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      Hundreds of Readers Told Us Their Favorite 1999 Movies. Which Came Out on Top?

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      In a memorable year for film, there were recommendations of blockbusters, tender dramas and coming-of-age-tales. But one title stood out from the rest.A quarter-century later, the residual energy of 1999 cinema lingers. The Class of 1999 series — our class project, so to say — took form as a retrospective, sifting through films and moments that inspired a generation at the dawn of a new millennium.It dissected the revolutionary power of “The Matrix” and “The Blair Witch Project,” which manipulated our minds into believing what we saw was real. It examined legacies, in conversation with Haley Joel Osment and the “risky stunts, not risky roles” ethos of Tom Cruise. In essence, the last year of the ’90s had earned itself the title of “the year of uncertainty,” at least according to Wesley Morris.As for myself, I’d define 1999 through the stylistic lens of “SLC Punk,” “American Movie” and “Girl, Interrupted.” (Passionate and a bit misdirected; gritty and a bit manic.) When our film staff writers and critics made their list of favorite films from 1999, we of course had to ask New York Times readers to weigh in on their favorite movie of the year — a question that spawned more than a thousand submissions (almost) overnight.“The Matrix” was mentioned nearly twice as often as any other film. “Fight Club,” “Office Space,” “American Beauty” and “Magnolia” followed suit, in that order. (“American Beauty,” directed by Sam Mendes, won the Oscar for best picture.)Many readers sent us lists, unable to choose just one film, while others gave an elaborate and detailed retelling of a first viewing. Here’s a sampling of what our readers picked, covering everything from teenage escapades to heart-racing thrills to gut-wrenching dramas.‘The Matrix’ Is EverywhereMike Ruddell of New York:By 2024, “The Matrix” is feeling more relevant (and plausible!) by the day, thanks in part to our obsession/tension with breeding ever more capable A.I., our cultural fixation on antihero hackers and leakers, our ongoing destruction of the planet, and our weirdly brat green digital culture. At this point only the phones feel dated.But that’s not what makes this a good movie. “The Matrix” is the best movie of 1999 because of the insanely inventive plot (or conceit?), the thesis-worthy philosophical themes, the kick-ass mishmash of Wing Chun, jujitsu, cyberpunk, shoot-em-up action, and C.G.I. “bullet time” (a term coined thanks to the film), the most “1999” film anyone could possibly think up. As Gen Z would say, “The Matrix” is a vibe.I still get an adrenaline rush from the closing scene when Neo, fresh off his obliteration of the Agents, puts on his shades, looks to the sky, and FLIES.Neeraj Gupta of London:Growing up in India, on a diet of Bollywood movies, “The Matrix” was the first English film that I had watched in a cinema. I distinctly remember being wowed by the plot and coming home to think if all of us are actually living in the Matrix. To this day, I can’t shake that feeling!It is a cult classic with scenes and props etched in my memory, from the long black leather coats to Morpheus’s frame less glasses, and of course Neo’s gravity defying bullet dodge. A movie that made a lasting impact on me.Dylan Feldpausch of Chicago:It epitomizes the alienation of modernity through a (literally and figuratively) subterranean queer lens. I remember watching it as a kid and being inexplicably drawn to its aesthetic, and only as an adult realizing how important it was to me as a nonbinary person — particularly the idea that you can imagine yourself into any identity no matter how inaccessible it may seem to you, and that your power in that identity comes from a strong commitment to your truest self.Paddy Free of Auckland, New Zealand:I was 10 in 1977, the perfect age for “Star Wars.” Walking out of “The Matrix,” I felt the feelings I’d hoped to feel walking into “The Phantom Menace.” 1999’s Great Disappointment and 1999’s Great Redeemer.Drama. Drama. Drama.Kevin Hengehold of Seal Beach, Calif., on “The Sixth Sense”:Not your typical ghost story, and I still watch it whenever I see it on. Fantastic in-depth acting led by Haley Joel Osment along with Toni Collette and Bruce Willis. “I see dead people” is a line that will live on long after I’m gone … and I’m not planning on coming back to watch my wedding video …Katie Robleski of Milwaukee on “Magnolia”:I’m glued to the screen in a dark theater as Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” swells. John C. Reilly quietly delivers his monologue until Melora Walters breaks the fourth wall (and her gut-wrenching pain) with that hopeful smile — cut to black (and to my tears rolling with the credits). Perhaps being 19 made all the difference, but everything about “Magnolia” — Tom Cruise, full cast breaking into song, raining frogs, and 3-hour runtime included — completely changed cinema for me. I miss that era.Zac Oldenburg of San Francisco on “Eyes Wide Shut”:My memories started on a 4:3 aspect ratio DVD, but the film became a revelation once I saw it in a theater. Kidman is alluring on every level, and Cruise gives himself over to Kubrick in a way he has never done again for a director. It’s just an incredible film that sends Kubrick out on a high note.Alex Arroyo of Littleton, Colo. on “Fight Club”:I remember I was in junior high, a group of friends and I going to watch it in theaters. We were so pumped afterward, we just wanted to start our own fight club … we never did though; we were kinda nerds. But the idea of someone being so over all of the daily, typical BS and willing to do something to change it all, gave me hope and kinda made me feel like a badass for watching it.Dana Jacoby of Cotati, Calif., on “American Beauty”:We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. 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      From Winona Ryder to Jenna Ortega, a Goth Girl Timeline

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      From “Beetlejuice” to its sequel, these are the actresses and roles that made us embrace the darkness.Is it just fashion? No, it’s an attitude, a lifestyle. And a beloved character type. The goth girl is the lovable-yet-scary outcast whose grim and ghastly exterior belies wit, smarts and a dry sense of humor that never fails to cast an honest light on the disappointing world around her. As “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” brings together two generations of legendary goth girls — Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega — we look at some of the actresses and roles that have defined the archetype since the original “Beetlejuice” in 1988.1988Winona Ryder Sets the Standard“My whole life is a dark room. One big dark room.”Winona Ryder in “Beetlejuice.”Warner Bros.When Lydia Deetz appears in her family’s new Connecticut home early in “Beetlejuice,” she glances around curiously, her eyes wandering beneath her short, spiky black bangs, stopping at the sight of a spider in a web along the stairwell. Unlike her shallow, distracted parents, Lydia is clued in to the supernatural happenings of her new surroundings and has no trouble befriending the undead residents of the house.The role was one of Winona Ryder’s earliest in a career largely defined by goth girls and dark-attired outsiders. In the black comedy “Heathers,” Ryder played Veronica Sawyer, the reluctant friend to the popular girls, who prance around in bright matching outfits. Veronica, however, dresses in blacks and grays and gets drawn into a string of homicides that leaves multiple teenagers dead.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Aaron Pierre: From Action Prince to Lion King

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      The British actor stars as an ex-Marine in the new Netflix thriller “Rebel Ridge” and as the titular cat in the upcoming “Mufasa: The Lion King.”Aaron Pierre was an unsure British teenager when he took his first acting gig: a narrator in a secondary-school production of “Moby Dick.” The school didn’t have a dedicated drama program and produced a play once every three years; Pierre had focused on athletics before giving the stage a try.As he recalled during a recent video call from his apartment in Los Angeles, his adolescent mind was thinking, “What’s going to happen to me walking through the halls if I do this play?”The show turned out to be painless. He went out, hit his mark at the corner of stage left and looked at the audience as he said his few lines. “I remember getting backstage and just being like, ‘That was amazing,’” Pierre said.The roles have grown a bit larger. Pierre, 30, played the hard-luck soldier Cassio in a 2018 production of “Othello” at the Globe Theater. The film and TV director Barry Jenkins saw him and was impressed enough to reach out to the actor on Twitter. That led to Pierre’s role as the yearning and enslaved Caesar in Jenkins’s mini-series “The Underground Railroad.”Since then, Pierre has played an ill-fated rapper in M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller “Old” (2021) and Malcolm X in the anthology series “Genius: MLK/X.” He currently has another major role, in “Rebel Ridge” (streaming on Netflix), directed by Jeremy Saulnier (“Green Room”); Pierre plays Terry Richmond, an ex-Marine who faces off against civil forfeiture and a corrupt police force. In December, he voices the digitally animated lead of “Mufasa: The Lion King,” reuniting with both Jenkins and the actor Kelvin Harrison Jr., who played the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in “Genius.”Pierre didn’t appear to be too caught up in the anticipation. “I don’t take myself seriously, but I do take my craft extremely seriously,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Film That Makes the Stationary Lives of Oysters Into a Wondrous Tale

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      “Holding Back the Tide” weaves facts and dreamy moments into an unconventional take on the nature documentary that very much affects humans.To say that “Holding Back the Tide” is about oysters is technically true. But that description might give the impression of a more conventional nature documentary, the kind with stunning footage narrated in the sonorous voice of a British man. I mean no slight to those films, which are often incredible. But “Holding Back the Tide” (at the Firehouse theater in New York) is something entirely different, and it’s wonderful.The director, Emily Packer, faced an inherent challenge in making a film about oysters, which is that you can’t really observe them doing anything, the way you might with lions or whales. They’re stationary. They don’t have facial expressions. They don’t make noise. But oysters are also incredibly important to our environment, especially in regions like New York City, where eroding shorelines pose a real threat not just to the natural world but to the city’s human inhabitants, too. Oysters also help improve water quality. And, at least to some of us, they’re pretty delicious.All of these facts come up in “Holding Back the Tide.” In interviews and a number of observational scenes, we meet the people and organizations who work to restore the oyster population in the New York region, including the Billion Oyster Project, which among other things partners with top restaurants on shell collection and education. We learn that without oysters, the city might not have existed, at least not the way we imagine it. We find out about historical figures and fascinating biological details. But the factual documentation scenes are just one mode that the film operates in.That’s because Packer sees more in an oyster than just a beach defender or a tasty snack. It’s both a literal creature and a rich symbol for thinking about civilization. Oysters are ancient. They’ve seen a lot. Their history is tied up with the history of race and labor; their disappearance from some areas tells a story about pollution and environmental decay. And oysters can change gender during their lives, with most starting out as male and transitioning to female after the first year of life, which gives them the capacity to fertilize their own eggs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Review: Delightfully Undead Again

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      Tim Burton has brought the band back together — Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, even Bob the shrunken head guy — for a fun but less edgy sequel.After more than three decades and assorted ups, downs and spinoffs like an animated series and Broadway musical, most of the key players in the original “Beetlejuice” band — Tim Burton, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Bob the shrunken-head guy — are back together. A lot has predictably changed along the way, yet one of the enjoyable aspects about reunion tours is that when a group has charmed its way into your consciousness, like this one did back in the day, a.k.a. 1988, you don’t mind (too much) its sporadically sour notes and slack timing.And, so, enter the dependably delightful Ryder as Lydia Deetz, the onetime Goth Girl whose family got into so much trouble the last time. Dressed in her customary black, from bangs to booted toe, her face as ethereally pale as ever, Lydia is the host of a paranormally inclined TV show, “Ghost House With Lydia Deetz,” and now a minor celebrity. She puts on a good front on camera, but Lydia remains a haunted soul, and now there’s more than memories of Beetlejuice (Keaton) that plague her: She’s a widow, and her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), is an eyeball-rolling, heavy-sighing mini-me of gloom, one who’s just itching to have her world rocked.Burton seems anxious to do just that, and he gets this party started without ceremony, cranking it into nicely morbid life as the characters make their introductions. Among these is the first film’s most clueless chucklehead, Lydia’s stepmother, Delia (O’Hara), an arty artist with an outsize ego and cruel lack of talent. Lydia is on warmer terms with her, partly because she needs someone on her side, given that her father is soon dead; he’s dispatched early in a satisfyingly bloody animated sequence. (The character was played in the first film by Jeffrey Jones, who pleaded guilty in 2010 to not updating his registration as a sex offender.)Her father’s death becomes the excuse for Lydia and the rest to return to the family’s old shrieking ground, a hillside fun house with an airy porch and troublesome pests. Once there, Burton cuts loose his cheerfully malignant clowns, and the characters settle down to business with magic portals and visitors from beyond. In bland strokes, Burton et al. also toss in a few romantic complications, partly, it seems, because someone here believes that female characters require love interests. One entanglement involves Lydia and her producer-boyfriend, Rory (Justin Theroux, farcically insufferable), a mindful kick-me-sign; the other, less developed one concerns Astrid and a local cutie, Jeremy (Arthur Conti).I don’t know why anyone thought that Beetlejuice needed any kind of love interest outside Lydia, his old crush. Whatever the case, Monica Bellucci turns up as his ex, the latest in a line of showy Burton vixens. Given her character’s soul-sucking toxicity, it’s hard not to wonder if the filmmakers are making a joke about bad divorces. Bellucci doesn’t have much to do but look hot, which is easy. Like Willem Dafoe — who’s predictably diverting playing a hammy (totally canned) dead actor — Bellucci is attractive filigree, something to admire amid the chats, chuckles and appealingly humble practical effects that still carry the touch of the human hand.The greatest special effect remains Keaton’s Beetlejuice, however attenuated. The original movie was at once a funfair and a comic family meltdown with heart (and other body parts), but what pushed it joyously over the top was Keaton. With his deathly white face and electric-chair shock of hair, Beetlejuice had been designed to seize your attention (and maybe evoke Jack Nicholson in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”). What held you rapt, though, was Keaton’s exciting expressive range and unpredictability. With his wild eyes and raspy growl, he pushed and pulled at your affections, and made you wonder about the guy under the get-up. He seemed borderline dangerous, which gave the film frisson. Even as “Beetlejuice” playfully hit its genre notes, Keaton’s vocalizations — he spat words and all but scatted — and his twitchy physicality kept the film from slipping into the generic.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harvey Weinstein Indecent Assault Case Dropped by U.K. Prosecutors

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      The Crown Prosecution Service said that it had “decided that there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.”British prosecutors have dropped a case against Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul, just two years after authorizing indecent assault charges against him.In a statement on Thursday, the Crown Prosecution Service said that, “following a review of the evidence,” it had decided to halt the proceedings against Mr. Weinstein.Frank Ferguson, head of the service’s special crime and counterterrorism division, said in the statement that there was “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.”“We have explained our decision to all parties,” he added.On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service said in an email that the service would not be giving any further details of the reasoning behind the decision.The case dates to 2022, when British prosecutors authorized two charges against Mr. Weinstein of indecent assault of a woman in London in 1996. Under British law, it is illegal to identify potential victims of sexual assault, even after prosecutors drop a case.At the height of his powers, Mr. Weinstein, now 72, was one of the world’s most important movie producers, widely seen as able to make or break an actor’s career.In 2017, his career went into free fall after The New York Times reported that he had, over the course of nearly three decades, paid off women who had accused him of sexual assault. In the story’s aftermath, prosecutors mounted cases against him in both Britain and the United States.Last year, Mr. Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being convicted of rape and sexual assault in California.In April, New York’s highest court overturned Mr. Weinstein’s 2020 felony sex crimes conviction, ruling that the original judge had deprived him of a fair trial. The court said that the original judge should not have let prosecutors call witnesses who said that Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them when their accusations did not form part of the case.In May, Manhattan prosecutors announced they would retry Mr. Weinstein on sex crimes charges and he is currently in the Rikers Island jail complex awaiting that case. More

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      ‘Rebel Ridge’ Review: Their Corruption, His Destruction

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      This crime drama from Jeremy Saulnier stars Aaron Pierre as a man whose run-in with small-town police officers uncovers uncomfortable secrets.A veteran arrives in a rural town to find his friend. He comes in peace — but the police demand submission. “Rebel Ridge,” written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier, wears its “First Blood” inspirations as boldly as John Rambo sported a patch of the American flag. That franchise distended into Afghanistan, where Sylvester Stallone machine-gunned the Red Army during the long Soviet war there. But Saulnier (“Blue Ruin,” “Green Room”), a specialist in thrillers set in the margins of society, keeps this efficient tale of ethical outrage as simple as a punch to the throat — or rather, given its stark cinematography, like a shot of someone patiently walking up to a bully and then punching them in the throat.The law remains more or less the same as it was 40 years ago, when it didn’t strain the audience’s credulity to imagine conservative cops loathing a hippie drifter. These Southern officers are nearly all indistinguishable, fatuous men with cropped goatees and dull stares, headed up by a swaggering police chief (Don Johnson) who drawls that he wouldn’t cut a guy a break for “eee-ternal life and a catfish sandwich.”But today, and with pointed reason, Saulnier has cast Aaron Pierre, a Black actor, as Terry, a former Marine who is simply pedaling a bicycle when he gets stopped and frisked. The officers, played by Emory Cohen and David Denman, confiscate the cash Terry’s carrying to bail out his cousin (C.J. LeBlanc) who’s been arrested on a weed possession charge, plus a few extra dollars Terry intended to use to buy a new truck. Here, as in the real world, “civil forfeiture,” the seizure of money or property from people who have not been charged with or convicted of a crime, is extra income for police departments. (Terry’s situation, not an uncommon one, mirrors an incident reported in The New York Times in 2021.)The local judge (James Cromwell) won’t help, and the court’s bail collector (Steve Zissis) is unswayed by Terry’s argument that the money to free his cousin is already in the building. (“This is surreal!” Terry sputters.) No one mentions race, not for a long while, and no one has to. The tension is in the cops’ confidence that they can do anything they want to Terry, in how doggedly he remains civil, long past the point where we want him to lose his cool. In one scene, he even appears to bring them doughnuts.Terry will snap, but the dominant mood isn’t revenge — it’s futility. The recent push for increased oversight of law enforcement is folded into the story, yet the fixes haven’t helped. One plot point centers on when a cruiser’s dashboard camera starts recording, and there’s a running gag about the linguistic shift from “nonlethal” to “less-lethal” weapons that hammers home the idea that the damage hasn’t changed, only the veneer. But the script resorts to a go-there, get-the-thing structure that sends Terry and his only supporter, a scrappy low-level court employee named Summer (AnnaSophia Robb), skulking around to obtain taped evidence of police abuse. Given the unshakable mood of cynicism, it’s hard to get very invested in their quest — especially when we’re already aware of so many similar videos that haven’t changed a thing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Red Rooms’ Review: A True Crime Obsession Unravels

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      A mysterious young woman becomes deeply invested in the trial of an accused serial killer in this courtroom thriller.“Red Rooms,” a disturbing courtroom thriller from Quebec, explores the fascination with serial killers and true crime from an enticingly fresh perspective. Directed by Pascal Plante, it takes the genre’s ingredients — vulnerable girls, male sickos — and adjusts them to the loneliness of the internet age.Kelly-Anne (a formidable Juliette Gariépy), a model, is deeply invested in the trial of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) — in part because she looks like the brunette version of one of his victims. Ludovic, a gaunt figure with sleepy eyes, has been accused of killing three teenage girls — not just killing, but torturing, disfiguring and dismembering them. These repugnant acts were captured on video, and anonymous users on the dark web paid extravagant sums to watch.The first half of the film, composed of glacial pans and unsettlingly static images, builds up to the day of the trial when the full-length videos are presented to the jury. A conspiracy-peddler, Clémentine (Laurie Babin), believes Ludovic is innocent — she brings to mind a Manson groupie — but Kelly-Anne is something else, a kind of cyber-samurai who lives alone in a sterile high-rise and has a small fortune in bitcoin from playing online poker. The two women are always the first in line to secure a spot in the trial gallery and they bond, uneasily and with ambiguous motives, until the true nature of Kelly-Anne’s voyeurism pushes Clémentine away.The film’s tension rides on the unknown, a paranoid vibe accented by Kelly-Anne’s shady online presence and Gariépy’s stark, sphinx-like performance. With a gaze that flings daggers, Gariépy’s an anchoring force that makes the more deranged second act feel credible. Most importantly, it’s her face — the way she looks at Ludovic in the courtroom or reacts to audio of screaming and chainsaw-whizzing — that works together with the film’s restraint to tug at our morbid curiosity.In one scene, Kelly-Anne watches one of the videos and all we see is the menacing blood-red glow of the torture room illuminating her enraptured expression. What could be so awful? So hypnotizing? We’re dying to know.Red RoomsNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. More