1999 in movies: Star Wars returns and Spacey reaches his peak

By the time The Phantom Menace finally arrived in theatres to take the crown in the box office for the year (side note: I saw it on May 22, three full days after its premiere, which is better than my track record with Terminator 2, for example, but still surprisingly late), I had so successfully avoided spoilers and news of any kind (another side note: by not, for example, looking at the names of the spoileriffic track titles on the already-released CD soundtrack) I didn't even know who was playing which role. As it happened, then, in a buzzing AMC movie theatre in Oakville, I missed the first time that Qui-Gon Jinn called Obi-Wan by name, so it was almost an hour and a half into the movie before I realized who Ewan McGregor was playing.

This is my first time, out of so many times, watching a blu-ray version of this movie. I'm not actually sure if I've ever seen a blu-ray of any Star Wars movie, but that seems unlikely so I'll guess that I must have. It looks fantastic. 

Unfortunately, after the rush of the opening titles and crawl, it wasn't long until I was a little bored and just waiting for the podrace, which, for the record, I don't find all that exciting either, but seeing as it's basically the whole reason for Lucas to have made the movie at all, he certainly puts his heart into it.

Other than that, it's still the same poorly scripted and directed, stiffly acted, loveable, cherished piece of my life.

Now, conversely, this is only my second time watching American Beauty, which would go on to win the Oscar for Best Picture the following year. The first time that I watched it was on DVD and I remember feeling impressed in the way that one sort of feels like they should be impressed. In truth, I didn't like it all that much, and I liked it less this time around.

What it tries to do is soon to be done much more effectively in Fight Club, and I settled on something that I believe I always felt but couldn't articulate at the time: Lester is a loser. And I don't mean in the context of the movie that he was a loser and then came to life - I mean that he was a loser all the way through. 

Spoilers follow for a nearly thirty-year-old Oscar-winning movie...

I think of him as a loser because one of his big triumphant moments is telling Carolyn off in juvenile fashion in the middle of the night, then tucking himself in with a satisfactory grin on his face like he just delivered a historic burn. He remained a loser while blackmailing his office because he couldn't even dream big - a year's salary (with benefits) was a paltry lowball offer on his part. And, of course, there's the element of his teenaged daughter's teenaged friend inhabiting his fantasies. 

On a related note: both he and Jane should stay far away from Ricky. Ah, that's probably just me now watching as a dad. But seriously: stay away from Ricky.

For Spacey, who won Best Actor for his performance, this was a turning point, professionally speaking, as what had been a career with terrific performances in great movies would soon turn into ... K-PAX and such. Allison Janney probably came out in the best shape in the long-tun.