Party like it’s 1999: 10 movies that encapsulate one of the greatest years for cinema

n 1999, cinemagoers flocked to watch The Talented Mr Ripley, in which Jude Law smoked cigarettes in a lazily buttoned linen shirt. The same year, they could also watch the actor getting a socket stamped into the base of his spine so he could play a video game. In David Cronenberg’s Existenz, Law’s character is fitted with a gnarly looking “UmbyCord” and hooked up to a creepy, pulsing virtual reality game “pod” that mines his nervous system for data as he plays.

Twenty-five years on there is a renewed appreciation of this lightning-in-a-bottle moment for film. The Criterion Channel has launched a streaming collection celebrating 1999, while the film-maker Edgar Wright has declared it his. In the book Best. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen, film journalist Brian Raftery describes it as “the most unruly, influential and unrepentantly pleasurable film year of all time”.

What’s striking about 1999 in particular is its variety. Weird, fun, thought-provoking movies were being made, and they were being watched, too. The following are not necessarily the 10 best or even the 10 defining films of 1999, but 10 great films that tell its story.If 1999’s slate of movies tell us anything, it’s that the era’s film-makers were keen to show their range. Before, the Wachowskis had made Bound, a sexy neo-noir.

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