Year: 1999

‘I know this looks bad,’ Bryce says, and he’s right. The potential for Best Laid Plans to take an offensively bad turn at this point is enormous. While the title does take on precisely the kind of sleazy double entendre you’d expect from a movie the features a sex act going as wrong as it possibly could (though not quite in the way were initially led to believe), the characters end up coming across as nothing more unsavory that merely sad and desperate.

The Hunt for Red October is one of those rare perfect movies. From director John McTiernan’s clever disposal of subtitles for the Russian-speaking characters to Basil Poledouris’s terrifically martial score to DP Jan de Bont’s beautifully eerie underwater photography, nothing could be better.

But damned if The 13th Warrior isn’t the best, most enthralling adventure movie I’ve seen in a good while. This one is sure to acquire a cult following on video, and that’s why I’m here now: to tell you that if you like this kind of film, go see it now while it’s still on the big screen. You’ll be sorry later if you don’t.

Reactionary fantasies seem to be a specialty of Julia Roberts, and Stepmom fits right into that groove. Not only does her Isabel Kelly willingly gives up a glamorous career to take care of the kids their father — her boyfriend — seems not to care about, she learns to be happy about it.

Do Hollywood execs think audiences are morons, and will watch any old piece of crap starring Julia Roberts? They’d be right. Runaway Bride, perhaps the godawfulest movie of the summer of 1999 (yes, worse even than Wild Wild West and The Haunting), looks on track to make an astounding $150 million dollars.

No wonder Edward — and by extension, all the men in the audience — loves her. She’s the perfect male fantasy: a gorgeous woman who’ll have sex with you and not want to talk about it afterward.

As Bill the Cat would have said, Ack! That line — inspiring cringes in me from the moment I saw it in the preview for Notting Hill — perfectly encapsulates everything that’s wrong with this movie: inane dialogue spoken by cardboard characters thrown together and forced to stay together by mere plot convenience.

I wanted to like Rushmore. I really did. While I was watching it, I kept telling myself: This is exactly the kind of movie I complain there aren’t enough of, with inventive characters, an unpredictable plot, and a fresh, off-kilter point of view. So what’s not to like?

The Farrelly brothers have done it again. If you liked There’s Something About Mary and want to feel all hip and happening by catching an independent film — even though you usually hate those talky, obscure pieces of crap — then Outside Providence is the film for you.