Anyway, here's the way my Top Ten List works.  I list (God help you) not only all of the movies that I saw in 1999 that were released in 1999, but also another list that shows all the movies I saw in 1999 that weren't released in 1999.  Why I continue to do this, I'm not sure; it has something to do with being able to place the top ten list both in a modern historical context and that of my own personal growth.  No matter how much I wish my friends are used to the odd holes in my cinematic education  (The year I don't hear "You've never seen [name of classic movie uttered in tones of shock and disbelief]?  How in the name of God have you managed not to see [name of classic movie again, in even more disbelieving tones than the first mention]?" will be the year that I go deaf), the fact is nobody's seen everything, and this is a great format for me to rant about stuff that really is outstanding with a quick and easy reference to other stuff so the reader can figure out whether my tastes match theirs.

The lists also show something important about my ability to think about things on the fly; Of my top ten movies that were released this year, I wrote reviews of two of them, and of the top ten movies that were released in other years, I wrote reviews of six. The reason last year's top ten of 1998 was so much fun to write is that although I hadn't written long reviews of most of the movies, I had a pithy paragraph or two already thought up for almost all of them.  Maybe my attention span is dwindling, but at this point I can't imagine getting off more than a one-liner or two about some of these babies.  We'll talk more about that when we get to it, I think.

And, finally, there's a few differences between my approach to this year's list and the last.  Most importantly, I'm including on the list movies that I saw in the month of January, which I've never done previously.  Before, it was whatever I saw up until December 31, but this year had even more post-Christmas released than previously.  So you'll see, at least in the first list, stuff I saw in January as well.  I also hope to spend some time talking about what didn't make the list and why.

So, on to the races.

Movies I Saw in 199 That Were Released in 1999:

• Thick as Thieves (1999) 1/28/99
• Kill the Man (1999) 1/29/99
• Payback (1999) 2/17/99
• The Corruptor (1999) 3/28/99
• The Matrix (1999) 3/31/99
• *The Matrix (1999), 4/9/99
• *The Matrix(!) (1999), 4/15/99
• EXistenZ (1999), 4/28/99
• Star Wars:  The Phantom Menace (1999) 5/19/99
• From Dusk Til Dawn 2:  Texas Blood Money (1999) 5/21/99
• Idle Hands (1999) 5/26/99
• Go (1999) 5/26/99
• Buena Vista Social Club (1999) 6/8/99
• Run Lola Run (1999) 6/30/99
• Wild, Wild West (1999) 7/7/99
• South Park:  Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) 7/7/99
• She's All That (1999) 7/13/99
• American Pie (1999) 7/18/99
• The Haunting (1999) 7/25/99
• The Blair Witch Project (1999) 7/28/99
• Deep Blue Sea (1999) 8/4/99
• Eyes Wide Shut (1999) 8/4/99
• Austin Powers 2 (1999) 8/10/99
• American Beauty (1999) 10/07/99
• Three Kings (1999) 10/12/99
• Dogma (1999) (11/18/99)
• Sleepy Hollow (1999) (11/19/99)
• Toy Story2 (1999) (11/25/99)
• Fight Club (1999) (12/2/99)
• *South Park:  Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) 12/4/99
• Being John Malkovich (1999) 12/24/99
• *The Matrix (1999) 12/26/99
• The Limey (1999) 12/29/99
• The Mummy (1999) 12/30/99
• Ten Things I Hate About You (1999) 1/1/00
• Election (1999) 1/1/00
• End of Days (1999) 1/5/00
• Magnolia (1999) 1/26/00

And from these, my top ten, in the order that I saw them:

  A cyberpunk kung-fu movie by way of Phil Dick and the movie Jacob's Ladder, this came pleasantly close to being my overall top movie of the year.  I used to be stunned speechless by people who have endorsed Existent or the Thirteenth Floor and disregarded this movie until I realized the secret of the Matrix;  it is the true cinematic equivalent of a nickel bag of weed, capable of making some people pleasantly dazed & thoughtful and others tired & cranky.  But when was the last time you saw a sci-fi movie that not only had slow motion gun fights and top-notch wire-rigged kung fu scenes, but also neatly incorporated Zen and Gnostic texts?  Sort of a new hope (pun intended) for those of us cut adrift by George Lucas's "if you're over twelve, this movie isn't for you" Phantom Menace.  I loved how open the movie was to all sorts of interpretations, as exemplified by the matinee I went to attended by a dutiful Nation of Islam school's field trip.  There are other movies on this list that go for society's jugular, but I can't think of a moment more subversive than the speech Lawrence Fishburne (who gives a terrific performance) gives to Keanu Reeves' character about the Matrix:  "It's there when you go to work, it's there when you pay your taxes, it's there when you go to church.  It is the world that THEY have thrown over your eyes."  To paraphrase an old blues song, the men don't know, but the romantic poets and the mystics understand.

Idle Hands:  An odd little movie that showed that the teen horror genre of the 90's had a lot more wit and acuity to it than people might have figured.  Well, it might have shown that, if it hadn't bombed horribly and seen by only 15 people (of which I was one).  As it is, chances seem quite good that Scream3 will be the the official close of the genre, just as Scream was its opening.  This movie, about a stoner so lazy the devil is able to possess his right hand, is darkly hilarious, and filled with lots of pungent jabs at teen apathy (after the protagonist's two best friends are killed, they continue to hang around and haunt him for the following reason;  "We were staring down this big tunnel of white light...[and] we were like, forget that, man, it's too far.") and enjoyably low-brow laughs.  Some may argue that the movie is essentially one long rip-off of the evil hand sequence of Evil Dead 2, but for me, the devil is in the details.  For every one thing that is as dumb as you thought it would be, there are two things far more clever than you thought.  Hope this movie finds the viewership it deserves on video.

Buena Vista Social Club:  Out of all the reviews about this film, not one talked about its greatest strength; its quietly convincing repudiation of the current American zeitgeist.  Watching this documentary about Ry Cooder's revival of the careers of nearly forgotten Cuban singers, this movie relieved anxieties I didn't even know that I had; fear of poverty, fear of growing old, fear of losing inspiration.  Still capable of making incredible music after years of inactivity, the singers in this Wim Wenders movie prove not only that art can continue to provide and protect you decades into your life, but also that there's a lot to be said for a society that, although poor, is much more communal and supportive than our capitalist exclusionary culture.  A really, really inspiring movie with wonderful tunes, its strengths far outshine its few cutsey-poo weaknesses.

Run Lola Run:  One of my faves, this one gets my "pure cinema" award for 1999.  A speedy study of free will and destiny using an awe-inspiring bag of cinematic tricks, Run Lola Run shows three possible outcomes for Lola, who only has 20 minutes to get enough money together to save the life of her beloved.  To a near constant score of propulsive techno tunes, Lola and her boyfriend find themselves battling again and again to live and love.  A lot of people said that this movie wasn't particularly deep, but that's because writer/director Tom Tykwer doesn't go out of his way to underscore the link between the movie's repetitiveness and the belief of some branches of psychology that people get themselves in the same predicaments over and over until they're able to break their bad habits;  Run Lola Run's scenarios end very, very similarly until Lola and her lover Manni learn to depend on themselves instead of each other or their family.  Great, great stuff.

The Blair Witch Project:  Yes, I enjoyed the movie that much.  Like every other movie on this list except for the Matrix, I only saw this movie once and, in the process of trying to figure out which movies would make the cut, wondered if it was really as good as I thought, or if I had just fallen prey to a combination of hype and "the right movie at the right time" syndrome.  But I think this one will hold up when I see it again; this faux documentary of discovered footage shot by three campers who have been missing for a year really presented a generational divide more than any other movie I saw this year.  Anyone over a certain age seemed completely indifferent to, if not annoyed by, this movie.  But everyone below, say, thirty-five was pretty entranced by it.  And I think this is because the characters Heather, Josh and Mike,  all smart enough to throw around witty banter and knowing pop-culture talk and to have researched arcane mysteries, but not wise enough to know how to pack for a an overnight camping trip in the woods, are pretty much archetypes of my generation.  The scariest part of the Blair Witch Project is that each of these people realize that they have blundered into something far beyond their ability to handle and that, in fact, they aren't really that prepared to handle that much.  As one of the characters points out, it doesn't matter if they're being tormented by demented villagers or an actual supernatural force, they're not really prepared to handle either.  The overall feeling of guilt experienced in particular by Heather also seems particularly indicative of my generation; we're always blaming ourselves for things that we don't know, even though obviously some crucial link in the passing of information burned out somewhere in the '70s.  Most of the people I know who are closer to the Boomer era see the movie as just a hand-held mess; a William Castle flick that doesn't work because, really, who runs in the forest at night with a camera going?  But I think the movie has more to it than that, and will (I hope) hold up well as time goes on, despite being over-marketed to death by greedy distributors trying to milk it of every last cent.

American Beauty:  Another film whose actual quality I've worried about before giving the nod, in part because I know that a lot of movies can fool me once.  Like many movies this year, American Beauty overcomes its not-new premise and plot (the secret lives of Americans in the suburbs, how many times have we seen that?) with some new spins and particularly brilliant handling.  That there are so many great performances in one movie, that there's such a brilliant job done with the lighting, music and shot composition, can't really be a coincidence but rather the suggestion of creators and actors working in synch under a gifted director.  Only Annette Bening's character never makes it beyond being essentially a cartoon, but even she has some brilliant scenes.  By being daring enough to embrace its characters and to make the audience laugh from recognition and not from ironic detachment, American Beauty was the one movie of the year that seemed to cut across all boundaries of age, gender and race; everyone I talked to agreed that it was a brilliant movie.  (It was also the one movie review I wrote that got the most responses, which may mean that I was really right on, or that people really respond to reviews of movies that they have already seen.  I haven't decided yet, but am somewhat troubled.)

Three Kings:  I really want to see this movie again; not so much to reassure myself that it's as good as I think, but because I really enjoyed it and want to watch some of my favorite parts again.  I had started a long review of this flick and never really got far once I realized that the perfect way to characterize it--that it's like watching a Garth Ennis comic on the big screen--meant nothing to anybody but a small clique of comic book readers.  Nonetheless, this story of three American soldiers at the close of the Gulf War trying to get their hands on Sadaam Hussein's treasure stash is like reading a Garth Ennis comic, funny and smart, with characters that somehow manage to be both human and iconic, and, somehow, simultaneously traditional and new at the same time.  This is one of several movies on my top ten list that never really seemed to live up to its potential, audience-wise.  I get the impression that it was marketed wrong; that the trailers and ads were built to look like an action movie for young guys, with the theory being that the young guys would spread good word-of-mouth and the movie would grow.  The problem with this idea, I think, is that this was 1999, the year young guys didn't really spread good word-of mouth; they just went to their schools and shot everyone who disagreed with them.  This is another movie that's going to be overlooked at the Oscars, and I can only hope finds more of the audience it deserves on video.

Fight Club:  This, to me, still feels like the best movie of the year, honestly, and probably one of the best of the decade.  Its exclusion by movie critics that should know better really surprises me, since this movie was funnier, darker and more audacious than anything else out there.  The story of a narrator (Ed Norton) that gets involved with a quirky and charismatic outsider (Brad Pitt) and ends up finding a new strange life outside the normal one he had imagined for himself was widely ignored by audiences and widely despised by movie critics.  The latter is understood, I guess, by middle-aged and older critics not taking to a movie that seems to so savagely criticize, if not openly hate, their generation's values and ideas.  Seeming to embrace the joys of nihilism (while in fact perhaps satirizing them as much as anything else in the movie), Fight Club is maybe the most Nietzschean movie I've ever seen; mocking everything, including itself, while daring to look for some attainable level of beauty and power in the world.  Although I understand why a lot of people might be reluctant to see a movie that presents itself so belligerently, I can't see how anyone could not appreciate the movie after its first third, where our narrator finds himself, sleepless and desperate, becoming addicted to victim support groups and only able to express any emotion by pretending to have a host of imaginary ills.  Fight Club is ultimately about the desire to connect in this unconnected society of ours, and by the second third of the movie, it seems that if genuine connection can't exist in this society of ours, then maybe it can exist in two guys beating the tar out of each other.  Filled with clever lines, daring ideas and brilliant execution, this was the most literary movie I saw this year, functioning on many, many levels and opening itself up to deeper and deeper levels of exploration the more it was explored.  Although I thought Seven was only good and The Game not even that, I always thought that director David Fincher had potential.  And here's where it came into full bloom; this film is more of a Kubrick film than Eyes Wide Shut, and deserves to be recognized, which apparently isn't going to happen any time soon.  All the movies that I saw after this film really felt like piffles (and explained why I felt kinda blahh about the movies I saw before it; this film was like being given a really good big meal that you can dig into after surviving on slightly stale peanut butter sandwiches for an interminably long amount of time).  If you've got to see one movie on this list, and you like taking a chance, see this one.

Being John Malkovich:  Unlike last year, where I was dubious of almost half of my picks, this is the only movie I'm not sure should be up here.  Part of it may be that I walked out of the movie largely underwhelmed, due to too much hype and positive word of mouth, but part of it is that, post-Fight Club, I'm starting to think that I'm outgrowing my heavy movie infatuation.  To put it plainly, Being John Malkovich is an extremely clever movie, directed well enough by Spike Jonze and with its original idea (an unhappy puppeteer finds a literal entrance to the inside of John Malkovich's head) adroitly and thoroughly explored by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, but thin as a fuckin' dime.  To me, the static characters of BJM are great tools for some decent laughs, but ultimately incapable of connecting with me enough to really make some sort of deeper point that I could agree with.  If the point of BJM was something about the unchanging nature of character--we are who we are, no matter whose head we're in, or something--it didn't work.  Being John Malkovich really didn't seem to be about anything except being funny and very interesting and somewhere between ninety minutes and two hours long.  If there was an Oscar for being a good sport, John Malkovich should win it for his role in this movie, and I hope he gets nominated for Best Supporting Actor because he does a wonderful job of playing himself in a way that doesn't seem in the least self-conscious (he was also the only character that I had any sympathy for).  This movie largely looks very good by dint of its competition; I have trouble believing that if it were a book (even in our current anemic literary climate), it would make anyone's top ten.  It's a really good debut for Jonze, I'll give him that, and his work reminded me a lot of Terry Gilliam's.  But most of Gilliam's movies really have a heart to them, as much as he might pretend otherwise; Being John Malkovich only has a score with heart, a beautiful piece of work by Carter Burwell that's well worth a listen.

Magnolia:  This is the movie that I bent the rules for, since I saw it very late in January.   But it is a 1999 movie, and I think deserves more than a mention in next year's "top movies I saw in 2000 that weren't made in 2000" list.  A big chaotic mess of a movie, the latest film from Paul "Boogie Nights" Anderson, which chronicles the overlapping lives of nine people (or more) in the Valley, is ambitious enough to feel literary albeit not particularly polished; either strangely ambiguous or else generally unfocussed, Magnolia is an indictment of the way we live now (gee, only the eighth such movie on this list) that never presumes to judge its characters.  Magnolia is kind of like one of those five pound boxes of cereal you get from Costco; if it seems that it has more brilliant acting and more exquisite scenes than any other movie, you have to realize that there's much more of it than there are of the other movies by nearly an hour.  Like Fight Club and American Beauty, Magnolia has a narrator, albeit an unidentified one, and one that usually chooses to make his point visually through blatant manipulation of the characters and camera (the scene where all the characters are singing along to the soundtrack tends to succeed or fail with audience members depending on how accepting they are of this pushy narrator).  The whole cast is very good, even if some of them seem to be developing shticks (Julianne Moore does some great stuff, but kind of a continuation of the sort of great stuff she's done before; Philip Seymour Hoffman seems to cry in every scene; William Macy does his hapless schlep shtick but does a wonderful declaration of love scene; and Luis Guzman pops up as an abrasive guy named, comically, Luis Guzman), and I think even if you don't share my odd and secret theories about the themes of Anderson's work, you'll probably enjoy Magnolia quite a bit.  And for those of you who, like me, might have a slightly larger load of family baggage at the moment, Magnolia might be one of your favorite movies of the year.  If not for Fight Club (which Anderson walked out on and has publicly decried), it would be at the top of my list.

So there's the top ten; as I think I sort of talk around, I found my jones for movie dying down a bit because of that "peanut butter sandwich" factor which is a non-pretentious way of saying that I'm really starting to miss the multi-layered approach of literature, and the movies that I liked best were indeed very literary with regard to subtext, theme or character.  We'll see how this trend follows up, but if this was indeed one of the best years for American film in many years, then American film isn't going to be able to keep my interest.  I'm a bit ashamed that I haven't read very many books over the last year or two, and have essentially reviewed none of them.  Perhaps it's time that I reverse that trend, and start digging back into the books.  My only reservation about this is that I find a lot of book reviews a bit tedious; if nothing else, we expect text and subtext, allusions and secret messages in literature, and reviews that talk about them tend to either ruin it for those who haven't read it, or preach to the converted.  The charms of talking about Gnostic subtext in the Matrix still has its appeals; there just aren't enough movies coming out that make me jump around in my seat.

Of course, there's all those movies that have come out already, just waiting patiently on the video shelf, or floating from art house theater to art house theater, and they still provide me with most of the thrills of my movie-watching career.  And on that note:
 

Seen in 1999 (only movies seen for the first time applicable):

1999

• Pedicab Driver (1988) 1/1/99
• Can't Hardly Wait (1998) 1/7/99
• Mask of Zorro (1998) 1/7/99
• Anaconda (1997) 1/8/99
• The Thin Red Line (1998) 1/13/99
• Psycho (1998)  1/19/99
• The Faculty (1998) 1/20/99
• Star Trek:  Insurrection  (1998) 1/21/99
• The Waterboy (1998) 1/21/99
• Samurai Fiction (1998) 1/27/99
• Playing By Heart (1998) 2/3/99
• Very Bad Things (1998) 2/4/99
• Rushmore (1998) 2/17/99
• A Simple Plan (1998) 2/17/99
• U-Turn (1997) 3/4/99
• Kurt & Courtney (1998) 3/5/99
• Masterminds (1997) 3/7/99
• Tango (1998) 3/9/99
• The Funhouse (1981) 3/17/99
• Who Am I? (1998) 3/17/99
• China Heat (1990?) 3/18/99
• Disturbing Behavior (1998) 3/18/99
• Chinese Ghost Story The Anime (1997) 3/26/99
• The Flirtation of Girls (1949) 4/4/99
• Dahab (1953) 4/4/99
• Gamera, Guardian of the Universe (1995) 4/7/99
• Every Beat of My Heart (1959), 4/11/99
• Love in Karnak (1967), 4/18/99
• Ice Cream in Glym (1992), 4/18/99
• 5 Films by Tezuka (Various Years)  6/4/99
• Black Jack:  The Movie (1992) 6/4/99
• Sniper (1992 or 1993, depending on if you believe the movie credits or the IMDB) 7/15/99
• Belly (1998) 7/21/99
• Halloween (1978) 7/22/99
• Halloween II (1981) 7/29/99
• The Thing (1982) 7/30/99
• John Carpenter's Vampires (1998) 8/13/99
• Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) 8/19/99
• Black Mama, White Mama (1972) 8/25/99
• Perfect Blue (1997) 10/17/99
• Rounders (1998) 10/21/99
• In the Mouth of Madness (1995) 10/21/99
• Black Jack:  Clinical Chart 1 10/23/99
• The Birds (1963) (10/30/99)
• Astroesque (1996) (11/07/99)
• Vanishing Point (1971)  (11/10/99)
• Music From Another Room (1998) (12/2/99)
• Salem's Lot (1979) 12/09/99
• Friday (1995) 12/10/99
• Legend of Hell House (1973) 12/23/99
• Black Mask (1996) 12/25/99

Samurai Fiction (1998):  Kurt and I saw three movies at Sundance '99, that's how little time we had there (not that I'm complaining).  One, Kill The Man, which received a very quick release and got dumped on video, sucked and made Clerks look technically advanced to boot; Thick as Thieves, which was very good and I was mystified to see went straight to HBO without any theatrical release; and this, Hiroyuki Nakano's loving recreation/parody of samurai films.  As the title suggests, Samurai Fiction is to samurai films as Pulp Fiction is to nouvelle vague crime films; the story concerns Samurai Heishiro's quest to regain the Shogun's sword and regain his honor. Lovable sidekicks join him on his quest, and the movie cuts between him and the unstoppable bad-ass who has taken the sword.  I think part of the reason why Nakano's movie never got picked up for distribution here is that the tone is wickedly, deliberately uneven, with beautiful shots of nature (pushing the envelope of black and white digital filmmaking) and a heartfelt message about the destructiveness of pride, vengeance and violence on the one hand, and comical slapstick, vigorous rock and roll music, metareferences (Nakano has the balls to call characters Kurosawa and Suzuki) and beautifully shot fight scenes, where most of the main characters clearly are barely capable of holding a sword with both hands, on the other.  Nakano actually manages to keep these sides enmeshed but separate.  I would be laughing for five minutes straight, and then rapt five minutes later.  I wish I could see it again, and apologize for putting on my list a film that will be impossible for most people to see (perhaps ever) but, you know, best is best.

Tango (1998):  I love Carlos Saura movies; sensual, intelligent, extravagant.  This little number, although a bit 8 1/2ish for my tastes, moves easily about in its study of an Argentinean filmmaker trying to create a production that shows the history of the Tango and of Argentina while piecing his troubled romantic life back together.  Great fun for Saura fans as elements of his previous films haunt Tango, to say nothing of the sensuality of the music, the actors, the colors and photography.  I still get hot and bothered when I see pictures of Mia Maestro.  A good "date" rental for horny college grads.

The Funhouse (1981):  Lost in the Funhouse, Tobe Hooper/Lawrence Block style, with more moments of frisson than you might not expect.  Is the carnival barker God, or just a mean drunk with a freakish son (or both)?  A thrillingly cruel coming of age story, that totters between being lame and being a work of formalist genius.  Although I have no standing on which to say this, The Funhouse strikes me as the most Texan movie that I've ever seen; funny, dark and effective, full of both nostalgia and regret for the dark places of civilization and the human heart.

The Flirtation of Girls (1949):  Kooky, wacky, witty and urbane, Egyptian musicals are the way to go, I tell you.  If someone offers to show you an Egyptian musical from the heyday (sometime between '46 and '59), do not say no, even if the offer is being made by a shadowy character in a trenchcoat at the opening of a dark alley; it's worth the risk.  In this one, Naguib al-Rahani plays like a buffoon-like teacher who falls for his strong-minded beautiful student (Layla Murad); as you can tell, the story turns the whole Pygmalion concept on its ear, with the flirty student easily capable of manipulating her supposed teacher. And everyone learns a delightful lesson about love -- even when you don't get to be with the one you love, love can teach you to love the world again.  Awww.  If someone was smart, they'd rewrite this movie for Julia Roberts.  It'd probably be better than the stuff she's done recently, too.

Dahab (1953):  The Egyptian musical take on the Shirley Temple template that beats the original into the ground.  Faryuz plays lovable orphan tyke Dahab who is adopted by lovable bum Alfredo (Angwar Wagdi), and together they eke out a rough living that would be miserable if not for their love for each other and their ability to create hijinks of a musical comical nature wherever they go.  A great movie with a melodramatic twist at the end that leaves you sort of genuinely alarmed at the seeming loss of lovable whimsy.  The whimsy, I'm happy to report, returns just in time for the closing credits.  A great, great movie.

Every Beat of My Heart (1959):  Gee, what a surprise, another Egyptian musical.  Unfortunately, my notes on this will be a lot more vague, as the PFA has removed their filmnotes from 1999 and haven't archived them yet (razzin, frazzin, sazzin, frazzin...)  Cute and adorable chica (I think Samia Gamal), playing a ditzy dancer who can't seem to keep herself out of the gossip pages, accidentally hits a guy with her car and decides to secretly nurse him back to health rather than risk having the accident (she's already had several accidents that month).  The guy she's hit (uh, let's say the actor's Muhammad Fawzi) is a down-to-earth music teacher who knows how to get her goat as well as when to launch into the right musical number.  Although he drives her nuts and they fight like cats and dogs, soon her eyes are filled with love and she shakes those killer hips in various musical numbers to prove it.  But her boyfriend, an unfaithful scamp of a celebrity singer, doesn't like this and plots to..... you get the idea.  Cute and funny as all hell, Every Beat of My Heart is another movie just waiting to be pillaged and turned into a successful Hollywood film (I guess Notting Hill is sorta like it, but I can't believe that it could be remotely as good).  Boy, I wish I could get my hands on more Egyptian musicals; they're a tonic for what ails you.

Halloween (1978):  Oooh, baby.  From what I've seen John Carpenter never got as good as this again, in part because partner-in-crime Debra Hill makes the lives and the dialogue of the teen girls being stalked by unstoppable force Michael Myers so true to life.  There's not an ounce of fat on this film; it's fighting trim and proceeds to pound the viewer for fifteen rounds.  I particularly loved the first third, which does an amazing job of creating an aura of inescapable doom in, incredibly enough, broad daylight.  Because of its tautness, all of its ambiguity helps the movie seem mythic and deep.  And maybe it is, but what's important is how good it is at what it sets out to do.  As I said in my longer review, you could teach an entire Introduction to Film class on this one movie alone.

Perfect Blue (1997):  Hey, I loved it, my brother hated it, that's how it goes, you know?  This anime about a former J-Pop girl trying to make a new career as an adult actress and being haunted, perhaps literally, by her former squeaky-clean image, manages to both ask a lot of questions about troubling aspects of Japan's kooky pop culture and exploit those aspects at the same time.  The narrative probably gets a bit too dream-like in the final third for its own good, but I'm a big fan of Peter Straub so you'll hear no complaints from me.  Well worth seeking out, I say, despite Tim's protests to the contrary.

The Birds (1963):  What a strange, disturbing movie.  Tippi Hendren plays the Hitchcock blonde who impulsively travels to the tiny coastal town to see a guy she's attracted to, and finds herself at the front line of a war between humanity and, apparently, birds.  Hitchcock is very, very elliptical in this one, leaving me with a lot of half-formed theories; I could swear the title is, in fact, a pun (on the English slang term for women) because well over half the movie is more than cinematic set-up; it's a study of four women all in love, to varying degrees, with the same man and the way they act around him and with each other (the Oedipal subtext between the guy and his widowed mother practically leaves a smear on the screen, even though not a word is mentioned about it).  So it's hard not to see the attacks of the birds as the manifestation of somebody's frustrations and hostility; the trick is figuring out whose frustrations those might be (the movie points again and again at Hedren but keeps things very ambiguous as to whether she might be secret victim or secret perpetrator).  I guess Hitch is making a point about nature, both external and internal; when sufficiently threatened, it will fight back.  I thought the first two-thirds of the movie was way too low-key, with not nearly enough jumps.  Hitch more than makes up for it at the end, though, and pretty much thrashed my nerves totally, the sadistic bastard.

Vanishing Point (1971):  Somewhere in me, there's an article trying to get out about that wonderful genre of the '70s, the car-chase movie.  This movie, flipping loosely between Sartrean existentialism and blue-collar nihilism, completely delighted me when I saw it.  Barry Newman plays Kowalski, a cross-country driver who breaks speed laws in three states because, well, just because.  There's a lot of noise about how he's agreed to a bet to deliver a Dodge Supercharger from Colorado to California in an insanely short amount of time, but basically he's breaking society's laws because society is just corrupt and no good and his own standards are the only thing worth living up to.  A drive-in movie by way of the French New Wave, this little flick has a fervent cult of muscle car fans, acidheads and film buffs, of which I'm well on my way to becoming a member.  A beautiful bag of cinematic tricks (one of which I was happy to see Fincher lift for Fight Club), a great understated performance by Barry Newman (the guy coulda been the Jewish Steve McQueen if there had been a more benevolent God in the sky), and a wonderful mix of straight faced surrealism, lead-footed driving action and ambitious storytelling.  It's movies like this that make me love movies, if you know what I mean.  See this film; in fact, buy a cheap copy (I got mine for six bucks at Costco) and throw it on in the dead of night when you've got insomnia and are generally hating everything.  If it works on you like it worked on me, it will re-introduce to you the odd and secret wonders of life, the sublime hidden in the debris.