The best part of The Cider House Rules, the 1999 film by director Lasse Hallström (An Unfinished Life, Chocolat), is the sweet, uplifting score from composer Rachel Portman. When a movie’s score is the best thing you can say about it, that’s not always good. With that said, some excellent movie scores out there help make a good movie great or a great film near perfect. Examples off the top of my head that I can think of are Jaws, Rocky, Sicario, Jurassic Park, The Last of the Mohicans, Drive, The Social Network, Halloween, Far and Away, The Empire Strikes Back, and Braveheart, to name a few. Each is a movie that I would consider to be, at worst, a B+ movie. Though a lesser score would likely not diminish my impression of any of these films, one of the first three or four things that come to mind is the score. When I think of The Cider House Rules, I think immediately of Portman’s beautiful Oscar-nominated score. However, unlike the movies above, its great score doesn’t equate to greatness. An A+ score probably takes this C+/B- movie up to a B.
Category Archives: 1999
American Beauty (1999)
Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey –The Usual Suspects, Se7en) isn’t your usual man going through your typical midlife crisis. A man going through a midlife crisis might quit his job, buy a sports car, cheat on his wife, long for a life with no responsibility, or obsess compulsively over things he can’t have. But all of these things at once? Maybe. But it’s less likely for sure. Sam Mendes (1917, Revolutionary Road) is a highly well-known director, even though he has only directed eight movies (as of 2020) and earned just one Oscar nomination before that year. But his film struck an accord, and he took home the two biggest trophies of the year for a person in his profession, Best Director and Best Picture for his debut feature-length film, 1999’s American Beauty.
Any Given Sunday (1999)
Oliver Stone’s (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July) Any Given Sunday was a movie I saw in the theaters in 1999. While I saw bits and pieces on cable television over the years, my second watch of this film wasn’t until 2019. So first, it doesn’t feel like this film is 20 years old. Second, except for a few technology pieces (mainly cell phones), it felt like this movie could have been released this year and still give the same message with a nearly identical look and feel. The movie holds the test of time; sometimes, that’s one of the best things you can say about a film. Unfortunately, that is the best thing about this movie.
Man on the Moon (1999)
Though we primarily know him for his slapstick comedy (The Cable Guy, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Venture: Pet Detective), Jim Carrey has proved on numerous occasions that he can do very well what many other people in his genre cannot…he can give riveting and believable performances in both light-hearted and heavy dramas. He’s done it with The Truman Show (where he was spectacular and deserving of an Oscar nomination) as well as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And he does it with 1999’s Man on the Man that, with respect to The Truman Show, is his finest performance as an actor in any genre. Carrey’s biopic of Andy Kaufman is a movie that I’ve had on my list to see for years, but one that I never felt “in the mood” for. It’s not that I expected to be disappointed by it (with just a 63% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I knew this movie would be hit or miss for me). Instead, I just knew that it would be a different kind of movie and that, like many Jim Carrey movies, I’d have to be prepared for anything. I liked The Truman Show a lot and appreciated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But I’m not a Jim Carrey fan by any means. I don’t think he’s that funny at all. If he retired tomorrow and never acted again, I would be perfectly okay with that. With that said, I did enjoy Man on the Moon, and Carrey was the perfect person to portray Andy Kaufman. This was the role that Carrey was born to play. Regardless if you are a fan of his or not, I think this is a movie that everyone should see because you’ll learn so much about Kaufman. And if you’re like me, you probably have heard his name a lot but know very little about him.
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Angela’s Ashes (1999)
A couple of months ago, I found an article in Entertainment Weekly that had a list of the most depressing books ever written. And near the top of this list was Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. So, along with a list of other books I wanted to read, I went to Barnes and Noble and searched for the book. I came up empty, which surprised me because I had long thought this book was a classic and one read in English classes in many high schools. And I know I could have downloaded it or my Kindle, but I’m really about a 65%/35% reader in terms of hard copies over Kindle. And I like to read my classics as hard copies. In any case, fast-forward a month, and I go to a different Barnes and Noble looking for the book and again come up empty. So I texted my friend Sarah, and she told me I needed to check out the biography section and not the fiction/classics section. Who knew? And there it was, along with about 20 other copies of it. So I read the book over two weeks and loved it. It’s my favorite book of 2015. And, yes, I do rank my books just like I do my movies. I don’t blog about it because I watch more movies than reading books.
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