Directed by Ron Howard, it is a remake of the 1994 Quebecois film Louis 19, King of the Airwaves, with a script adapted by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, it stars Matthew McConaughey, Jenna Elfman, Woody Harrelson, Ellen DeGeneres, Sally Kirkland, a frankly Oscar-worthy Martin Landau, Rob Reiner, Dennis Hopper, Elizabeth Hurley, Harry Shearer, Ian Gomez, Rupaul, Michael Moore, Jay Leno, George Plimpton, and Bill Maher.

EDtv tells the story of a regular guy whose life becomes a 24-hour reality show. It did modestly well with critics, but it was drowned out by 1998's similarly-premised (but in no way similar) The Truman Show.

Anyway, since it's the only 1999 movie to feature Bill Maher, we invited the host of the I Hate Bill Maher Podcast, comedian Will Weldon, to talk about this incredibly confused, frustrating movie, which remains notable for being the start of the McConaughey-Harrelson (possibly literal) Bromance!

Will's on Bluesky and other social media @oldmanweldon

But love and baseball was very different territory for Raimi, and his inexperience in the realm of pop movie making (as well as in directing romance) proved to be a hindrance.

For Love of the Game is, unofficially, the third and final entry in Kevin Costner's baseball trilogy, following 1989's Field of Dreams and 1988's Bull Durham.

The film tries to balance its dual nature as a romance and a straight sports movie, and while it occasionally hits the mark, most critics agreed: For Love of the Game is pretty great when it's about the game, and not so great when it's about the love.

But it's baseball season, and this was by far 1999's biggest baseball-themed movie, so we asked friend of the show - and White Sox diehard - Jacki Krestel to help us call some balls and strikes on this one!

1999 was a weird year in Oscar history, as the awards held that year saw one of the most controversial Best Picture wins ever (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE) and the awards held the following year honoring the awards of 1999 gave the Best Picture Oscar to a film that, well, has not aged well at all (AMERICAN BEAUTY)

So to mark the weekend, we took some time to discuss those two films and their legacies and discussed our picks for some of the worst Best Picture wins in recent history. We talk FORREST GUMP, BRAVEHEART, ANORA, CRASH, and more!

Analyze This gave us the unlikely comedy duo of Billy Crystal and (a then new to comedy) Robert DeNiro, alongside Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palminteri, and Joe Viterelli

Directed by the late great Harold Ramis and written by Ramis, Peter Tolan, and, somewhat shockingly, Kenneth Lonergan, Analyze This made a lot of its then very novel premise of a gangster getting therapy...but also happened to be released a few months after the premiere of the The Sopranos.

This week, we're rejoined by our friend, comedy writer Chase Mitchell.

Chase is on the socials at @ChaseMit

Joining us is returning friend of the pod Dan Colón, co-host of our podcast network's very own The Monsters that Made Us.

We talk Crystal, Ryan, Carrie Fisher, Barry Sonnenfeld, and if we've really seen a romantic comedy since (not called Notting Hill) that has come close to reaching its considerable romcom heights.

"Father Mother Sister Brother" is an anthology dramedy starring Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Sarah Greene, Indya Moore, and Luka Sabbat.

Julia and John discuss the film and take another stab at what makes a Jarmusch film a Jarmusch film, the career of Tom Waits, great casting, and some of their favorite anthology films.

In honor of the late Rob Reiner we are looking at The Story of Us, the 74th highest-grossing movie of the year, finishing just ahead of earlier entry Blast from the Past. Opening #2 behind Fight Club on October 15th and going on to gross $59 million worldwide on a $50 million dollar budget.

Starring Bruce Willis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Reiner himself, Rita Wilson, Julie Hagerty, Paul Reiser, and Tim Matheson, The Story of Us is one of Reiner’s worst-reviewed movies, who, after an unbelievable run of movies in the late 80s and early 90s started running into trouble in the late 90s and early 2000s with the likes of this, Rumor Has It, and the aggressively sentimental and fluffy The Bucket List.

Is The Story of Us as bad as critics said? Or does it belong alongside When Harry Met Sally, Reiner's romcom masterpiece that it goes so far out its way to evoke?

We welcome Slate's Nitish Pahwa to discuss marriage, casting, bad writing, unnecessary monologues, and the greatness of Rob Reiner.

Nitish is on Bluesky @nitishpahwa.com

In this episode, John and Julia each recommend five of their favorite "alternative" Christmas movies. The like of It's a Wonderful Life, Home Alone, Love Actually, Miracle on 34th Street, and, yes, even Die Hard are off-limits.

Instead, we present 10 movies that are maybe not in your annual Christmas rotation but ought to be! Enjoy!

Julia's picks:

The Ref (1994)

Carol (2015)

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941)

A Christmas Tale (2008)

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

John's picks:

Rare Exports (2010)

A Midwinter's Tale (1995)

8-Bit Christmas (2021)

About A Boy (2002)

Little Women (1994)

Ghost Dog appears nowhere on the 1999 box office charts because it technically didn’t have a major theatrical release in the US until March of 2000 (it did begin its festival run in 1999, starting in May at the Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for the Palme D’or)

Starring Forest Whitaker and written and directed by Jim Jarmusch with a score by Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, Ghost Dog is a movie unlike any other, aggressively defying genre and staying laser-focused on its bizarre but endearing vision.

This week, John and Julia are joined by returning guest Sean Malin, author of the just-released book The Podcast Pantheon to talk Whitaker, Jarmusch, podcasts, Jon Hamm, and Christmas movies!

This time, our See Also recommendation for The Insider is Billy Ray's superb 2003 docudrama/thriller Shattered Glass.

Featuring incredible performances from a uniformly excellent cast, especially Hayden Christensen as the title character and Peter Sarsgaard as New Republic editor Chuck Lane, Shattered Glass deserves it place among the best movies about journalism and the best movies of 2003.

It's also newly relevant in the midst of the Olivia Nuzzi of it all, and we talk about how the cult of personality around "The Writer" has impacted journalism for the worse.

You can watch Shattered Glass right now for free on Tubi.

Finishing in 69th place, sandwiched between two previous entries, Girl Interrupted at 70th and Mystery Men at 68th, The Insider stars Russell Crowe, in an Oscar-nominated performance, and Al Pacino alongside an incredibly deep supporting class (including the greatest character actor alive, Stephen Tobolowsky)

Directed by Michael Mann and adapted from the 1996 Vanity Fair article "The Man Who Knew Too Much" by Marie Brenner, The Insider received rave reviews, wound up on countless year-end top 10 lists, and was nominated for a slew of Oscars, including Mann for directing and screenwriting, but was shut out by the juggernaut that was American Beauty.

Since it's widely regarded as one of Mann's best films and one the best films ever made about journalism, we invited investigative journalist Lindsay Beyerstein to tell us how well the movie mirrors real life and to dig into what it's like to watch a movie about CBS News struggling to maintain its integrity as a journalistic entity in the bleak future of 26 years later.

Lindsay is on Bluesky @beyerstein

Starring and directed by Clint Eastwood, True Crime was largely forgotten and remains overlooked most likely due to its release at what can be described as Eastwood’s most prolonged artistic lull in the mid 1990s, starting with 1997’s Absolute Power and Midnight in the Garden of Eden, 2000’s Space Cowboys, and 2002’s Blood Work. That lull would end with 2003’s acclaimed Mystic River, which earned Oscars for both Sean Penn and Tim Robbins as well as Best Director and Best Picture nominations for Eastwood.

But True Crime is still an interesting entry on Eastwood's resume, exploring many of the themes of injustice and moral ambiguity that he frequently explores in his work. So does the similarly-themed 2024 film Juror #2, which Eastwood directed in his mid-90s.

So this week we're talking about them both, and joining is us is Aaron from the podcast Hit Factory.

The Sixth Sense was one of the biggest movies of the year, second only to The Phantom Menace. And since it's Halloween and Julia had never seen it before, we thought it was time to take a second look.

A movie best remembered for its plot twist (and the meticulous build up to it), The Sixth Sense is nonetheless at its core a drama about grief. Once you know the ending, the experience of the movie changes. But is it still good? Does M. Night Shyamalan's breakthrough film deserve its status on the 1999 Mount Rushmore?

For our second go-round on The Sixth Sense, John and Julia invited comedian, actor, and singer Sooz Kempner - who didn't understand the ending to The Sixth Sense when she saw it at the age of 14 - to talk plot twists, child actors, Bruce Willis, and jump scares.

You can find Sooz on Bluesky @soozuk

Her website is https://www.soozkempner.co.uk/

Opening on February 19th with just shy of $6 million, it went on to gross $34.7 million worldwide on a $25 million budget.

October Sky was adapted from the memoir Rocket Boys (an anagram of "October Sky") by NASA engineer Homer Hickman and directed by Joe Johnston, beautifully shot by journeyman cinematographer Fred Murphy with a score by Mark Isham it starred newcomer Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Lauren Dern, William Lee Scott, Chad Lindberg, Natalie Canderday, Chris Ellis, and in a really wonderful performance, American Pie’s Sherminator himself, Chris Owen.

A critical hit and modest commercial success, October Sky was largely forgotten by the time award season rolled around, and it is now a fondly if faintly remembered gem (as well as the breakout film for its young star!)

This week, Julia and John welcome actor/writer Amanda Jane Stern from the podcast Don't Be Crazy to talk about her new film, Joe Johnston's aggressively earnest style, and boys and their rockets.

Amanda is on Bluesky @amandajanestern.com

Despite its reputation as giant bomb, Entrapment was the 24th-highest grossing movie of 1999, coming in just behind another movie starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, The Haunting.

Entrapment opened on April 30th at number 1 with an impressive $20 million debut, dethroning The Matrix at the top box office spot, going on to gross $212 million worldwide.

It has since gone on to be synonymous with "high profile dud from 1999", but does it really deserve that reputation?

Its relative success at the box office aside, Entrapment is unpretentious, silly, and a lot of fun, even if it never lands every shot it makes. And it's hard not to stack it up against the other big budget art heist movie starring a famous James Bond actor from the same year (a thing we do plenty of this episode).

Joining John and Julia to talk about it is Jason Christian, a writer and co-host of the podcast Cold War Cinema.

Jason is on all the social medias and can be found on Bluesky @jasonachristian.

The first of two 1999 film besides (besides The 13th Warrior, which we also recently discussed) from Die Hard director John McTiernan, The Thomas Crown Affair is a remake of the 1968 Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway caper of the same name.

Starring Pierce Brosnan in the title role - at the height of his Bond tenure -  alongside Rene Russo, the film was praised for featuring two (very attractive) actors who were north of 40 and portraying them in an overtly sexy light, with particular ink spilled on how refreshing it was to see the then 45-year-old Russo presented as a femme fatale.

The Thomas Crown Affair was pretty well received at the time, which is interesting because it has not, on a number of fronts, aged very well. What did people see in it at the time? And does it hold up at all today?

John and Julia invited critic/writer/internet pioneer Sarah Bunting, the co-creator of Television Without Pity (among many other things) to take a trip down memory lane with us as we talk sex scenes in the 1990s, the importance of getting the right director, and what separates a "heist" from a "caper".

Sarah is on Bluesky @sarahdbunting

Today marks the 26th anniversary of one of the true low points of 1999 and pop culture in general - the human rights disaster that was Woodstock 99.

Dan Colón, of CageClub's very own The Monsters That Made Us podcast, joined John to talk about the greed, mayhem, and madness that defined Woodstock 99.

The Woodstock that was just so great that it convinced everybody to never Woodstock again, 1999's 30th anniversary festival (inspired by the relative success of the 25th anniversary Woodstock 94) was...a lot of things. But mostly it was an epic disaster that somehow managed to take bad situations and terrible ideas and make them much worse.

What went wrong?? Well, aside from everything, John and Dan explore some of the specific problems that sent Woodstock 99 into a fiery tailspin, and discuss why this is such and important milestone in how our culture got to where it is today.

Muppets From Space was the 95th-highest grossing movie of 1999, opening in 4th place behind juggernauts American Pie, Wild Wild West, and The Phantom Menace.

Directed by Tim Hill, the co-developer and longtime director of Spongebob Squarepants (which debuted 3 days later!) and written by longtime Muppet writer Jerry Juhl alongside Joey Mazzarino and Ken Kaufman, Muppets From Space was the third of the 1990s cinematic Muppet revival (following Christmas Carol and Treasure Island)

Unlike the two other films released that year, Muppets From Space was an attempt to get back to basics - less music and more mayhem, and not an adaptation of a classic literary work.

The results, however, fell flat, and the Muppets would not get another theatrical release for more than a decade.

This week, John and Julia talk to author and Muppet fan Ethan Warren about what went wrong and what the future of the Muppets might be.

Galaxy Quest was one of the great summer movies of 1999. Except it was released, for some reason, at Christmas.

Lovingly sending up television sci-fi of a certain era - and heavily grounded in Star Trek - Galaxy Quest was a modest success as 30th highest grossing movie of 1999

The second feature film, both overall and in as many years following the Vince Gilligan-penned Home Fries with Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson in 1998, from accomplished television director Dean Parisot, and witten by David Howard and Rob Gordon, Galaxy Quest stars Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Enrico Colantoni, Tony Shaloub, Sam Rockwell, Darryl Chill Mitchell, Robin Sachs, Patrick Breen, Missy Pyle, Jeb Rees, and Rain Wilson and Justin Long in their film debuts.

Galaxy Quest has gone on to become one of the great cult films (and most enduring comedies) ever. So we invited culture writer Annie Berke to see how it holds up a quarter century later.

Oh, and we basically write the sequel!

Annie is on Bluesky @sayanniething

Based on the 1976 novel "Eaters of the Dead" by Michael Crichton (who also took over to direct several scenes), The 13th Warrior stars Antonio Banderas, Vladimir Kulich, Dennis Storhoi, Diane Venora, Richard Bremmer, Tony Curran, and Omar Sharif

It took two decades to finally get Crichton’s reimagining of "Beowulf" to the screen, and the film is best remembered as a fascinating failure – a $160 million epic that earned about $100 million shy of that globally, making it the biggest flop of the year.

But over the years The 13th Warrior has achieved cult status, with many defenders arguing that, while imperfect, what actually winds up on the screen is still very worthwhile.

We took that theory to task with writer/critic Peter Raleigh, who you can find on Bluesky at @petreraleigh

You can also listen to Graeme Revell's vastly superior original score to The 13th Warrior here, thanks to YouTube user deavonw: The 13th Warrior (Rejected Score)

We are kicking off the summer by returning to the box office top 10 for the first time since Runaway Bride with one of the 1999’s big summer blockbusters, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me!

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was the 4th-highest grossing movie of 1999, behind Toy Story 2, The Sixth Sense, and The Phantom Menace, opening on June 11 and taking in $55 million that weekend, going on to make $206 million at the domestic box office on a $33 million budget.

Directed by Jay Roach and written by Mike Myers and Michael McCullers, The Spy Who Shagged Me saw Heather Graham stepping in to the Powers Girl role, replacing Elizabeth Hurley. The hugely anticipated and hyped sequel to the 1997 original, the movie came in with sky high expectations.

The results were, well...mixed.

But there's no question that Austin Powers was a huge cultural milestone, so we wanted to see how it held up.

Helping us get the summer off to the most shagadelic start possible is actor, writer, podcaster, and activist Siri Dahl!

It stars Noah Fleiss in the title role, Karen Young, John Leguizamo, Whaley’s friend and frequent collaborator Ethan Hawke, Camryn Manheim, Max Ligosh, a very young Kate Mara, and Whaley’s The Doors co-star, the late Val Kilmer. as Joe’s abusive alcoholic father.

Critics were kind of all over the place about Joe the King, a film very much of its time, although the performances, especially those of Fleiss and Kilmer, were widely praised.

Joe the King was given a very limited release on October 15, going on to gross just $60,000, but a few those dollars once belonged to our guest for this episode, Zaki Hasan, who actually saw it in a movie theater 26 years ago.

Zaki is is a professor, award-winning writer, and film critic for, among other things, the San Francisco Chronicle.

You can find him on Bluesky @zakiscorner

Released October 8th in just 17 theaters and going on to make $3.2 million on a $10 million budget, The Limey was directed by Steven Soderbergh, just on the verge of his first major commercial successes (Erin Brokovich and Traffic, both released on opposite ends of 2000) and following another acclaimed crime caper, 1998’s Elmore Leonard adaptation Out of Sight.

Featuring a tour-de-force performance from Terrence Stamp,  The Limey crosses genre boundaries, it also straddles the line between Soderbergh's smaller, more risk-taking films (like sex, lies, and videotape and Schizopolis) and his bigger, more ambitious ones (like Traffic and Ocean's 11).

In this episode, John and Julia are joined by filmmaker, podcaster, and Steven Soderbergh fan Devan Scott joins John and Julia to discuss 1999's best crime thriller/comedy/tone poem.

Devan is on Bluesky @dagscott.

Kilmer's film career began in the 1980s with iconic turns in the likes of Top Gun and Real Genius, but it was in the 1990s where be became an icon in a decade known primarily one dominated by iconoclasts, starting with his portrayal of Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's The Doors, and including memorable bit roles in movies like True Romance, replacing Michael Keaton as Batman in Batman Forever, and what man consider his greatest role as Doc Holiday opposite Kurt Russell's Wyatt Earp in Tombstone.

Kilmer was an avid documentarian of his own life and was rarely without his camcorder. His own video tapes were repurposed to tell the story of his life and career in the moving and insightful documentary Val, directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott, which captures a man who seems to know his time is almost up reflecting on the lessons of a life extraordinarily lived.

That film formed the basis of this conversation between John and Julia discussing the strange life and career of this remarkable actor.

Written and directed by Woody Allen, it stars Sean Penn as fictional jazz guitar legend Emmet Ray alongside Samantha Morton and Uma Thurman, Brad Garrett, John Waters, Anthony LaPaglia, and Brian Markinson, among others.

Sweet and Lowdown was a welcome end to what many saw as a mid-90s slump for Allen, who had released a string of movies who that had been received with mixed or sometimes scathing reviews, like 1995’s Mighty Aphrodite, 1996’s Everyone Says I Love You, 1997’s Deconstructing Harry, and 1998’s Celebrity.

It's also difficult to not see in light of revelations of Allen's darker behaviors throughout his career, to say nothing of Penn.

But it can also sweet and charming, and its jazz-age nostalgia is as hard to resist as Morton's acclaimed, Oscar-nominated silent performance.

Joining John and Julia to talk through Sweet and Lowdown's ups and downs is actor, writer, and director Liz Whitmere, who has some thoughts on toxic behavior in the entertainment industry.

Liz is on Bluesky @lizwhitmere

But love and baseball was very different territory for Raimi, and his inexperience in the realm of pop movie making (as well as in directing romance) proved to be a hindrance.

For Love of the Game is, unofficially, the third and final entry in Kevin Costner's baseball trilogy, following 1989's Field of Dreams and 1988's Bull Durham.

The film tries to balance its dual nature as a romance and a straight sports movie, and while it occasionally hits the mark, most critics agreed: For Love of the Game is pretty great when it's about the game, and not so great when it's about the love.

But it's baseball season, and this was by far 1999's biggest baseball-themed movie, so we asked friend of the show - and White Sox diehard - Jacki Krestel to help us call some balls and strikes on this one!

So because plenty has been said about the former, we are taking a look today at the latter.

Directed by Kramer and Kramer writer and director Robert Benton and written by Benton and novelist Richard Russo, who also teamed up with star Paul Newman on 1994’s adaptation of Russo's Nobody's Fool, Twilight stars Newman with a supporting cast of Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon, James Garner, Stockard Channing, Reese Witherspoon, Margo Martindale, John Spencer, Live Shrieber, the dying body of M. Emmet Walsh, and Giancarlo Esposito.

Twilight was a box office failure and was met with a lukewarm reception by critics, but it is a very good case study in the question as to whether or not some actors - like Hackman - could be good in absolutely anything.

The End of the Affair was the second 1999 film in 11 months (after January’s psychological thriller In Dream) from auteur Neil Jordan, best known for 1992’s Oscar winning film The Crying Game as well as 1994’s Interview with the Vampire.

It was also the second sweeping period romance in just a couple years for star Ralph Fiennes after The English Patient, leading to many critics and audiences drawing comparisons between the two films. It was also the one film for which 1999's busiest woman, Julianne Moore, was nominated for an Oscar, despite her equal performances in A Map of the World, An Ideal Husband, and Magnolia.

Joining John and Julia to talk about this second (incredibly horny) adaptation of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is film critic, writer, and podcaster Kristin Battestella (I Think Therefore I Review)

Kristin is on Bluesky @thereforereview

Beyond the Mat was directed by Barry Blaustein, an accomplished comedy screenwriter, and it features the real-life stories of wrestling legends Terry Funk, Mick Foley, and Jake the Snake Roberts,

Though it wasn't a commercial hit, it received a mostly favorable critical response, and has gone on to become a beloved documentary, especially among wrestling fans.

Joining John and Julia to discuss it is Ross Benes, author of the upcoming book 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted our Bizarre Times. His book will be available everywhere in April.

You can learn more about Ross and his work on his website: www.rossbenes.com

Despite a generally warm and positive critical reception Dick would go on to make just 6.3 million dollars on a 13 million dollar budget.

Which is a shame, because as part commentary on the Lewinski scandal and part parody of All The President's Men, Dick has more to say than your typical teen comedy. With two very talented stars at its core - Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams - It's more Election than American Pie, and portraying the Watergate conspirators as an insane, bumbling mess actually feels relevant.

You know who loves Dick? Our guest, Alex Steed, who appeared on our episode for the 1999 movie that starred that other girl from Dawson's Creek, Go.

Alex is on Bluesky @alexsteed

To start - for absolutely no reason at all, what are you even talking about? - we take a look at some of the more interesting media concerning the former Worst President of the Last 100 Years and the famous thing he did that used to pass for a scandal until *waves hands around wildly*.

Julia had to endure a lot of Nixon stuff for this one, so the least you can do is make it worth her time by listening.

Directed by first-time director and accomplished casting director Risa Bramon Garcia, written by first-and-only time screenwriter Shana Larsen, and produced by first-time producer Betsy Beers, 200 Cigarettes was panned by critics shrugged off by audiences.

But over time, due in part to its compelling cast and 80s nostalgia, it developed a cult status of sorts.

And, well, it's one of only a handful of New Year's Eve films that exist, and since this is something of a bummer New Year's, we thought, well, just as the characters bury their emotions in 200 cigarettes in the film, we'd do the same with 200 Cigarettes.

Airing Sunday, November 28th, 1999 on CBS, One Special Night stars James Garner and Julie Andrews, alongside Patricia Charbonneau, Stewart Bick ,Stacy Grant, and Danniel Magder.

Written by the highly prolific Christmas TV movie scribe Nancey Silvers and directed by accomplished TV director and Emmy winner Roger Young, One Special Night was generally praised by critics and probably beloved by our nation's grandparents at the time. It was then, however, entirely forgotten until John accidentally stumbled upon it on the internet a couple weeks ago!

So Julia and John invited film critic Audrey Fox, who recently wrote about the 25 best Hallmark Christmas movies ever, to chime in with her expert opinion!

Audrey is on Twitter @theaudreyfox and Bluesky @audreyfox

Titus, adapted from the Shakespeare (or possibly not Shakespeare) play came on the heels of Taymor hitting the cultural spotlight with her enormous Broadway success The Lion King. Titus makes great use of her maxilamist sensibilities, given that it is Shakespeare's most violent, sensationalist play - which also explains why it is among his least-popular, and generally considered one of the worst not titled Henry VIII.

With an incredible cast and eye-catching style, and with Shakespeare adaptations as popular as ever, many assumed Titus would ride a wave of critical success and award accolades to boost its box office, but it was not meant to be.

Beautiful, violent, over-long, absurd, inspired, and tonally inconsistent, Titus is more a curiosity now than a classic.

This week, we talked about it with film critic Carmen Paddock, who, in her own words, "specializes in changing distribution methods and cross-media adaptations, where the limitations of film, literature, music, and time are explored and exploited to reveal new sides to old narratives."

Find Carmen on Bluesky @carmenchloieReleased December 25th, Christmas Day, Julie Taymor's debut feature Titus was 187th-highest grossing movie of the year, going on to gross just about three million dollars worldwide on an 18 million dollar budget.

Titus, adapted from the Shakespeare (or possibly not Shakespeare) play came on the heels of Taymor hitting the cultural spotlight with her enormous Broadway success The Lion King. Titus makes great use of her maxilamist sensibilities, given that it is Shakespeare's most violent, sensationalist play - which also explains why it is among his least-popular, and generally considered one of the worst not titled Henry VIII.

With an incredible cast and eye-catching style, and with Shakespeare adaptations as popular as ever, many assumed Titus would ride a wave of critical success and award accolades to boost its box office, but it was not meant to be.

Beautiful, violent, over-long, absurd, inspired, and tonally inconsistent, Titus is more a curiosity now than a classic.

This week, we talked about it with film critic Carmen Paddock, who, in her own words, "specializes in changing distribution methods and cross-media adaptations, where the limitations of film, literature, music, and time are explored and exploited to reveal new sides to old narratives."

Find Carmen on Bluesky @carmenchloie

Directed and co-written by Copland director James Mangold from the memoir "Girl, Interrupted" by Susanna Kaysen, the film was a longtime dream project for star Winona Ryder, who fought hard for years to get it made. It was presented as obvious Oscar bait, but the film had a mixed response from audiences and critics, who found it uneven and lacking a narrative core.

Still, Girl, Interrupted earned universal praise for its performances, including the breakthrough one from Angeline Jolie, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as the sociopathic Lisa.

It was also praised for what at the time was an unusually nuanced and sensitive portrayal of mental health disorders. But how has Girl, Interrupted aged? Was it too ahead of its time, or is it too of its time to stand on its own today?

John and Julia welcomed Film Twitter superstar Jane Altoids for her take.

Jane is on Twitter @staticbluebat

Among other things, Man on the Moon was touted as a second chance for Carrey to nab a best actor Oscar, following what had roundly been seen as an epic snub for his denial of the award for The Truman Show. 

It had a lot going for it - an exploration of the tragic and mysterious life of an obscure but beloved cultural figure, directed by the Oscar-winning director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus. Forman had just come off the critical and commercial success of The People Vs. Larry Flynt, written as well by Alexander and Karaszewski, who, with that film and 1994’s Ed Wood had developed a reputation as having cracked the elusive biopic formula, which they described as the “anti-biopic".

Unfortunately, while it did earn his his second consecutive Golden Globe, Man on the Moon was shut out from the Oscars, and the film seemed to find some way to disappoint basically everyone, even those who loved it.

This week, we invited cultural critic and giant Man on the Moon fan Sean Malin to talk about Carrey, Kaufman, and that most uneven of genres, the biopic.

Sean is on Twitter @cinemalins

But the production of Payback also opened a window to some of the personal and professional issues surrounding Gibson that would become increasingly apparent in the years leading up to his career crash in the mid-2000s.

Unhappy with the direction of the film Helgeland wrote and director, Gibson had Helgeland fired and reworked and reshot much of the movie, adding Kristofferson's character to the story and changing much of the tone and arc of the main character Porter.

As a result, Payback is actually two movies - the theatrically-released Gibson vision released in 1999 and the Helgeland cut, released on Blu-ray 7 years later, officially titled Payback: Straight Up.

We had writer and Payback superfan Jim Woods on to talk about both!

You can find out everything you need to know about Jim on his website: Jim Woods Writes

After Lee’s breakthrough 1989 film Do the Right Thing, he was on a roll in the 90s, giving us 1990s’ Mo Better Blues, 1991’s Jungle Fever, 1992’s Malcolm X, 1994’s Crooklyn, 1995’s Clockers, 1996’s Get on the Bus, and 1998’s He Got Game.

And so a gritty, Scorsese-esque New York crime like Summer of Sam headlined by the rising star Brody and Leguizamo at his most popular seemed like a no-brainer. And maybe because its nearly two and a half hour run time just didn’t appeal to audiences in the middle of summer, for some reason SoS (which served as a near-perfect metaphor for the anxiety of pre-Y2K America) just never caught on with critics or at the box office.

But has our equally volatile (and true crime obsessed) 2024 America made the film newly relevant? And where does it stand in Spike Lee's oeuvre?

To discuss, John welcomed back film and culture writer and frequent guest Julia Sirmons to the show.

Covid? Prices? Capitalism? All of the above?

Find out what we have to say in this special summer episode about America's increasingly, depressingly empty cinemas.

Directed by acclaimed music video director Mark Pellington (Pearl Jam's "Jeremy"), with a script from future Oscar nominee Ehren Kruger. a score by David Lynch’s personal composer Angelo Badalamenti, and starring two of the finest actors of their generation, Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins, Arlington Road has a lot going for it.

25 years later, it's also turned out to be one of the most prescient and relevant movies of the year. At times unbearably tense, deadly serious, and eye-rollingly goofy, it's ambitious, uneven, and incredibly entertaining.

Lawyer, occasional movie producer, and writer Matt Belenky is probably the world's most biggest Arlington Road fan (prove us wrong!), so John and Jenn invited him on to look back on this very 1990s genre film.

Find Matt on Twitter @JagrWatch68

It's also absurd, obscene, and one of the best movie musicals not called Moulin Rouge of the last few decades.

The humor of the show and the movie, though, has always been too things - edgy (bordering on shocking) and timely. South Park the series has produced some of the smartest, most incisive satire anywhere in its 25 years of existence, but that kind of humor doesn't always age well?

So how does this movie hold up in that regard? We asked someone who loved it at the time - John's friend George Freitag - if he would still rave to strangers about it at Denny's like he did 23 years ago.

Blame Canada, join La Resistance, and save Terrence and Phillip as we talk about South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, a title that refers solely to the the fact that the movie is bigger and longer than an episode of the show and did not have to be edited for television!

Find George on Twitter if it still exists @georgefreitag

Tarzan did well with critics, as well. It was nominated for more than 2 dozen different awards, and won the Oscar and Golden Globe for best original song, Phil Collins’ “You’ll Be in My Heart”. 

It holds a an 89 percent Rotten Tomatoes score with more than 100 reviews, and 79 Metacritic score with 27 reviews, putting it right in the middle of the pack of the so-called Disney Renaissance films.

But, oddly, this de facto grand finale of the Disney hand-drawn era just doesn't loom as large as the like of The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, or even Hercules.

It will, however, always be in the heart (get it?) of our guest, artist and senior editor at IDW, Heather Antos. She joins John and Joey to talk about why Tarzan is great and deserves its seat in the Disney pantheon.

Heather is on Twitter @HeatherAntos

It opened in 8th place (behind Bats, which it would ultimately outgross) on the very not rom-com season of October the 22nd, going on to gross 10 and a half million dollars worldwide on a 20 million dollar budget.

Three to Tango - which, we can't stress enough, features no tango or dancing of any kind - was written by Aline Brosch McKenna, who would go on to write romcoms like 27 Dresses and Laws of Attraction in addition to the likes of Morning Glory, Cruella, The Devil Wears Prada, and We Bought a Zoo, along with Rodney Patrick Vaccaro, who did not go on to write those things

Starring Matthew Perry, Neve Campbell, Dylan McDermott, Oliver Platt, John C. McGinley, Bob Balaban, Deborah Rush, Kelly Rowan, and (appropriately) Sue for Swingers Patrick van Horn, Three to Tango has a stellar cast, but it was not one of the highest grossing romcoms of the year.

She's All That, however, was. So we invited the writer of that movie, R. Lee Fleming Jr., to talk to us about Three to Tango.

Lee is on twitter @QualityShorts

Never Been Kissed opened April 9th, pitting it against The Matrix in its second week, but still managed to post an impressive second place finish for the week, taking in 14 million dollars. This is largely thanks to the overwhelming popularity of star Drew Barrymore, coming off consecutive romantic hits in 1998 with Ever After and The Wedding Singer.

It's a strange movie with an, um, uncomfortable premise. It's part farce, part tragedy, part love story (all of which tends to be true of Shakespeare's plays, from which it draws its narrative template). Never Been Kissed also became a huge home video hit, watched a rewatched by its target demo for years after, as Barrymore's "Josie Grosie" became an Elder Gen-X/Millennial folk hero.

This week, John and Jenn welcome comedians, podcasters, and, as of recently, authors Trae Crowder and Corey Ryan Forrester to talk about high school trauma, inappropriate relationships, the ethics of the 1990s, and Drew.

Trae is on Twitter @traecrowder

Corey is on Twitter @coreyrforrester

Starring Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck at a time when both actors' stars were at a high point and one of just a few features directed by accomplished television director Bronwen Hughes, Forces of Nature was the follow-up to her 1996 adaptation of Harriet the Spy, and written by Family Ties writing alum Marc Lawrence, who also wrote 1999’s The Out-of-Towners and would go on to reteam with star Sandra Bullock for Miss Congeniality 1 and 2 as well as Two Weeks Notice with Hugh Grant.

Forces of Nature has a weird and very 1999 visual aesthetic that flies in the face of rom-com tradition, and it dares to at least try something unique and different instead of adhering to genre conventions. It's a stranger, surprising movie. But is it a good one?

You can find Julia and her work on her website, juliasirmons.com

This is followed by a rerelease of our Phantom Menace episode, the second in the podcast's history, with Brian Silliman and Matt Romano from the podcast RETURN OF THE POD: A Star Wars Podcast.

Enjoy. And may the Force be with you, always.

The first of two 1999 collaborations between director Hugh Wilson and star Brendan Fraser, Blast from the Past included a stellar supporting cast, including Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, Dave Foley, Nathan Fillion, Joey Slotnick, and the legendary Jennifer Lewis.

Critics were pretty even split on it - partly because it was inevitably compared to 1998's Pleasantville - and none were especially effusive in their praise, but it went on to find a charmed audience on home video and has emerged as the quintessential "hidden gem" in the years since.

One if its fans is actor Samm Levine, who graced the small screen in 1999 in the beloved (and prematurely canceled) television series Freaks and Geeks. He joined John and Jenn to talk Walken, swing dance, and his most famous creation, the beloved character Zoot Suit Ryan.

Directed by Four Weddings and a Funeral and Donnie Brasco director Mike Newell and written by Cheers co-creators Les and Glen Charles, Pushing Tin felt like a sure thing, especially given its very of-the-moment core cast of John Cusack, Cate Blanchett, Billy Bob Thornton, and Angelina Jolie.

But it never left the runway (get it) with audiences or critics.

What went wrong? And is Pushing Tin a forgotten gem, or was everyone right about it 25 years ago?

This week, John and Jenn are joined by comedian Joe Kwaczala to talk about this weird, uneven, confused, and very pre-9/11 romcom-dramedy thing!

You can find Joe on most of the socials @joekjoek

You can find Jenn's coverage of the documentary and some of its fallout on Distractify, including this breakdown of what's been going on with Dan Schneider of late: https://www.distractify.com/p/where-is-dan-schneider-now

She's All That opened at #1 on January 29, boosted by being nicely timed around Valentine’s Day and by coming out in one of the least-competitive box office periods of the year. Directed by Robert Iscove and written by friend of the show R. Lee Fleming Jr, She's All That boasts one of the most incredibly deep casts of 1990s icons, as well as launching the career of the titular "she" Rachael Leigh Cook.

It is the very definition of the nostalgic favorite, and it finds charm and humor in places not typical of the teen rom-com genre. So this week, we invited comedy writer Chase Mitchell to join us down by the broken treehouse to talk all about it, so bring your flowered hat as we see if, all these years later, this ugly duckling is still a swan.

You can find Chase on Twitter @ChaseMit

And while Runaway Bride did far worse with the critics to the vastly superior Notting Hill, its box office performance was likely boosted by two factors: unlike Notting Hill, it didn't open against Star Wars, and - more importantly - it was billed as a spiritual sequel to the movie that put Julia Roberts on the map, 1990's smash hit Pretty Woman, reuniting stars Roberts and Richard Gere and director Gary Marshall.

Runaway Bride is a written-by-committee tonal, structural, and thematic mess. But it has its charms, and it boasts an insanely talented supporting cast (and a picturesque Maryland town) that keep the comedy and appeal afloat.

Jenn's person Greg Pilgrim joins the show to talk about eggs, lamps, and the scientific term for a group of orioles.

It would go on to make $116 million domestically and $364 million worldwide on a $42 million budget.

Notting Hill was the second of several successful ventures between Grant and writer (and Mr. Bean creator) Richard Curtis, following 1994’s Four Weddings and a Funeral and predating 2001’s Bridget Jones's Diary (which Curtis adapted from Helen Fielding's enormously popular novel) and 2003’s Love Actually.

It has gone on to be one of the most revered and beloved romantic comedies of all time, so to kick off our round on 1999 RomComs, we give you our longest episode ever: A love letter to great comedy, peak Hugh Grant, and the joy of close friendships.

John's wife Courtney joins the show for the first time, and John and Jenn also talk to a very special guest - the iconic extra who Hugh Grant refers to affectionately as Cookie Monster in the opening voiceover.

Rather, Audition played a single screening at the Toronto International Film Festival that year, and would only go on to make a few hundred thousand dollars worldwide during its run.

But it developed an enormous cult following since, and has become one of the most revered horror films of its time. And it's easy to see why - Audition is gruesome, inventive, and stunningly unique.

And, also, due to circumstances beyond her control, Jenn couldn't watch it. So John did, shares his thoughts, and then they both discuss Penelope Spheeris's unreleased OZZFEST 99 documentary We Sold Our Souls For Rock 'N Roll, which might finally be released at some point in the near future, but, if not, is available in a fairly grainy Vimeo upload.

It's great. So is Audition. Watch them both, if you can stomach the latter!

If not, just listen to us talk about them!

It probably didn't help that it was released 10 days after Columbine, and audiences maybe weren't in the mood for a high school-set slasher film.

Or maybe it's that Idle Hands is a bafflingly, deliriously confused movies, with tones shifting wildly, sometimes within the same scene.

But either way, it can't be accused of being lazy, and everything that makes its way to the screen is endlessly interesting (if for not always the best reasons).

And it also includes some great performances, including a lot of improvised banter between Seth Green and Elden Hensen, and a tirelessly committed performance (along with some excellent physical comedy) from Devon Sawa. Plus a pre-Dark Angel Jessica Alba slinking all over the place.

Joining John and Jenn this week is comedian, photographer, writer, and Idle Hands evangelist John-Michael Bond, who you can find on Twitter @BondJohnBond

A remake of William Castle’s 1959 film starring Vincent Price, this House on Haunted Hill was directed by William Malone with a written by Dick Beebe, who also penned Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2) with effects by the legendary Greg Nicotero and Robert Kurtzmann.

With a delightfully loopy, hammy performance from Geoffrey Rush and pretty great supporting cast who all understood the assignment, House on Haunted Hill is an imperfect but genuinely enjoyable horror thrill ride.

It's also a favorite of our guest Stephanie Gagnon, host of the horror book podcast Books in the Freezer, who joined us way back in Round 1 for The 6th Sense and rejoins us to talk mustaches, Chris Kattan, bad endings, and which is the best Scream movie.

Check out Books in the Freezer here: https://booksinthefreezer.com/

And spins on A Christmas Carol have appeared in everything from Beavis and Butthead to Doctor Who.

But rarely have they been as faithful as the version from 1999 starring Patrick Stewart as the miserly businessman whose life changes one fateful night after a visit from three ghosts.

Starring an incredible cast including Stewart, Richard E. Grant, Dominic West, Ian McNiece, Breaking Bad's Laura Fraser, and Ted Lasso's Jeremy Swift, the TNT original movie is a jewel in the vast sea of Christmas Carol adaptations.

So this Christmas, we invited our friend Alex Steed back to share in the Christmas spirit...er...ghost?...as we dig in to this wonderful version of a classic story.

Merry Christmas! And, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

But it didn't quite work out that way.

Released on November the 19th of 1999, Sleepy Hollow was one of the most expensive movies ever made at the time, with a budget of $100 million, and while it wasn't a flop, it only barely broke even.

While Burton reteamed with some of his most reliable collaborators - star Johnny Depp, composer Danny Elfman, and production designer Rick Heinrichs - and while what appears onscreen is unquestionably beautiful to look at, critics and audiences found Sleepy Hollow...well, hollow.

This week, Dan Colón, of CageClub's very own The Monsters That Made Us podcast guests as our old friend Becky Ellis subs in the co-host seat as we wrestle with our feelings for Tim Burton's most beautiful gorefest.

But it didn't quite make back its budget, and it as since largely been forgotten about.

Which is a shame, because it has a lot to offer. While the film was initially called The Curse and had nothing to do with 1976's Carrie, the similarities led the studio to call for a retooling that set the production back a couple years. And actor Amy Irving, who played Sue Snell in the original, was called in to reprise the role. A last-minute change of director (Poison Ivy director Katt Shea) further impacted the production.

But both the fact that The Rage: Carrie 2 finally hit cinemas just a few weeks before Columbine, and its use of a real-life true crime story (the notorious Spur Posse) has led to a lot of revision of its legacy in the quarter century since. As such, we invited horror fan and true crime guy Paul Haynes (collaborator on Michell McNamara's 2018 book I'll Be Gone In The Dark) to talk it out with us.

It made $50 million domestically and just shy of $90 million worldwide on a $29 million budget.

Opening at #1 on September the 10th at over $18 million on a spooky box office weekend that saw The Sixth Sense take second with $16 million and ALSO opening, Stir of Echoes, debuting at $5.8 million in 3rd, the music video of a movie was directed by, appropriately, a music video director named Rupert Wainwright and cowritten by Tom Lazarus and Rick Ramage, all three of whom having very limited experience in feature films prior to Stigmata.

While Stigmata was a modest box office success, it was critically derided and has been largely reduced to a memory of the late 90s. It may well be the 1999est movie we've ever covered, and it does, at the very least, attempt to say something interesting.

This week, John and Jenn are joined by John's OTHER co-host at Pod Only Knows, Kelly Baker, to talk about this interesting little relic.

It’s not clear that it ever had the makings of a runaway hit, but it can’t have helped that another heady sci-fi thriller about people who aren’t sure if the reality they exist in is real (and it isn’t) was released three weeks earlier in the form of The Matrix. 

Cronenberg was hardly a bankable commercial director, either, and the gooey, heady, psychosexual horror-scifi mashup struggled to find an audience.

But critics liked eXistenz. It has a 74 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and 68 Metacritic score with fairly comparable audience scores on both sites. 

And, as we discover in this episode, it was oddly prescient on so many levels and way, way ahead of its time. 

This week, John and Jenn welcome back Julia Sirmons, a fan of both weird Davids (Lynch and Cronenberg), as we learned in our The Straight Story episode, and friend of the network Jess Collins, who loves eXistenZ and is apparently really into movies that Sarah Polley made in 1999. 

Just 6 years off his massive breakthrough penning Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (a film he wrote when he was not yet 30 years old), Koepp was riding high in the industry.

But Stir of Echoes was a low-key ghost story thriller involving a boy who can see and talk to dead people, and, suffice to say, a lot of that oxygen had been sucked up when it arrived more than a month after the runaway hit The Sixth Sense.

Still, it was a modest, fairly low-budget success that enjoyed critical admiration for the most part, especially in the form of Kevin Bacon's well-tuned performance - one that could have easily gone off the rails in the hands of a different actor.

But is Stir of Echoes actually good? Is it scary?? We invited horror journalist Mary Beth McAndrews to talk to us about her experiences with the film and ask those very questions.

You can learn more about her here: https://www.mbmcandrews.com/

But like almost all of Leigh's work, it was a critical smash, remaining one of his best-reviewed movies and the recipient of a number of awards, including two Oscars, and landing on a number of year-end best-of lists in 1999.

Topsy-Turvy never really had "commercial hit" written all over it, though. It offers a uniformly spectacular cast including Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall, Kevin McKidd, Lesley Manville, and Andy Serkis, and absolutely none of them were at the time (or really are today) bankable stars. And much of its appeal depends on how you feel about (or even if you know the first thing about) the work of Gilbert and Sullivan, hardly tapping into the zeitgeist of mainstream 1999 popular culture.

And Leigh's most commercially successful film had been 1994's Secrets and Lies, a runaway, word-of-mouth indy hit and critical and awards season darling. But Leigh is one of the most consistent directors alive, both in terms of the quality and very nature of his films.

So in our final "hosts choice" round selection, we invited Joey's co-host on How to Win the Lottery, "Shreds", himself a giant Leigh stan, to discuss Leigh's first real dip into the waters of grand period drama.

It arrived at a strange but opportune time, as it both lampooned and heralded the rebirth of the superhero genre. The early stages of its production date to the mid 1990s, when movies like 1998’s Blade, often cited as the birthplace of the modern superhero film, began preproduction.

Based on the comic book series by Bob Burden, Kinka Usher's Mystery Men was first offered to Danny DeVito and Stiller, who both turned it down for personal reasons. Usher landed the movie thanks to his reputation as a great director of commercials.

But the movie's massive cast of established talent and big ambitions proved too much drama for Usher, who, according to Hank Azaria, said "I'm going back to commercials when this is done. I've had enough. I'd much rather do my cool little one-minute shorts that I make than deal with all this nonsense."

Mystery Men is very much a product of its time, and is now considered a cult classic. It also stars the late Paul Reubens, so we decided now was the time to talk about it, and we invited filmmaker, pop culture junky, and die-hard Mystery Men evangelist Becky Ellis to join us.

In all seriousness, the beloved film about a man at the end of his life driving his lawnmower across the Midwest to visit his estranged brother is notable for a number of reasons.

It's a rare G-rated non-aminated movie (though the rating itself is a source of some controversy). It comes from legendary weirdo auteur David Lynch, most famous for films like Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, and the TV series Twin Peaks, and yet it is astoundingly, aggressively naturalistic and warm.

And it's the final film for stuntman-turned-actor Richard Farnsworth, whose performance carried the movie and whose health deteriorated as the film's shoot went on. He would die shortly after its release.

And while the awards behemoth American Beauty has aged like fine milk, The Straight Story, which also featured on a ton of critics' best-of lists from 1999, has only earned more and more admirers along the way.

Among them our guest today - Lynch fan and film writer Julia Sirmons, who you can learn more about here: juliasirmons.com

Well, actually, we don't know, because Box Office Mojo's rankings end at #200, which was American Movie, which made $1,165,795.

Simon Sez made $292,152 (somehow) on a budget of...well, quite a bit more than that, probably.

You've probably never heard of Simon Sez, and we hadn't either, until Joey came upon it accidentally and it was just a movie we couldn't pass up.

Simon Sez is a very strange relic of its time, a Eurotrash martial arts action movie, directed by the guy who wrote the Iron Eagle trilogy, that keeps switching genres, featuring an unbearable performance by an unbearable human being (Dane Cook) that was meant for Robert Downey Jr.

It is, to use a variation of a phrase we often use on the show, a movie that could only be made at the time.

But it's so bizarre and bad that it's impossible to not be fascinated by. We watched it so you don't have to, but we had a great time talking about it with filmmaker Matt Stuertz.

You can find Matt on Twitter @MattStuertz

Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet starring Mel Gibson was released in 1990, and other hit adaptations would follow - notably Kenneth Branagh’s celebrated Much Ado About Nothing in 1993, Oliver Parker’s Othello, starring Branagh and Laurence Fishburne, in 1995, and Baz Luhrman’s huge hit Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in 1996, a movie that made ten times its 14 million dollar budget.

So when A Midsummer Night's Dream, often cited as the most popular Shakespeare play ever, hit early in summer movie season of 1999, it was basically a sure thing, especially given its stellar cast.

However, grossing just 16 million dollars, it barely made money on its 11 million dollar budget. Compare that to Romeo + Juliet or even Much Ado, which made 43 million on a less than 6 million dollar budget, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream has to be seen as a dud.

It was met with a very mixed (but largely approving) critical response, but what did we think of it?

This week, John and Joey welcome accomplished Shakespearean actor, director, and producer Steven Sabel to talk about it. Steven is also the host of Don't Quill the Messenger, a podcast exploring the Shakespeare authorship question.

The stars have little chemistry. None of them are happy with the material. Wild Wild West has burned through six writers and several reimaginings. Sonnenfeld - coming off a string of hits in The Addams Family, Get Shorty, and his previous team-up with Smith, Men in Black - sits at a table opposite producer Jon Peters.

"I've lost control of the film," he tells Peters. "It has no story, no core, no charm - the jokes don't work and the tone is all over the place."

Peters takes a deep breath. He looks down at the table and then up at Sonnenfeld. Suddenly, he slams his fist on the table, shoots up from his chair, and screams at his director. "DAMN IT! I don't care if it has no plot! I don't care if the actors hate it!! I don't care if it's miscast!!! I. ONLY. CARE. ABOUT. GIANT. METAL. SPIDERS. Get that spider onto the big screen. Nothing else matters!!"

Peters takes another breath. He sits back down. He looks a startled Sonnenfeld right in the eye. "Nothing. Else. Matters."

Wicky wicky wah wah.

We're joined this week by Dan Cólon (@DanColon) and Mike Manzi (@the_mikestir), hosts of The Monsters That Made Us.

There is some shared DNA between the two movies - both explore a very specific subculture in LA at a very specific time in the 90s, both drip with cool, and both borrow heavily from other films while creating something all their own.

But they're also very different. And Go was often labeled by critics - who overwhelmingly praised the movie - as "Tarantinoesque".

Of all the movies we've covered, this one is perhaps the most of its time (by design) and, weirdly, among the least aged, as Go's emphasis on clever dialogue, fast-paced storytelling, and characters that feel like real people make it a movie that is every bit as enjoyable, frantic, surprising, and oddly sweet as it was 24 years ago.

John and Joey invited two giant Go fans to discuss all of this - friend of the network Jess Collins, and the co-host of the podcast You Are Good, Alex Steed.

Jess is on Twitter @jayarekay_

Alex is on Twitter @alexsteed

But it has gone on to become of the most critically successful and beloved documentaries ever made. The story of filmmaker Mark Borchardt's attempt to make his dream movie on a microbudget in his quiet midwestern town. The film ends up as something of a meditation on artistry, the American Dream, family, and the true costs of the relentless will to create.

And it is now considered by many to be one of the greatest documentaries ever made, and in some way helped usher in a new era of documentaries as a commercially viable, culturally relevant genre of film.

BJ Colangelo, who established herself as the expert on midwest quirkiness in our Drop Dead Gorgeous episode. rejoins us. And this time, so does Harmony Colangelo (who happen to be married and are also the co-hosts of the podcast This Ends at Prom) as we take a loving look at American Movie.

Check out This Ends at Prom on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/thisendsatprom

One year and 27 movies later, we're wrapping up round 3 and previewing our fourth round - this time, it's hosts' choice, as John and Joey each pick 4 movies and one they decided on together. But before that, they are joined by their friend and #1 fan Tyler Birth to take a look back at the highs and lows of our request round.

Thanks to all our guest from this round:

Bridget Todd (The Talented Mr. Ripley)

Jenn Tisdale (Jawbreaker)

Cody and Garth from Least Haunted (Ravenous)

BJ Colangelo, Chelsey Weber-Smith, and Miranda Zickler (Drop Dead Gorgeous)

Mark Hofmeyer (Deep Blue Sea)

Heather Antos (Tarzan)

Dahlia Balcazar (The Haunting)

Sebastian Major (The Messenger)

and

Austin Wolf-Sothern (Bats)

You can find Tyler on Twitter @OhThatTyler

Bats.

So, not every 1999 movie was a paradigm-shifting landmark. Some of them were unabashedly absurd b-movie creature features about bats. Like Bats.

1999’s 127th-highest grossing movie, Bats opened at #9 just in time for Halloween, on the weekend of October 29th.

But it nearly earned back its budget in its opening week, taking in 4.7 million dollars, and going on to earn more than 10 million dollars on a US-only release.

Bats is also the worst-reviewed film we’ve covered. But is the Lou Diamond Philips-led horror romp a hidden gem?

Maybe!

So we asked the world's #1 fan of the movie Bratz, Austin Wolf-Sothern, to go to bat for Bats, a movie Joey ended up loving and John ended up rooting for in spite of all its frustrating shortcomings.

You can check out Austin's Patreon site here: The Truth About Cats and Bratz

Actually, The Messenger was indeed touted as "Oscar bait" prior to its release in November of 1999. Luc Besson was fresh off of his most commercially successful hit The Fifth Element, and so reteaming with Fifth Element star Milla Jovovich (who at the time was married to Besson) for a big, epic, gritty retelling of the Joan of Arc story seemed like a sure thing.

Add in star power from John Malkovich, Dustin Hoffman, and how could you go wrong?

Well, The Messenger goes wrong a lot of ways. But it's also not the abysmal disaster some people seem to remember.

The Messenger, for all its faults, tries to do something different with the well-worn Joan of Arc story, and it has a lot to recommend it (just maybe not its run-time).

This week, Our Fake History host Sebastian Major, who covered Joan in his podcast's first season, joins John and Joey to share his thoughts on the award-winning epic that wasn't.

Dahlia tells us why she decided to make an audio essay about the year of all years, and we touch on what was going on in other areas of culture outside of the movie theater, like Y2K and The Sopranos.

Dahlia's requested movie was Jan Debont's follow-up to Speed and Twister, the 2nd major...um...adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House. Originally planned to be release with the novel's title intact, it was shortened to The Haunting to avoid confusion with another 1999 movie, The House on Haunted Hill.

Starring Lily Taylor, Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Owen Wilson, The Haunting was not a disaster at the box office, cracking the top 25 for the year. But it is, nonetheless, a disaster...and not in the way it's supposed to be, like Twister.

Is there any reason to watch this movie? Find out!

But there are definitely reasons to listen to 1999: Forever, which you can find here!

https://www.salvadordahlia.com/1999-forever

Tarzan did well with critics, as well. It was nominated for more than 2 dozen different awards, and won the Oscar and Golden Globe for best original song, Phil Collins’ “You’ll Be in My Heart”. 

It holds a an 89 percent Rotten Tomatoes score with more than 100 reviews, and 79 Metacritic score with 27 reviews, putting it right in the middle of the pack of the so-called Disney Renaissance films.

But, oddly, this de facto grand finale of the Disney hand-drawn era just doesn't loom as large as the like of The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, or even Hercules.

It will, however, always be in the heart (get it?) of our guest, artist and senior editor at IDW, Heather Antos. She joins John and Joey to talk about why Tarzan is great and deserves its seat in the Disney pantheon.

Heather is on Twitter @HeatherAntos

Opening on July 30, Deep Blue Sea debuted in 3rd place behind the #1 opening of Runaway Bride and a still-strong Blair Witch Project coming in #2 in its third week.

It would continue to stay in the top 10 for a respectable three further weeks.

Writing in Wired in 2016, friend of the show and giant Deep Blue Sea fan Brian Raftery noted that it was one of the last movies of its kind, one ubiquitous in the mid-90s, “A]n R-rated B-movie, full of gore and chaos and smart-stupidness.”

It felt old-fashioned and anachronistic by the eve of the 21st century, but has gone on to be celebrated as, at once, a shameless facsimile, delightful celebration, and singular exemplar of its specific subgenre.

To discuss its legacy and surprising effectiveness, John and Joey invited Deep Blue Sea's most notable fan, Mark Hofmeyer, to explain why it's so great, and to settle which of the film's many doors are best.

You can find Mark, and link to his many ventures, on Twitter @Mhofmeyer

Jann shares his thoughts on the film's journey from critical and commercial dud to beloved cult classic, and shares what he's been up to lately (spoiler, his second feature film is due out this year!)

Filmed in the then still novel mockumentary style, the movie about a beauty pageant in Mount Rose, Minnesota was written by a former beauty pageant contestant from Rosemount, Minnesota, Lona Williams (also known as 1985’s Minnesota Junior Miss) and directed by former member of The State and accomplished TV director Michael Patrick Jann.

And it boasts a jam-packed cast, including Kirsten Dunst, Allison Janney, Ellen Barkin, Denise Richards, and the film debut of Amy Adams.

But in the years since its release, it has become an enormously popular cult favorite, with appreciative audiences finding themselves baffled over its initial critical panning.

Drop Dead Gorgeous was requested by return guest Chelsey Weber-Smith, who appeared on our Blair Witch Project episode, this time joined by American Hysteria producer Miranda Zickler and This Ends at Prom co-host BJ Colangelo.

Ravenous was also the recipient of decidedly (often wildly) mixed critics' reviews, all of whom seem to agree that the movie shifts tones so often and dramatically that it’s hard to actually pin it to any one genre.

But like our previous movie, Jawbreaker, it has since developed a loving cult following. So this week Joey and John invited back Logan Ashley-Kisner, who considers Ravenous one of his favorite movies, to help them with the intro, and then speaks to the hosts of the podcast Least Haunted, Cody and Garth, about the history and folklore that serves as the movie's inspiration, as well as a healthy debate about whether Guy Pearce is actually attractive.

Logan is on Twitter @transhorrors

and his Linktree is available here

Check out Least Haunted at their website:

https://www.leasthaunted.com/

Jawbreaker was released in theatres on February 19th, making it one of the earliest 1999 films we’ve covered to date.

The sophomore feature from writer Darren Stein, Jawbreaker is a John Waters-esque psychedelic high school satire. The 171st-highest grossing movie of the year, it earned 3.1 million on a 3.5 million dollar budget and was a complete failure with critics, holding just a 14% Rotten Tomatoes score and a 22 Metacritic score.

The film was really intended for home video consumption, however, and it quickly became a cult classic in that form. Additionally, several critics gave the film a second look much later and came to a much different conclusion.

How does it hold up? And does Jenn still love it? And what about that Marilyn Manson cameo? Find out this week!

The second motion picture adaptation of the novel by Patricia Highsmith, Ripley was released just under the wire on December 25th, going on to earn $127 million on a $40 million budget. The film stars Matt Damon, a pre-Goop Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cate Blanchett, Jack Davenport, and James Rebhorn, with music by Gabriel Yared and adapted and directed by Anthony Minghella, just a couple years of his big Oscar haul for The English Patient.

Bridget joins John and Joey to argue that, far from being merely an incredible period-specific psychodrama, Ripley has a lot to say about the ways the world was changing in 1999, and is just as relevant as it was 23 years ago...and 70 some-odd years since Tom Ripley first graced the page.

Find Bridget on Twitter (where you can link to the rest of her work) @BridgetMarie

Olive the Other Reindeer is based on the children's book of the same name by artist J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh.

With its unique style, an all-star voice cast, and Michael Stipe, Olive is something of a forgotten gem. And we're here to unforget it! (Except Joey and Juhi, who had never seen it at all...)

Enjoy our laid-back Christmas chat and get the fireplace going as you enjoy Juhi's incredible recapping skills and sit in amazement as John regales the listeners with his incredibly random Drew Barrymore story.

We hope you and yours are happy and well. Look out for frogs, and see you in 2023!

We take a moment to look back at it all, discuss some of what surprised us both, offer ideas on which movies might be ready for a sequel or two, and take preview what's to come (hint: it's a lot!)

The show will be back with a new round with a new theme and brand new episodes on January 9th, but in the meantime keep an eye out on your feed for a potential Christmas surprise!

Originally conceived as a direct-to-video sequel, much in line with Disney's strategy of releasing its other sequels to blockbuster animated films like The Return of Jafar and The Lion King 2, it soon became clear that Pixar's vision for Toy Story 2 was far too big and too bold not to grace the big screen.

So instead of relegating it to video, Disney triples the budget of the original Toy Story and wound up with a mammoth holiday season hit.

The film went on to win a number of awards and wind up on several critics' year-end Best Of lists, and it, along with its predecessor, holds the rare honor of a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating.

For this episode, film critic and Pixar enthusiast Aaron Neuwirth joined the show to talk about Toy Story 2's place in the series, where it ranks among the best of Pixar's work, and that damn Sarah McLachlan scene.

Aaron is on Twitter @AaronsPS4

You can check out his website here.

It's also absurd, obscene, and one of the best movie musicals not called Moulin Rouge of the last few decades.

The humor of the show and the movie, though, has always been too things - edgy (bordering on shocking) and timely. South Park the series has produced some of the smartest, most incisive satire anywhere in its 25 years of existence, but that kind of humor doesn't always age well?

So how does this movie hold up in that regard? We asked someone who loved it at the time - John's friend George Freitag - if he would still rave to strangers about it at Denny's like he did 23 years ago.

Blame Canada, join La Resistance, and save Terrence and Phillip as we talk about South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, a title that refers solely to the the fact that the movie is bigger and longer than an episode of the show and did not have to be edited for television!

Find George on Twitter if it still exists @georgefreitag

Starring Franke Potente and Moritz Bleibtreu, Run Lola Run was the breakout feature from writer-director-composer Tom Tykwer.

The style and themes of the film share a lot in common with the first film we covered on the podcast and one of your favorites, The Matrix. Beyond just the superficial, like a telephone serving as the catalyst for the plot, both films borrow as much from the kinetic pace and jump-cut editing of music videos of the era as they do from the styles and techniques of traditional filmmaking.

Not surprisingly, then, Tykwer, used Run Lola Run as a springboard for much more mainstream (if still pretty avant-garde) success with his collaborations with Wachowskis in films like Cloud Atlas and the Netflix Series Sense8, as well as serving, again with Klimek, as composer for Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections.

Is the film as vital today as it was two decades ago? To find out, we asked someone who wasn't born when it was released. Jacob Meirovich is one of the editors responsible for the Run Lola Run remix Run Lola Run the Jewels Run, and he joined John and Joey to explain why this movie is one of his favorites.

Find Jacob on Twitter @nerdyton

Other links!

https://twitter.com/exportz_

https://twitter.com/MonMovMad

https://twitter.com/dvdivision

https://twitter.com/MagnoliaRMSTRD

https://twitter.com/SegFest

https://www.twitch.tv/exportz

https://www.twitch.tv/beesonehundred

https://www.twitch.tv/caymanislandspublicaccess

https://www.twitch.tv/mondaymoviemadness

https://www.twitch.tv/dreamvideodivision

https://www.twitch.tv/segfest

Released in the frigid box office month of February and featuring an advertising and marketing campaign that was so bad classes should be taught about it, Office Space went on to become the year's 134th-highest grossing movie, falling short of the box office hauls for beloved, critically-acclaimed classics like Chill Factor and Wing Commander. 

The live-action feature debut of Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge deserved so much better, and it would soon get it. Office Space caught on when Comedy Central began airing it (on heavy rotation) shortly after its release on home video, in August of 1999, and the movie began to develop the audience it always deserved.

It was very funny then. But does it still work now? Or is its satirizing of late-90s office life lost on the audiences of 2022. We pose this question to podcaster, comedian, writer, and all-around spooktacular person Jenn Tisdale, cohost of Too Many Jennifers.

The 8th-highest grossing movie of 1999, The Mummy is - there's no other way to say it - weird on a lot of levels. It feels completely out of place among its peers, embracing both state-of-the-art digital effects and very old school practical effects, it pays homage to the adventure films of the golden age of Hollywood while also somehow functioning as modern blockbuster.

It's not for everyone (including, at is turns out, Joey), but it was so earnest and unexpected at the time that it still has some pretty rabid fans, including our guest for out The Matrix episode, the first movie we covered on this podcast, Chris Kluwe, who returns to talk about bugs that crawl under your skin, whether this should be compared to Indiana Jones, and whether anybody should bother with the sequels (or the Tom Cruise version!)

Election was a pretty giant dud. With a reported $25 million price tag, the film earned just $15 million at the box office, making it the 98th-highest grossing movie of the year. And that's despite near universal critical acclaim and a number of major awards nominations.

What went wrong? A lot, including a very limited release right after Columbine and sandwiched between The Matrix and The Mummy. But Election also defies genre, and having the MTV Productions label attached to it made the movie seem like something it...wasn't.

But the growing acclaim for its writer-director Alexander Payne in the years that followed made audience give it a second look, and today Election is something of a cult favorite, as well as powerful time capsule for a lot of the pre-9/11, pre-millennium, post-Clinton angst that made 1999 so unique.

John and Joey invited High School Slumber Party host Brian Rodriguez on to chat about this very not-a-teen-movie high school comedy.

But it explores many of the same issues that films like The Matrix and Fight Club explore, though with a much more insane glee than those films. And it comes across as the kind of movie that could only hit theaters during the year of Y2K end-times paranoia, when the whole culture sort of shared and “I dunno, fuck it!” kind of attitude.

It also happens to be previous guest Brian Silliman's favorite 1999 movie, so John and Joey asked him back to take a little trip through the tunnel on floor seven-and-a-half to get inside the mind Malkovich and talk about this brilliant, groundbreaking classic.

Find Brian on Twitter @BrianSilliman

American Pie made back its tiny 11 million dollar budget and then some in its opening weekend. And it went on to gross more than 100 million domestically and 235 million worldwide, making it one of the most profitable movies of the year (an honor obviously belonging to the freakishly budget-to-gross ratio obliteration machine that was The Blair Witch Project).

But like 10 Things, it had almost no star power whatsoever. While much of the cast would go on to various levels of fame, the most famous cast member at the time was Alyson Hannigan, who had spent three seasons playing Willow Rosenberg on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, followed by Thomas Ian Nicholas, who had starred in a couple of popular family movies in the 1990s.

American Pie was also buoyed by some surprisingly warm critical praise. But do the movie's gross-out humor and depictions of sexual angst still hold up? Find out in this episode, where John and Joey invited Tessa and Nicole from the Doom Generation podcast to talk about what happened that one time in band camp.

Everything you need to know about Doom Generation you can find out here!

But while it boasted a very impressive cast of very good actors, it had virtually no star power, and the central draw was a virtually unknown young actor named Heath Ledger. Neither Joseph Gordon-Levitt nor Julia Stiles were yet household names.

And it was released against another big 1999 movie called The Matrix, and right in the crowded midst of the revival of the teen movie that had begun a year earlier with the release of Can’t Hardly Wait, and had already in 1999, by the time of 10 Things I Hate About You's release, seen the releases of She’s All That, Varsity Blues, Jawbreaker, and Cruel Intentions (to say nothing of the juggernaut that was American Pie, released several months later). 

So why did 10 Things work so well, and find such a devout audience, that it makes it so beloved today? John and Joey invited one such devotee, author Kelly J. Baker, to tell them.

Find Dr. Baker on Twitter @kelly_j_baker

Thanks to Brian Raftery, Chris Kluwe, Brian Silliman, Matt Romano, Lila Shapiro, Chelsey Weber-Smith, Stephanie Gagnon, Aislinn and Tobin Addington, Amanda Moore, Logan Kisner, and Tyler Huckabee for sharing their time and thoughts with us!

We'll be back to on Monday, 8/22 with a new episode!

Released at the very end of 1999, Magnolia was largely lauded by critics, received a number of year-end awards and nominations, and mostly overlooked by audiences.

But like Fight Club before it, it found second life on DVD and quickly found an adoring audience, in addition to the source of a number of ubiquitous pop culture references, largely due to Tom Cruise's outrageous motivational speaker character, Frank T. J. Mackey.

Still, three hours of high drama, weird dramatic flourishes, multiple storylines, falling frogs, and Aimee Mann sing-a-longs doesn't exactly sound like everyone's cup of tea. But it is the cup of tea of Relevant Magazine's senior editor Tyler Huckabee, who joined John and Joey to talk all about this classic in our round one finale!

Find Tyler on Twitter @TylerHuckabee

Billed as a dramatization of the events leading up to the 1993 rape and murder of 21-year-old trans man Brandon Teena, it was nominated for 57 major awards and won 37 of them.

14 of went to star Hilary Swank, 6 to costar Chloe Sevigny, and 8 to writer director Kimberley Peirce.

And Swank of course won the Oscar for Best Actress, while Sevigny was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

But critics at the time almost always misgendered Brandon in their reviews. And the film effectively erases the trans identity of its protagonist, which some argue is the result of a conscious and unforgiveable narrative and creative decision made my Peirce, who cast a cisgendered woman to play Brandon and who shut out essentially all input and participation from anyone in the trans community. 

In the 23 years since its release, Boys Don't Cry has not aged well. But this week's guest, writer and trans horror historian Logan Ashley Kisner, argues that it's not all about aging - Boys Don't Cry is a fundamentally, irredeemably transphobic film.

Find Logan Ashley on Twitter @transhorrors and find links to his writing at linktr.ee/transhorror

His essay on Boys Don't Cry is available here: “Boys Don’t Cry” Has Always Been Violently Transphobic

Trans Rights Organization Links:

• Transgender Map Advocacy Page
• National Center for Transgender Equality
• Transgender Law Center
• Trans Justice Funding Project
• The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund
• The Trevor Project
• Trans Lifeline
• Transgender Media Portal
• TransAction Florida
• Trans Pride Initative
• TransOhio

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

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.

Filmed on a $40 million budget, the film made a respectable $26 million its opening weekend, but great reviews and word of mouth propelled it to a $293.5 million domestic box office gross and a worldwide gross of just shy of $673 million.

It was the only movie to stay #1 for 5 weeks aside from The Phantom Menace, and, most impressively, it made at least $20 million all five weekends it was #1, making more than $29 million its final weekend.

Not bad for a decidedly not-action movie centered around Bruce Willis, a year after Armageddon and then at the early stages of the waning days of his star power, and a relatively obscure child actor named Haley Joel Osment, and written and directed by an almost entirely unknown filmmaker named M. Night Shyamalan.

So much of The Sixth Sense rests on its legendary plot twist, so already knowing how it ends, we invited Stephanie Gagnon, host of the horror book podcast Books in the Freezer, to join us in taking another look at the movie to see if it still holds up as a haunted horror movie.

Check out Books in the Freezer here.

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.

One of the founding films in the "found footage" genre, the film was perhaps most famous for the unprecedented marketing campaign that led up to its release.

The movie made innovative use of a relatively novel outlet called "the World Wide Web" and deliberately blurred the lines between fact and fiction, giving the film an air of reality that actually fooled some its audience into believing they were watching real documentary footage.

Heralded by critics for its ingenuity as well as its genuine scares, Blair Witch may well have been the buzziest of buzzy movies ever. But its legacy is slightly more complicated. While it was a huge hit with the public at the time, it is less liked by audiences now, who often complain that the movie doesn't hold up on its own, having relied too much on the multimedia "project" of which the film is merely the final ingredient.

This week, we talk to Blair Witch superfan and host of American Hysteria Chelsey Weber-Smith about what made it a great movie then and why we should still love it today.

Chelsey on Twitter: @AmerHysteria

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

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

Find John on Twitter @ProbablyRealJB

Find Joey on Twitter @soulpopped

Find Brian on Twitter @BrianRaftery

For more on the book, Brian's website is https://www.brianraftery.com/