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Next week's US releases from 1999 were 10 Things I Hate about You, Cookie's Fortune, The Dreamlife of Angels, and The Matrix. Want to rewatch?
Cookie's Fortune (99, B+)²: Altman's savvy but relaxed direction is mirror and foil to Rapp's deft plotting. Very funny and slyly satirical.
I LOVED revisiting this movie after 21 years. Feels like a Christopher Guest/William Faulkner collaboration. Balm for tough times. So smart.
The Dreamlife of Angels (98, A–)²: Fierce but deeply sympathetic study of two working-class girls judging each other's survival strategies.
In 1999, I understood these characters' differences as temperamental. I now see a comparative study of two exhaustions, two cruel optimisms.
10 Things I Hate about You (99, B–): Gender politics, overall sophistication muddier than it imagines. Still, lightly charming. It does try!
I'm just a Bring It On person. I just am. Lots here feels awkward or overconfident, but quite a bit I like, and I think Stiles is wonderful.
The Matrix (99, X)*: I grant its sleekness and innovations. But it's awash in paradox, with gun-loving paranoia hiding in enlightened robes.
("X" means I have no idea how to give a grade at this point. The movie's extremes are too confounding and my own relation to it too bruisy.)
I want to enjoy the novelty and ambition, all welcome even when confused, but the brutally violent messianism is a huge stain at its center.
The sequence where Neo and Trinity shoot up that lobby is the worst I've ever felt in a theater, and hasn't gotten easier for me with time.
My 1999 review is overheated in MANY respects, but I still connect to the heartbreak and anger that motivated that furious piece of writing.
Otherwise, the film around it is a vertiginously exciting/frustrating mix of smart, spiffy, and stupid, but I'll never be able to relish it.
All that said, please read @CaelKeegan's brilliant, persuasive, hugely sympathetic book on the Wachowskis: https://www.amazon.com/Lana-Lilly-Wachowski-Contemporary-Directors/dp/0252083830
