1999 Was a Great Year for Movies. It Was the Best Year to Write About Them.

One thing to love about time is how liberating it can be. I, for instance, am at liberty to look at the Top 10 movies for the weekend of Aug. 20, 1999 — when “The Sixth Sense,” in its third week out, began its monopoly of the chart — and declare “The Thomas Crown Affair” the best of the lot.

What could be going on here? Am I actually saying that a Pierce Brosnan-Rene Russo remake of the old Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway love heist, from 1968, was always superior to M. Night Shyamalan’s where’d-that-come-from supernatural smash? Or have 25 years ripened one and grayed the other? Hadn’t “The Blair Witch Project” opened in July yet was still very much a thing? (It had, yet it was, down at No. 5.) Only one of the 10 movies was a sequel. In the mix were Julia Roberts, at her commercial peak, in “Runaway Bride” (No. 4, after opening in July) and Steve Martin and a gonzo Eddie Murphy, holding at second, in “Bowfinger.”

So why I am hugging the remake?

For one thing, that’s the kind of year 1999 was: a lot of everything. It’s almost a reflex now, to claim it was just about the greatest class of movies there ever was. Brian Raftery called his breathlessly chummy history of 1999 “Best. Movie. Year. Ever.” Though, I’ve always sought clarification on “greatest,” because this had never been a year of easily triumphant or consensus work. Try 1939, ’68 or ’89 for wonders of the world. “Great,” in 1999, denotes range, volume, abundance, deluge. It’s quality capturing quantity: a megalopolis skyline as opposed to a mountain range.

Twenty-five years later, 1999 is known for being the year of Shyamalan’s movie, of “Blair Witch” and “American Beauty,” which came out in September and went on, somehow, to win the best picture Oscar. The year is remembered for “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace” and “The Matrix,” which had opened in March and by August was winding down its initial colonization of the cultural imagination. It was known for existential identity crackups, and a pervasive itch of anomie, that you could sense in “Office Space,” “Election,” “Dick” and “Fight Club,” which weren’t hits, but also in “American Pie,” which very much was. So Raftery’s breathless tone seems right. It was the last most-exciting period for American moviegoing. It was the last most-exciting time to write about the movies.