Best Movies of 1999

By Peter Calder and Russell Baillie

1 SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE: The inspired conjecture behind this romantic comedy is that the author of Romeo and Juliet was the lovelorn victim of writer's block and sexual performance anxiety. Unworried by the paucity of certain knowledge about the Bard, the film concocted a deliciously fanciful entertainment in mock-Shakespearean language which would have impressed the man himself (co-writers Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard took one of its seven-Oscar haul which included best picture).

The sly in-jokes (a souvenir Stratford-Upon-Avon mug holds the writer's pens) may have been for the initiated but the giddy love story was for everyone, driven by great performances, particularly that of Gwyneth Paltrow, who finally got a role worth her talent.

Directed hell-for-leather by John Madden who made Mrs. Brown, it saturated its narrative premise with Shakespearean motifs: the Elizabethan hostility to women on the stage is an essential contrivance of the plot's romantic intrigue and at times it's delightfully hard to tell the film's dialogue from that of the play they're rehearsing. Big-hearted, glamorous and driven by brilliant supporting performances (particularly from Geoffrey Rush and Ben Affleck), it was a film that proved all the stage is a world. That all the world is a stage we already knew.

2 SCARFIES: It had been ages since we'd had a decent laugh at ourselves on the big screen.

So really, Scarfies only had to be funny to succeed. It was. But it was so much more in a tightly-scripted, character-powered tale (from director Robert Sarkies and brother writer Duncan) about a quintet of Dunedin students tempted then endangered by the marijuana plot they find in the basement of their flat from hell.

While there was nothing particularly new plot-wise about innocents stumbling upon a potentially incriminating windfall, this still played fresh, thrilling and sinister, with a decidedly New Zealand-accent throughout.

It found an audience at home too, taking a healthy $1.2 million at the local box office making it the second most popular NZ flick of the year after What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? And next month it's off to the Sundance Festival, the influential independent American film bash in Utah.

But like its possible closest relation, Goodbye Pork Pie of a generation ago, Scarfies is so entertainingly "us", we probably shouldn't care whether the rest of the world gets it or not.

3. GODS AND MONSTERS: Sir Ian McKellen's star turn as James Whale, the urbane English homosexual who directed the first two Frankenstein movies, was one of the year's most memorable and distinguished, a film which speculated on the last days of a man found dead - shades of Sunset Boulevard - in his swimming pool. A slight but beguiling glimpse into what might have been, it featured beautiful supporting performances, particularly that of Lynn Redgrave as the curmudgeonly housekeeper.

4. GENGHIS BLUES: The year's most low-tech documentary was also its best. Shot on pocketmoney by brothers Roko and Adrian Belic, it followed blind Creole bluesman Paul Pena on a trip to Tuva at the centre of Asia, where he demonstrated his unlikely mastery of the ancient local art of throatsinging. What starts as a bizarre travelogue ends up as a cross-cultural portrait of two artists - Pena and the local master Kongar ol-Ondar. Touching, amazing, technically rough as guts and with scenery to clear the sinuses, it was an off-centre delight.

5. THE MATRIX: In the words of its star Keanu Reeves:" Whoah!" The little ballyhooed action sci-fi action flick from the Wachowski brothers was the coolest movie of the year with its cybertale of Reeves' hacker fighting dark forces which had enslaved mankind into a virtual reality grid (or something like that). And it's flo-mo sequences made special effects seem special again.

6. MY NAME IS JOE: Britain's veteran socialist Ken Loach served up his best in years in the bleakly funny and desperately moving story of a recovered alcoholic on the dole who falls reluctantly in love with a woman from the other side of the tracks. Loach's astonishing control of mood and tone constantly upended expectations and Peter Mullan's fluid and sincere performance was a revelation.

7. TOY STORY 2: The sequel was an equal to the delightful first instalment of computer-animated magic with a perfect balance of freewheeling story, eye-catching action and relentlessly inventive comedy. All this and Woody contemplating his mortality - who would have thought a pixilated plaything could generate so much pathos?

8. RUN LOLA RUN: The German sensation of the festival, this furiously kinetic display of visual pyrotechnics was about as shallow as a puddle but as entertaining as a rollercoaster ride. Lola ran to save her boyfriend from a homicidal gangster and the film reran her frantic race twice each time, comically or tellingly altering details.

9. RUSHMORE: Not many saw it, but this black though sweet-natured comedy about the private school borderline psychotic supernerd, the unhinged millionaire and the sad kindergarten teacher with whom they both fall in love was an askew delight. Bill Murray's performance as the depressive rich guy and newcomer Jonathon Schwartzman as the eccentric teenage Max helped make this debut by director writer Wes Anderson something strange but special - a coming-of-age flick where you were never sure just who was meant to be growing up.

10. THE SIXTH SENSE: It might have had the don't-spoil-it-for-us-ending of the year but its blend of psychological thriller and horror was perfectly pitched throughout. So too was the performance of young Hayley Joel Osment as Cole Sear, the little boy who becomes a patient of troubled child psychologist Bruce Willis, his apparent neurosis explained by the year's most chillingly-delivered line: "I see dead people."