle Will Rock, Princess Mononoke, and Jawbreaker It’s not clear that it ever had the makings of a runaway hit, but it can’t have helped that another heady sci-fi thriller about people who aren’t sure if the reality they exist in is real (and it isn’t) was released three weeks earlier in the form of The Matrix.  Cronenberg was hardly a...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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),...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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%...

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...