Mike’s Top Ten of 2000
2000 is probably the height of my pre-teen movie-going years. I would say that I was probably at a movie theater with my friends almost every single week that year. I can go back and look at the release calendar and go, “Saw that, saw that, saw that, saw that.” And anything I didn’t see in a theater, I probably saw from my family’s wonderful “hot box” (which, for those young folks reading this, is slang term for illegal cable hookup that got you all the Pay Per View channels. Which… for you young folks reading this, is basically what would become On Demand on cable, only there were like five Pay Per View movie channels and they all played the same movie on a loop every single day for a few weeks until a new movie showed up).
I saw so many things from this year at age 11/12 that I probably shouldn’t have. But because of that, there’s a lot of stuff that has since stuck with me and become some of my favorite movies because of it. I can’t really gauge just how strong or weak a year this is for cinema, because there’s that whole “I was in middle school and almost all of it is now permanently engrained in my head as being a great time” thing.
But there is not a single movie in this Top Ten that I don’t love, and there’s a lot great stuff below too. So I think this is one of the stronger years of this decade. (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Picture and Best Director – 2000
2000 was an interesting year for the Oscars. And the industry in general. They were coming off an incredible year for motion pictures in 1999. Just to recap, look at this list of movies that came out in ’99:
- American Beauty
- American Pie
- Analyze This
- Any Given Sunday
- Baby Geniuses
- Being John Malkovich
- The Blair Witch Project
- Blue Streak
- Bowfinger
- Bringing Out the Dead (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Actor & Best Actress – 2000
These are fun, because, it’s a mix of actor vs. performance. You look at the sheet of winners and be like, “They won for that?” And then your brain starts processing, and you’re like, “Well, that makes sense. But, not for that. Well, they do like them, and they probably deserve something, and…”
BEST ACTOR – 2000
Javier Bardem, Before Night Falls
Russell Crowe, Gladiator
Tom Hanks, Cast Away
Ed Haris, Pollock
Geoffrey Rush, Quills (more…)
The Oscar Quest: Best Supporting Actor & Best Supporting Actress – 2000
Here’s the first entry in our Oscar quest. I say our, because mine started a long time ago. Now it’s ours.
Since the Oscars will be upon us within the next 40 days (and nominations will be announced in exactly 7 days), I figure this is a good time to start gearing up for that wonderful, wonderful night.
How this is gonna work is, from now until Oscar night, I will go over all the major 6 nominees for every year of the past decade, Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress and Director. I will go over who won, what I thought of the performances, who I would have voted for, who I thought should have won, all of it.
The purposes of this are educational (and expository). I want you to be able to know what I think are the worthwhile performances in 83 years worth of films, so that if you should ever come across one of them, maybe you’ll actually give them a chance based on some good things I had to say about it. Maybe you’ll discover something in here that ends up becoming one of your favorite films all because of me. And wouldn’t my ego love to hear that.
My other goal is simple — I’ve watched a shit ton of movies this past year. I want to document my watching them in some way. I want to be able to go back and remember what I thought of certain films, because, eventually, being the DVD hound I am, I will want to buy some of them, and I want to know which ones I liked and want to add to the collection.
So that’s that. Now, let’s start with 2000 and work backwards. (more…)
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