10. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT

By now, you’ve likely heard about the brilliant marketing scheme of The Blair Witch Project.  Filmed with a budget of just $60,000, The Blair Witch Project went on to gross nearly $250 million at the box office last year.  Talk about money well spent!  The brilliance, doesn’t just end there, though.  The Blair Witch Project would have been money well spent even if it wasn’t a box office smash, because it’s the sort of fresh and scary horror film that is destined to become a classic

9. THE SIXTH SENSE

Nearly twenty years after the death of Alfred Hitchcock, we may have finally sound someone who can fill his shoes in M. Night Shyamalan.  The Sixth Sense is the thriller of the year, as it tells the story of a young boy named Cole who sees ghosts and the psychiatrist who tries to help him to make up for his past failures.  Haley Joel Osment is a breakthrough as Cole, and Bruce Willis has never been better, either.  But the real star is Shyamalan, who makes The Sixth Sense mysterious, eerie and absolutely heart pounding, even way before the big twist-ending.   We may never have another Hitchcock, but if Shyamalan can continue to grow from The Sixth Sense, we won’t complain.

8. RUN LOLA RUN

The title pretty much says it all on this one.  German director Tom Tykwer takes a simple story of a girl named Lola who must run through the city and somehow find a way to save her boyfriend who will be murdered by a group of mobsters in twenty minutes if they don’t come up with the money fast.  What the title doesn’t tell us, however, is that Run Lola Run is the most exciting and original cross between a choose-your-own-adventure book and a video game to ever be brought to the big screen. 

7. ELECTION

Perhaps no movie in history has captured the dirty tricks and backstabbing of our American political elections quite as well as Alexander Payne’s very funny story of an overly ambitious high school girl – Tracy Flick – who has her dreams set on becoming the class president.  Her biggest obstacle isn’t her running mate –a popular but dimwitted jock – but rather one of her high school teachers who hates Tracy with a passion.  Tracy may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s impossible not to enjoy Payne’s smart comedy that is so much more than the teenage comedy it appears to be.

6. GO

There have been countless imitators since the release of Pulp Fiction five years ago, but none have come as close to the brilliance of the original as Doug Liman’s adrenaline rush of a picture, Go.  The film brilliantly intertwines three different storylines, all involving a group of coworkers, drug dealers and the undercover cops who are tracking them down.  Go, as its title suggests, never slows down for a minute, as if it took one too many of the ecstasy pills, itself.

5. THE STRAIGHT STORY

In the most unlikely of pairings, director David Lynch – the mastermind behind dark, twisted stories like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet – teams up with 79-year-old Richard Farnsworth to tell the G-rated story of an Iowa man who travels to 240 miles to see his estranged brother.  When he gets there, he may not have anything particular to say, but the film has already said plenty during his journey.  The Straight Story is one of the best depictions of the wisdom and patience that one gains through age, along with the unbreakable bond of siblings.

4. TOY STORY 2

Sequels are always risky, but when you’re following up on the Citizen Kane of animated films, you’re especially playing with fire.  Fortunately, John Lasseter and his Pixar crew made sure they got everything right with Toy Story 2, from its brilliant writing to its groundbreaking animation.  In this brilliant sequel, Woody, who has become a rare classic toy, is stolen by a greedy toy collector.    Like the Woody doll and the original, Toy Story 2 is destined to become a classic that everyone will want to have. 

3. MAGNOLIA

After mastering the 70’s porn industry with Boogie Nights, 29-year-old director Paul Thomas Anderson moved on to a much more ambitious project about love, sorrow, forgiveness and frogs.  And, for the most part, he completely masters it.  Of course, he gets plenty of help from Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and a slew of frogs – all of who gives Oscar-worthy performances.  Anderson may not be doing anything that Robert Altman mastered with films like Short Cuts, but somehow Anderson may be doing them even better.  Requiring audiences to watch a three-hour film is not an easy task, but Magnolia makes it all time well spent.

2. AMERICAN BEAUTY

Its humor may be easier to appreciate than to enjoy, but there’s no denying the creativity and daringness of Sam Mendes’ brilliant debut feature, American Beauty.  It’s a film that’s so good that many believed it would become only the fourth film ever to sweep all the major Oscar categories.  It came up short when Annette Bening lost the lead actress category to Hilary Swank, which is ironic since Bening gives the best performance in the entire film.  Then again irony is exactly what made American Beauty one of the very bestfilms of 1999.

1. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH

Like a modern retelling of Alice in Wonderland, Being John Malkovich tells the story of a struggling puppeteer who discovers a secret portal in his office that leads visitors inside the mind of actor John Malkovich.  And, in the true sense of American culture, he and his friends decide to use it for two purposes: money and sex.  It’s not difficult for viewers to understand the joys of Malkovich’s visitors, becausethe filmis so unique, clever and enjoyable, that they too feel they’ve discovered a rare experience of their own.  Being John Malkovich is one of the most unique films of our time, and the one true masterpiece of 1999.