1999: The Podcast

American Beauty was 1999's Best Picture winner at the Academy Awards. And it was an unstoppable behemoth when it came to end of year accolades, cleaning up as well at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, SAG, and more. Critics practically tripped over themselves digging deep into their vocabularies to properly articulate the film's genius.

And yet, 23 year later, the consensus seems to be that the film is...bad.

So what happened (beyond the dark revelations of Kevin Spacey's long history of terrible, abusive behavior and sexual assault)? And is there anything left to make American Beauty a film that can still be appreciated? Is anything about American Beauty still beautiful?

This week, John and Joey are joined by the Addington siblings, Aislinn and Tobin, co-hosts of CageClub's very own The Contenders podcast.

They discuss their journeys from loving and then really, really hating Sam Mendes and Alan Ball's strange, misguided, ambitious, and hopelessly outdated failure.

Former Minnesota Vikings punter and current science fiction author ("Otaku") Chris Kluwe joins us to discuss our first movie from our Essentials series - The Matrix.

Released on March 31, 1999, written and directed by the Wachowskis and starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano, The Matrix was something of an unexpected hit that would go on to become a cultural phenomenon.

To this day, we use terms like "glitch in the Matrix" and "red pill" in memes and casual conversation because the things the reference are nearly universally recognizable.

Kluwe joined John and Joey to talk about their memories of seeing it for the first time, how well it has aged, and how it has influenced his own writing.

Find John on Twitter @ProbablyRealJB

Find Joey on Twitter @soulpopped

Find Chris on Twitter @ChrisWarcraft

For more on Chris's book Otaku: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250203939/otaku

The Phantom Menace was, at the time, universally referred to as "the most anticipated movie of all time", and it's unlikely that any movie will ever again carry that distinction.

But with anticipation like that, how could it not disappoint? The movie has gone on quite a journey in the last 23 years, from "the first Star Wars movie in 22 years", to "the biggest disappointment of the summer", to "the worst Star Wars movie", to now, where it finds itself beloved by a generation of fans who grew up on it and admired by older fans who have come to overlook its obvious flaws in favor of its considerable (and many) charms.

Just in time for Star Wars Day, May the Fourth, Star Wars fans (and prequel lovers) Brian Silliman and Matt Romano, the hosts of the Star Wars podcast Return of the Pod, join us to talk about all the ups and downs of The Phantom Menace, and how the film has become a nostalgic favorite and continued to find new fans two decades later.

(NOTE: John keeps referring to the span between RotJ and TPM as 17 years. It was 16. John is old and time is an illusion. 1999: The Podcast regrets the error.)

Check out Return of the Pod on the web.

Return of the Pod on Twitter: @ReturnOfThePod

Brian on Twitter: @BrianSilliman

Matt on Twitter: @mattromano

Fight Club may well have been 1999's most important box office bomb. With a budget of $65 million, the film barely made back half that at the domestic box office, and barely cleared $100 million worldwide.

Yet it remains one of the cult classics of the 1990s, and people often remember it being a lot more successful than it was. A lot of that has to do with the format that would define film in the pre-streaming era of the late 90s and early 00s: DVD.

Its themes of toxic masculinity, cultural decay, overbearing capitalism, fascism, and how all those things are expressed in violence seem particularly relevant today.

And so this week, John and Joey invited Amanda Moore (aka Frank) - who spent a year infiltrating the world of the alt-right and neo-Nazis and has spent her time since exposing them and writing about her experience - to talk about her love of the film and how well it reflects what is happening beneath the surface of American culture today.

You can find Amanda on Twitter @noturtlesoup17 and on TikTok at noturtlesoup17

Stanley Kubrick’s final film (and perhaps the nail in the coffin for Hollywood's most famous couple), the psychosexual thriller Eyes Wide Shut, was released on July 16th, two days after the limited release of The Blair Witch Project, and on the day that birthed a thousand QAnon conspiracy theories as John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy died in a plane crash while everyone in America kept listening to Destiny’s Child’s Bills Bills Bills.

The film was, at the time, well received if not overwhelmingly praised by critics and audiences.

But it’s worth noting that the critical division is unusually stark, with critics who reviewed it positively giving the film overwhelming praise and vice-versa, with very little in between (Slate’s David Edelstein called it “a somnolent load of wank,” for example).

And, to be fair, many critics have given the film a second look and come to their senses.

But the question now is not whether or not Eyes Wide Shut is a great film (it is) but whether or not it’s Kubrick’s greatest film.

In this episode, John and Joey welcome New York Magazine feature writer Lila Shapiro, who wrote the 2019 essay What I Learned After Watching Eyes Wide Shut 100 Times for Vulture.

Check out more of Lila's work here.