Remember ‘99? Here’s Some 20/20 Hindsight

This time last year it was pretty easy for Calendar or anyone else to predict “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace” would be 1999’s biggest commercial success, but who would have guessed that a Bruce Willis picture about a kid who sees ghosts would be No. 2?

Our only mention of that film, “The Sixth Sense,” was in a group of films cited as examples of “intriguing roles.” The others were “The Green Mile,” “Analyze This” and “The Mummy.”

In terms of photographs, at least at the front of last year’s Sneaks overview, most of the movies we selected proved worthwhile; the one we played up most, however, was a big stinker, despite grossing $114 million: “Wild Wild West.”

On the next six pages, only one highlighted film qualified as a mega-hit: “The Matrix.”

Movies on which we had not a clue included “American Pie,” “American Beauty” and “Stuart Little.”

And then there were films studios had hoped would be ready but still haven’t come out: “Lost Souls,” “Pitch Black,” “The Yards,” “The Big Tease,” “The Ninth Gate,” “Isn’t She Great,” “Hanging Up,” “Gossip,” “I Dreamed of Africa,” “Inconvenienced” (since renamed, fittingly, “Held Up”), an “untitled comedy from Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski” (since titled “Foolproof” and retitled “Screwed”), “The Beach,” “Me, Myself and Irene” and two Billy Bob Thornton-directed movies--”All the Pretty Horses” and “Daddy and Them.” And then there are the remakes of “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” which is nowhere to be seen on this year’s list, and “Town and Country,” which New Line hopes will come out by year’s end.

Meanwhile, films from Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford and Nicolas Cage under-performed, while John Travolta scored with “The General’s Daughter” and Ashley Judd showed box-office muscle with “Double Jeopardy.”

Finally, last January nobody but some Florida film school grads and Sundance Film Festival programmers had heard about “The Blair Witch Project.” Nor did anyone know that skateboarding music video director Spike Jonze would turn out one of the year’s most original films, “Being John Malkovich,” and find himself a possible Oscar contender.