Trailer - Celebrating the 25th Jubilee of the Best Year of Cinema Ever

Something wonderful happened to cinema in the nineties.

The decade started slowly, hungover on the popcorn spectacles and high school dramas of the eighties, until---BANG!---Tarantino burst onto the scene with Reservoir Dogs and made cinephiles everywhere sit up and take notice.

Young directors emerged from the fluoro-spandex ruin of the previous decade in response; directors who grew up with videotape and Nintendo instead of super 8 and cowboys and black and white war movies; they threw away the rulebook and told their stories in their own unique way. Like the French New Wave, these movies re-defined what cinema could be.

It all reached an astonishing apex in 1999 when films that would formerly have been written off as arthouse hit the mainstream; dozens of cinema classics that continue to influence filmmakers of today were released one after another in a seemingly endless cascade of creativity with no sequels or superheroes in sight.

2024 marks the 25th jubilee of what is considered by many to be the greatest year of cinema in the history of cinema! Nineteen Ninety Nine. To celebrate this landmark year I'll be hosting a pot-luck watch party at my place each weekend for the entire year, where we'll randomly selected a movie from a hat containing 52 examples of the very best of what 1999 has to offer and watch it on the spot.

This podcast is my invitation to you to join us for the ride. Venture back with us to the beforetimes; before doomscrolling, filter bubbles and the attention economy. Back when the mainstream media didn't know what an algorithm was and movies could be daring and unpredictable and different to anything anybody had seen before. Before Y2K and 911 and the MCU ruined the party. Before streaming services - six years before YouTube even - when studios were using their gut instincts to place big bets on originality and when directors had the freedom to call the shots. Strap yourselves in, it's going to be one hell of a ride!