In 1998,
The Drudge Report broke the story about Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky;
The Unabomber pled guilty;
The Winter Olympics took place in Nagano, Japan;
Titanic became the first film to gross over a billion dollars;
France won the World Cup;
Google was founded;
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami retracted the fatwa against Salman Rushdie;
Eric Rudolph was charged with four bombings;
Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela;
The US House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton;
Khalid, Jayson Tatum, Paris Jackson, Elle Fanning, Jaden Smith, Dylan Sprayberry, Bindi Irwin, Rico Rodriguez, Jalen Hurts, Shawn Mendes, and Nolan Gould were born;
While Sonny Bono, Carl Perkins, Harry Caray, Grandpa Jones, J.T. Walsh, Lloyd Bridges, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Bella Abzug, Tammy Wynette, Linda McCartney, Octavio Paz, Irene Vernon, James Earl Ray, Eldridge Cleaver, Eddie Rabbit, Alice Faye, Frank Sinatra, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Phil Hartman, Barry Goldwater, the Junkyard Dog, Jeanette Nolan, Maureen O’Sullivan, Sid Luckman, Alan Shepard, Robert Young, Jerome Robbins, Buffalo Bob Smith, Shari Lewis, E.G. Marshall, Lewis F. Powell Jr., Cary Middlecoff, George Wallace, Florence Griffith Joyner, Doak Walker, Gene Autry, Roddy McDowall, Ted Hughes, James Byrd Jr., Bob Kane, Red Holzman, Stokely Carmichael, Alan J. Pakula, Flip Wilson, Matthew Shepard, and Lawton Chiles died.
The following is a list of my ten favorite movies released in 1998:
After his father is murdered by black drug dealers, Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton), forms a white supremacist gang. After murdering a thief, he’s convicted of involuntary manslaughter. In prison, Derek develops a close relationship with an African American prisoner, softening his previous attitudes.
He’s visited in prison by the black principal of his high school (Avery Brooks) who warns him his younger brother Danny appears headed down a similar path.
When Derek is released from prison, he tries to mentor Danny, but they’re harassed by their former associates; the film ends with a harsh reminder of the consequence of toxic beliefs.
The tortured production is well documented. Director Tony Kaye did not approve of the released cut and unsuccessfully tried to have his name removed.
Nonetheless, it’s a powerful film about race relations, the causes of hatred, and the capacity to forgive and overcome such prejudices. We can’t do it without patience, love, and exposure to different points of view.
This challenging, difficult film is still relevant twenty years later and deserves an audience.
The shock of winning seven million pounds in the lottery gives Ned Devine a fatal heart attack. When his friends discover his corpse still holding the ticket, they hatch a scheme to claim the winnings and split it among everyone in their small village. All of the villagers agree except one, a curmudgeonly older woman who threatens to turn them in to get a reward for herself.
When a lottery claim inspector comes to verify Ned’s ticket, it sets off a mad dash to deceive him.
This is a sweet film about small town English life in the late twentieth century. For many Americans, this is our idealized version of English country life: a close knit community relying on each other.
8) 42 Up
This fascinating documentary series began examining the lives of several seven year olds in the early 1960s, circling back to them every seven years.
In this installment, the subjects are forty two years old.
Binge watching the series is compelling; we see children grow old in a matter of hours. We watch the compromises made, and the shuttered dreams. Neal’s struggles with mental illness and Suzy’s struggle to find purpose despite her family’s wealth.
We feel bad when these strangers get divorced. We delight in their grandchildren. It’s like looking into a mirror, seeing in stark relief how the vagaries of life change and shape us in spite of whatever plans we have for ourselves.
Jim Caviezel is Private Robert Witt, whose experiences in the South Pacific theater of World War II are the basis for the story, but the real the star is the fog of war, approximated by a meandering story which weaves in and out.
Loosely based on James Jones’ novel of the same name, Terrence Malick’s film is typically, deliberately obscure. Seemingly major characters disappear from the narrative thread.
The cast is a ridiculous collection of A-listers: John C. Reilly, George Clooney, Nick Nolte, Woody Harrelson, Jared Leto, Sean Penn, John Travolta.
Unlike many war films, this does not focus on violence, but on the psychological effects, the hidden hurts and pains, which can be longer lasting and more devastating.
A lovely fictionalization of the origin of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
William Shakespeare is a young playwright struggling with writer’s block. When Viola de Lesseps (Gywneth Paltrow) disguises herself as a man, Thomas Kent, to audition for his play Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter, Shakespeare is entranced by the performance. He follows “Kent” home and discovers her secret. The pair fall in love, although Shakespeare is already married and Viola engaged to an aristocrat.
If you’re familiar with Shakespearean drama, the inside jokes, the wit, and the anachronisms are fascinating. And it’s loaded with an all star cast: Geoffrey Rush, Ben Affleck, Imedla Staunton, Jim Carter, Tom Wilkinson, Ruppert Everett, Colin Firth.
Judi Dench won an Oscar for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth despite appearing for less than ten minutes of screen time. Once you watch the film, you understand why. Her surprise appearance at the end to unwind the film’s delicate plot is commanding and delightful.
The rivalry between theaters, the machinations of how theater was produced in the late sixteenth century, the censorship. It’s a wholly imaginative work which transports us to a world both foreign and familiar.
Jeffrey “the Dude” Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) shares a name with a much wealthier man. This becomes a major inconvenience when pornographer Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzarra) sends thugs to reclaim money to the wrong Lebowski.
From there, the Dude gets involved with the other Lebowski’s porn star trophy wife and her fake kidnapping, nihilists, and angry Germans. His car is stolen; his rug peed on. It’s Raymond Chandler on acid.
All the while, he finds time to drink white Russians and bowl with his buddies Donny (Steve Buscemi) and Walter (John Goodman).
Despite their further accolades, this remains one of the Coens signature achievements. It’s weird and eminently quotable. And it’s hard to go to a bowling alley on a Friday night and not hear at least one oblique reference to the movie.
Twenty years later, the Dude abides.
The first twenty minutes are breathtaking. Everyone who’s seen this movie can recall the searing images of a man picking up his detached arm and continuing on his journey to the beach. The bookended segment of a soldier striving his entire life to earn the sacrifice made on his behalf is wonderful.
I loved the scene where no nonsense Captain Miller reveals he was a teacher before the war.
The American military sending a squad of men behind enemy lines to locate one soldier just so his family could be spared the grief of losing another son seems false to me. Prioritizing one grief over countless others is off putting,
However, in the end, my admiration of the opening sequence and the sentiment of owed debt, outweighs any other objections and this remains one of the definitive American cinematic representations of the second World War.
As he turns thirty, a series of events leads Truman Burbank to an unsettling discovery: he’s the unwitting star of a reality television show.
Every relationship, from his parents to his best friend, has been carefully choreographed. His father’s death was a ratings stunt. His wife was selected via an audition.
Written by the director of Gattaca (1997), Andrew Niccol, Jim Carrey’s dramatic turn asks important questions about the nature of entertainment, the power of individuality, and the evil of a world where everything is a commodity. Left unsaid is the parallel between the viewers watching Truman’s life unfold and the millions of people who watch similarly exploitative programs like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
The movie wisely ends ambiguously. Truman escapes, but without a camera following his every move, we have no idea what he does next, nor should we: it’s none of our damn business.
Retired schoolteacher Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) writes letters for the illiterate at Central Station in Rio de Janeiro.
When one of her customers, Ana, dies in a bus accident, Dora reluctantly takes responsibility for her child, Josué, and agrees to help him find his father in a remote part of northeast Brazil.
Through a series of misadventures, the two forge an unlikely friendship.
This movie belongs to a long line of films about an unlikely pair forced to work together on the road including La Strada (1954), Paper Moon (1973), Midnight Run (1988), and Transamerica (2002).
What makes this special is the execution. Fernanda Montenegro is compellingly unglamarous, turning this sentimental story into a poignant examination of humanity’s desperate attempts to break free of isolation. Her chemistry with young costar Vinicius de Oliverira is so genuine I had to make sure they weren’t related.
If this were remade in Hollywood, the lead would be Jessica Lange, Diane Keaton, or Meryl Streep, because Hollywood wants to sell us a fantasy world where the only people who matter conform to certain standards of beauty. Fortunately, films like this remind us there’s hope for the rest of us.
1) After Life
Everyone who dies goes to a station between life and eternity where they must choose one memory from their life to take with them into the next. If anyone refuses, they must work at the station aiding others until they do. One of the current workers, Takashi Mochizuki (Arata), recognizes the latest gentleman he’s assigned to guide, Ichiro Watanabe.
After Mochizuki died during World War II, his fiancée entered into a loveless marriage with Watanabe. As both men help each other come to terms with what their lives were and what they weren’t, Mochizuki discovers his beloved had chosen a memory with him as her eternity, and chooses this moment of epiphany as his forever moment, finally leaving his work at the station behind for the next phase of existence.
I’m a huge fan of films which deal with loss and mortality. Director Hirokazu Kore-eda has created a moving ode to the human experience, which manages to be spiritually satisfying without preaching.
Between this and Departures (2008), I’m beginning to understand the Japanese have a view of death I find immensely satisfying.
I will think of this film often and, prompted by its message, I’m already combing through my memories to determine which ones might make the cut in my own Valhalla.