Two thousand was a year in which I did temp work for the first half of the year and worked at a technical theater magazine for the second half. I lived in New York. It is starting to feel like a very long time ago.
I still remember with some fondness the movie theaters I frequented when I lived there, though my #1, Hamlet, was seen in some sort of special venue that I don't particularly remember, as part of a screening my friend got through her SAG membership. Or was it some other actors guild? Stage seems more likely. Anyway, yes, it was a long time ago.
In fact so long ago that I am starting to get my employment timelines wrong. I think last month I said that I was working in buildings close to the World Trade Center only six months before 9/11, but it was actually 18 months, since I worked for the theater magazine for almost a year, or maybe even a full year, before moving in March of 2001. Anyway, you did not really come here to learn about my life from 22 years ago, though I should also say that I was involved in my most serious relationship to that point, with a woman from my high school, until about August, at which point she went to grad school in Pittsburgh. She hadn't lived in New York before that, but rather Boston, so it was also a year of a lot of commuting. Somehow we managed to see each other several times a month in the nine months we dated, which just feels like a lot of work now. At the time I had the energy.
Anyway, as we go back in time I'm predictably watching fewer and fewer movies. In 2000 it was only 58. Here is how I ranked them:
1. Hamlet
2. Wonder Boys
3. Traffic
4. Frequency
5. Almost Famous
6. Dancer in the Dark
7. The Contender
8. Erin Brockovich
9. Timecode
10. You Can Count on Me
11. Thirteen Days
12. Disney's The Kid
13. Requiem for a Dream
14. Nurse Betty
15. Return to Me
16. American Psycho
17. The Cell
18. Before Night Falls
19. Shaft
20. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
21. Gladiator
22. Snatch
23. What Women Want
24. X-Men
25. Saving Grace
26. The Tao of Steve
27. Quills
28. Cast Away
29. The Legends of Rita
30. Red Planet
31. Mission to Mars
32. The Perfect Storm
33. Grass
34. Shanghai Noon
35. The Road to El Dorado
36. Boiler Room
37. High Fidelity
38. Unbreakable
39. Chocolat
40. Chicken Run
41. State and Main
42. Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas
43. Scary Movie
44. Best in Show
45. Mission: Impossible 2
46. Pay It Forward
47. The Yards
48. The Patriot
49. Fantasia 2000
50. Joe Gould's Secret
51. Dinosaur
52. Pitch Black
53. Hollow Man
54. Shadow of the Vampire
55. The Whole Nine Yards
56. The Replacements
57. All the Pretty Horses
58. The 6th Day
And here is the order in which those movies rank out of 6013 movies currently on my Flickchart. Following the ranking is the percentage of the ranking out of 6013 and the number of slots they rose or fell compared to the other movies from that year on my Flickchart. A positive number indicates a comparative rise of that many slots, a negative number a fall.
1. Almost Famous (47, 99%) 4
2. The Cell (54, 99%) 15
3. Hamlet (151, 97%) -2
4. Requiem for a Dream (195, 97%) 9
5. Wonder Boys (204, 97%) -3
6. Dancer in the Dark (232, 96%) 0
7. Frequency (267, 96%) -3
8. American Psycho (382, 94%) 8
9. Erin Brockovich (473, 92%) -1
10. Traffic (490, 92%) -7
11. The Contender (692, 88%) -4
12. Thirteen Days (701, 88%) -1
13. High Fidelity (853, 86%) 24
14. Timecode (1012, 83%) -5
15. Return to Me (1018, 83%) 0
16. You Can Count on Me (1064, 82%) -6
17. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (1111, 82%) 3
18. Saving Grace (1396, 77%) 7
19. Shanghai Noon (1449, 76%) 15
20. The Road to El Dorado (1607, 73%) 15
21. Before Night Falls (1631, 73%) -3
22. Snatch (1711, 72%) 0
23. Cast Away (1872, 69%) 5
24. Nurse Betty (2006, 67%) -10
25. Quills (2024, 66%) 2
26. Gladiator (2046, 66%) -5
27. X-Men (2060, 66%) -3
28. What Women Want (2288, 62%) -5
29. Grass (2483, 59%) 4
30. Disney's The Kid (2591, 57%) -18
31. The Legends of Rita (2685, 55%) -2
32. Unbreakable (3000, 50%) 6
33. Chocolat (3107,, 48%) 6
34. Shaft (3154, 48%) -15
35. Mission to Mars (3351, 44%) -4
36. The Tao of Steve (3507, 42%) -10
37. Pitch Black (3583, 40%) 15
38. The Perfect Storm (3593, 40%) -6
39. Boiler Room (3812, 37%) -3
40. Joe Gould's Secret (3813, 37%) 10
41. Scary Movie (3938, 35%) 2
42. Red Planet (3982, 34%) -12
43. Chicken Run (3992, 34%) -3
44. Fantasia 2000 (4103, 32%) 5
45. Best in Show (4246, 29%) -1
46. The Yards (4302, 28%) 1
47. Mission: Impossible 2 (4492, 25%) -2
48. Dinosaur (4501, 25%) 3
49. Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (4576, 24%) -7
50. The Patriot (5146, 14%) -2
51. Pay It Forward (5194, 14%) -5
52. Shadow of the Vampire (5342, 11%) 2
53. State and Main (5357, 11%) -12
54. The Replacements (5731, 5%) 2
55. The Whole Nine Yards (5758, 4%) 0
56. All the Pretty Horses (5777, 4%) 1
57. Hollow Man (5856, 3%) -4
58. The 6th Day (5979, 1%) 0
Five best movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): Bamboozled, But I'm a Cheerleader, The Claim, The Emperor's New Groove, The Gleaners & I
Five worst movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): Battlefield Earth, Coyote Ugly, Heavy Metal 2000, Held Up, Trois
Biggest risers: High Fidelty (+24), The Cell/Pitch Black/The Road to El Dorado/Shanghai Noon (+15)
Biggest fallers: Disney's The Kid (-18), Shaft (-15), Red Planet/State and Main (-12)
Stayed the same: Dancer in the Dark (6th), Return to Me (15th), Snatch (22nd), The Whole Nine Yards (55th), The 6th Day (58th)
Average percentage on Flickchart: 55.72% (1 of 8 so far)
I wouldn't have automatically produced 2000 as a great movie year if you had asked me -- I think 1999 was a real classic, but we'll look at that next month. You can't argue with the 55.72% average rating on Flickchart, though, the highest so far by several percentage points. Impressive.
The biggest riser is not a film I have grown to appreciate significantly more than I did at the time. Nick Hornby's novel version of High Fidelity was always a tough act to follow, but the movie version now follows it a lot less closely than it did at the time for me, when I'd read the book within a year before seeing the movie. I think I've started to conflate the value of the two, though I did rewatch the movie and it obviously did not drop in my estimation from that viewing. Among the quartet of movies that rose 15 spots, I really want to highlight The Cell, because of the high level of that 15-spot rise. A movie I enjoyed enough at the time to rate it 17th for the year has now risen all the way to #2, as I continue to watch it about every two to three years.
Among fallers, the biggest is Disney's The Kid, which I watched on a plane trip to California from New York. I counted the viewing even though the plane landed before the movie ended, but when I rewatched it for a project on this blog about ten years ago, I wasn't charmed by it the way I had been the first time. I guess you should really watch the whole movie before ranking it. It's interesting to note that I rated the two Mars movies, Red Planet and Mission to Mars, about the same as each other, with Red Planet actually having a slight advantage. Both have dropped since then, but I guess I now think Mars is the better film, as it fell only four spots while Planet dropped a dozen.
Oh and for the second month in a row my #1 from that year did not hold on to its peak position on Flickchart, as Hamlet is only third now, surpassed by new #1 Almost Famous and the aforementioned The Cell.
The great movie year of 1999 is our next up in September.
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