1999

BEST PICTURE NOMINEES

*Life is Beautiful
*Shakespeare in Love
*Saving Private Ryan
*Elizabeth
*The Thin Red Line

AND "MY" WINNER IS...(TIE) Life is Beautiful, Saving Private Ryan, Shakespeare in Love
AND "THE" WINNER IS...Shakespeare in Love

Shakespeare in Love (1998) directed by: John Madden
Main Cast: Joseph Fiennes, Judi Dench and Gwyneth Paltrow

William Shakespeare(Fiennes) is writing a comedy play to revive the closed Rose Theater. Viola (Paltrow) is an upper class woman who has been promised to marry a man she doesn't love. Viola has a great love for the theater, and dreams of one day being an actress. She tries out for Shakespeare's play disguised as a man, because women are not allowed to preform on stage. William discovers the truth about Viola and they fall in love. All the while William is still writing his play, which has now become a love story now to be called Romeo & Juliet. Will, Shakespeare and Viola be together or does she marry the man she had been promised to? I highly recommend this movie, I can honestly say there was nothing I disliked about it!

RATING: 10/10

Life is Beautiful (1997) directed by: Roberto Benigni
Main Cast: Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi and Giorgio Cantarini

A carefree Jewish bookkeeper Guido (Benigni) courts and eventually marries Dora ( Braschi) they have a son named Joshua (Cantarini), one day while Guido and Joshua were preparing for his fifth birthday party, they are captured by the Germans and sent to the train to go to a concentration camp. Dora comes home to discover this and begs the soldiers to place her on the train as well. Guido and Joshua are kept together for the ride to the camp, during the journey Guido is telling Joshua they are going on a trip for his birthday. Once they get were they are going they are will be playing a game, where the first prize is a real tank. Will the family survive the camp and be reunited? This movie is foreign and does contain subtitles, but I absolutely loved it! Truly a great story from beginning to end. Very highly recommended, It was also one of those box of tissue movies!

RATING: 10/10

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998) directed by: Steven Spielberg
Main Cast: Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns and Matt Damon

U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall learns there are four Ryan brothers in the war and three have been killed. Mrs. Ryan is to recieve the telegram about all three on the same day. So he sends orders down that the last remaining Ryan boy be found and send home. So Captain Miller (Hanks) is to take eight of his men on a special assignment, to find James Francis Ryan (Damon) and get him home safely. Will they succeed? This movie has a lot of blood and is the movie I needed a box of tissues for. I have seen this movie a lot of times and love it everytime I watch it. I would definitely say if you have never seen it, watch it as soon as you get a chance.

RATING: 10/10

THE BEST OF THE REST

Elizabeth (1998) directed by: Shekhar Kapur
Main Cast: Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Christopher Eccleston, Kathy Burke and Joseph Fiennes

Catholic Queen Mary (Burke) dies and the succession goes to Elizabeth (Blanchett), the Protestant half sister that Mary was not prepared to execute. The new Queen finds herself surrounded by advisors, some supportive, but most plotting her removal by any means necessary. Elizabeth is also under pressure to marry and produce an heir, but her lover, Lord Robert Dudley (Fiennes) is not considered suitable. Elizabeth realizes she has some decisions to make, most important being who should rule England. This was a fairly decent movie, not really the genre I usually prefer, but fairly interesting.

RATING: 7/10

The Thin Red Line (1998) directed by: Terrence Malick
Main Cast: James Caviezel, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas and George Clooney

In 1943, the first major U.S. offensive of World War II, is drawing to a close on the South Pacific Island of Guadalcanal. The U.S. Army arrives with full troops and equipment. The troops in the division include, a war weary sergeant, a power hungry colonel, a private who has only known desertion and AWOL, and a company commander who is doubting his abilities as a leader. You have this one going back and forth between the war and the soldiers past memories. It is a little hard to follow unless you really pay attention and it drags in some parts.

RATING: 6/10

For 1999 as a whole, I was very pleased. I saw three great movies and the other two were really not extremely bad. So it was a pretty good year.

Rating for 1999 as a whole: 9/10

NEXT UP: 1965 - Alexis Zorbas, Becket, Dr. Stangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady

October 14, 2009 6:10pm