The Astronaut's Wife (1999)

Charlize Theron, at least, got a chance at a do-over in The Devil's Advocate, another, better scifi-fantasy in which a woman with a boy-cut experiences mental collapse while her husband becomes distracted by otherworldly issues at work, a concept that works well within the context of a morally bankrupt law firm but which here, set in Florida and centred around NASA male astronauts and their wives who wait fearfully on Earth, never is definitively a story about mental health nor alien abduction nor paranormality nor trauma, is never exactly a story about the after-effects of space travel, of loneliness, of body snatching, nor twinship, just a long string of ponderous scenes, the tedium of which is eventually put to death by an hysterical ending so random it is as if it comes suddenly from outer space.

★☆☆☆☆

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I Am Legend (1999)

The virus in the 1971 Charlton Heston film adaptation of Richard Matheson's book turned people into eloquent cloaked albinos about as terrifying as the "Street Countdown" participants of that IT Crowd episode, so this much more recent adaptation is already winning by featuring truly terrifying monsters, the Darkseekers, whose cgi may be wonky but whose rapidly increasing intelligence really does pose a problem to Robert Neville, the last-man-on-Earth immune to the virus and humanity's last chance at a comeback, played by Will Smith, looking as good as he ever has and with a bottom lip that should have won an Oscar for its role in this post-apocalyptic scifi blockbuster.

★★★☆☆

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Stir of Echoes (1999)

Released in the same year as The Sixth Sense, this paranormal thriller also has a cute-ish kid seeing dead people, but the focus of the plot is on Dad, following a more Amityville Horror-type of same-old trajectory in which the 'he' (Kevin Bacon) becomes increasingly erratic, subject to paranormality that renders him unable to maintain happy relationships with his wife and child - it's all very predictable but some effective sfx chills helps to overcome the stock-standardness.

★★★☆☆

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Cruel Intentions (1999)

Just 17 years old, this biting comedy of manners - Dangerous Liaisons transported to NYs Upper East Side - has already dated terribly, especially in respect to the gay-shaming that features heavily in its plot, but if you can view the movie as a product of its homophobic time, there's a lot to enjoy including Buffy's Sarah Michelle Gellar as the schemer who wages sex to get her half-brother (Ryan Phillipe) to bed Reese Witherspoon's straight-laced virgin Annette Hargrove - oh, and if you just want to watch it because at one point Ryan Phillipe bares all, well, there's no shame in that.

★★★☆☆

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Black Robe (1999)

I wonder if Martin Scorsese ever considered the title, Black Robe 2: Japan Calling for his 2017 Silence, because his movie and this 1999 Bruce Beresford epic both tell the story of Jesuit missionaries, or 'black robes' traversing new lands in the 17th Century (here it is New France (Canada), not Japan) searching for colleagues and encountering persecution and brutality as religion clashes with natives.

★★★★☆

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Office Space (1999)

Thanks to a hypnosis accident, disengaged and disgruntled office worker, Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) starts impressing upper management in this comedy that perfectly articulates the plight of many modern-day cubicle dwellers lost in soulless corporations and particularly those employees working under insipid middle managers like the one here portrayed in a perfectly irritating manner by a hilarious Gary Cole.

★★★★☆

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Random Hearts (1999)

Random Hearts tells the incredibly boring story of two complete strangers, played by Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas, whose worlds collide when their respective partners die in a plane crash together and it is revealed they'd been having an affair.

☆☆☆☆☆

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The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)

Despite the anticlimax of its fudged final scene, this is a terrific adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 book that succeeds as a classy thriller, a glamorous European travelogue, and a deeply disturbing psychological character study of a young chameleon whose talents as a voice artist and tendency to be in the right place at the right time assist him in keeping up a series of wickedly simple but deadly deceptions.

★★★★☆

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The Iron Giant (1999)

A giant robot descends from the sky and befriends a boy in this delightful animated movie, Brad Bird's directorial debut, with a story a little bit like E.T. crossed with the 50s paranoia of, say, The Day The Earth Stood Still; it is a largely hand-drawn boys-own adventure and a refreshing break from the computer-generated polish of the Pixar-dominated contemporary animated film world.

★★★★☆

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Stigmata (1999)

Patricia Arquette stars as the only person in the world who doesn't know from the outset of this light horror movie exactly what is going on - for 90-odd minutes, she thrashes around like a crazy person on a train, at a nightclub, and in a bathtub surrounded by a silly number of candles, having strange visions, repeatedly running out into Pittsburg traffic, and generally trying very hard to fill the time it takes for stigmata to appear one-by-one on her body while her co-stars, Gabriel Byrne and a string of rosary beads, and viewers, wait patiently for the by-the-numbers demon possession story to finish.

★☆☆☆☆

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Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

As a big fan of British spy action - the serious (James Bond) as well as the not so serious (quirky 70s tv series, The Avengers) - I have a soft spot for Austin Powers and this 1999 follow-up to the 1997 original ups the ante by introducing time travel, big name cameos (Elvis Costello, Will Ferrell..), and myriad new characters (Michael Myers does an Eddie Murphy and portrays several including Fat Bastard), and the sequel succeeds in being funny most of the time, mostly because so much trouble is taken setting up some really lame jokes.

★★★☆☆

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The Sixth Sense (1999)

The spooky thriller that momentarily shot director M Night Shyamalan and child star Haley Joel Osment to fame features Toni Collette as the mother of a troubled boy (Osment) who sees dead people, Bruce Willis as the child psychologist trying to help, and a now famous twist in the movie's tail.

★★★★☆

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Galaxy Quest (1999)

A group of actors from a scifi tv series are mistaken for real intergalactic heroes in a funny comedy that pokes fun at nerd conventions, Star Trek actors and fandom.

★★★☆☆

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Fight Club (1999)

This is a subversive drama about a lot more than just a club of men that secretly meets in a basement so that members can beat each other senseless.

★★★★☆

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Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Based on a short story, Traumnovelle by 'the literary Sigmund Freud' Albert Schnitzler, Stanley Kubrick's last film is a slow-burn psychological suspense drama about adult sexual relations and monogamy, pondering whether a wife's erotic fantasy about an American Naval officer constitutes a betrayal of some kind against her husband.

★★★★☆

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