Alex Fung's Page > Film Columns/Essays > 1999's Top Films: A Critical Consensus

By ALEX FUNG
January 30th, 2000

(Newcomers: I have a home page on film. Had to get that out of the way.)

PREVIOUS RESULTS:

1998 (Saving Private Ryan) 1997 (L.A. Confidential) 1996 (Fargo) 1995 (Sense And Sensibility)

As in previous years, I have collected several Top 10 lists from various film critics with enormous help from many generous people, and have attempted to consolidate this data into a 'consensus' ordered list of the top films of the year.

Scoring

I have used the same proprietary scoring methodology this time around, with a largely weighted scale for ordered Top 10 lists, and equal weighting for lists where no particular order was used. (For hybrid lists, I have compensated accordingly.) In ordered lists, only the first 10 films were counted -- if a critic deigned to list fifty pictures, I only took note of the first ten. "Tied" films were ranked equally in both ordered and unordered lists. (A correspondant astutely pointed out the inanity of ties in unordered lists.)

In instances where critics chose to recognize only a specific portion or sequence of a picture, I appropriately downgraded the points allotted to the film accordingly under the reasoning that it made no sense to assign the full point total when the critic only deemed a section of the picture to be listworthy.

For various reasons, some critics cited non-film projects -- television programs, music albums, etc. -- in their year-end Top 10 lists. For posterity, these were counted but had no impact in the final standing.

This year, the Village Voice polled many film critics on their year-end and decade-end selections and posted the results online. In many cases, the top ten films listed in critics' Voice ballots did not match the Top 10 lists published in their respective periodicals. In such conflicting cases, I have used their "official" versions.

As per last year, for the purposes of this compilation I have excluded the lists from all non-North American sources on the grounds that films which have been released internationally will clearly have an unfair advantage over pictures which have yet to bow in foreign territories. (Films yet to be released internationally will obviously have no chance to appear on any foreign Top 10 lists.)

Each critic's list was weighted equally, irregardless of my personal opinion of the quality of their work or their tastes -- as tempting (or in fact, justifiable) as it may have been. Indeed, as I continue to be exposed to "film critics" whose primary interests and motivators are are so dubious (quote whoring, celebrity interviews and junket-hopping) as to be distasteful, I find it increasingly difficult to reasonably justify giving equal weight to their questionable lists as to those of legitimate critics and cinephiles; on a personal level, at least, I certainly don't invest any weight in them.

This is not a perfect system by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm growing increasingly troubled by the many weaknesses with this methodology. For one, it's an unbalanced system, measuring the good (people who really like a movie) while ignoring the bad (even more people who might completely hate it); an extremely divisive picture will fare better in this system than one which elicits unanimous appreciation without enthusiasm. Also, films which did not receive wide theatrical releases (which includes late-year platform releases, limited release pictures and virtually all foreign-language films) will be handicapped under this system as film critics in smaller markets will be unable to consider the pictures for their Top 10 lists (either for practical -- they haven't seen them -- or ideological -- they won't list films unavailable to their readership -- grounds). I was actually considering breaking the list up into separate categories this year -- wide-release, limited-release, foreign-language -- but decided against it since I don't want to ghettoize the pictures; do keep in mind, though, that some mental adjustment should be performed when comparing, say, a huge studio picture like The Green Mile with a limited release Japanese film like After Life.

There's also the matter of the different sorts of film critics being surveyed -- while many film critics (mostly those based with smaller publications or with TV programmes) stick to accessible, mainstream Hollywood fare to populate their Top 10 lists (perhaps due to editorial constraints -- one need only recall Dave Kehr's difficulties with the New York Daily News to recognize the effect of editorial influences), other film writers for publications like the Village Voice and Film Comment are willing (and able) to champion more adventurous fare -- small independent and experimental films, obscure foreign-language pictures, etc. This schism results in a rather schizophrenic final consolidated list which strikes me as both rather unsatisfying and unavoidable under this technique.

Nevertheless, this method is not without some merit; one would be hardpressed to claim that American Beauty and Being John Malkovich were not largely well-received by the North American critical community. It's nearly irrefutable that the films near the top of the list received much critical acclaim, the films in the middle of the list less so, and so forth; objectively, there's a good correlation here. Whether the #15 film was better received than the #16 film is of course debatable, but I presume it's understood that this degree of precision is unattainable: I can state with some degree of confindence that the #15 film wasn't as appreciated as the #5 picture, and more than the #25 and #35 movies, but hair-splitting on such a fine level is debatable. I suspect that anyone who develops an alternate methodology to assess the same data will come up with a list which will strongly resemble the one below (and note that Shawn Levy of The Oregonian did just that with last year's results).

Again, I've also included "point totals" for the rankings. While the figures themselves are largely incomprehensible, it gives a vague idea of how films fared relative to each other. The figure in square brackets next to the film title, where applicable, is the number of unequivocable first-place votes the picture received. (First-place ties were not included in this total.)

[NOTE: At this point, I'm unsure if I'm going to be continuing The Top 10 Project next year. While I'm certainly grateful for the invaluable help from many list contributors this year, this exercise does take a fair chunk of work and a considerable amount of time, and I admit to being rather exasperated by those who feel the need to waste even more of my time by sending in fake Top 10 lists, thereby prompting me to have to double-check every list submitted by a non-established source. For that matter, I regretfully seem to be picking up web page visitors who perceive that since I provide a public service by archiving all sorts of film-related information, I must be a public employee and have an obligation to fulfill their film info needs. To quote Bill James, "I still get many letters during the course of a year that are a great pleasure to me. But as time goes by, I get more and more letters that irritate the living hell out of me. People have started assuming that I am a goddamn public utility or something." I may reduce my focus on archiving film information (including but not limited to the Top 10 lists) hereon; we'll see.]

Anyway, the results for 1999:

[1] American Beauty [34] Sam Mendes 1610.205 [2] Being John Malkovich [13] Spike Jonze 1560.367 [3] Election [6] Alexander Payne 1026.453 [4] The Straight Story [11] David Lynch 985.730 [5] The Insider [2] Michael Mann 822.036 [6] Boys Don't Cry [4] Kimberly Peirce 728.334 [7] Toy Story 2 [3] John Lasseter 698.375 [8] All About My Mother [8] Pedro Almodóvar 680.962 [9] Magnolia [9] Paul Thomas Anderson 673.213 [10] Three Kings [5] David O. Russell 662.004 [11] Topsy-Turvy [7] Mike Leigh 656.037 [12] Eyes Wide Shut [7] Stanley Kubrick 537.514 [13] The Limey Steven Soderbergh 518.061 [14] The Talented Mr. Ripley [1] Anthony Minghella 491.913 [15] The Matrix [2] The Wachowski Brothers 489.511 [16] Run Lola Run Tom Tykwer 483.011 [17] Fight Club [5] David Fincher 476.934 [18] South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut [4] Trey Parker 449.748 [19] The Blair Witch Project [2] Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez 414.515 [20] The Sixth Sense M. Night Shyamalan 405.191 [21] The Dreamlife Of Angels [2] Erick Zonca 372.405 [22] The Iron Giant [2] Brad Bird 334.855 [23] Rosetta [2] Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne 296.934 [24] Go [1] Doug Liman 296.704 [25] Autumn Tale [2] Eric Rohmer 270.575 [26] Buena Vista Social Club Wim Wenders 248.198 [27] Besieged [1] Bernardo Bertolucci 244.782 [28] American Movie [1] Chris Smith 243.322 [29] The End Of The Affair [1] Neil Jordan 201.647 [30] After Life [2] Hirokazu Kore-eda 168.813 [31] The Green Mile [1] Frank Darabont 164.400 [32] Man On The Moon [1] Milos Forman 161.600 [33] Dogma Kevin Smith 161.236 [34] The Hurricane Norman Jewison 147.600 [35] Ride With The Devil [1] Ang Lee 144.753 [36] eXistenZ David Cronenberg 141.600 [37] Rushmore [2] Wes Anderson 124.345 [38] The Cider House Rules [1] Lasse Hallström 115.452 [39] Flowers Of Shanghai [6] Hou Hsiao-hsien 114.000 [40] Mr. Death: The Rise And Fall Of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. Errol Morris 112.783 [41] October Sky [1] Joe Johnston 110.743 [42] Princess Mononoke Hayao Miyazaki 109.573 [43] The War Zone [2] Tim Roth 100.519 [44] Leila Darius Mehrjui 87.900 [45] Romance [1] Catherine Breillat 86.622 [46] Sleepy Hollow Tim Burton 85.151 [47] Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl Joan Chen 84.340 [48] Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels Guy Ritchie 83.943 [49] Beau Travail Claire Denis 82.046 [50] Cookie's Fortune Robert Altman 81.864 List generated with data as of 00/01/26

Commentary

• For the second consecutive year, a DreamWorks picture tops the list: Saving Private Ryan was the most critically-acclaimed film of 1998, while Sam Mendes' American Beauty grabs the title this year, edging out Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich. This was easily the closest race for the #1 position I've encountered during the five years I've been performing this exercise, and the factor which pushed Beauty over the top was probably its 34 first-place votes, nearly three times that of Malkovich's thirteen. (They were one-two both in total points and in first-place votes; David Lynch's The Straight Story (#4) impressively topped eleven Top 10 lists.) While American Beauty rated first on more individual lists, Malkovich was named on more Top 10 lists, which is all the more impressive given that Spike Jonze's film played fewer markets than Sam Mendes' picture -- at its widest, it played on about half as many screens as American Beauty; one could definitely make a good argument that, after considering all factors, Being John Malkovich was in fact the critical darling of 1999.

• Some may be surprised by the strong performance of Alexander Payne's satire Election (#3), but in December when the first handful of Top 10 lists began to pour in, I was actually wondering whether or not it would win it all and rate first; it's a picture which placed on numerous lists and has received near-unanimous critical praise. While it ultimately didn't come close to topping American Beauty, Election still fared very well in being the third picture to top a thousand "points". (It was also the only picture among the top 10-ranked films to be theatrically released in the first half of the year; this gives credence either to the cliché that film critics, like Academy members, have short memories, or that studios release their stronger pictures in the second half of the year. As I've written in the past, I subscribe to the latter philosophy.)

• The strong performance of Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother (#8) is remarkable given the fact that it's a foreign-language film which hadn't played many markets by the end of 1999. Similarly, I was somewhat surprised to hear that Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry (#6), which opened in mid-October, hadn't yet played to some mid-sized markets by the end of December.

• Among the top 10-ranked films, only two of them -- Toy Story 2 (#7) and Three Kings (#10) -- had a legitimate wide (over 2000 screens) release. Toy Story 2 was a commercial smash, American Beauty (#1) was a hit, and the rest of the top 10 ran the gamut from modest success to commercial disappointment.

• Although the perception exists that film critics tend to praise uncommercial and inaccessible material, the top 20 critical favourites include four of the year's top ten domestic box office grossers -- Toy Story 2, The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense.

• While one may look at the fairly weak standing of Norman Jewison's The Hurricane (#34), considered to be a leading Oscar candidate, and presume that its late release date and limited critical exposure hampered its performance here, it's worth noting that Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (#9) was released at roughly the same time frame and scored exceedingly well in this study, even nabbing nine first-place votes (fourth-most amongst all films). Similarly, Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy (#11), a late-year limited release picture, fared very well in the 1999 standings. Next to these two, the performance of Anthony Minghella's late December release The Talented Mr. Ripley (#14, with a single first-place vote) seems positively modest by comparison.

• I've read a lot of year-end revisionism which claimed that the long-awaited opus Eyes Wide Shut was a dud with both audiences and critics, which frankly made me wonder what the hell these people were talking about; while the Kubrick film certainly received its share of negative reviews, it also scored some very positive assessments, and its resultant #12 ranking here along with seven first-place votes hardly seems indicative of a film that has received the sort of critical scorn some articles might have one believe.

• The films which ranked highest without topping any single critic's Top 10 list were Steven Soderbergh's The Limey (#13), Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run (#16), and the unexpected box office smash The Sixth Sense (#20) from M. Night Shyamalan.

• First-time filmmakers fared very strongly in this year's study, with Sam Mendes (American Beauty [#1]), Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich [#2]) and Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry [#6]) all placing in the top 10.

• In a truly banner year for animation, Toy Story 2 (#7) was the top-ranking animated film, beating out South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (#18, but four first-place votes to Toy Story 2's three), The Iron Giant (#22), and Princess Mononoke (#42). (The summer Disney vehicle, Tarzan, received solid reviews upon its theatrical release and wound up at #63 here.)

• After a weak 1998, documentaries made a comeback in 1999, with Wim Wenders' Buena Vista Social Club (#26), Chris Smith's American Movie (#28) and Errol Morris' Mr. Death: The Rise And Fall Of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (#40) represented on the final list.

• Eleven of the top fifty critical favourites played theaters entirely in a language other than English. (While a Japanese film, Princess Mononoke was dubbed into English and hence is not included in the aforementioned figure.) The top ranking foreign-language films were All About My Mother (#8), Run Lola Run (#16), The Dreamlife Of Angels (#21), Rosetta (#23), and Autumn Tale (#25). Five of the eleven pictures were primarily French-language.

• Due to its platform release, Wes Anderson's Rushmore (#37) also made the 1998 list (#10 last year). Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flowers Of Shanghai also placed on both lists (#39 in 1999, #50 in 1998) based solely upon the support of film critics (mostly from The Village Voice) who have caught special screenings of the picture: it never received domestic distribution. (Incidentally, I recently rewatched the film as part of Cinematheque Ontario's Best Of The Nineties programme, and appreciated it a great deal more than from my initial film festival viewing.)

• I was rather surprised by the strong performances by Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged (#27) and David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (#36); I liked the latter and was cool on the former, but hadn't expected either of them to fare so highly in the survey given the critical reponses received during their respective theatrical releases. (The #33 overall rank of Dogma also surprised me, if only because I'm struggling to come to terms with some critics deeming it as one of the year's ten best.)

• Films which scored a first-place vote without ranking in the top fifty overall include (in descending order): Angela's Ashes, Black Cat, White Cat, The Thin Red Line, and Show Me Love.

• #51-55, for those who care: The Winslow Boy, Cradle Will Rock, Holy Smoke, Dick, and Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train.

• The Jar-Jar Effect: The highest-grossing, and to many (but not I), the most highly-anticipated film of 1999, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace was only (partially) cited on one critics' top 10 list.

• Films which received unexpected Top 10 mentions: Light It Up (you know, with Usher), Black Mask.

• Follow-up from last year: the 1998 films which made up the Best Picture Oscar nominees were Saving Private Ryan (1998 #1), Shakespeare In Love (#3), Life Is Beautiful (#7), The Thin Red Line (#11), and Elizabeth (#18). To date, the lowest-ranking Best Picture nominee during the five years of this study has been Good Will Hunting (1997 #24).

• As of this writing, I've only seen 44 of the Top 50; then again, three of the films I missed haven't been distributed in Toronto (yet).

Alex Fung (aw220@freenet.carleton.ca).

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